Blood Meridian(86)

Glanton rode at the fore of the column in a new Ringgold saddle ironbound that he'd traded for and he wore a new hat which was black and became him. The recruits now five in number grinned at one another and looked back at the sentry. David Brown rode at the rear and he was leaving his brother here for what would prove forever and his mood was foul enough for him to have shot the sentry with no provocation at all. When the sentry called again he swung about with his rifle and the man had the sense to duck under the parapet and they heard no more from him. In the long dusk the savages rode out to meet them and the whiskey was exchanged for upon a Saltillo blanket spread on the ground. Glanton paid little attention to the proceedings. When the savages had counted out gold and silver to the judge's satisfaction Glanton stepped onto the blanket and kicked the coins together with his bootheel and then stepped away and directed Brown to take up the blanket. Mangas and his lieutenants exchanged dark looks but the Americans mounted up and rode out and none looked back save the recruits. They'd become privy to the details of the business and one of them fell in alongside Brown and asked if the Apaches would not follow them.

They wont ride at night, said Brown.

The recruit looked back at the figures gathered about the keg in that scoured and darkening waste.

Why wont they? he said.

Brown spat. Because it's dark, he said.

They rode west from the town across the base of a small mountain through a dogtown strewn with old broken earthenware from a crockery furnace that once had been there. The keeper of the idiot rode downside of the trestled cage and the idiot clutched the poles and watched the land pass in silence.

They rode that night through forests of saguaro up into the hills to the west. The sky was all overcast and those fluted columns passing in the dark were like the ruins of vast temples ordered and grave and silent save for the soft cries of elf owls among them. The terrain was thick with cholla and clumps of it clung to the horses with spikes that would drive through a bootsole to the bones within and a wind came up through the hills and all night it sang with a wild viper sound through that countless reach of spines. They rode on and the land grew more spare and they reached the first of a series of jornadas where there would be no water at all and there they camped. That night Glanton stared long into the embers of the fire. All about him his men were sleeping but much was changed. So many gone, defected or dead. The Delawares all slain. He watched the fire and if he saw portents there it was much the same to him. He would live to look upon the western sea and he was equal to whatever might follow for he was complete at every hour. Whether his history should run concomitant with men and nations, whether it should cease. He'd long forsworn all weighing of consequence and allowing as he did that men's destinies are given yet he usurped to contain within him all that he would ever be in the world and all that the world would be to him and be his charter written in the urstone itself he claimed agency and said so and he'd drive the remorseless sun on to its final endarkenment as if he'd ordered it all ages since, before there were paths anywhere, before there were men or suns to go upon them.

Across from him sat the vast abhorrence of the judge. Half naked, scribbling in his ledger. In the thornforest through which they'd passed the little desert wolves yapped and on the dry plain before them others answered and the wind fanned the coals that he watched. The bones of cholla that glowed there in their incandescent basketry pulsed like burning holothurians in the phosphorous dark of the sea's deeps. The idiot in his cage had been drawn close to the fire and he watched it tirelessly. When Glanton raised his head he saw the kid across the fire from him, squatting in his blanket, watching the judge.

Two days later they encountered a ragged legion under the command of Colonel Garcia. They were troops from Sonora seeking a band of Apaches under Pablo and they numbered close to a hundred riders. Of these some were without hats and some without pantaloons and some were naked under their coats and they were armed with derelict weapons, old fusils and Tower muskets, some with bows and arrows or nothing more than ropes with which to garrote the enemy.

Glanton and his men reviewed this company with stony amazement. The Mexicans pressed about with their hands out-held for tobacco and Glanton and the colonel exchanged rudimentary civilities and then Glanton pushed on through that importunate horde. They were of another nation, those riders, and all that land to the south out of which they'd originated and whatever lands to the east toward which they were bound were dead to him and both the ground and any sojourners upon it remote and arguable of substance. This feeling communicated itself through the company before Glanton had moved entirely clear of them and each man turned his horse and each man followed and not even the judge spoke to excuse himself from out of that encounter.