Tobin looked at the kid. Never in this world. I thought Glanton would leave him. We went on. The next day on the far side of the mountain we encountered the two lads that had deserted us. Hangin upside down in a tree. They’d been skinned and I can tell ye it does very little for a man’s appearance. But if the savages had not guessed it already now they knew for sure. That we’d none of us any powder.
We would not ride the animals. Just lead them, keep them off the rocks, hold their noses if they snuffled. But in those two days the judge leached out the guano with creekwater and woodash and precipitated it out and he built a clay kiln and burned charcoal in it, doused the fire by day and fired it again come dark. When we found him him and the Delaware was settin in the creek stark naked and they appeared at first to be drunk but on what none could surmise. The entire top of that mountain was covered with Apache indians and there set he. He got up when he seen us and went to the willows and come back with a pair of wallets and in one was about eight pounds of pure crystal saltpetre and in the other about three pounds of fine alder charcoal. He’d ground the charcoal to a powder in the hollow of a rock, you could have made ink of it. He lashed the bags shut and put them across the pommel of Glanton’s saddle and him and the indian got their clothes and I was glad of it for I never seen a grown man with not a hair to his body and him weighin twenty-four stone which he did then and does now. And by my own warrant, for I added up the counters on the bar with my own and sober eyes at a stockscale in Chihuahua City in that same month and year.
We went down the mountain with no scouts, nothin. Just straight out. We were dead for sleep. It was dark when we reached the plain and we grouped and took a headcount and then we rode out. The moon was about three quarters full and waxing and we were like circus riders, not a sound, the horses on eggshells. We’d no way of knowin where the savages was. The last clue we’d had of their vicinity was the poor buggers flayed in the tree. We set out dead west across the desert. Doc Irving was before me and it was that bright I could count the hairs on his head.
We rode all night and toward the morning just as the moon was down we come upon a band of wolves. They scattered and come back, not a sound out of them no more than smoke. They’d drift off and quarter around and circle the horses. Bold as brass. We cut at them with our hobbles and they would slip past, you couldnt hear them on the hardpan just their breath or they would mutter and grouse or pop their teeth. Glanton halted and the things swirled around and slank off and come back. Two of the Delawares backtracked off to the left a bit—braver souls than me—and sure they found the kill. Twas a young buck antelope new killed the evenin before. It was about half consumed and we set upon it with our knives and took the rest of the meat with us and we ate it raw in the saddle and it was the first meat we’d seen in six days. Froze for it we were. Foragin on the mountain for piñon nuts like bears and glad to get them. We left little more than bones for the lobos, but I would never shoot a wolf and I know other men of the same sentiments.
In all this time the judge had spoke hardly a word. So at dawn we were on the edge of a vast malpais and his honor takes up a position on some lava rocks there and he commences to give us a address. It was like a sermon but it was no such sermon as any man of us had ever heard before. Beyond the malpais was a volcanic peak and in the sunrise it was many colors and there was dark little birds crossin down the wind and the wind was flappin the judge’s old benjamin about him and he pointed to that stark and solitary mountain and delivered himself of an oration to what end I know not, then or now, and he concluded with the tellin us that our mother the earth as he said was round like an egg and contained all good things within her. Then he turned and led the horse he had been ridin across that terrain of black and glassy slag, treacherous to man and beast alike, and us behind him like the disciples of a new faith.
The expriest broke off and tapped the dead pipe against the heel of his boot. He looked at the judge over the way where he sat with his torso bared to the flames as was his practice. He turned and regarded the kid.
The malpais. It was a maze. Ye’d run out upon a little promontory and ye’d be balked about by the steep crevasses, you wouldnt dare to jump them. Sharp black glass the edges and sharp the flinty rocks below. We led the horses with every care and still they were bleedin about their hooves. Our boots was cut to pieces. Clamberin over those old caved and rimpled plates you could see well enough how things had gone in that place, rocks melted and set up all wrinkled like a pudding, the earth stove through to the molten core of her. Where for aught any man knows lies the locality of hell. For the earth is a globe in the void and truth there’s no up nor down to it and there’s men in this company besides myself seen little cloven hoofprints in the stone clever as a little doe in her going but what little doe ever trod melted rock? I’d not go behind scripture but it may be that there has been sinners so notorious evil that the fires coughed em up again and I could well see in the long ago how it was little devils with their pitchforks had traversed that fiery vomit for to salvage back those souls that had by misadventure been spewed up from their damnation onto the outer shelves of the world. Aye. It’s a notion, no more. But someplace in the scheme of things this world must touch the other. And somethin put them little hooflet markings in the lava flow for I seen them there myself.
The judge, he seemed not to take his eyes from that dead cone where it rose off the desert like a great chancre. We followed solemn as owls so that he turned to look back and he did laugh when he seen our faces. At the foot of the mountain we drew lots and we sent two men to go on with the horses. I watched them go. One of them is at this fire tonight and I saw him lead them horses away over the slaglands like a doomed man.
And we were not doomed ourselves I dont reckon. When I looked up he was already upon the slope hand and foot, the judge was, his bag over his shoulder and his rifle for alpenstock. And so did we all go. Not halfway up we could already see the savages out on the plain. We climbed on. I thought at worst we’d throw ourselves into the caldron rather than be taken by those fiends. We climbed up and I reckon it was midday when we reached the top. We were done in. The savages not ten miles out. I looked at the men about me and sure they didnt look much. The dignity was gone out of them. They were good hearts all, then and now, and I did not like to see them so and I thought the judge had been sent among us for a curse. And yet he proved me wrong. At the time he did. I’m of two minds again now.
He was the first to the rim of the cone for all the size of him and he stood gazin about like he’d come for the view. Then he set down and he begun to scale at the rock with his knife. One by one we straggled up and he set with his back to that gapin hole and he was chippin away and he called upon us to do the same. It was brimstone. A weal of brimstone all about the rim of the caldron, bright yellow and shining here and there with the little flakes of silica but most pure flowers of sulphur. We chipped it loose and chopped it fine with our knives till we had about two pounds of it and then the judge took the wallets and went to a cupped place in the rock and dumped out the charcoal and the nitre and stirred them about with his hand and poured the sulphur in.
I didnt know but what we’d be required to bleed into it like freemasons but it was not so. He worked it up dry with his hands and all the while the savages down there on the plain drawin nigh to us and when I turned back the judge was standin, the great hairless oaf, and he’d took out his pizzle and he was pissin into the mixture, pissin with a great vengeance and one hand aloft and he cried out for us to do likewise.