Cormac McCarthy - Cities of the Plain

Go on.

No Sir.

The man's face darkened. He stood holding out the bill. Then he stuck it in the pocket of his shirt.

It wouldnt be no skin off your ass.

John Grady didnt answer. The man turned and spat again.

I didnt have nothin to do with doctorin it thataway if that's what you're thinkin.

I never said you did.

You wouldnt help a man out though, would you?

Not that way I wouldnt.

The man stood looking at John Grady. He spat once more. He looked at the other man and he looked out across the spread.

Let's go, Carl, the other man said. Hell.

They walked the horse back across the lot toward the truck and trailer. John Grady stood watching them. They loaded the horse and raised the gate and shut the doors and latched them. The tall man walked around the side of the truck. Hey kid, he called.

Yessir.

You go to hell.

John Grady didnt answer.

You hear me?

Yessir. I hear you.

Then they got in the truck and turned and drove out across the lot and down the drive.

HE DROPPED THE REINS Of his horse in the yard at the kitchen door and went in. Socorro was not in the kitchen and he called her and waited and then went back out. As he was mounting the horse she came to the door. She put her hands to her eyes against the sun. Bueno, she said.

A quZ hora regresa el Se-or Mac?

No sZ.

He nodded. She watched him. She asked him what time he would be back and he said by dark.

EspZrate, she said.

Est++ bien.

No. EspZrate.

She went in. He sat the horse. The horse stamped at the bare ground and shook its head. All right, he said. We're goin.

When she came back out she had his lunch done up in a cloth and she handed it up to him at the stirrup. He thanked her and reached behind him and put it in the gamepocket of his duckingjacket and nodded and put the horse forward. She watched him ride to the gate and lean and undo the latch and push the gate open horseback and ride through and turn the horse and close the gate horseback and then set off down the road at a jog with the morning sun on his shoulders, his hat pushed back. Sitting very straight in the saddle. The wrapped and bootless foot at one side, the empty stirrup. The herefords and their calves following along the fence and calling after him.

He rode among the half wild cattle in the Bransford pasture all day and a cold wind blew down from the mountains of New Mexico. The cattle trotted off before him or ran with their tails up over the gravel plains among the creosote and he studied them for culls as they went. He was horsetraining as much as he was sorting cattle and the little blue horse he rode had the cuttinghorse's contempt for cows and would closeherd them along the crossfence and bite them. John Grady gave him his head and he cut out a big yearling calf and John Grady roped the calf and dallied but the calf didnt go down. The little horse stood spraddlelegged backed into the rope with the calf standing and twisting at the end of it.

What do you want to do now? he asked the horse.

The horse turned and backed. The calf went bucking.

I guess you think I'm goin to get down and flank that big son of a bitch and me on one leg.

He waited until the calf had bucked itself into a clear space among the creosote and then he put the horse forward at a gallop. He paid the slack rope over the horse's head and overtook the calf on its off side. The calf went trotting. The rope ran from its neck along the ground on the near side and trailed in a curve behind its legs and ran forward up the off side following the horse. John Grady checked his dally and then stood in one stirrup and cleared his other leg of the trailing rope. When the rope snapped taut it jerked the calf's head backward and snatched its hind legs from under it. The calf turned endwise in the air and slammed to the ground in a cloud of dust and lay there.

John Grady was already off the horse and hobbling back along the rope to where the calf lay and he knelt on its head before it could recover and grabbed its hind leg and yanked the pigginstring from his belt and tied it and waited till it quit struggling. Then he leaned and pulled the leg up to take a closer look at the swelling on the inside of its leg that had made it run oddly and caused him to cut it out and rope it in the first place.

The calf had a stob of wood embedded under the skin. He tried to get hold of it with his fingers but it was broken off almost flush. He felt along the length of it and pushed on the end of it with his thumb and tried to feed it forward. He got a bit more of it exposed and finally leaned forward and got hold of it with his teeth and pulled it out. A watery serum ran. He held the stick under his nose and sniffed it and then pitched it away and went back to the horse to get his bottle of Peerless and his swabs. When he turned the calf loose it was running worse than before but he thought it would be all right.

He ate his lunch at noon in an outcropping of lava rock with a view across the floodplain to the north and to the west. There were ancient pictographs among the rocks, engravings of animals and moons and men and lost hieroglyphics whose meaning no man would ever know. The rocks were warm in the sun and he sat sheltered from the wind and watched the silent empty land. Nothing moved. After a while he folded away the wrappings from his lunch and rose and went down and caught the horse.

He was still currying the sweated animal by the light from the barn stall when Billy walked down picking his teeth and stood watching him.

Where'd you go?

Cedar Springs.

You up there all day?

Yep.

The man called that owned that filly.

I figured he would.

He wasnt pissed off or nothin.

He had no reason to be.

He asked Mac if he could get you to look at some horses for him.

Well.

He moved along the horse brushing. Billy watched him. She says she's fixin to throw it out if you dont come.

I'll be there in a minute.

All right.

What did you think about that country down there?

I thought it was some pretty nice country.

Yeah?

I aint goin nowheres. Troy aint either.

John Grady ran the brush down the horse's loins. The horse shuddered. We'll all be goin somewhere when the army takes this spread over.

Yeah, I know it.

Troy aint leavin?

Billy looked at the end of his toothpick and put it back in his mouth. The shadow of a bat come to hunt in the barnlight passed across the horse, across John Grady.

I think he just wanted to see his brother.

John Grady nodded. He leaned with both forearms across the horse and stripped the loose hairs from the brush and watched them drop.

When he entered the kitchen Oren was still at the table. He looked up from his paper and then went back to reading. John Grady went to the sink and washed and Socorro opened the warmer door over the oven and got down a plate.

He sat eating his supper and reading the news on the back side of Oren's paper across the table.

What's a plebiscite? said Oren.

You got me.

After a while Oren said: Dont be readin the back of the

paper.

What?

I said dont be readin the back of the paper.

All right.

He folded the paper and slid it across the table and raised his coffee and sipped it.

How did you know I was readin the back of the paper?

I could feel it.

What's wrong with it?

Nothin. It just makes me nervous is all. It's a bad habit people got. If you want to read a man's paper you ought to ask him.

All right.

The man that owned that filly you wouldnt have on the property called out here tryin to hire you.

I already got a job.

I think he just wanted you to ride out to Fabens with him to look at a horse.

John Grady nodded. That aint what he wants.