All the Pretty Horses

They were perhaps five miles away. He watched them and they dropped from sight into a cut or into a shadow. Then they appeared again.
    He mounted up and they rode on. The captain slept tottering in the saddle with his arm slung through his belt. It was cool inthe higher country and when the sun set it was going to be cold. He pushed on and before dark they found a deep ravine in the north slope of the ridge they’d crossed and they descended and found standing water among the rocks and the horses clambered and scrabbled their way down and stood drinking.
    He unsaddled Junior and cuffed the captain’s bracelets through the wooden stirrups and told him he was free to go as far as he thought he could carry the saddle. Then he built a fire in the rocks and kicked out a place in the ground for his hip and lay down and stretched out his aching leg and put the pistol in his belt and closed his eyes.
    In his sleep he could hear the horses stepping among the rocks and he could hear them drink from the shallow pools in the dark where the rocks lay smooth and rectilinear as the stones of ancient ruins and the water from their muzzles dripped and rang like water dripping in a well and in his sleep he dreamt of horses and the horses in his dream moved gravely among the tilted stones like horses come upon an antique site where some ordering of the world had failed and if anything had been written on the stones the weathers had taken it away again and the horses were wary and moved with great circumspection carrying in their blood as they did the recollection of this and other places where horses once had been and would be again. Finally what he saw in his dream was that the order in the horse’s heart was more durable for it was written in a place where no rain could erase it.
    When he woke there were three men standing over him. They wore serapes over their shoulders and one of them was holding the empty rifle and all of them wore pistols. The fire was burning from brush they’d piled on it but he was very cold and he had no way to know how long he’d been sleeping. He sat up. The man with the rifle snapped his fingers and held out his hand.
    Déme las llaves, he said.
    He reached into his pocket and took out the keys and handed them up. He and one of the other men walked over to where thecaptain sat chained to the saddle at the far side of the fire. The third man stood by him. They freed the captain and the one carrying the rifle came back.
    Cuáles de los caballos son suyos? he said.
    Todos son míos.
    The man studied his eyes in the firelight. He walked back to the others and they talked. When they came past with the captain the captain’s hands were cuffed behind him. The man carrying the rifle levered the action open and when he saw that the gun was empty stood it against a rock. He looked at John Grady.
    Dónde está su serape? he said.
    No tengo.
    The man loosed the blanket from his own shoulders and swung it in a slow veronica and handed it to him. Then he turned and they passed on out of the firelight to where their horses were standing in the dark with other companions, other horses.
    Quiénes son ustedes? he called.
    The man who’d given him his serape turned at the outer edge of the light and touched the brim of his hat. Hombres del país, he said. Then all went on.
    Men of the country. He sat listening as they rode up out of the ravine and then they were gone. He never saw them again. In the morning he saddled Redbo and driving the other two horses before him he rode up from the ravine and turned north along the mesa.
    He rode all day and the day clouded before him and a cool wind was coming downcountry. He’d reloaded the rifle and he carried it across the bow of the saddle and rode with the serape over his shoulders and looseherded the riderless horses before him. By evening all the north country was black and the wind was cold and he picked his way across the rim country through the sparse swales of grass and broken volcanic rock and he sat above a highland bajada in the cold blue dusk with the rifle across his knee while the staked horses grazed behind him andat the last hour light enough by which to see the iron sights of the rifle five deer entered the bajada and pricked their ears and stood and then bent to graze.
    He picked out the smallest doe among them and shot her. Blevins’ horse rose howling where he’d tied it and the deer in the bajada leapt away and vanished in the dusk and the little doe