Blood Meridian or The Evening Redness in the West

XVIII

The return to camp — The idiot delivered — Sarah Borgi

Then they rode out of the Yuma camp it was in the dark of early morning. Cancer, Virgo, Leo raced the ecliptic down the southern night and to the north the constellation of Cassiopeia burned like a witch's signature on the black face of the firmament. In the nightlong parley they'd come to terms with the Yumas in conspiring to seize the ferry. They rode upriver among the floodstained trees talking quietly among themselves like men returning late from a social, from a wedding or a death.

By daylight the women at the crossing had discovered the idiot in his cage. They gathered about him, apparently unap-palled by the nakedness and filth. They crooned to him and they consulted among themselves and a woman named Sarah Borgin­nis led them to seek out the brother. She was a huge woman with a great red face and she read him riot.

What's your name anyways? she said.

Cloyce Bell mam.

What's his.

His name's James Robert but there dont anybody call him it.

If your mother was to see him what do you reckon she'd say.

I dont know. She's dead.

Aint you ashamed?

No mam.

Dont you sass me.

I'm not trying to. You want him just take him. I'll give him to you. I cant do any more than what I've done.

Damn if you aint a sorry specimen. She turned to the other women.

You all help me. We need to bathe him and get some clothes on him. Somebody run get some soap.

Mam, said the keeper.

You all just take him on to the river.

Toadvine and the kid passed them as they were dragging the cart along. They stepped off the path and watched them go by. The idiot was clutching the bars and hooting at the water and some of the women had started up a hymn.

Where are they takin it? said Toadvine.

The kid didnt know. They were backing the cart through the loose sand toward the edge of the river and they let it down and opened the cage. The Borgi

James Robert come out of there.

She reached in and took him by the hand. He peered past her at the water, then he reached for her.

A sigh went up from the women, several of whom had hiked their skirts and tucked them at the waist and now stood in the river to receive him.

She handed him down, him clinging to her neck. When his feet touched the ground he turned to the water. She was smeared with feces but she seemed not to notice. She looked back at those on the riverbank.

Burn that thing, she said.

Someone ran to the fire for a brand and while they led James Robert into the waters the cage was torched and began to burn.

He clutched at their skirts, he reached with a clawed hand, gibbering, drooling.

He sees hisself in it, they said.

Shoo. Imagine having this child pe

The flames from the burning cart crackled in the dry air and the noise must have caught the idiot's attention for he turned his dead black eyes upon it. He knows, they said. All agreed. The Borgi

His old companions saw him that night before the migrants' fires in a coarse woven wool suit. His thin neck turned warily in the collar of his outsized shirt. They'd greased his hair and combed it flat upon his skull so that it looked painted on. They brought him sweets and he sat drooling and watched the fire, greatly to their admiration. In the dark the river ran on and a fishcolored moon rose over the desert east and set their shadows by their sides in the barren light. The fires drew down and the smoke stood gray and chambered in the night. The little jackal wolves cried from across the river and the camp dogs stirred and muttered. The Borgi

Now the judge on his midnight rounds was passing along at just this place stark naked himself—such encounters being com­moner than men suppose or who would survive any crossing by night—and he stepped into the river and seized up the drown­ing idiot, snatching it aloft by the heels like a great midwife and slapping it on the back to let the water out. A birth scene or a baptism or some ritual not yet inaugurated into any canon. He twisted the water from its hair and he gathered the naked and sobbing fool into his arms and carried it up into the camp and restored it among its fellows.

XIX

The howitzer — The Yumas attack — A skirmish — Clanton appropriates the ferry — The hanged Judas — The coffers — A deputation for the coast — San Diego — Arranging for supplies — Brown at the farrier's — A dispute — Webster and Toadvine freed — The ocean — An altercation — A man burned alive — Brown in durance vile — Tales of treasure — An escape — A murder in the mountains — Glanton leaves Yuma — The alcalde hanged — Hostages — Returns to Yuma — Doctor and judge, nigger and fool — Dawn on the river — Carts without wheels — Murder of Jackson — The Yuma massacre.

The doctor had been bound for California when the ferry fell into his hands for the most by chance. In the ensuing months he'd amassed a considerable wealth in gold and silver and jewelry. He and the two men who worked for him had taken up resi­dence on the west bank of the river overlooking the ferrylanding among the abutments of an unfinished hillside fortification made from mud and rock. In addition to the pair of freightwagons he'd inherited from Major Graham's command he had also a moun­tain howitzer—a bronze twelvepounder with a bore the size of a saucer—and this piece stood idle and unloaded in its wooden truck. In the doctor's crude quarters he and Glanton and the judge together with Brown and Irving sat drinking tea and Glanton sketched for the doctor a few of their indian adventures and advised him strongly to secure his position. The doctor demurred. He claimed to get along well with the Yumas. Glanton told him to his face that any man who trusted an indian was a fool. The doctor colored but he held his tongue. The judge inter­vened. He asked the doctor did he consider the pilgrims huddled on the far shore to be under his protection. The doctor said that he did so consider them. The judge spoke reasonably and with concern and when Glanton and his detail returned down the hill to cross to their camp they had the doctor's permission to fortify the hill and charge the howitzer and to this end they set about ru

They loaded the howitzer that evening with something like a pound of powder and the entire cast of shot and they trundled the piece to a place of advantage overlooking the river and the landing below.