Cormac McCarthy - The Crossing

They bought meal and dried beans in a grocery and salt and coffee and dried fruit and dried peppers and they bought a small enameled frypan and a pot with a lid and a box of kitchen matches and a few utensils and they changed the remainder of their money into pesos.

Now you're rich, Billy said.

NiggeraEU'rich, said Boyd.

It's moren what I had when I come down here.

That aint no big comfort.

They left the road at the south end of town and followed the river along its course of pale gray cobbles out into the desert and made camp in the dark. Billy fixed their supper and they ate and sat watching the fire.

You need to quit thinkin about it, Billy said.

I aint thinkin about it.

What are you thinkin about?

Nothin.

That's hard to do.

What if somethin was to happen to you?

Dont be thinkin all the time about what would happen.

What if it was?

You could go back.

To the Websters?

Yeah.

After we robbed em and all?

You didnt rob em. I thought you wasnt thinkin about nothin. I aint. I just got a uneasy feelin.

Billy leaned and spat into the fire. You'll be all right.

I'm all right now.

They rode all the day following along the secular river in its bed of stones and in the early evening they entered the roadside hamlet of Ojito. Boyd had been sleeping with his face against his brother's back and he raised up all sweaty and rumpled and got his hat from where he'd crushed it in his lap between them and put it on.

Where are we at? he said. I dont know.

I'm hungry.

I know it. I am too.

You reckon they got anything to eat here? I dont know.

They halted the horse before a man in a crumbling mud doorway and asked if there was anything to eat in the town and the man reflected a moment and then offered to sell them a chicken. They rode on. Where the empty road ran out into the desert to the south a storm was making up and the country was bluelooking under the clouds and the thin wires of lightning that stood repeatedly over the raw blue mountains in the distance broke in utter silence like a storm in a belljar. It caught them just before dark. The rain came ripping across the desert driving flights of wild doves before it and they rode into a wall of water and were wet instantly. A hundred yards along they dismounted and stood in a grove of roadside trees and held the horse and watched the rain roar in the mud. By the time the storm had passed it was dead black of night about them and they stood shivering in the starless dark and listened to the water dripping in the silence.

What do you want to do now? Boyd said. Mount up and ride, I reckon.

That's a awful wet horse to have to climb aboard. He might say the same about you.

It was past midnight when they rode through the town of Morelos. Lamps dimmed out down the street as if they were bringing the darkness with them. He'd wrapped his coat around Boyd and Boyd was tottering asleep against his back and the horse went sucking through the mud with its head down and the dog tacked before them among the pools of standing water and they took the road south where he had followed the pilgrims to the fair in the spring of that same year so long ago.

They passed what was left of the night in a jacal just off the road and in the morning they built a fire and made breakfast and dried their clothes and then saddled the horse and set out again on the road south. In three more days of such riding and seven days into the country passing one by one through the squalid mud towns along the river they entered the town of Bacerac. In front of a whitewashed house under an elder tree were two horses standing head down. One was a big roan gelding with a fresh brand on its left hip and the other was their horse Keno wearing a tooled mexican saddle.

Look yonder, said Boyd.

I see him. Get down.

Boyd slid from the horse and Billy dismounted and passed him the reins and pulled the shotgun from the saddlescabbard. The dog had stopped in the road and stood looking back at them. Billy unbreeched the gun to see that it was loaded and breeched it shut again and looked at Boyd.

Take the horse over yonder and keep out of the way.

All right.

He watched while Boyd walked the horse across the road and then he turned and started for the house. The dog stood looking from one to the other until Boyd whistled for it.

He walked around Keno and patted his neck and the horse pushed its forehead against his shirt and breathed a long sweet breath against him. He stood the shotgun against the elder tree and lifted the stirrup and hung it over the horn and pulled the latigo and slid the strap free and pulled loose the backcinch and took hold of the saddle by horn and cantle and lifted it down and stood it in the dirt. Then he pulled off the saddleblanket and hung it over the horn of the saddle and picked up the shotgun and untied the horse and led it back across the street to where Boyd stood.

He jammed the shotgun back into the scabbard and looked again toward the house. Ride Bird, he said.

Boyd stood up into the saddle and looked down at him.

Take the horses up here and keep out of sight of the house.

I'll meet you at the south end of town. Just stay hid. I'll find you.

What do you aim to do?

I want to see who all's in there.

What if it's them?

It aint.

Who all do you think is in there?

I dont know. I think somebody has died. Go on now.

You better take the shotgun.

I dont need it. Go on.

He watched him ride up the narrow dirt street and then he turned and walked back to the house.

He knocked at the door and stood with his hat in his hands. No one came. He put his hat on and walked down and pushed at an old weathered carriage door in the wall but it was barred shut. He looked at the top of the wall. There were broken bottle ends set into the mud masonry there. He took out his knife and put it between the doors and began to walk the ancient wooden tranca a half inch at a time across the gates until the end of it slipped free of the cradle and he pushed the door open and stepped inside and pushed it shut again. There were no dragmarks in the dirt, nothing come and gone. There were chickens sitting in a tree in broad daylight. He crossed the patio to the rear of the house and stood in a doorway that gave onto a long hall. On a low bench were clay pots with plants in them which had been recently watered and the dirt was damp and the tiles under the bench were wet. He took off his hat again and walked down the hallway and stood in the door at the far end. In a darkened room a woman lay in a bed. About her were sister figures clothed in dark rebozos. On a table a candle burning.

The woman in the bed was lying with her eyes closed and she held a glass rosary in her hands. She was dead. One of the women kneeling turned her head and looked at him. Then she looked toward a part of the room he could not see. After a while a man came out pulling on his coat and he nodded politely to the boy standing at the door.

Quien es? he said.

He was tall and blond and he spoke Spanish with a foreign accent. Billy stepped to one side and they stood in the hall.

Estaba su caballo enfrente de la casa?

The man stopped, his coat on one shoulder. He looked at Billy and he looked down the hallway. Estaba? he said.

HE FOUND BOYD laid up with the horses in a stand of carrizo cane at the river's edge south of the town.

Anybody could of tracked you here, he said.

Boyd didnt answer. Billy squatted on the ground and broke off a reed and broke it again in his hands.

He's a German doctor. He had a factura for the horse. Or said he did. He said he had papers from a broker in Casas Grandes named Soto.

Boyd had been standing holding the shotgun. He reholstered it in the scabbard and leaned and spat. Well, he said. Whatever papers he has it's moren what we got.