Cormac McCarthy - The Crossing

Le gusta? said Billy.

Claro que si, said the mozo. He leaned and put the flat of his hand on the horse's neck and then nodded and turned and climbed aboard the burro and rode out down the paseo without looking back.

IT WAS ALMOST DARK when he left. The Munoz woman tried to have him wait until morning but he would not. The doctor had arrived in the late afternoon and he had left the dressings for the woman and a package of epsom salts and the woman had fixed Boyd a tea made from manzanilla and Arnica and the root of the golondrina bush. She'd put up provisions for Billy in an old canvas moral and he slung it over the horn of the saddle and mounted up and turned the horse and looked down at her.

Donde esta la pistola? he said.

She said that it was under the pillow beneath his brother's head. He nodded. He looked out down the road toward the bridge and the river and he looked at her again. He asked her if any men had been to the ejido.

Si, she said. Dos veces.

He nodded again. Es peligroso para ustedes.

She shrugged. She said that life was dangerous. She said that for a man of the people there was no choice.

He smiled. Mi hermano es hombre de la gente?

Si, she said. Claro.

He rode south along the road through the riverside cottonwoods, riding through the town of Mata Ortiz and riding the moon up out of the west to its cool meridian before he turned off and put up for the remainder of the night in a grove of trees he'd skylighted from the road. He rolled himself in his serape and hung his hat over the tops of his standing boots and did not wake till daylight.

He rode all day the day following. Few cars passed and he saw no riders. In the evening the truck that had carried his brother to San Diego came lumbering down the road from the north in a slow uncoiling of road dust and ground to a stop. The workers on the bed of the truck waved and called out to him and he rode up and pushed his hat back on his head and held up his hand to them. They gathered along the edge of the truckbed and held out their hands and he leaned from the horse and shook hands with them every man. They said that it was dangerous for him to be on the road. They did not ask about Boyd and when he began to tell them they waved away his words for they had been to see him that very day. They said that he had eaten and that he'd drunk a small glass of pulque for the vigor in it and that all signs were of the most affirmative nature. They said that only the hand of the Virgin could have sustained him through such a terrible wound. Herida tan grave, they said. Tan horrible. Herida tan fea.

They spoke of his brother lying with the pistol under his pillow and spoke in a high whisper. Tan joven, they said. Tan valiente. Y peligroso por todo eso. Como el ogre herido en su cueva.

Billy looked at them. He looked out across the cooling country to the west, the long bands of shadow. Doves were calling from the acacias. The workers believed that his brother had killed the manco in a gunfight in the streets of Boquilla y Anexas. That the manco had fired upon him without provocation and what folly for the manco who had not reckoned upon the great heart of the guerito. They pressed him for details. How the guerito had risen from his blood in the dust to draw his pistol and shoot the manco dead from his horse. They addressed Billy with great reverenceand they asked him how it was that he and his brother had set out upon their path of justice.

He scanned their faces. What he saw in those eyes was very moving to him. The driver and the two other men in the cab of the truck had got down and were standing along the bed of the truck at the rear. All waited to see what he would say. In the end he told them that the accounts of the conflict were greatly exaggerated and that his brother was only fifteen years old and that he himself was to blame for he should have cared better for his brother. He should not have carried him off to a strange country to be shot down in the street like a dog. They only shook their heads and repeated among themselves Boyd's age. Quince anos, they said. Que guapo. Que joven tan enforzado. In the end he thanked them for their care of his brother and touched the brim of his hat at which they all crowded again with their hands outstretched and he shook their hands again and the hands of the driver and the other two men standing in the road and then reined the horse around and rode past the truck and out along the road south. He heard the truckdoors slam behind him and heard the driver put the truck in gear and they rumbled slowly past him in the augmenting dust. The workers on the bed of the truck waved and some took off their hats and then one of them stood and steadied himself by one hand on the shoulder of his companion and raised one fist in the air and shouted to him. Hay justicia en el mundo, he called. Then they all rode on.

He woke that night with the ground trembling beneath him and he sat up and looked for the horse. The horse stood with its head raised against the desert nightsky looking toward the west. A train was going downcountry, the pale yellow cone of the headlight boring slowly and sedately down the desert and the distant clatter of the wheeltrucks outlandish and mechanical in that dark waste of silence. Finally the small square windowlight of the caboose trailing after. It passed and left only the faint pale track of boilersmoke hanging over the desert and then came the long lonesome whistle echoing across the country where it called for the crossing at Las Varas.

He rode into Boquilla at noon with the shotgun across the pommel of the saddle. There was no one about. He took the road south to Santa Ana de Babicora. Towards dark he began to come upon riders riding north toward Boquilla, young men and boys with their black hair slicked down on their skulls and their boots polished and the cheap cotton shirts they wore that had been pressed with hot bricks. It was Saturday night and they were going to a dance. They nodded gravely, mounted on burros or on the little distaff mules from the mines. He nodded back, his eyes watching every movement, the shotgun upright against him with the buttstock cradled against his inner thigh. The good horse he rode flaring its nostrils at them. When he rode through La Pinta on the high juniper plain above the Santa Maria River Valley the moon was up and when he rode into Santa Ana de Babicora it was midnight and the town was dark and empty. He watered the horse in the alameda and took the road west to Namiquipa. An hour's ride he came to a small stream that was part of the headwaters of the Santa Maria and turned the horse off down out of the road and hobbled him in the river grass and rolled himself into his serape and slept in dreamless exhaustion.

When he woke the sun was hours high. He walked down to the creek carrying his boots and stood in the water and bent and washed his face. When he raised up and looked for the horse the horse was standing looking toward the road. In a few minutes a rider came along. Coming down the road on the horse his mother used to ride was the girl wearing a new dress of blue cotton and a small straw hat with a green ribbon that hung down her back. Billy watched her pass and when she was out of sight he sat in the grass and studied his boots standing there and the slow passing of the small river and the tops of the grass that bent and recovered constantly in the morning breeze. Then he reached for the boots and pulled them on and stood and walked up and bridled and saddled the horse and mounted up and rode out into the road and set out behind her.

When she heard the horse on the road she put her hand on top of her hat and turned and looked back. Then she stopped. He slowed the horse and rode up to her. She fixed him with her dark eyes.

Esta muerto? she said. Esta muerto?

No.

No me mienta.