All the Pretty Horses

on one of the beds and counted their money.
    How much are these britches if they’re fifteen pesos?
    Just remember that two pesos is two bits.
    You remember it. How much are they?
    A dollar and eighty-seven cents.
    Hell, said Rawlins. We’re in good shape. We get paid in five days.
    They bought socks and underwear and they piled everything on the counter while the woman totted up the figures. Then she wrapped the new clothes in two separate parcels and tied them with string.
    What have you got left? said John Grady.
    Four dollars and somethin.
    Get a pair of boots.
    I lack some havin enough.
    I’ll let you have the difference.
    You sure?
    Yeah.
    We got to have some operatin capital for this evenin.
    We’ll still have a couple of dollars. Go on.
    What if you want to buy that sweet thing a soda pop?
    It’ll set me back about four cents. Go on.
    Rawlins handled the boots dubiously. He stood one against the sole of his own raised boot.
    These things are awful small.
    Try these.
    Black?
    Sure. Why not.
    Rawlins pulled on the new boots and walked up and down the floor. The woman nodded approvingly.
    What do you think? said John Grady.
    They’re all right. These underslung heels take some gettin used to.
    Let’s see you dance.
    Do what?
    Dance.
    Rawlins looked at the woman and he looked at John Grady. Shit, he said. You’re lookin at a dancin fool.
    Hit it there a few steps.
    Rawlins executed a nimble ninestep stomp on the old board floor and stood grinning in the dust he’d raised.
    Qué guapo, said the woman.
    John Grady grinned and reached in his pocket for his money.
    We’ve forgot to get gloves, said Rawlins.
    Gloves?
    Gloves. We get done sportin we’re goin to have to go back to work.
    You got a point.
    Them old hot maggie ropes have eat my hands about up.
    John Grady looked at his own hands. He asked the woman where the gloves were and they bought a pair apiece.
    They stood at the counter while she wrapped them. Rawlins was looking down at his boots.
    The old man’s got some good silk manilla ropes in the barn, said John Grady. I’ll slip one out to you quick as I get a chance.
    Black boots, said Rawlins. Aint that the shits? I always wanted to be a badman.
    * * *
    A LTHOUGH THE NIGHT was cool the double doors of the grange stood open and the man selling the tickets was seated in a chair on a raised wooden platform just within the doors so that he must lean down to each in a gesture akin to benevolence and take their coins and hand them down their tickets or pass upon the ticketstubs of those who were only returning from outside. The old adobe hall was buttressed along its outer walls with piers not all of which had been a part of its design and there were no windows and the walls were s wagged and cracked. A string of electric bulbs ran the length of the hall at either side and the bulbs were covered with paper bags that had been painted and the brushstrokes showed through in the light and the reds and greens and blues were all muted and much of a piece. The floor was swept but there were pockets of seeds underfoot and drifts of straw and at the far end of the hall a small orchestra labored on a stage of grainpallets under a band-shell rigged from sheeting. Along the foot of the stage were lights set in fruitcans among colored crepe that smoldered throughout the night. The mouths of the cans were lensed with tinted cellophane and they cast upon the sheeting a shadowplay in the lights and smoke of antic demon players and a pair of goathawks arced chittering through the partial darkness overhead.
    John Grady and Rawlins and a boy named Roberto from the ranch stood just beyond the reach of light at the door among the cars and wagons and passed among themselves a pint medicine-bottle of mescal. Roberto held the bottle to the light.
    A las chicas, he said.
    He drank and handed off the bottle. They drank. They poured salt from a paper onto their wrists and licked it off and Roberto pushed the cob stopper into the neck of the bottle and hid the bottle behind the tire of a parked truck and they passed around a pack of chewing gum.
    Listos? he said.
    Listos.
    She was dancing with a tall boy from the San Pablo ranch and she wore a blue dress and her mouth was red. He and Rawlins and Roberto stood with other youths along the wall and watched the dancers and watched beyond the dancers the young girls at the far side of the hall. He moved along past the groups. The air smelled of straw and sweat and a rich spice of