They carried their dishes to a galvanized tub full of water and soapcurd and they carried the lamp to their bunks at the farther end of the bunkhouse and unrolled the ticks down over the rusty springs and spread their blankets and undressed and blew out the lamp. Tired as they were they lay a long time in the dark after the vaqueros were asleep. They could hear them breathing deeply in the room that smelled of horses and leather and men and they could hear in the distance the new cattle still not bedded down in the holdingpen.
I believe these are some pretty good old boys, whispered Rawlins.
Yeah, I believe they are too.
You see them old highback centerfire rigs?
Yeah.
You reckon they think we’re on the run down here?
Aint we?
Rawlins didnt answer. After a while he said: I like hearin the cattle out there.
Yeah. I do too.
He didnt say much about Rocha, did he?
Not a lot.
You reckon that was his daughter?
I’d say it was.
This is some country, aint it?
Yeah. It is. Go to sleep.
Bud?
Yeah.
This is how it was with the old waddies, aint it?
Yeah.
How long do you think you’d like to stay here?
About a hundred years. Go to sleep.
HE HACIENDA de Nuestra Señora de la Purísima Concepción was a ranch of eleven thousand hectares situated along the edge of the Bolsón de Cuatro Ciénagas in the state of Coahuila. The western sections ran into the Sierra de Anteojo to elevations of nine thousand feet but south and east the ranch occupied part of the broad barrial or basin floor of the bolsón and was well watered with natural springs and clear streams and dotted with marshes and shallow lakes or lagunas. In the lakes and in the streams were species of fish not known elsewhere on earth and birds and lizards and other forms of life as well all long relict here for the desert stretched away on every side.
La Purísima was one of very few ranches in that part of Mexico retaining the full complement of six square leagues of land allotted by the colonizing legislation of eighteen twenty-four and the owner Don Héctor Rocha y Villareal was one of the few hacendados who actually lived on the land he claimed, land which had been in his family for one hundred and seventy years. He was forty-seven years old and he was the first male heir in all that new world lineage to attain such an age.
He ran upwards of a thousand head of cattle on this land. He kept a house in Mexico City where his wife lived. He flew his own airplane. He loved horses. When he rode up to the gerente’s house that morning he was accompanied by four friends and by a retinue of mozos and two packanimals saddled with hardwood kiacks, one empty, the other carrying their noon provisions. They were attended by a pack of greyhound dogs and the dogs were lean and silver in color and they flowed among the legs of the horses silent and fluid as running mercury and the horses paid them no mind at all. The hacendado halloed the house and the gerente emerged in his shirtsleeves and they spoke briefly and the gerente nodded and the hacendado spoke to his friends and then all rode on. When they passed the bunkhouse and rode through the gate and turned into the road up-country some of the vaqueros were catching their horses in the trap and leading them out to saddle them for the day’s work. John Grady and Rawlins stood in the doorway drinking their coffee.
Yonder he is, said Rawlins.
John Grady nodded and slung the dregs of coffee out into the yard.
Where the hell do you reckon they’re goin? said Rawlins.
I’d say they’re goin to run coyotes.
They aint got no guns.
They got ropes.
Rawlins looked at him. Are you shittin me?
I dont think so.
Well I’d damn sure like to see it.
I would too. You ready?
They worked two days in the holdingpens branding and earmarking and castrating and dehorning and inoculating. On the third day the vaqueros brought a small herd of wild three year old colts down from the mesa and penned them and in the evening Rawlins and John Grady walked out to look them over. They were bunched against the fence at the far side of the enclosure and they were a mixed lot, roans and duns and bays and a few paints and they were of varied size and conformation. John Grady opened the gate and he and Rawlins walked in and he closed it behind them. The horrified animals began to climb over one another and to break up and move along the fence in both directions.
That’s as spooky a bunch of horses as I ever saw, said Rawlins.
They dont know what we are.
Dont know what we are?
I dont think so. I dont think they’ve ever seen a man afoot.
Rawlins leaned and spat.
You see anything there you’d have?
There’s horses there.
Where at?
Look at that dark bay. Right yonder.
I’m lookin.
Look again.
That horse wont weigh eight hundred pounds.