Blood Meridian(77)

He reckoned it one of the packhorses purchased in Ures. It stopped and he urged it forward but it did not go. He brought his bootheels sharply up under its ribs and it squatted on its hindquarters and went crabbing sideways. He reached and undid the belt from its muzzle and kicked it forward and gave it a whack with the belt and it stepped out right smartly. He twisted a good handful of the mane in his fist and jammed the pistol securely in his waist and rode on, perched upon the raw spine of the animal with the vertebra articulating palpable and discrete under the hide.

In their riding they were joined by another horse that came off the desert and walked alongside them and it was still there when dawn broke. In the night too the tracks of the riders had been joined by a larger party and it was a broad and trampled causeway that now led up the valley floor to the north. With daylight he leaned down with his face against the horse's shoulder and studied the tracks. They were unshod Indian ponies and there were perhaps a hundred of them. Nor had they joined the riders but rather been joined by them. He pushed on. The little horse that had come to them in the night had moved off some leagues and now paced them with a watchful eye and the horse he rode was nervous and ill for want of water.

By noon the animal was failing. He tried to coax it out of the track to catch the other horse but it would not quit the course it was set upon. He sucked on a pebble and surveyed the countryside. Then he saw riders ahead of him. They'd not been there, then they were there. He realized it was their vicinity that was the source of the unrest in the two horses and he rode on watching now the animals and now the skyline to the north. The hack that he straddled trembled and pushed ahead and after a while he could see that the riders wore hats. He urged the horse on and when he rode up the party were halted and seated on the ground all watching his approach.

They looked bad. They were used up and bloody and black about the eyes and they had bound up their wounds with linens that were filthy and bloodstained and their clothes were crusted with dried blood and powderblack. Glanton's eyes in their dark sockets were burning centroids of murder and he and his haggard riders stared balefully at the kid as if he were no part of them for all they were so like in wretchedness of circumstance. The kid slid down from the horse and stood among them gaunt and parched and crazedlooking. Someone threw him a canteen.

They had lost four men. The others were ahead on scout. Elias had forced on through the mountains all night and all the day following and had ridden upon them through the snow in the dark on the plain forty miles to the south. They'd been harried north over the desert like cattle and had deliberately taken the track of the warparty in order to lose their pursuers. They did not know how far the Mexicans were behind them and they did not know how far the Apaches were ahead.

He drank from the canteen and looked them over. Of the missing he'd no way of knowing which were ahead with the scouts and which were dead in the desert. The horse that Toad-vine brought him was the one the recruit Sloat had ridden out of Ures. When they moved out a half hour later two of the horses would not rise and were left behind. He sat a hideless and rickety saddle astride the dead man's horse and he rode slumped and tottering and soon his legs and arms were dangling and he jostled along in his sleep like a mounted marionette. He woke to find the expriest alongside him. He slept again. When he woke next it was the judge was there. He too had lost his hat and he rode with a woven wreath of desert scrub about his head like some egregious saltland bard and he looked down upon the refugee with the same smile, as if the world were pleasing even to him alone.

They rode all the rest of that day, up through low rolling hills covered with cholla and whitethorn. From time to time one of the spare horses would stop and stand swaying in the track and grow small behind them. They rode down a long north slope in the cold blue evening and through a barren bajada grown only with sporadic ocotillo and stands of grama and they made camp in the flat and all night the wind blew and they could see other fires burning on the desert to the north. The judge walked out and looked over the horses and selected from that sorry remuda the animal least likely in appearance and caught it up. He led it past the fire and called for someone to come hold it. No one rose. The expriest leaned to the kid.

Pay him no mind lad.

The judge called again from the dark beyond the fire and the expriest placed a cautionary hand upon the kid's arm. But the kid rose and spat into the fire. He turned and eyed the expriest.

You think I'm afraid of him?

The expriest didnt answer and the kid turned and went out into the darkness where the judge waited.

He stood holding the horse. Just his teeth glistened in the firelight. Together they led the animal off a little ways and the kid held the woven reata while the judge took up a round rock weighing perhaps a hundred pounds and crushed the horse's skull with a single blow. Blood shot out of its ears and it slammed to the ground so hard that one of its forelegs broke under it with a dull snap.