All the Pretty Horses

walked over to the workers and squatted and asked for a light. Two of them produced esclarajos from their clothes and one struck him a light and he leaned and lit the cigarette and nodded. He asked about the boiler and the loads of candelilla still tied on the burros and the workers told them about the wax and one of them rose and walked off and came back with a small gray cake of it and handed it to him. It looked like a bar of laundrysoap. He scraped it with his fingernail and sniffed it. He held it up and looked at it.
    Qué vale? he said.
    They shrugged.
    Es mucho trabajo, he said.
    Bastante.
    A thin man in a stained leather vest with embroidery on the front was watching John Grady with narrowed and speculative eyes. John Grady handed back the wax and this man hissed at him and jerked his head.
    John Grady turned.
    Es su hermano, el rubio?
    He meant Blevins. John Grady shook his head. No, he said.
    Quién es? said the man.
    He looked across the clearing. The cook had given Blevins some lard and he sat rubbing it into his sunburned legs.
    Un muchacho, no más, he said.
    Algún parentesco?
    No.
    Un amigo.
    John Grady drew on the cigarette and tapped the ash against the heel of his boot. Nada, he said.
    No one spoke. The man in the vest studied John Grady and he looked across the clearing at Blevins. Then he asked John Grady if he wished to sell the boy.
    He didnt answer for a moment. The man may have thought he was weighing the matter. They waited. He looked up. No, he said.
    Qué vale? said the man.
    John Grady stubbed out the cigarette against the sole of his boot and rose.
    Gracias por su hospitalidad, he said.
    The man offered that he would trade for him in wax. The others had turned to listen to him. Now they turned and looked at John Grady.
    John Grady studied them. They did not look evil but it was no comfort to him. He turned and crossed the clearing toward the standing horses. Blevins and Rawlins rose.
    What did they say? said Blevins.
    Nothing.
    Did you ask them about my horse?
    No.
    Why not?
    They dont have your horse.
    What was that guy talkin about?
    Nothing. Get the plates. Let’s go.
    Rawlins looked across the clearing at the seated men. He took up the trailing reins and swung up into the saddle.
    What’s happened, bud? he said.
    John Grady mounted and turned the horse. He looked back at the men and he looked at Blevins. Blevins stood with the plates.
    What was he lookin at me for? he said.
    Put them in the bag and get your ass up here.
    They aint washed.
    Do like I told you.
    Some of the men had risen. Blevins stuffed the plates into the bag and John Grady reached down and swung him up onto the horse behind him.
    He pulled the horse around and they rode out of the camp and into the road south. Rawlins looked back and put his horse into a trot and John Grady came up and they rode side by side down the narrow rutted track. No one spoke. When they were clear of the camp a mile or so Blevins asked what it was that the man in the vest had wanted but John Grady didnt answer. When Blevins asked again Rawlins looked back at him.
    He wanted to buy you, he said. That’s what he wanted.
    John Grady didnt look at Blevins.
    They rode on in silence.
    What did you go and tell him that for? said John Grady. There wasnt no call to do that.
    They camped that night in the low range of hills under the Sierra de la Encantada and the three of them sat about the fire in silence. The boy’s bony legs were pale in the firelight and coated with road dust and bits of chaff that had stuck to the lard. The drawers he wore were baggy and dirty and he did indeed look like some sad and ill used serf or worse. John Grady parceled out to him the bottom blanket from his bedroll and he wrapped himself in it and lay by the fire and was soon asleep. Rawlins shook his head and spat.
    Goddamn pitiful, he said. You thought any more about what I said?
    Yeah, said John Grady. I thought about it.
    Rawlins stared long into the red heart of the fire. I’ll tell you somethin, he said.
    Tell me.
    Somethin bad is goin to happen.
    John Grady smoked slowly, his arms around his updrawn knees.
    This is just a jackpot, said Rawlins. What this is.
    At noon the next day they rode into the pueblo of Encantada at the foot of the low range of pollarded mountains they’d been skirting and the first thing they saw was Blevins’ pistol sticking out of the back pocket of a man bent over into the engine compartment of a Dodge car. John Grady saw it first