Blood Meridian, or the Evening Redness in the West Read online

  He took one. He'd not seen such cards before, yet the one he held seemed familiar to him. He turned it upside down and regarded it and he turned it back.

  The juggler took the boy's hand in his own and turned the card so he could see. Then he took the card and held it up.

  Cuatro de copas, he called out.

  The woman raised her head. She looked like a blindfold mannequin raised awake by a string.

  Cuatro de copas, she said. She moved her shoulders. The wind went among her garments and her hair.

  Quien, called the juggler.

  El hombre ... she said. El hombre mas joven. El muchacho.

  El muchacho, called the juggler. He turned the card for all to see. The woman sat like that blind interlocutrix between Boaz and Jachin inscribed upon the one card in the juggler's deck that they would not see come to light, true pillars and true card, false prophetess for all. She began to chant.

  The judge was laughing silently. He bent slightly the better to see the kid. The kid looked at Tobin and at David Brown and he looked at Glanton himself but they were none laughing. The juggler kneeling before him watched him with a strange intensity. He followed the kid's gaze to the judge and back. When the kid looked down at him he smiled a crooked smile.

  Get the hell away from me, said the kid.

  The juggler leaned his ear forward. A common gesture and one that served for any tongue. The ear was dark and misshapen, as if in being put forth in this fashion it had suffered no few clouts, or perhaps the very news men had for him had blighted it. The kid spoke to him again but a man named Tate from Kentucky who had fought with McCulloch's Rangers as had Tobin and others among them leaned and whispered to the ragged soothsayer and he rose and made a slight bow and moved away. The woman had ceased her chanting. The juggler stood flapping in the wind and the fire lashed a long hot tail over the ground. Quien, quien, he called.

  El jefe, said the judge.

  The juggler's eyes sought out Glanton. He sat unmoved. The juggler looked at the old woman where she sat apart, facing the dark, lightly tottering, racing the night in her rags. He raised his finger to his lips and he spread his arms in a gesture of uncertainty.

  El jefe, hissed the judge.

  The man turned and went along the group at the fire and brought himself before Glanton and crouched and offered up the cards, spreading them in both hands. If he spoke his words were snatched away unheard. Glanton smiled, his eyes were small against the stinging grit. He put one hand forth and paused, he looked at the juggler. Then he took a card.

  The juggler folded shut the deck and tucked it among his clothes. He reached for the card in Glanton's hand. Perhaps he touched it, perhaps not. The card vanished. It was in Glanton's hand and then it was not. The juggler's eyes snapped after it where it had gone down the dark. Perhaps Glanton had seen the card's face. What could it have meant to him? The juggler reached out to that naked bedlam beyond the fire's light but in the doing he overbalanced and fell forward against Glanton and created a moment of strange liaison with his old man's arms about the leader as if he would console him at his scrawny bosom.

  Glanton swore and flung him away and at that moment the old woman began to chant.

  Glanton rose.

  She raised her jaw, gibbering at the night.

  Shut her up, said Glanton.

  La carroza, la carroza, cried the beldam. Invertido. Carta de guerra, de venganza. La vi sin ruedas sobre un rio obscuro ...

  Glanton called to her and she paused as if she'd heard him but it was not so. She seemed to catch some new drift in her divinings.

  Perdida, perdida. La carta esta perdida en la noche.

  The girl standing this while at the edge of the howling darkness crossed herself silently. The old malabarista was on his knees where he'd been flung. Perdida, perdida, he whispered.

  Un maleficio, cried the old woman. Que viento tan maleante ...

  By god you will shut up, said Glanton, drawing his revolver.

  Carroza de muertos, llena de huesos. El joven que ...

  The judge like a great ponderous djinn stepped through the fire and the flames delivered him up as if he were in some way native to their element. He put his arms around Glanton. Someone snatched the old woman's blindfold from her and she and the juggler were clouted away and when the company turned in to sleep and the low fire was roaring in the blast like a thing alive these four yet crouched at the edge of the firelight among their strange chattels and watched how the ragged flames fled down the wind as if sucked by some maelstrom out there in the void, some vortex in that waste apposite to which man's transit and his reckonings alike lay abrogate. As if beyond will or fate he and his beasts and his trappings moved both in card and in substance under consignment to some third and other destiny.

  In the morning when they rode out it was that pale day with the sun not risen and the wind had abated in the night and the things of the night were gone. The juggler on his burro trotted out to the head of the column and fell in with Glanton and they rode on together and they were so riding in the afternoon when the company entered the town of Janos.

  An ancient walled presidio composed wholly of mud, a tall mud church and mud watchtowers and all of it rainwashed and lumpy and sloughing into a soft decay. The advent of the riders bruited by scurvid curs that howled woundedly and slank among the crumbling walls.

  They rode past the church where old Spanish bells seagreen with age hung from a pole between low mud dolmens. Darkeyed children watched from the hovels. The air was heavy with the smoke from charcoal fires and a few old pelados sat mute in the doorways and many of the houses were caved and ruinous and stood for pens. An old man with soapy eyes lurched out at them and held forth his hand. Una corta caridad, he croaked to the passing horses. Por Dios.

  In the square two of the Delawares and the outrider Webster were squatting in the dust with a weathered old woman the color of pipeclay. Dry old crone, half naked, her paps like wrinkled aubergines hanging from under the shawl she wore. She stared at the ground nor did she look up even when the horses stood all about her.

  Glanton looked down the square. The town appeared empty. There was a small company of soldiers garrisoned here but they did not turn out. Dust was blowing through the streets. His horse leaned and sniffed at the old woman and jerked its head and trembled and Glanton patted the animal's neck and dismounted.

  She was in a meatcamp about eight mile up the river, said Webster. She caint walk.

  How many were there?

  We reckoned maybe fifteen or twenty. They didnt have no stock to amount to anything. I dont know what she was doin there.

  Glanton crossed in front of his horse, passing the reins behind his back.

  Watch her, Cap. She bites.

  She had raised her eyes to the level of his knees. Glanton pushed the horse back and took one of the heavy saddle pistols from its scabbard and cocked it.

  Watch yourself there.

  Several of the men stepped back.

  The woman looked up. Neither courage nor heartsink in those old eyes. He pointed with his left hand and she turned to follow his hand with her gaze and he put the pistol to her head and fired.

  The explosion filled all that sad little park. Some of the horses shied and stepped. A fistsized hole erupted out of the far side of the woman's head in a great vomit of gore and she pitched over and lay slain in her blood without remedy. Glanton had already put the pistol at halfcock and he flicked away the spent primer with his thumb and was preparing to recharge the cylinder. McGill, he said.

  A Mexican, solitary of his race in that company, came forward.

  Get that receipt for us.

  He took a skinning knife from his belt and stepped to where the old woman lay and took up her hair and twisted it about his wrist and passed the blade of the knife about her skull and ripped away the scalp.

  Glanton looked at the men. They were stood some looking down at the old woman, some already seeing to their mounts or their equipage
. Only the recruits were watching Glanton. He seated a pistolball in the mouth of the chamber and then he raised his eyes and looked across the square. The juggler and his family stood aligned like witnesses and beyond them in the long mud facade faces that had been watching from the doors and the naked windows dropped away like puppets in a gallery before the slow sweep of his eyes. He levered the ball home and capped the piece and spun the heavy pistol in his hand and returned it to the scabbard at the horse's shoulder and took the dripping trophy from McGill and turned it in the sun the way a man might qualify the pelt of an animal and then handed it back and took up the trailing reins and led his horse out through the square toward the water at the ford.

  They made camp in a grove of cottonwoods across the creek just beyond the walls of the town and with dark they drifted in small groups through the smoky streets. The circus folk had set up a little pitchtent in the dusty plaza and had stood a few poles about mounted with cressets of burning oil. The juggler was beating a sort of snaredrum made of tin and rawhide and calling out in a high nasal voice his bill of entertainments while the woman shrieked Pase pase pase, sweeping her arms about her in a gesture of the greatest spectacle. Toadvine and the kid watched among the milling citizenry. Bathcat leaned and spoke to them.

  Look yonder, chappies.

  They turned to look where he pointed. The black stood stripped to the waist behind the tent and as the juggler turned with a sweep of his arm the girl gave him a shove and he leaped from the tent and strode about with strange posturings under the lapsing flare of the torches.

  VIII

  Another cantina, another advisor - Monte - A knifing - The darkest corner of the tavern the most conspicuous - The sereno - Riding north - The meatcamp - Grannyrat - Under the Animas peaks - A confrontation and a killing - Another anchorite, another dawn.

  They paused without the cantina and pooled their coins and Toadvine pushed aside the dried cowhide that hung for a door and they entered a place where all was darkness and without definition. A lone lamp hung from a crosstree in the ceiling and in the shadows dark figures sat smoking. They made their way across the room to a claytiled bar. The place reeked of woodsmoke and sweat. A thin little man appeared before them and placed his hands ceremonially upon the tiles.

  Digame, he said.

  Toadvine took off his hat and put it on the bar and swept a clawed hand through his hair.

  What have you got that a man could drink with just a minimum risk of blindness and death.

  Como?

  He cocked his thumb at his throat. What have you got to drink, he said.

  The barman turned and looked behind him at his wares. He seemed uncertain whether anything there would answer their requirements.

  Mescal?

  Suit everbody?

  Trot it out, said Bathcat.

  The barman poured the measures from a clay jar into three dented tin cups and pushed them forward with care like counters on a board.

  Cuanto, said Toadvine.

  The barman looked fearful. Seis? he said.

  Seis what?

  The man held up six fingers.

  Centavos, said Bathcat.

  Toadvine doled the coppers onto the bar and drained his cup and paid again. He gestured at the cups all three with a wag of his finger. The kid took up his cup and drained it and set it down again. The liquor was rank, sour, tasted faintly of creosote. He was standing like the others with his back to the bar and he looked over the room. At a table in the far corner men were playing cards by the light of a single tallow candle. Along the wall opposite crouched figures seeming alien to the light who watched the Americans with no expression at all.

  There's a game for ye, said Toadvine. Play monte in the dark with a pack of niggers. He raised the cup and drained it and set it on the bar and counted the remaining coins. A man was shuffling toward them out of the gloom. He had a bottle under his arm and he set it on the tiles with care together with his cup and spoke to the barman and the barman brought him a clay pitcher of water. He turned the pitcher so that the handle of it stood to his right and he looked at the kid. He was old and he wore a flatcrowned hat of a type no longer much seen in that country and he was dressed in dirty white cotton drawers and shirt. The huaraches he wore looked like dried and blackened fish lashed to the floors of his feet.

  You are Texas? he said.

  The kid looked at Toadvine.

  You are Texas, the old man said. I was Texas three year. He held up his hand. The forefinger was gone at the first joint and perhaps he was showing them what happened in Texas or perhaps he merely meant to count the years. He lowered the hand and turned to the bar and poured wine into the cup and took up the jar of water and poured it sparingly after. He drank and set the cup down and turned to Toadvine. He wore thin white whiskers at the point of his chin and he wiped them with the back of his hand before looking up again.

  You are socieded de guerra. Contra los barbaros.

  Toadvine didnt know. He looked like some loutish knight beriddled by a troll.

  The old man put a phantom rifle to his shoulder and made a noise with his mouth. He looked at the Americans. You kill the Apache, no?

  Toadvine looked at Bathcat. What does he want? he said.

  The Vandiemenlander passed his own threefingered hand across his mouth but he allowed no affinity. The old man's full he said. Or mad.

  Toadvine propped his elbows on the tiles behind him. He looked at the old man and he spat on the floor. Craziern a runaway nigger, aint ye? he said.

  There was a groan from the far side of the room. A man rose and went along the wall and bent to speak with others. The groans came again and the old man passed his hand before his face twice and kissed the ends of his fingers and looked up.

  How much monies they pay you? he said.

  No one spoke.

  You kill Gomez they pay you much monies.

  The man in the dark of the far wall moaned again. Madre de Dios, he called.

  Gomez, Gomez, said the old man. Even Gomez. Who can ride against the Tejanos? They are soldiers. Que soldados tan valientes. La sangre de Gomez, sangre de la gente ...

  He looked up. Blood, he said. This country is give much blood. This Mexico. This is a thirsty country. The blood of a thousand Christs. Nothing.

  He made a gesture toward the world beyond where all the land lay under darkness and all a great stained altarstone. He turned and poured his wine and poured again from the waterjar, temperate old man, and drank.

  The kid watched him. He watched him drink and he watched him wipe his mouth. When he turned he spoke neither to the kid nor Toadvine but seemed to address the room.

  I pray to God for this country. I say that to you. I pray. I dont go in the church. What I need to talk to them dolls there? I talk here.

  He pointed to his chest. When he turned to the Americans his voice softened again. You are fine caballeros, he said. You kill the barbaros. They cannot hide from you. But there is another caballero and I think that no man hides from him. I was a soldier. It is like a dream. When even the bones is gone in the desert the dreams is talk to you, you dont wake up forever.

  He drained his cup and took up his bottle and went softly away on his sandals into the farther dim of the cantina. The man at the wall moaned again and called upon his god. The Vandiemenlander and the barman spoke together and the barman gestured at the dark in the corner and shook his head and the Americans chambered down their last cups and Toadvine pushed the few tlacos toward the barman and they went out.

  That was his son, said Bathcat.

  Who was?

  The lad in the corner cut with a knife.

  He was cut?

  One of the chaps at the table cut him. They were playin cards and one of them cut him.

  Why dont he leave.

  I asked him the same myself.

  What did he say?

  He had a question for me. Said where would he go to?

  They made their way through the narrow walled st
reets toward the gate and the fires of the camp beyond. A voice was calling. It called: Las diez y media, tiempo sereno. It was the watchman at his rounds and he passed them with his lantern calling softly the hour.

  In the predawn dark the sounds about describe the scene to come. The first cries of birds in the trees along the river and the clink of harness and the snuffle of horses and the gentle sound of their cropping. In the darkened village roosters have begun. The air smells of horses and charcoal. The camp has begun to stir. Sitting all about in the accruing light are the children from the town. None of the men rising know how long they have been there in darkness and silence.

  When they rode through the square the dead squaw was gone and the dust was newly raked. The juggler's lamps were stark and black atop their poles and the fire was cold before the pitchtent. An old woman who had been chopping wood raised up and stood with the axe in both hands as they passed.

  They rode through the sacked indian camp at midmorning, the blackened sheets of meat draped across the bushes or hung from poles like strange dark laundry. Deerhides were pegged out on the ground and white or ruddled bones lay strewn over the rocks in a primitive shambles. The horses cocked their ears and stepped quickly. They rode on. In the, afternoon black Jackson caught them up, his mount surbated and all but blown. Glanton turned in the saddle and measured him with his eye. Then he nudged his horse forward and the black fell in with his pale wayfellows and all rode on as before.

  They did not miss the veteran until that evening. The judge made his way down through the smoke of the cookfires and squatted before Toadvine and the kid.

  What's become of Chambers, he said.

  I believe he's quit.

  Quit.

  I believe he has.

  Did he ride out this morning?

  Not with us he never.

  It was my understanding that you spoke for your group.

  Toadvine spat. He appears to of spoke for hisself.

  When did you last see him.

  Seen him yesterday evenin.

  But not this morning.

  Not this mornin.

  The judge regarded him.

  Hell, said Toadvine. I allowed you knowed he was gone. It aint like he was so small you never would miss him.