Cormac McCarthy - All The Pretty Horses

You dumb shit. What did you do? Tell me the rest of it. Aint nothin to tell.

Oh hell no, said Rawlins. Aint a damn thing to tell.

John Grady turned. He looked past Rawlins. An old man sat quietly against the wall watching them.

De qué crimen queda acusado el joven? he said. The man blinked. Asesinato, he said.

El ha matado un hombre?

The man blinked again. He held up three fingers.

What did he say? said Rawlins.

John Grady didnt answer.

What did he say? I know what the son of a bitch said.

He said he's killed three men.

That's a damn lie, said Blevins.

Rawlins sat slowly on the concrete.

We're dead, he said. We're dead men. I knew it'd come to this. From the time I first seen him.

That aint goin to help us, said John Grady.

Aint but one of em died, said Blevins.

Rawlins raised his head and looked at him. Then he got up and stepped to the other side of the room and sat down again.

Cuidado con el bote, said the old man.

John Grady turned to Blevins.

I aint done nothin to him, said Blevins.

Tell me what happened, said John Grady.

He'd worked for a German family in the town of Palau eighty miles to the east and at the end of two months he'd taken the money he'd earned and ridden back across the selfsame desert and staked out the horse at the selfsame spring and dressed in the common clothes of the country he'd walked into town and sat in front of the tienda for two days until he saw the same man go by with the Bisley's worn guttapercha grips sticking out of his belt.

What did you do?

You aint got a cigarette have you?

No. What did you do?

Didnt think you did.

What did you do?

Lord what wouldnt I give for a chew of tobacco.

What did you do?

I walked up behind him and snatched it out of his belt. That's what I done.

And shot him.

He come at me.

Come at you.

Yeah.

So you shot him.

What choice did I have?

What choice, said John Grady.

I didnt want to shoot the dumb son of a bitch. That was never no part of my intention.

What did you do then?

Time I got back to the spring where my horse was at they was on me. That boy I shot off his horse thowed down on me with a shotgun.

What happened then?

I didnt have no more shells. I'd shot em all up. My own damn fault. All I had was what was in the gun.

You shot one of the rurales?

Yeah.

Dead?

Yeah.

They sat quietly in the dark.

I could of bought shells in Muñoz, said Blevins. Fore I even come here. I had the money too.

John Grady looked at him. You got any idea the kind of mess you're in?

Blevins didnt answer.

What did they say they mean to do with you?

Send me to the penitentiary I reckon.

They aint goin to send you to the penitentiary.

Why aint they?

You aint goin to be that lucky, said Rawlins.

I aint old enough to hang.

They'll lie about your age for you.

They dont have capital punishment in this country, said John Grady. Dont listen to him.

You knew they was huntin us, didnt you? said Rawlins.

Yeah, I knew it. What was I supposed to do, send you a telegram?

John Grady waited for Rawlins to answer but he didnt. The shadow of the iron grid over the judas-hole lay skewed upon the far wall like a waiting chalkgame which the space in that dark and stinking cubicle had somehow rendered out of true. He folded his blanket and sat on it and leaned against the wall.

Do they ever let you out? Do you get to walk around?

I dont know.

What do you mean you dont know? I caint walk.

You cant walk?

That's what I said.

How come you caint walk, said Rawlins.

Cause they busted my feet all to hell is how come.

They sat. No one spoke. Soon it was dark. The old man on the other side of the room had begun to snore. They could hear sounds from the distant village. Dogs. A mother calling. Ranchero music with its falsetto cries almost like an agony played out of a cheap radio somewhere in the nameless night.

THAT NIGHT he dreamt of horses in a field on a high plain where the spring rains had brought up the grass and the wildflowers out of the ground and the flowers ran all blue and yellow far as the eye could see and in the dream he was among the horses running and in the dream he himself could run with the horses and they coursed the young mares and fillies over the plain where their rich bay and their rich chestnut colors shone in the sun and the young colts ran with their dams and trampled down the flowers in a haze of pollen that hung in the sun like powdered gold and they ran he and the horses out along the high mesas where the ground resounded under their running hooves and they flowed and changed and ran and their manes and tails blew off of them like spume and there was nothing else at all in that high world and they moved all of them in a resonance that was like a music among them and they were none of them afraid horse nor colt nor mare and they ran in that resonance which is the world itself and which cannot be spoken but only praised.

In the morning two guards came and opened the door and handcuffed Rawlins and led him away. John Grady stood and asked where they were taking him but they didnt answer. Rawlins didnt even look back.

The captain was sitting at his desk drinking coffee and reading a three day old newspaper from Monterrey. He looked up. Pasaporte, he said.

I dont have no passport, said Rawlins.

The captain looked at him. He raised his eyebrows in mock surprise. Dont have no passport, he said. You have identification?

Rawlins reached around to his left rear pocket with his manacled hands. He could reach the pocket but he couldnt reach into it. The captain nodded and one of the guards stepped forward and took out the billfold and handed it across to the captain. The captain leaned back in the chair. Quita las esposas, he said.

The guard swung his keys forward and took hold of Rawlins' wrists and unlocked the handcuffs and stepped back and put them in his belt. Rawlins stood rubbing his wrists. The captain turned the sweatblackened leather in his hand. He looked at both sides of it and he looked up at Rawlins. Then he opened it and took out the cards and he took out the photograph of Betty Ward and he took out the american money and then the mexican peso bills which alone were unmutilated. He spread these things out on the desk and leaned back in his chair and folded his hands together and tapped his chin with his forefingers and looked at Rawlins again. Outside Rawlins could hear a goat. He could hear children. The captain made a little rotary motion with one finger. Turn around, he said.

He did so.

Put down your pants.

Do what?

Put down your pants.

What the hell for?

The captain must have made another gesture because the guard stepped forward and took a leather sap from his rear pocket and struck Rawlins across the back of the head with it. The room Rawlins was in lit up all white and his knees buckled and he reached about him in the air.

He was lying with his face against the splintry wooden floor. He didnt remember falling. The floor smelled of dust and grain. He pushed himself up. They waited. They seemed to have nothing else to do.

He got to his feet and faced the captain. He felt sick to his stomach.

You must co-po-rate, said the captain. Then you dont have no troubles. Turn around. Put down your pants.

He turned around and unbuckled his belt and pushed his trousers down around his knees and then the cheap cotton undershorts he'd bought in the commissary at La Vega.

Lift your shirt, said the captain.

He lifted the shirt.

Turn around, said the captain.

He turned.

Get dressed.

He let the shirt fall and reached and hauled up his trousers and buttoned them and buckled back the belt.