All the Pretty Horses

at them. The guard came back and reported to the captain and the captain took the guard’s rifle from him and handed it to the charro and the charro hefted it in his hands as if it were a game gun. The prisoners straggled back to the truck. Blevins sat down a little apart and the charro looked at him and then took his cigarette from his mouth and dropped it in the grass and stepped on it. Blevins got up and moved to the rear of the truck where John Grady and Rawlins were standing.
    What are they goin to do? he said.
    The guard with no rifle came to the rear of the truck.
    Vámonos, he said.
    Rawlins raised up from where he was leaning on the bed of the truck.
    Sólo el chico, said the guard. Vámonos.
    Rawlins looked at John Grady.
    What are they goin to do? said Blevins.
    They aint goin to do nothin, said Rawlins.
    He looked at John Grady. John Grady said nothing at all. The guard reached and took Blevins by the arm. Vámonos, he said.
    Wait a minute, said Blevins.
    Están esperando, said the guard.
    Blevins twisted out of his grip and sat on the ground. The guard’s face clouded. He looked toward the front of the truck where the captain stood. Blevins had wrenched off one boot and was reaching down inside it. He pulled up the black and sweaty inner sole and threw it away and reached in again. The guardbent and got hold of his thin arm. He pulled Blevins up. Blevins was flailing about trying to hand something to John Grady.
    Here, he hissed.
    John Grady looked at him. What do I want with that? he said.
    Take it, said Blevins.
    He thrust into his hand a wad of dirty and crumpled peso notes and the guard jerked him around by his arm and pushed him forward. The boot had fallen to the ground.
    Wait, said Blevins. I need to get my boot.
    But the guard shoved him on past the truck and he limped away, looking back once mute and terrified and then going on with the captain and the charro across the clearing toward the trees. The captain had put one arm around the boy, or he put his hand in the small of his back. Like some kindly advisor. The other man walked behind them carrying the rifle and Blevins disappeared into the ebony trees hobbling on one boot much as they had seen him that morning coming up the arroyo after the rain in that unknown country long ago.
    Rawlins looked at John Grady. His mouth was tight. John Grady watched the small ragged figure vanish limping among the trees with his keepers. There seemed insufficient substance to him to be the object of men’s wrath. There seemed nothing about him sufficient to fuel any enterprise at all.
    Dont you say nothin, said Rawlins.
    All right.
    Dont you say a damn word.
    John Grady turned and looked at him. He looked at the guards and he looked at the place where they were, the strange land, the strange sky.
    All right, he said. I wont.
    At some time the driver had got out and gone off somewhere to inspect the buildings. The others stood, the two prisoners, the three guards in their rumpled suits. The one guard with no rifle squatting by the tire. They waited a long time. Rawlinsleaned and put his fists on the truckbed and laid his forehead down and closed his eyes tightly. After a while he raised up again. He looked at John Grady.
    They caint just walk him out there and shoot him, he said. Hell fire. Just walk him out there and shoot him.
    John Grady looked at him. As he did so the pistol shot came from beyond the ebony trees. Not loud. Just a flat sort of pop. Then another.
    When they came back out of the trees the captain was carrying the handcuffs. Vámonos, he called.
    The guards moved. One of them stood on the rear axlehub and reached across the boards of the truckbed for the chain. The driver came from the ruins of the quinta.
    We’re okay, whispered Rawlins. We’re okay.
    John Grady didnt answer. He almost reached to pull down the front of his hatbrim but then he remembered that they had no hats anymore and he turned and climbed up on the bed of the truck and sat waiting to be chained. Blevins’ boot was still lying in the grass. One of the guards bent and picked it up and pitched it into the weeds.
    When they wound back up out of the glade it was already evening and the sun lay long in the grass and across the shallow swales where the land dipped in pockets of darkness. Small birds come to feed in the evening cool of the open country flushed and flared away over the grasstops and the hawks in silhouette against the sunset waited in the upper limbs of a dead