Blood Meridian(44)

The judge had been up all the night by what the videttes said. Watchin the bats. He would go up the side of the mountain and make notes in a little book and then he would come back down. Could not have been more cheerful. Two men had deserted in the night and that made us down to twelve and the judge thirteen. I gave him my best study, the judge. Then and now. He appeared to be a lunatic and then not. Glanton I always knew was mad.

We left out with the first light up a little wooded draw. We were on the north slope and there was willow and alder and cherry growin out of the rock, just little trees. The judge would stop to botanize and then ride to catch up. My hand to God. Pressing leaves into his book. Sure I never saw the equal to it and all the time the savages in plain view below us. Ridin on that pan. God I'd put a crick in my neck I couldnt keep my eyes off of them and they were a hundred souls if they were one.

We come out on some flinty ground where it was all juniper and we just went on. No attempt to put their trackers at fault. We rode all that day. We saw no more of the savages for they were come under the lee of the mountain and were somewhere on the slopes below us. As soon as it was dusk and the bats was about the judge he altered our course again, ridin along holdin onto his hat, lookin up at the little animals. We got broke up and scattered all in the junipers and we halted to regroup and to recruit the horses. We sat around in the dark, no one spoke a word. When the judge got back he and Glanton whispered among themselves and then we moved on.

We led the horses in the dark. There was no trail, just steep scrabbly rock. When we reached the cave some of the men thought that he meant for us to hide there and that he was for a fact daft altogether. But it was the nitre. The nitre, you see. We left all that we owned at the mouth of that cave and we filled our wallets and panniers and our mochilas with the cave dirt and we left out at daybreak. When we topped the rise above that place and looked back there was a great spout of bats being sucked down into the cave, thousands of the creatures, and they continued so for an hour or more and even then it was just that we could no longer see them.

The judge. We left him at a high pass, a little clearwater creek. Him and one of the Delawares. He told us to circle the mountain and to return to that place in forty-eight hours. We unloaded all the containers onto the ground and took the two horses with us and him and the Delaware commenced luggin the panniers and the wallets up that little creek. I watched him go and I said that I would never set eyes on that man again.

Tobin looked at the kid. Never in this world. I thought Glan-ton would leave him. We went on. The next day on the far side of the mountain we encountered the two lads that had deserted us. Hangin upside down in a tree. They'd been skinned and I can tell ye it does very little for a man's appearance. But if the savages had not guessed it already now they knew for sure. That we'd none of us any powder.

We would not ride the animals. Just lead them, keep them off the rocks, hold their noses if they snuffled. But in those two days the judge leached out the guano with creekwater and woodash and precipitated it out and he built a clay kiln and burned charcoal in it, doused the fire by day and fired it again come dark. When we found him him and the Delaware was settin in the creek stark naked and they appeared at first to be drunk but on what none could surmise. The entire top of that mountain was covered with Apache Indians and there set he. He got up when he seen us and went to the willows and come back with a pair of wallets and in one was about eight pounds of pure crystal saltpetre and in the other about three pounds of fine alder charcoal. He'd ground the charcoal to a powder in the hollow of a rock, you could have made ink of it. He lashed the bags shut and put them across the pommel of Glanton's saddle and him and the indian got their clothes and I was glad of it for I never seen a grown man with not a hair to his body and him weighin twenty-four stone which he did then and does now. And by my own warrant, for I added up the counters on the bar with my own and sober eyes at a stockscale in Chihuahua City in that same month and year.

We went down the mountain with no scouts, nothin. Just straight out. We were dead for sleep. It was dark when we reached the plain and we grouped and took a headcount and then we rode out. The moon was about three quarters full and waxing and we were like circus riders, not a sound, the horses on eggshells. We'd no way of knowin where the savages was. The last clue we'd had of their vicinity was the poor buggers flayed in the tree. We set out dead west across the desert. Doc Irving was before me and it was that bright I could count the hairs on his head.

We rode all night and toward the morning just as the moon was down we come upon a band of wolves. They scattered and come back, not a sound out of them no more than smoke. They'd drift off and quarter around and circle the horses. Bold as brass. We cut at them with our hobbles and they would slip past, you couldnt hear them on the hardpan just their breath or they would mutter and grouse or pop their teeth. Glanton halted and the things swirled around and slank off and come back. Two of the Delawares backtracked off to the left a bit—braver souls than me—and sure they found the kill. Twas a young buck antelope new killed the evenin before. It was about half consumed and we set upon it with our knives and took the rest of the meat with us and we ate it raw in the saddle and it was the first meat we'd seen in six days. Froze for it we were. Foragin on the mountain for pinon nuts like bears and glad to get them. We left little more than bones for the lobos, but I would never shoot a wolf and I know other men of the same sentiments.