Blood Meridian or The Evening Redness in the West

They rose and began to saddle the horses. Glanton fetched down a quiver made from ocelot skin and counted out the arrows in it so that there was one for each man and he tore a piece of red fla

He sat on the ground with the quiver upright between his knees while the company filed past. When the kid selected among the shafts to draw one he saw the judge watching him and he paused. He looked at Glanton. He let go the arrow he'd chosen and sorted out another and drew that one. It carried the red tassel. He looked at the judge again and the judge was not watching and he moved on and took his place with Tate and Webster. They were joined finally by a man named Harlan from Texas who had drawn the last arrow and the four of them stood together while the rest saddled their horses and led them out.

Of the wounded men two were Delawares and one a Mexican. The fourth was Dick Shelby and he alone sat watching the prep­arations for departure. The Delawares remaining in the com­pany conferred among themselves and one of them approached the four Americans and studied them each in turn. He walked past them and turned and came back and took the arrow from Webster. Webster looked at Glanton where he stood with his horse. Then the Delaware took Harlan's arrow. Glanton turned and with his forehead against the ribs of his horse he tightened the girthstraps and then mounted up. He adjusted his hat. No one spoke. Harlan and Webster went to get their animals. Glan­ton sat his horse while the company filed past and then he turned and followed them out onto the plain.

The Delaware had gone for his horse and he brought it up still hobbled through the wallowed places in the sand where the men had slept. Of the wounded Indians one was silent, breathing heavily with his eyes closed. The other was chanting rhythmically. The Delaware let drop the reins and took down his warclub from his bag and stepped astraddle of the man and swung the club and crushed his skull with a single blow. The man humped up in a little shuddering spasm and then lay still. The other was dispatched in the same way and then the Dela­ware raised the horse's leg and undid the hobble and slid it clear and rose and put the hobble and the club in the bag and mounted up and turned the horse. He looked at the two men standing there. His face and chest were freckled with blood. He touched up the horse with his heels and rode out.

Tate squatted in the sand, his hands dangling in front of him. He turned and looked at the kid.

Who gets the Mexican? he said.

The kid didnt answer. They looked at Shelby. He was watch­ing them.

Tate had a clutch of small pebbles in his hand and he let them drop one by one into the sand. He looked at the kid.

Go on if you want to, the kid said.

He looked at the Delawares dead in their blankets. You might not do it, he said.

That aint your worry.

Glanton might come back.

He might.

Tate looked over to where the Mexican was lying and he looked at the kid again. I'm still held to it, he said.

The kid didnt answer.

You know what they'll do to them?

The kid spat. I can guess, he said.

No you caint.

I said you could go. You do what you want.

Tate rose and looked to the south but the desert there lay in all its clarity uninhabited by any approaching armies. He shrugged up his shoulders in the cold. Injins, he said. It dont mean nothin to them. He crossed the campground and brought his horse around and led it up and mounted it. He looked at the Mexican, wheezing softly, a pink froth on his lips. He looked at the kid and then he nudged the pony up through the scraggly acacia and was gone.

The kid sat in the sand and stared off to the south. The Mexi­can was shot through the lungs and would die anyway but Shelby had had his hip shattered by a ball and he was clear in his head. He lay watching the kid. He was from a prominent Kentucky family and had attended Transylvania College and like many another young man of his class he'd gone west because of a woman. He watched the kid and he watched the enormous sun where it sat boiling on the edge of the desert. Any roadagent or gambler would have known that the first to speak would lose but Shelby had already lost it all.

Why dont you just get on with it? he said.

The kid looked at him.

If I had a gun I'd shoot you, Shelby said.

The kid didnt answer.

You know that, dont you?

You aint got a gun, the kid said.

He looked to the south again. Something moving, perhaps the first lines of heat. No dust in the morning so early. When he looked at Shelby again Shelby was crying.

You wont thank me if I let you off, he said.

Do it then you son of a bitch.

The kid sat. A light wind was blowing out of the north and some doves had begun to call in the thicket of greasewood be­hind them.

If you want me just to leave you I will.

Shelby didnt answer.

He pushed a furrow in the sand with the heel of his boot. You'll have to say.

Will you leave me a gun?

You know I caint leave you no gun.

You're no better than him. Are you?

The kid didnt answer.

What if he comes back.

Glanton.

Yes.

What if he does.

He'll kill me.

You wont be out nothin.

You son of a bitch.

The kid rose.

Will you hide me?

Hide you?

Yes.

The kid spat. You caint hide. Where you goin to hide at?

Will he come back?

I dont know.

This is a terrible place to die in.

Where's a good one?

Shelby wiped his eyes with the back of his wrist. Can you see them? he said.

Not yet.

Will you pull me up under that bush?

The kid turned and looked at him. He looked off down-country again and then he crossed the basin and squatted be­hind Shelby and took him up under the arms and raised him. Shelby's head rolled back and he looked up and then he snatched at the butt of the pistol stuck in the kid's belt. The kid seized his arm. He let him down and stepped away and turned him loose. When he returned through the basin leading the horse the man was crying again. He took the pistol from his belt and jammed it among his belongings lashed to the cantle and took his canteen down and went to him.

He had his face turned away. The kid filled his flask from his own and reseated the stopper where it hung by its thong and drove it home with the heel of his hand. Then he rose and looked off to the south.

Yonder they come, he said.

Shelby raised up on one elbow.

The kid looked at him and he looked at the faint and form­less articulation along the horizon to the south. Shelby lay back. He was staring up at the sky. A dark overcast was moving down from the north and the wind was up. A clutch of leaves scuttled out of the willow bracken at the edge of the sand and then scuttled back again. The kid crossed to where the horse stood waiting and took the pistol and stuck it in his belt and hung the canteen over the saddlehorn and mounted up and looked back at the wounded man. Then he rode out.

He was trotting north on the plain when he saw another horse­man on the grounds before him perhaps a mile distant. He could not make him out and he rode more slowly. After a while he saw that the rider was leading the horse and after a while he could see that the horse was not walking right.

It was Tate. He sat by the wayside watching the kid as he rode up. The horse stood on three legs. Tate said nothing. He took off his hat and looked inside it and put it on again. The kid was turned in the saddle and he was looking to the south. Then he looked at Tate.

Can he walk?

Not much.

He got down and drew up the horse's leg. The frog of the hoof was split and bloody and the animal's shoulder quivered. He let the hoof down. The sun was about two hours high and now there was dust on the horizon. He looked at Tate.