All the Pretty Horses

country at all.
    In the afternoon they watered the horses at a clear stream running out of the southwest. They walked the creek and drank and filled and stoppered their canteens. There were antelope out on the plain perhaps two miles distant, all standing with their heads up.
    They rode on. There was good grass in the level floor of the valley and cattle the color of housecats to tortoiseshell and calico moved off constantly before them up through the buckthorn or stood along the low rise of ancient ground running down to the east to watch them as they passed along the road. That night they camped in the low hills and they cooked a jackrabbit that Blevins had shot with his pistol. He fielddressed it with his pocketknife and buried it in the sandy ground with the skin on and built the fire over it. He said it was the way the indians did.
    You ever eat a jackrabbit? said Rawlins.
    He shook his head. Not yet, he said.
    You better rustle some more wood if you aim to eat thisn.
    It’ll cook.
    What’s the strangest thing you ever ate?
    Strangest thing I ever ate, said Blevins. I guess I’d have to say that would be a oyster.
    A mountain oyster or a real oyster?
    A real oyster.
    How were they cooked?
    They wasnt cooked. They just laid there in their shells. You put hotsauce on em.
    You ate that?
    I did.
    How’d it taste?
    About like you’d expect.
    They sat watching the fire.
    Where you from, Blevins? said Rawlins.
    Blevins looked at Rawlins and looked back into the fire. Uvalde County, he said. Up on the Sabinal River.
    What’d you run off for?
    What’d you?
    I’m seventeen years old. I can go wherever I want.
    So can I.
    John Grady was sitting with his legs crossed in front of him leaning against his saddle and smoking a cigarette. You’ve run off before, aint you? he said.
    Yeah.
    What’d they do, catch you?
    Yeah. I was settin pins in a bowlin alley in Ardmore Oklahoma and I got dogbit by a bulldog took a chunk out of my leg the size of a Sunday roast and it got infected and the man I worked for carried me down to the doctor and they thought I had rabies or somethin and all hell busted loose and I got shipped back to Uvalde County.
    What were you doin in Ardmore Oklahoma?
    Settin pins in a bowlin alley.
    How come you wound up there?
    There was a show was supposed to come through Uvalde, town of Uvalde, and I’d saved up to go see it but they never showed up because the man that run the show got thowed in jail in Tyler Texas for havin a dirty show. Had this striptease that was part of the deal. I got down there and it said on the poster they was goin to be in Ardmore Oklahoma in two weeks and that’s how come me to be in Ardmore Oklahoma.
    You went all the way to Oklahoma to see a show?
    That’s what I’d saved up to do and I meant to do it.
    Did you see the show in Ardmore?
    No. They never showed up there neither.
    Blevins hauled up one leg of his overalls and turned his leg to the firelight.
    Yonder’s where that son of a bitch bit me, he said. I’d as soon been bit by a alligator.
    What made you set out for Mexico? said Rawlins.
    Same reason as you.
    What reason is that?
    Cause you knowed they’d play hell sowed in oats findin your ass down here.
    There aint nobody huntin me.
    Blevins rolled down the leg of his overalls and poked at the fire with a stick. I told that son of a bitch I wouldnt take a whippin off of him and I didnt.
    Your daddy?
    My daddy never come back from the war.
    Your stepdaddy?
    Yeah.
    Rawlins leaned forward and spat into the fire. You didnt shoot him did you?
    I would of. He knowed it too.
    What was a bulldog doin in a bowlin alley?
    I didnt get bit in the bowlin alley. I was workin in the bowlin alley, that’s all.
    What were you doin that you got dogbit?
    Nothin. I wasnt doin nothin.
    Rawlins leaned and spat into the fire. Where were you at at the time?
    You got a awful lot of goddamned questions. And dont be spittin in the fire where I got supper cookin.
    What? said Rawlins.
    I said dont be spittin in the fire where I got supper cookin.
    Rawlins looked at John Grady. John Grady had started to laugh. He looked at Blevins. Supper? he said. You’ll think supper when you try and eat that stringy son of a bitch.
    Blevins nodded. You let me know if you dont want your share, he said.
    What they dredged smoking out of the ground looked like some desiccated effigy from a tomb. Blevins put it on a flat rock and peeled away the hide and scraped the meat off the bones into their plates