All the Pretty Horses

horses stood in the marshy grass and sucked quietly at the water. She’d tied the food up in a square of muslin and they spread the cloth on the ground and selected from among the quesadillas and tacos and bizcochos like picnickers, leaning back on their elbows in the shade with their boots crossed before them, chewing idly and observing the horses.
    Back in the old days, said Blevins, this’d be just the place where Comanches’d lay for you and bushwhack you.
    I hope they had some cards or a checkerboard with em while they was waitin, said Rawlins. It dont look to me like there’s been nobody down this road in a year.
    Back in the old days you had a lot more travelers, said Blevins.
    Rawlins eyed balefully that cauterized terrain. What in the putrefied dogshit would you know about the old days? he said.
    You all want any more of this? said John Grady.
    I’m full as a tick.
    He tied up the cloth and stood and began to strip out of hisclothes and he walked out naked through the grass past the horses and waded out into the water and sat in it to his waist. He spread his arms and lay backward into the water and disappeared. The horses watched him. He sat up out of the water and pushed his hair back and wiped his eyes. Then he just sat.
    They camped that night in the floor of a wash just off the road and built a fire and sat in the sand and stared into the embers.
    Blevins are you a cowboy? said Rawlins.
    I like it.
    Everbody likes it.
    I dont claim to be no top hand. I can ride.
    Yeah? said Rawlins.
    That man yonder can ride, said Blevins. He nodded across the fire toward John Grady.
    What makes you say that?
    He just can, that’s all.
    Suppose I was to tell you he just took it up. Suppose I was to tell you he’s never been on a horse a girl couldnt ride.
    I’d have to say you was pullin my leg.
    Suppose I was to tell you he’s the best I ever saw.
    Blevins spat into the fire.
    You doubt that?
    No, I dont doubt it. Depends on who you seen ride.
    I seen Booger Red ride, said Rawlins.
    Yeah? said Blevins.
    Yeah.
    You think he can outride him?
    I know for a fact he can.
    Maybe he can and maybe he caint.
    You dont know shit from applebutter, said Rawlins. Booger Red’s been dead forever.
    Dont pay no attention to him, said John Grady.
    Rawlins recrossed his boots and nodded toward John Grady. He cant take my part of it without braggin on hisself, can he?
    He’s full of shit, said John Grady.
    You hear that? said Rawlins.
    Blevins leaned his chin toward the fire and spat. I dont see how you can say somebody is just flat out the best.
    You cant, said John Grady. He’s just ignorant, that’s all.
    There’s a lot of good riders, said Blevins.
    That’s right, said Rawlins. There’s a lot of good riders. But there’s just one that’s the best. And he happens to be settin right yonder.
    Leave him alone, said John Grady.
    I aint botherin him, said Rawlins. Am I botherin you?
    No.
    Tell Joe yonder I aint botherin you.
    I said you wasnt.
    Leave him alone, said John Grady.
    D AYS TO COME they rode through the mountains and they crossed at a barren windgap and sat the horses among the rocks and looked out over the country to the south where the last shadows were running over the land before the wind and the sun to the west lay blood red among the shelving clouds and the distant cordilleras ranged down the terminals of the sky to fade from pale to pale of blue and then to nothing at all.
    Where do you reckon that paradise is at? said Rawlins.
    John Grady had taken off his hat to let the wind cool his head. You cant tell what’s in a country like that till you’re down there in it, he said.
    There’s damn sure a bunch of it, aint there.
    John Grady nodded. That’s what I’m here for.
    I hear you, cousin.
    They rode down through the cooling blue shadowland of the north slope. Evergreen ash growing in the rocky draws. Persimmon, mountain gum. A hawk set forth below them and circled in the deepening haze and dropped and they kicked their feet out of the stirrups and put the horses forward with care down the shaly rock switchbacks. At just dark they benched out on a gravel shelf and made their camp and that night they heardwhat they’d none heard before, three long howls to the southwest and all afterwards a silence.
    You hear that? said Rawlins.
    Yeah.
    It’s a wolf, aint it?
    Yeah.
    He lay on his back in his blankets and looked out where the quartermoon lay cocked over the heel of the mountains. In that false blue