Cormac McCarthy - Cities of the Plain

I know about where that den's at.

Why wont you let me sleep?

We could be back by dinnertime. I guarantee you.

I'm beggin you to leave me alone, son. Beggin you. I dont want to have to shoot you. I'd never hear the end of it from Mac.

Where the dogs struck that first time just below that big slide of gravel? I'll bet we rode within fifty feet of that den. You know they're in those big rocks.

THEY RODE OUT carrying across the pommels of their saddles a longhanded spade, a mattock, a fourfoot iron prybar. Socorro had come to her door in wrapper and hairpapers while they were finding something to eat and shooed them to the table while she cooked eggs and sausage and made coffee. She packed their lunch while they ate.

Billy looked out the window to where the horses stood saddled at the kitchen door. Let's eat and get gone, he said. And do not tell her where we're goin.

All right.

I dont want to have to listen to it.

They crossed into the Valenciana pasture before the sun was up and rode past the old well. The cattle moved off before them in the gray halflight. Billy rode with the spade over his shoulder. I'll tell you one thing, he said.

What's that.

There's places up in them rocks where if they are denned you damn sure wont dig em out.

Yeah. I know it.

When they reached the trail along the western edge of the floodplain the sun was up behind the mesa and the light that overshot the plain crossed to the rocks above them so that they rode out the remnant night in a deep blue sink with the new day falling slowly down about them. They rode to the upper end and came back slowly, Billy in the lead studying the ground at either side of the horse, leaning with his forearm across the horse's withers.

Are you a tracker? said John Grady.

I'm a trackin fool. I can track lowflyin birds.

What do you see?

Not a damn thing.

The sun came down the rocks and over the broken ground toward them. They sat the horses.

They been runnin these cowtracks, Billy said. Or did run. I dont think they were all denned together. I think there was two separate bunches.

That could be.

Any close place like that right yonder?

Yeah?

There's doghair on ever rock. Let's just circle up here and keep our eyes open.

They came back up the valley close under the wall among the boulders and scree. They circled among the rocks and studied the ground. It was weeks since the last rain and what dogtracks had been printed in the clay trails below them had long since been trodden out by the cattle and in the dry ground the dogs made no track at all.

Let's go back up here, said Billy.

They rode along the upper slope close under the rock bluffs. They crossed the gravel slide and rode under the old shamans and the ledgerless arcana inscribed upon those outsize tablets.

I know where they're at, Billy said.

He turned the horse on the narrow trail and rode back down through the rocks. John Grady followed. Billy halted and dropped the reins and stood down. He passed afoot through a narrow place in the rocks and then he came back out again and pointed down the hill.

They've come in here from three sides, he said. Down yonder the cows have come right up to the rocks but they cant get in. See that tall grass?

I see it.

Reason it's tall is the cows couldnt get in there to eat it.

John Grady dismounted and followed him into the rocks. They walked up and back and they studied the ground. The horses stood looking in.

Let's just set a while, said Billy.

They sat. Within the rocks it was cool. The ground was cold. Billy smoked.

I hear em, John Grady said.

I do too.

They rose and stood listening. The mewling stopped. Then it began again.

The den was in a corner of the rocks and it angled back under a boulder. They lay on their bellies in the grass and listened.

I can smell em, Billy said.

I can too.

They listened.

How are we goin to get em out?

Billy looked at him. You aint, he said.

Maybe they'll come out.

What for?

We could get some milk and set it out for them.

I dont think they'll come out. Listen at how young they are. I'll bet their eyes aint open. What do you want with em anyway? he said.

I dont know. I hate leavin em down there.

We might could twist em out. Get a ocotillo long enough.

John Grady lay peering into the darkness under the rock. Let me have your cigarette, he said.

Billy handed it across.

There's another entrance, John Grady said. There's air blowin out of this one. See the smoke?

Billy reached and took the cigarette. Yeah, he said. But the den is still under that rock and the rock's the size of Mac's kitchen.

A kid could crawl down in there.

Where you goin to get a kid at? And suppose he got stuck down in there?

You could tie a rope to his legs.

They'd tie one to your neck if anything happened to him. Let me have your knife.

John Grady handed him his pocketknife and he rose and went off and after a while he came back with an ocotillo branch. It was a good ten feet long and he sat and trimmed the thorns off the lower couple of feet for a handhold and then they lay and took turns for the next half hour with the ocotillo down in the hole turning it in an effort to twist up the fur of the pups in the thorns.

We dont even know if this is long enough, Billy said.

I think what it is is that the hole's too big down there. You'd have to run the end of it underneath them some way to do any good and that would just be luck.

I aint heard one of em squeal for a while.

They might of moved back in a corner or somethin.

Billy sat up and pulled the ocotillo out of the hole and examined the end of it.

Is there any hair on it?

Yeah. Some. But there probably aint no shortage of hair down there.

What do you think that rock weighs?

Shit, said Billy.

All we'd have to do is tip it over.

I'll bet that damn rock weighs five tons. How in the hell are you goin to tip it over?

I dont believe it would be all that hard.

And where you goin to tip it to?

We could tip it this way.

Then it'd be layin over the hole.

So what? The pups are at the back.

What makes you so bullheaded? You cant get the horses in here and if you could they'd pull the damn rock over on top of theirselves.

They wouldnt have to be in here. They could be outside.

The ropes wont reach.

They will if we tie em end to end.

They still wont. It'd take near one just to go around the rock. I think I can make it reach.

You got a ropestretcher in your saddlebags? Anyway, no two horses could tip that rock over.

They could with some leverage.

Bullheaded, Billy said. Worst case I believe I ever saw.

There's some fairsized saplin trees at the upper end of the wash. If we could cut one of em with the mattock we could use it for a prypole. Then we could tie the rope to the end of it and that would save havin to tie it around the rock. We'd be killin two birds with one stone.

Two horses and two cowboys is more like it.

We should of brought a axe.

You let me know when you're ready to go back. I'm goin to see if I can catch me a little nap.

All right.

John Grady rode up to the wash with the mattock across the saddle in front of him. Billy stretched out and crossed his boots one over the top of theother and pulled his hat over his face. It was totally silent in the basin. No wind, no bird. No call of cattle. He was almost asleep when he heard the first dull chock of the mattock blade. He smiled into the darkness of his hatcrown and slept.

When John Grady came back he was dragging behind the horse a cottonwood sapling he'd topped out and limbed. It was about eighteen feet long and close to six inches in diameter at the base and the weight of it hanging by the loop of rope from the saddlehorn was pulling his saddle over. He rode half standing in the offside stirrup with his left leg hanging over the sapling trunk and the horse was walking on eggshells. When he reached the rocks he stepped down and unlooped the rope and let the pole down on the ground and walked in and kicked Billy's bootsole.