Cormac McCarthy - The Crossing

They passed out of the irrigated land and they passed in a grove of roadside trees a jacal of mud and sticks where the faint orange light of a slutlamp burned. They thought it must be the place where the girl lived and were surprised to come upon her in the road before them once again.

When they overtook her now it was black of night and Billy slowed the horse beside her and asked her if she had far to go and she hesitated for a moment and then said that she did not. He offered that he would carry her bundle behind him on the horse and she could walk beside but she refused politely. She called him sefior. She looked at Boyd. It occurred to him that she could have hidden in the roadside chaparral but she had not done so. They wished her a good evening and rode on and a short while later they encountered two horsemen on the road riding back the way they'd come who spoke to them briefly out of the darkness and passed on. He halted his horse and sat watching after them and Boyd halted beside him.

Are you thinkin what I am? Billy said.

Boyd sat with his forearms crossed on the pommel of his saddle. You want to wait on her?

Yeah.

All right. You think they'll bother her?

Billy didnt answer. The horses shifted and stood. After a while he said: Let's just wait here a minute. She'll be along in a minute. Then we can go.

But she wasnt along in a minute and she wasnt along in ten minutes or in thirty.

Let's go back, Billy said.

Boyd leaned and spat slowly into the road and turned his horse.

They'd gone no more than a mile when they saw a fire somewhere ahead of them through the iron shapes of the brush. The road turned and the fire swung slowly off to the right. Then it swung back. A half mile further and they halted their horses. The fire was burning in a small grove of oaks off to the east. The light of it was caught under the dark canopy of the leaves and shadows moved and moved back and a horse nickered from the dark beyond.

What do you want to do? said Boyd.

I dont know. Let me think.

They sat their horses in the darkened road.

You thought yet?

I guess there aint nothin to do but just ride on in.

They'll know we backtracked em.

I know it. It caint be helped.

Boyd sat watching the fire through the trees.

What do you want to do? said Billy.

If we're goin to go on in there then let's just do it.

They got down and led the horses. The dog sat in the road and watched them. Then it got up and followed.

When they entered the clear ground under the trees the two men were standing on the far side of the fire watching them approach. Their horses were not in sight. The girl was sitting on the ground with her legs tucked under her and clutching the bundle in her lap. When she saw who it was she looked away and sat staring into the fire.

Buenas noches, called Billy.

Buenas noches, they said.

They stood holding the horses. They had not been invited forward. The dog when it struck the circle of light stopped in its tracks and then backed away slightly and stood waiting. The men were watching them. One of them was smoking a cigarette and he raised it to his lips and sucked thinly at it and blew a thin stream of smoke toward the fire. He made a circling motion with his arm, his finger pointed down. He told them to take their horses around and into the trees behind them. Nuestros caballos estan alla, he said.

Esta bien, said Billy. He stood.

The man said that it was not all right. He said that he did not want their horses soiling the ground on which they were to sleep.

Billy looked at him. He turned slightly and looked at his horse. He could see curved like a dark triptych in a glass paperweight the figures of the two men and the girl burning in the fugitive light of the fire at the black center of the animal's eye. He passed the reins behind him to Boyd. Take them out yonder, he said. Dont unsaddle Bird and dont loose the latigo and dont put them with their horses.

Boyd passed in front of him leading the horses and went on past the men and into the dark of the trees. Billy came forward and nodded to them and pushed his hat back slightly from his eyes. He stood before the fire and looked down into it. He looked at the girl.

Como esta, he said.

She didnt answer. When he looked across the fire the man who was smoking had squatted on his heels and was watching him through the warp of heat with eyes the color of wet coal. On the ground at his side stood a bottle stoppered with a corncob.

De donde viene? he said.

America.

Tejas.

Nuevo Mexico.

Nuevo Mexico, the man said. Adonde va?

Billy watched him. He had his right arm folded across his chest and held in place with the elbow of his left so that his left forearm stood vertically before him holding the cigarette in a pose strangely formal, strangely delicate. Billy looked at the girl again and he looked again at the man across the fire. He had no answer to his query.

Hemos perdido un caballo, he said. Lo buscamos.

The man didnt answer. He held the cigarette between his forefingers and dipped his wrist in a birdlike motion and smoked and then raised the cigarette aloft again. Boyd came out of the trees and circled the fire and stood but the man did not look at him. He pitched the butt of the cigarette into the fire before him and wrapped his arms around his knees and began to rock back and forth in a motion barely perceptible. He jutted his chin at Billy and asked if he had followed them in order to see their horses.

No, said Billy. Nuestro caballo es un caballo muy distinto. Lo conoceriamos en cualquier luz.

As soon as he'd said it he knew that he'd given up his only plausible answer to the man's next question. He looked at Boyd. Boyd knew it too. The man rocked, he studied them. Que quieren pues? he said.

Nada, said Billy. No queremos nada.

Nada, said the man. He formed the word as if tasting it. He gave his chin a slight sideways turn as a man might in pondering likelihoods. Two horsemen who meet two others on a dark road and pass on and thereafter meet also a traveler afoot know that those riders have overtaken the footaEU'traveler and passed on. That was what was known. The man's teeth shone in the firelight. He picked something from between them and examined it and then ate it. Cuantos anos tiene? he said.

Yo?

Quien mas.

Diecisiete.

The man nodded. Cuantos anos tiene la muchacha?

No to se.

Que opina.

Billy looked at the girl. She sat staring into her lap. She looked to be maybe fourteen.

Es muy joven, he said.

Bastante.

Doce quizas.

The man shrugged. He reached and took up the bottle from the ground and pulled the stopper and drank and sat holding the bottle by the neck. He said that if they were old enough to bleed they were old enough to butcher. Then he held the bottle up over his shoulder. The man behind him stepped forward and took it from him and drank. Out in the road a horse was passing. The dog had stood to listen. The rider did not stop and the slow clop of the hooves on the dried mud of the roadway faded and the dog lay down again. The man standing drank a second time and then handed the bottle back. The other man took it and pushed the cob back into the neck of the bottle with the heel of his hand and then weighed the bottle.

Quiere tomar? he said.

No. Gracias.

He weighed the bottle in his hand again and then pitched it underhand across the fire. Billy caught it and looked at the man. He held the bottle to the light. The smoky yellow mescal rolled viscously inside the glass and the curled form of the dead gusano circled the floor of the bottle in a slow drift like a small wandering fetus.

No quiero tomar, he said.

Tome, the man said.

He looked at the bottle again. The greaseprints on the glass shone in the firelight. He looked at the man and then he twisted the cob out of the neck.