All the Pretty Horses

horsetracks in it and turned south and at noon they rode into the town of Reforma.
    They rode singlefile down the cart track that served as a street. Half a dozen low houses with walls of mud brick slumping into ruin. A few jacales of brush and mud with brush roofs and a pole corral where five scrubby horses with big heads stood looking solemnly at the horses passing in the road.
    They dismounted and tied their horses at a little mud tienda and entered. A girl was sitting in a straightback chair by a sheetiron stove in the center of the room reading a comicbook by the light from the doorway and she looked up at them and looked at the comicbook and then looked up again. She got up and glanced toward the back of the store where a green curtain hung across a doorway and she put the book down in the chair and crossed the packed clay floor to the counter and turned and stood. On top of the counter were three clay jars or ollas. Two of them were empty but the third was covered with the tin lid from a lardpail and the lid was notched to accommodate the handle of an enameled tin dipper. Along the wall behind herwere three or four board shelves that held canned goods and cloth and thread and candy. Against the far wall was a handmade pineboard mealbox. Above it a calendar nailed to the mud wall with a stick. Other than the stove and the chair that was all there was in the building.
    Rawlins took off his hat and pressed his forearm against his forehead and put the hat back on. He looked at John Grady. She got anything to drink?
    Tiene algo que tomar? said John Grady.
    Sí, said the girl. She moved to take up her station behind the jars and lifted away the lid. The three riders stood at the counter and looked.
    What is that? said Rawlins.
    Sidrón, said the girl.
    John Grady looked at her. Habla inglés? he said.
    Oh no, she said.
    What is it? said Rawlins.
    Cider.
    He looked into the jar. Let’s have em, he said. Give us three.
    Mande?
    Three, said Rawlins. Tres. He held up three fingers.
    He got out his billfold. She reached to the shelves behind and got down three tumblers and stood them on the board and took up the dipper and dredged up a thin brown liquid and filled the glasses and Rawlins laid a dollar bill on the counter. It had a hole in it at each end. They reached for the glasses and John Grady nodded at the bill.
    He about deadcentered your pocketbook didnt he?
    Yeah, said Rawlins.
    He lifted up his glass and they drank. Rawlins stood thoughtfully.
    I dont know what that shit is, he said. But it tastes pretty good to a cowboy. Let us have three more here.
    They set their glasses down and she refilled them. What do we owe? said Rawlins.
    She looked at John Grady.
    Cuánto, said John Grady.
    Para todo?
    Sí.
    Uno cincuenta.
    How much is that? said Rawlins.
    It’s about three cents a glass.
    Rawlins pushed the bill across the counter. You let your old dad buy, he said.
    She made change out of a cigar box under the counter and laid the Mexican coins out on the counter and looked up. Rawlins set his empty glass down and gestured at it and paid for three more glasses and took his change and they took their glasses and walked outside.
    They sat in the shade of the pole and brush ramada in front of the place and sipped their drinks and looked out at the desolate stillness of the little crossroads at noon. The mud huts. The dusty agave and the barren gravel hills beyond. A thin blue rivulet of drainwater ran down the clay gully in front of the store and a goat stood in the rutted road looking at the horses.
    There aint no electricity here, said Rawlins.
    He sipped his drink. He looked out down the road.
    I doubt there’s ever even been a car in here.
    I dont know where it would come from, said John Grady.
    Rawlins nodded. He held the glass to the light and rolled the cider around and looked at it. You think this here is some sort of cactus juice or what?
    I dont know, said John Grady. It’s got a little kick to it, dont it?
    I think it does.
    Better not let that youngn have no more.
    I’ve drunk whiskey, said Blevins. This aint nothin.
    Rawlins shook his head. Drinkin cactus juice in old Mexico, he said. What do you reckon they’re sayin at home about now?
    I reckon they’re sayin we’re gone, said John Grady.
    Rawlins sat with his legs stretched out before him and his boots crossed and his hat over one knee and looked out at the alien land and nodded. We are, aint we? he said.
    They watered the horses and loosed the