Cormac McCarthy - The Crossing

Billy?

What.

Did Pap write Mr Echols?

Yeah.

He never heard nothin though. Did he?

Not yet he aint.

Billy?

What.

I had this dream.

What dream.

I had it twice.

Well what was it.

There was this big fire out on the dry lake. There aint nothin to burn on a dry lake.

I know it.

What happened.

These people were burnin. The lake was on fire and they was burnin up.

It's probably somethin you ate.

I had the same dream twice.

Maybe you ate the same thing twice.

I dont think so.

It aint nothin. It's just a bad dream. Go to sleep.

It was real as day. I could see it.

People have dreams all the time. It dont mean nothin.

Then what do they have em for?

I dont know. Go to sleep.

Billy?

What.

I had this feelin that somethin bad was goin to happen.

There aint nothin bad goin to happen. You just had a bad dream is all. It dont mean somethin bad is goin to happen.

What does it mean?

It dont mean nothin. Go to sleep.

IN THE WOODS on the southfacing slopes the snow was partly melted from the prior day's sun and it had frozen back in the night so that there was a thin crust on top. The crust was just hard enough for birds to walk on. Mice. In the trail he saw where the cows had come down. The traps in the mountains lay all undisturbed beneath the snow with their jaws agape like steel trolls silent and mindless and blind. He took up three of the sets, holding the cocked traps in his gloved hands and reaching under the jaw and tripping the pan with his thumb. The traps leapt mightily. The iron clang of the jaws slamming shut echoed in the cold. You could see nothing of their movement. Now the jaws were open. Now they were closed.

He rode with the traps packed under the calfhide in the floor of the packbasket where they would not fall out as he rolled sideways in the saddle to duck low branches. When he came to the fork in the trail he followed the track she'd taken the evening before going west toward Hog Canyon. He made the sets in the trail and cut and placed stepping sticks and returned along a route of his own devising a mile to the south and continued down to the Cloverdale road to visit the last two sets on the line.

There was still snow in the upper stretches of the road and there were tiretracks in the road and horsetracks and the tracks of deer. When he reached the spring he left the road and crossed through the pasture and dismounted and watered his horse. It was near noon by the sun and he intended to ride the four miles into Cloverdale and go back by way of the road.

While the horse was drinking an old man in a Model A pickup truck pulled up out at the fence. Billy pulled the horse's head up and mounted and went back out to the road and sat the horse alongside the truck. The man leaned out the window and looked up at him. He looked at the packbasket.

What are you trappin? he said.

He was a rancher from the lower valley along the border and Billy knew him but didnt say his name. He knew the old man wanted to hear that he was trapping coyotes and he wouldnt lie, or wouldnt exactly lie.

Well, he said. I seen a lot of coyote sign down here.

I aint surprised, the old man said. They done everthing down at our place but come in and set at the table.

He scanned the country with his pale eyes. As if the little jackal wolves might be afoot on the plain in broadest day. He took out a pack of readymade cigarettes and shucked one up and took it in his mouth and held up the pack.

Smoke?

No sir. Thank you.

He put the pack away and took from his pocket a brass lighter that looked like something for soldering pipe, burning off paint. He struck it and a bluish ball of flame whooshed up. He lit the cigarette and snapped the lighter shut but it continued to burn anyway. He blew it out and dandled it in one hand to cool it. He looked at the boy.

I had to quit usin the hightest, he said.

Yessir.

You married?

No sir. I aint but sixteen.

Dont get married. Women are crazy.

Yessir.

You'll think you've found one that aint but guess what?

What?

She will be too.

Yessir.

You got any big traps in there?

Like how big?

Number four, say.

No sir. Truth to tell, I dont have none with

What did you ask me how big for then?

Sir?

The old man nodded at the road. There was a mountain lion crossed about a mile down here yesterday evenin.

They're around, the boy said.

My nephew's got some dogs. Got some blueticks out of the Lee Brothers' line. Pretty good dogs. He dont want em walkin in no steeltraps though.

I'm back up here towards Hog Canyon, the boy said. And up towards Black Point.

The old man smoked. The horse turned its head and sniffed at the truck and looked away again.

You hear about the Texas lion and the New Mexico lion? the old man said.

No sir. I dont believe so.

There was this Texas lion and this New Mexico lion. They split up on the divide and went off to hunt. Agreed to meet up in the spring and see how they'd done and all and whenever they done it why the old lion been over in Texas looked just awful. Lion from New Mexico he looked at him and he said Lord son you look awful. Said what's happened to you. Lion been over in Texas said I dont know. Said I'm about starved out. Other old lion said well, said tell me what all you been doin. Said you might be doin somethin wrong.

Well the Texas lion said I just been usin the old tried and true methods. Said I get up on a limb overlookin the trail and then whenever one of the Texans rides underneath it why I holler real big and then I jump out on top of him. And that's what I been a doin.

Well, the old New Mexico lion looked at him and he said it's a wonder you aint dead. Said that's all wrong for your Texans and I dont see how you got through the winter atall. Said look here. First of all when you holler thataway it scares the shit out of em. Then when you jump on top of em thataway it knocks the wind out of em. Hell, son. You aint got nothin left but buckles and boots.

The old man fell across the steering wheel wheezing. After a while he began to cough. He looked up and wiped his watery eyes with one finger and shook his head and looked up at the boy.

You see the point? he said. Texans?

Billy smiled. Yessir, he said.

You aint from Texas are you?

No sir.

I didnt allow you was. Well. I better get on. You want to catch coyotes you come down to my place.

All right.

He didnt say where his place was. He put the truck in gear and pulled the sparklever down and pulled away down the road.

WHEN THEY RAN the traps on Monday the snow had melted off everywhere save in the northfacing rincons or in the deeper woods below the north slope of the pass. She'd pulled out all the sets save for the ones in the Hog Canyon trail and she had taken to turning the traps over and springing them.

They took the traps up and his father made two new sets with double traps, burying one trap under the other and the bottom trap upside down. Then he made blind sets in the perimeter about. He laid these two new sets and they returned home and when they ran the traps the next morning there was a coyote dead in the first set. They pulled this set entirely and Billy tied the coyote on behind the cantle of his saddle and they went on. The coyote's bladder leaked down the horse's flank and it smelled peculiar.

What did the coyote die of? he said.

I dont know, said his father. Sometimes things just die.

The second set was dug out and all five traps sprung. His father sat looking at it for a long time.

There was no word from Echols. He and Boyd rode the outlying pastures and began bringing the cattle in. They found two more calves dead. Then another heifer.