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.