revelations of lightning, striding the perimeter up there and declaiming in the old epic mode. Glanton watched the fire silently and the men composed themselves in their blankets in the drier places about the floor and soon they were asleep.
In the morning the rain had ceased. The water stood in pools in the courtyard and the snakebit horse lay dead with its shapeless head stretched in the mud and the other animals had gathered in the northeast corner under the tower and stood facing the wall. The peaks to the north were white with snow in the new risen sun and when Toadvine stepped out into the day the sun was just touching the upper walls of the compound and the judge was standing in the gently steaming quiet picking his teeth with a thorn as if he had just eaten.
Morning, said the judge.
Morning, said Toadvine.
Looks fair to clear.
It done has cleared, said Toadvine.
The judge turned his head and looked toward the pristine cobalt keep of the visible day. An eagle was crossing the gorge with the sun very white on its head and tailfeathers.
So it has, said the judge. So it has.
The squatters emerged and stood about the cantonment blinking like birds. They had elected among themselves to join the company and when Glanton came across the yard leading his horse the spokesman for their group stepped forward to inform him of their decision. Glanton didnt even look at him. He entered the cuartel and got his saddle and gear. In the meantime someone had found the boy.
He was lying face down naked in one of the cubicles. Scattered about on the clay were great numbers of old bones. As if he like others before him had stumbled upon a place where something inimical lived. The squatters crowded in and stood about the corpse in silence. Soon they were conversing senselessly about the merits and virtues of the dead boy.
In the compound the scalphunters mounted up and turned their horses toward the gates that now stood open to the east to welcome in the light and to invite their journey. As they rode out the doomed men hosteled in that place came dragging the boy out and laid him in the mud. His neck had been broken and his head hung straight down and it flopped over strangely when they let him onto the ground. The hills beyond the minepit were reflected grayly in the pools of rainwater in the courtyard and the partly eaten mule lay in the mud with its hindquarters missing like something from a chromo of terrific war. Within the doorless cuartel the man who’d been shot sang church hymns and cursed God alternately. The squatters stood about the dead boy with their wretched firearms at rest like some tatterdemalion guard of honor. Glanton had given them a half pound of rifle-powder and some primers and a small pig of lead and as the company rode out some looked back at them, three men standing there without expression. No one raised a hand in farewell. The dying man by the ashes of the fire was singing and as they rode out they could hear the hymns of their childhood and they could hear them as they ascended the arroyo and rode up through the low junipers still wet from the rain. The dying man sang with great clarity and intention and the riders setting forth upcountry may have ridden more slowly the longer to hear him for they were of just these qualities themselves.
They rode that day through low hills barren save for the scrub evergreens. Everywhere in this high parkland deer leapt and scattered and the hunters shot several from their saddles and gutted and packed them and by evening they had acquired a retinue of half a dozen wolves of varying size and color that trotted behind them singlefile and watched over their own shoulders to see that each should follow in his place.
At dusk they halted and built a fire and roasted the deer. The night was much enclosed about them and there were no stars. To the north they could see other fires that burned red and sullen along the invisible ridges. They ate and moved on, leaving the fire on the ground behind them, and as they rode up into the mountains this fire seemed to become altered of its location, now here, now there, drawing away, or shifting unaccountably along the flank of their movement. Like some ignis fatuus belated upon the road behind them which all could see and of which none spoke. For this will to deceive that is in things luminous may manifest itself likewise in retrospect and so by sleight of some fixed part of a journey already accomplished may also post men to fraudulent destinies.
As they rode that night upon the mesa they saw come toward them much like their own image a party of riders pieced out of the darkness by the intermittent flare of the dry lightning to the north. Glanton halted and sat his horse and the company halted behind him. The silent riders hove on. When they were a hundred yards out they too halted and all sat in silent speculation at this encounter.
Who are you? called Glanton.
Amigos, somos amigos.
They were counting each the other’s number.
De donde viene? called the strangers.
A donde va? called the judge.
They were ciboleros down from the north, their packhorses laden with dried meat. They were dressed in skins sewn with the ligaments of beasts and they sat their animals in the way of men seldom off them. They carried lances with which they hunted the wild buffalo on the plains and these weapons were dressed with tassels of feathers and colored cloth and some carried bows and some carried old fusils with tasseled stoppers in their bores. The dried meat was packed in hides and other than the few arms among them they were innocent of civilized device as the rawest savage of that land.
They parleyed without dismounting and the ciboleros lighted their small cigarillos and told that they were bound for the markets at Mesilla. The Americans might have traded for some of the meat but they carried no tantamount goods and the disposition to exchange was foreign to them. And so these parties divided upon that midnight plain, each passing back the way the other had come, pursuing as all travelers must inversions without end upon other men’s journeys.
X
Tobin – The skirmish on the Little Colorado – The Katabasis – How came the learned man – Glanton and the judge – A new course – The judge and the bats – Guano – The deserters – Saltpeter and charcoal – The malpais – Hoofprints – The volcano – Brimstone – The matrix – The slaughter of the aborigines.
In the days to follow all trace of the Gilenos faded and they pushed deeper into the mountains. By fires of highland driftwood pale as bone they crouched in silence while the flames yawed in the nightwinds ascending those stony draws. The kid sat with his legs crossed mending a strap with an awl he’d borrowed from the expriest Tobin and the frockless one looked on as he worked.
You’ve done this afore, said Tobin.
The kid wiped his nose with a swipe of his greasy sleeve and turned the piece in his lap. Not me, he said.
Well you’ve the knack. More so than me. There’s little equity in the Lord’s gifts.
The kid looked up at him and then bent to his work again.
That’s so, said the expriest. Look around you. Study the judge.
I done studied him.
Mayhaps he aint to your liking, fair enough. But the man’s a hand at anything. I’ve never seen him turn to a task but what he didnt prove clever at it.
The kid drove the greased thread through the leather and hauled it taut.
He speaks dutch, said the expriest.
Dutch?
Aye.
The kid looked at the expriest, he bent to his mending.
He does for I heard him do it. We cut a parcel of crazy pilgrims down off the Llano and the old man in the lead of them he spoke right up in dutch like we were all of us in dutchland and the judge give him right back.
