Blood Meridian or The Evening Redness in the West

XXI

Desert castaways — The backtrack — A hideout — The wind takes a side — The judge returns — An address — Los Dieguenos — San Felipe — Hospitality of the savages — Into the mountains — Grizzlies — San Diego — The sea.

The kid looked at Tobin but the expriest sat without expres­sion. He was drawn and wretchedlooking and the approach­ing travelers seemed to evoke in him no recognition. He raised his head slightly and he spoke without looking at the kid. Go on, he said. Save yourself.

The kid took the water bottle from the shales and unstoppered it and drank and handed it across. The expriest drank and they sat watching and then they rose and turned and set out again.

They were much reduced by their wounds and their hunger and they made a poor show as they staggered onward. By noon their water was gone and they sat studying the barre

The approach to any watering place in that desert was marked by the carcasses of perished animals in increasing number and so it was now, as if the wells were ringed about by some hazard lethal to creatures. The travelers looked back. The judge was out of sight beyond the rise. Before them lay the whitened boards of a wagon and further on the shapes of mule and ox with the hide scoured bald as canvas by the constant abrasion of the sand.

The kid stood studying this place and then he backtracked some hundred yards and stood looking down at his shallow footprints in the sand. He looked upon the drifted slope of the esker which they had descended and he knelt and held his hand against the ground and he listened to the faint silica hiss of the wind.

When he lifted his hand there was a thin ridge of sand that had drifted against it and he watched this ridge slowly vanish before him.

The expriest when he returned to him presented a grave ap­pearance. The kid knelt and studied him where he sat.

We got to hide, he said.

Hide?

Yes.

Where do you aim to hide?

Here. We'll hide here.

You cant hide, lad.

We can hide.

You think he cant follow your track?

The wind's taking it. It's gone from the slope yonder.

Gone?

Ever trace.

The expriest shook his head.

Come on. We got to get goin.

You cant hide.

Get up.

The expriest shook his head. Ah lad, he said.

Get up, said the kid.

Go on, go on. He waved his hand.

The lad spoke to him. He aint nothin. You told me so your­self. Men are made of the dust of the earth. You said it was no pair … pair…

Parable.

No parable. That it was a naked fact and the judge was a man like all men.

Face him down then, said the expriest. Face him down if he is so.

And him with a rifle and me with a pistol. Him with two rifles. Get up from there.

Tobin rose. He stood unsteadily, he leaned against the kid. They set out, veering off from the drifted track and down past the wagon.

They passed the first of the racks of bones and went on to where a pair of mules lay dead in the traces and here the kid knelt with a piece of board and began to scoop them a shelter, watching the skyline to the east as he worked. Then they lay prone in the lee of those sour bones like sated scavengers and awaited the arrival of the judge and the passing of the judge if he would so pass.

They'd not long to wait. He appeared upon the rise and paused momentarily before starting down, he and his drooling manciple. The ground before him was drifted and rolling and although it could be fairly reco

They advanced across the flats and the kid on his belly in the sand wallow watched them through the ribs of the dead mules. He could see his own tracks and Tobin's coming across the sand, dim and rounded but tracks for that, and he watched the judge and he watched the tracks and he listened to the sand moving on the desert floor. The judge was perhaps a hundred yards out when he stopped and surveyed the ground. The idiot squatted on all fours and leaned into the lead like some naked species of lemur. It swung its head and sniffed at the air, as if it were being used for tracking. It had lost its hat, or perhaps the judge had replevined it, for he now wore a rough and curious pair of pampooties cut from a piece of hide and strapped to the soles of his feet with wrappings of hemp salvaged from some desert wreck. The imbecile lunged in its collar and croaked, its forearms dangling at its chest. When they passed the wagon and continued on the kid knew they were beyond the point where he and Tobin had turned off from the trace. He looked at the tracks. Faint shapes that backed across the sands and vanished. The expriest at his side seized his arm and hissed and gestured toward the passing judge and the wind rattled the scraps of hide at the carcass and the judge and the idiot passed on across the sands and disappeared from sight.

They lay without speaking. The expriest raised himself slightly and looked out and he looked at the kid. The kid lowered the hammer of the pistol.

Ye'll get no such a chance as that again.

The kid put the pistol in his belt and rose onto his knees and looked out.

And what now?

The kid didnt answer.

He'll be waiting at the next well.

Let him wait.

We could go back to the creek.

And do what.

Wait for a party to come through.

Through from where? There aint no ferry.

There's game comes to the creek.

Tobin was looking out through the bones and hide. When the kid didnt answer he looked up. We could go there, he said.

I got four rounds, the kid said.

He rose and looked out across the scavenged ground and the expriest rose and looked with him. What they saw was the judge returning.

The kid swore and dropped to his belly. The expriest crouched. They pushed down into the wallow and with their chins in the sand like lizards they watched the judge traverse again the grounds before them.

With his leashed fool and his equipage and the parasol dipping in the wind like a great black flower he passed among the wreck­age until he was again upon the slope of the sand esker. At the crest he turned and the imbecile squatted at his knees and the judge lowered the parasol before him and addressed the country­side about.