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 Gómez they pay you much monies.
The man in the dark of the far wall moaned again. Madre de Dios, he called.
Gómez, Gómez, said the old man. Even Gómez. Who can ride against the Tejanos? They are soldiers. Que soldados tan valientes. La sangre de Gómez, 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 streets toward the gate and the fires of the camp beyond. A voice was calling. It called: Las diez y media, tiempo sereño. 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.
The judge looked at the kid. He looked at Toadvine again. Then he rose and went back.
In the morning two of the Delawares were gone. They rode on. By noon they had begun to climb toward the gap in the mountains. Riding up through wild lavender or soapweed, under the Animas peaks. The shadow of an eagle that had set forth from those high and craggy fastnesses crossed the line of riders below and they looked up to mark it where it rode in that brittle blue and faultless void. They came up through piñon and scruboak and they crossed the gap through a high pine forest and rode on through the mountains.
In the evening they came out upon a mesa that overlooked all the country to the north. The sun to the west lay in a holocaust where there rose a steady column of small desert bats and to the north along the trembling perimeter of the world dust was blowing down the void like the smoke of distant armies. The crumpled butcherpaper mountains lay in sharp shadowfold under the long blue dusk and in the middle distance the glazed bed of a dry lake lay shimmering like the mare imbrium and herds of deer were moving north in the last of the twilight, harried over the plain by wolves who were themselves the color of the desert floor.
Glanton sat his horse and looked long out upon this scene. Sparse on the mesa the dry weeds lashed in the wind like the earth’s long echo of lance and spear in old encounters forever unrecorded. All the sky seemed troubled and night came quickly over the evening land and small gray birds flew crying softly after the fled sun. He chucked up the horse. He passed and so passed all into the problematical destruction of darkness.
They camped that night on the foreplain at the foot of a talus slope and the murder that had been reckoned upon took place. The white man Jackson had been drunk in Janos and he had ridden red-eyed and sullen for two days through the mountains. He now sat disheveled by the fire with his boots off drinking aguardiente from a flask, circumscribed about by his companions and by the cries of wolves and providence of night. He was sitting so when the black approached the fire and threw down his apishamore and sat upon it and fell to stoking his pipe.
There were two fires in this camp and no rules real or tacit as to who should use them. But when the white man looked to the other fire he saw that the Delawares and John McGill and the new men in the company had taken their supper there and with a gesture and a slurred oath he warned the black away.
Here beyond men’s judgements all covenants were brittle. The black looked up from his pipebowl. About that fire were men whose eyes gave back the light like coals socketed hot in their skulls and men whose eyes did not, but the black man’s eyes stood as corridors for the ferrying through of naked and un-rectified night from what of it lay behind to what was yet to come. Any man in this company can sit where it suits him, he said.