Blood Meridian or The Evening Redness in the West

Why dont you shoot that thing? said Irving.

Sooner it dies the sooner it'll rot, they said.

Irving spat. You aim to eat it and it snakebit?

They looked at one another. They didnt know.

Irving shook his head and went out. Glanton and the judge looked at the squatters and the squatters looked at the floor. Some of the roofbeams were half down into the room and the floor was filled with mud and rubble. Into these ruinous works the morning sun now slanted and Glanton could see crouched in a corner a Mexican or halfbreed boy maybe twelve years old. He was naked save for a pair of old calzones and makeshift sandals of uncured hide. He glared back at Glanton with a sort of terrified insolence.

Who's this child? said the judge.

They shrugged, they looked away.

Glanton spat and shook his head.

They posted guards atop the azotea and unsaddled the horses and drove them out to graze and the judge took one of the packanimals and emptied out the pa

Books lie, he said.

God dont lie.

No, said the judge. He does not. And these are his words.

He held up a chunk of rock.

He speaks in stones and trees, the bones of things.

The squatters in their rags nodded among themselves and were soon reckoning him correct, this man of learning, in all his speculations, and this the judge encouraged until they were right proselytes of the new order whereupon he laughed at them for fools.

That evening the main part of the company quartered them­selves on the dry clay of the compound under the stars. Before morning rain would drive them in, huddled in the dark mud cubicles along the south wall. In the office of the presidio they'd built a fire in the floor and the smoke rose through the ruined roof and Glanton and the judge and their lieutenants sat about the blaze and smoked their pipes while the squatters stood off to one side chewing the tobacco they'd been given and spitting at the wall. The halfbreed boy watched them with his dark eyes. To the west among the low dark hills they could hear the howl­ing of a wolf that the squatters did mistrust and the hunters smiled among themselves. In a night so beclamored with the jackal-yapping of coyotes and the cries of owls the howl of that old dog wolf was the one sound they knew to issue from its right form, a solitary lobo, perhaps gray at the muzzle, hung like a marionette from the moon with his long mouth gibbering.

It grew cold in the night and it blew stormy with wind and rain and soon all the wild menagerie of that country grew mute. A horse put its long wet face in at the door and Glanton looked up and spoke to it and it lifted its head and curled its lip and withdrew into the rain and the night.

The squatters observed this as they observed everything with their shifting eyes and one of them allowed that he would never make a pet of a horse. Glanton spat at the fire and looked at the man where he sat horseless in his rags and he shook his head at the wonderful invention of folly in its guises and forms. The rain had slacked and in the stillness a long crack of thunder rolled overhead and clanged among the rocks and then the rain came harder until it was pouring through the blackened opening in the roof and steaming and hissing in the fire. One of the men rose and dragged up the rotted ends of some old beams and piled them onto the flames. The smoke spread along the sagging vigas above them and little streams of liquid clay started down from the sod roof. Outside the compound lay under sheets of water that slashed about in the gusts and the light of the fire falling from the door laid a pale band upon that shallow sea along which the horses stood like roadside spectators waiting an event. From time to time one of the men would rise and go out and his shadow would fall among the animals and they would raise and lower their dripping heads and dap their hooves and then wait in the rain again.

The men who had been on watch entered the room and stood steaming before the fire. The black stood at the door neither in nor out. Someone had reported the judge naked atop the walls, immense and pale in the revelations of lightning, striding the perimeter up there and declaiming in the old epic mode. Glanton watched the fire silently and the men composed themselves in their blankets in the drier places about the floor and soon they were asleep.

In the morning the rain had ceased. The water stood in pools in the courtyard and the snakebit horse lay dead with its shape­less head stretched in the mud and the other animals had gathered in the northeast corner under the tower and stood facing the wall. The peaks to the north were white with snow in the new risen sun and when Toadvine stepped out into the day the sun was just touching the upper walls of the compound and the judge was standing in the gently steaming quiet picking his teeth with a thorn as if he had just eaten.

Morning, said the judge.

Morning, said Toadvine.

Looks fair to clear.

It done has cleared, said Toadvine.

The judge turned his head and looked toward the pristine cobalt keep of the visible day. An eagle was crossing the gorge with the sun very white on its head and tailfeathers.

So it has, said the judge. So it has.

The squatters emerged and stood about the cantonment blink­ing like birds. They had elected among themselves to join the company and when Glanton came across the yard leading his horse the spokesman for their group stepped forward to inform him of their decision. Glanton didnt even look at him. He entered the cuartel and got his saddle and gear. In the meantime someone had found the boy.

He was lying face down naked in one of the cubicles. Scattered about on the clay were great numbers of old bones. As if he like others before him had stumbled upon a place where something inimical lived. The squatters crowded in and stood about the corpse in silence. Soon they were conversing senselessly about the merits and virtues of the dead boy.

In the compound the scalphunters mounted up and turned their horses toward the gates that now stood open to the east to welcome in the light and to invite their journey. As they rode out the doomed men hosteled in that place came dragging the boy out and laid him in the mud. His neck had been broken and his head hung straight down and it flopped over strangely when they let him onto the ground. The hills beyond the minepit were reflected grayly in the pools of rainwater in the courtyard and the partly eaten mule lay in the mud with its hindquarters miss­ing like something from a chromo of terrific war. Within the doorless cuartel the man who'd been shot sang church hymns and cursed God alternately. The squatters stood about the dead boy with their wretched firearms at rest like some tatterdemalion guard of honor. Glanton had given them a half pound of rifle-powder and some primers and a small pig of lead and as the company rode out some looked back at them, three men standing there without expression. No one raised a hand in farewell. The dying man by the ashes of the fire was singing and as they rode out they could hear the hymns of their childhood and they could hear them as they ascended the arroyo and rode up through the low junipers still wet from the rain. The dying man sang with great clarity and intention and the riders setting forth upcountry may have ridden more slowly the longer to hear him for they were of just these qualities themselves.