All the Pretty Horses

money in both dollars and pesos together with sight-drafts on banks in Houston and Memphis. He spoke no english and he could neither read nor write. When he got back the envelope was gone together with the Spanish letter but he had the english letter and it was separated into three parts along the lines of its folding and it was dogeared and coffeestained and stained with other stains some of which may have been blood. He’d been in jail once in Kentucky, once in Tennessee, and three times in Texas. When he pulled into the yard he got out and walked stiffly to the house and knocked at the kitchen door. María let him in and he stood with his hat in his hand while she went for the hacendado. When the hacendado entered the kitchen they shook hands gravely and the hacendado asked after his health and he said that it was excellent and handed him the pieces of the letter together with a sheaf of bills and receipts from cafes and gas stations and feedstores and jails and he handed him the money he had left including the change in hispockets and he handed him the keys to the truck and lastly he handed him the factura from the Mexican aduana at Piedras Negras together with a long manilla envelope tied with a blue ribbon that contained the papers on the horse and the bill of sale.
    Don Héctor piled the money and the receipts and the papers on the sideboard and put the keys in his pocket. He asked if the truck had proved satisfactory.
    Sí, said Antonio. Es una troca muy fuerte.
    Bueno, said the hacendado. Y el caballo?
    Está un poco cansado de su viaje, pero es muy bonito.
    So he was. He was a deep chestnut in color and stood sixteen hands high and weighed about fourteen hundred pounds and he was well muscled and heavily boned for his breed. When they brought him back from the Distrito Federal in the same trailer in the third week of May and John Grady and Sr Rocha walked out to the barn to look at him John Grady simply pushed open the door to the stall and entered and walked up to the horse and leaned against it and began to rub it and talk to it softly in Spanish. The hacendado offered no advice about the horse at all. John Grady walked all around it talking to it. He lifted up one front hoof and examined it.
    Have you ridden him? he said.
    But of course.
    I’d like to ride him. Con su permiso.
    The hacendado nodded. Yes, he said. Of course.
    He came out of the stall and shut the door and they stood looking at the stallion.
    Le gusta? said the hacendado.
    John Grady nodded. That’s a hell of a horse, he said.
    In the days to follow the hacendado would come up to the corral where they’d shaped the manada and he and John Grady would walk among the mares and John Grady would argue their points and the hacendado would muse and walk away a fixed distance and stand looking back and nod and muse again and walk off with his eyes to the ground to a fresh vantage pointand then look up to see the mare anew, willing to see a new mare should one present itself. Where he could find no gifts of either stance or conformation to warrant his young breeder’s confidence John Grady would likely defer to his judgment. Yet every mare could be pled for on the basis of what they came to call la única cosa and that one thing—which could absolve them of any but the grossest defect—was an interest in cattle. For he’d broken the more promising mares to ride and he’d take them upcountry through the ciénaga pasture where the cows and calves stood in the lush grass along the edge of the marshlands and he would show them the cows and let them move among them. And in the manada were mares who took a great interest in what they saw and some would look back at the cows as they were ridden from the pasture. He claimed that cowsense could be bred for. The hacendado was less sure. But there were two things they agreed upon wholly and that were never spoken and that was that God had put horses on earth to work cattle and that other than cattle there was no wealth proper to a man.
    They stabled the stallion away from the mares in a barn up at the gerente’s and as the mares came into season he and Antonio bred them. They bred mares almost daily for three weeks and sometimes twice daily and Antonio regarded the stallion with great reverence and great love and he called him caballo padre and like John Grady he would talk to the horse and often make promises to him and he never lied to the horse. The horse would hear him coming and set to walking