Cormac McCarthy - The Crossing

Billy was trying to undo the tie on the flap of the saddlebag to get to his pistol but Nino turned and stamped and backed away sawing his head. The bandolero undallied and cast off the leadrope and stepped down. The packhorse turned and went trotting. The man bent above the shrouded form on the ground and unseamed with a single long pass of the knife ropes and soogan all from end to end and kicked aside the coverings to reveal in the graying light Boyd's poor form in the loosely fitting coat with his hands crossed at his chest, the withered hands with the bones imprinted in the leather skin, lying there with his caven face turned up and clutching himself like some fragile being fraught with cold in that indifferent dawn.

You son of a bitch, said Billy. You son of a bitch.

Es un engano? said the man. Es un engano?

He kicked at the poor desiccated thing. He turned with the knife.

Donde esta el dinero?

Las alforjas, called out one of the riders. Billy had swung under Nino's neck and he reached again for the flap of the saddlebag on the horse's offside. The bandolero cut open the bedroll under his feet and kicked it apart and trod in it with his boots and turned and then reached and seized Nino's bridlereins. But the horse must have begun to see the loosening of some demoniac among them for he reared and backed and in his backing trod among the bones and he reared again and pawed and the bandolero was snatched off balance and one forehoof caught his belt and ripped it from him and tore open the front of his trousers. He scrambled from under the horse and swore wildly and made a grab again for the swinging reins and the men behind him laughed and before anyone would have thought of such a thing occurring he plunged his knife into the horse's chest.

The horse stopped and stood quivering. The point of the blade had bedded itself in the animal's breastbone and the bandolero stepped back and threw out his hands.

Goddamn you to hell, Billy said. He held the trembling horse by the throatlatch and took hold of the handle of the knife and pulled the blade from the horse's chest and flung it away. Blood welled, blood ran down the front of the horse. He snatched off his hat and pushed it against the wound and looked wildly back at the mounted men. They sat their horses as before. One of them leaned and spat and jerked his chin at the others. Vamonos, he said.

The bandolero was demanding that Billy go fetch the knife. Billy didnt answer. He held his hat against the horse's chest and tried once more to reach back and unfasten the saddlebag pocket but he could not reach it. The bandolero reached and got hold of the tiestraps and pulled down the saddlebags onto the ground and dragged them from under the horse.

Vamonos, called the rider.

But the bandolero had already found the pistol and he held it up to show to them. He dumped the bags out and kicked Billy's possibles over the ground, his spare clothes, his razor. He picked up a shirt and held it up and then draped it across his shoulder and he cocked the pistol and spun the cylinder and let the hammer down again. He stepped across the wreckage of the bones unshrouded from out of the soogan and cocked the pistol and put it to Billy's head and demanded his money. Billy could feel his hat going warm and sticky with blood where he held it to the horse's chest. The blood was seeping through the felt and running on his arm. You go to hell, he said.

Vamonos, called the rider. He turned his horse

The man with the pistol looked at them. Tengo que encontrar mi cuchillo, he called.

He uncocked the pistol and went to shove it in his belt but he had no belt. He turned and looked upriver where the day was coming beyond the brambly river breaks. The breath of the standing horses plumed and vanished. The leader told him to get his horse. He said that he did not need his knife and that he had killed a good horse for no reason.

Then they were gone. Billy stood holding the crushed and bloodsogged hat and he heard the horses crossing the river upstream and then he just heard the river and the first birds that were waking in that country and his own breath and the labored breathing of the horse. He put his arm around the horse's neck and held it and he could feel it trembling and feel it lean against him and he was afraid that it would die and he could feel in the horse's breast a despair much like his own.

He wrung the blood from the hat and wiped his hand on his trousers and unbuckled and pulled down the saddle and left it lying where it fell in the track along with the other wreckage there and he led the horse slowly out through the trees and across a gravel bar and into the river. The water was cold running into his boots and he talked to the horse and bent and lifted a hatful of water and poured it over the animal's chest. The horse steamed in the cold and its breathing had begun to suck and rattle and it sounded all wrong. He put the palm of his hand over the hole but the blood ran between his fingers. He stripped off his shirt and folded it and pushed it against the animal's chest but the shirt soon filled with blood and still the blood ran.

He'd let the reins trail in the river and he patted the horse and spoke to it and left it standing there while he waded to the river bank and clawed up a handful of wet clay from under the roots of the willows. He came back and plastered the clay over the wound and troweled it down with the flat of his hand. He rinsed out the shirt and wrung the water from it and folded it over the plaster of mud and waited in the gray light with the steam rising off the river. He didnt know if the blood would ever stop running but it did and in the first pale reach of sunlight across the eastern plain the gray landscape seemed to hush and the birds to hush and in the new sun the peaks of the distant mountains to the west beyond the wild Bavispe country rose out of the dawn like a dream of the world. The horse turned and laid its long bony face upon his shoulder.

He led the animal ashore and up into the track and turned it to face the light. He looked in its mouth for blood but there was none that he could see. Old Nino, he said. Old Nino. He left the saddle and the saddlebags where they'd fallen. The trampled bedrolls. The body of his brother awry in its wrappings with one yellow forearm outflung. He walked the horse slowly at his elbow and held the mudstained shirt against its chest. His boots sloshed with river water and he was very cold. They walked up the track and into a grove of wild mahogany where he'd be partly hid from sight of any parties passing along the river and then he went back and got the saddle and the saddlebags and the bedroll. Lastly he went to fetch the remains of his brother.

The bones seemed held together only by the dry outer covering of hide and by their integuments but they were of a piece and nothing scattered. He knelt in the road and refolded the weightless arms and wrapped the soogan about and sorted the ropes and tied the ends to make the severed pieces do. By the time he had all this done the sun was well up and he gathered the bones in his arms and carried them up into the trees and laid them on the ground. Lastly he walked back out to the river and washed and wrung out his hat and filled it with river water and carried it back to the horse to see if it would drink. The horse would not. It was lying in the leaves and the shirt was lying in the leaves and the clay compress had begun to break away and blood was running from the wound again and pooling darkly in the little jagged cups of the dry mahogany leaves and the horse would not raise its head.

He walked out and looked for the packhorse but he couldnt see it. He went to the river and squatted and rinsed out the shirt and put it on and he got a fresh handful of clay from under the willows and carried it back and caked the new mud over the old and sat shivering in the leaves watching the horse. After a while he went back out and down the track to hunt for the other horse.