Blood Meridian, Or, the Evening Redness in the West by Cormac Mccarthy

Author:Cormac Mccarthy [McCarthy, Cormac]
Language: eng
Format: azw
Tags: Romance, Teenage Boys, Outlaws - Fiction, Glanton Gang, Historical, Indians of North America, Massacres - Fiction, Westerns, Mexican-American Border Region, Fiction, Literary, Teenage Boys - Fiction, Massacres, Mexican- American Border Region - Fiction, Indians of North America - Fiction, Historical Fiction, Mexican- American Border Region, Outlaws, General, Gangs, Sample Book
ISBN: 9780679728757
Google: s-QzccStux4C
Publisher: Random House Digital, Inc.
Published: 1985-01-01T08:00:00+00:00

II

Across the prairie – A hermit – A nigger’s heart – A stormy night – Westward again – Cattle drovers – Their kindness – On the trail again – The deadcart – San Antonio de Bexar – A Mexican cantina – Another fight – The abandoned church – The dead in the sacristy – At the ford – Bathing in the river.

Now come days of begging, days of theft. Days of riding where there rode no soul save he. He’s left behind the pinewood country and the evening sun declines before him beyond an endless swale and dark falls here like a thunderclap and a cold wind sets the weeds to gnashing. The night sky lies so sprent with stars that there is scarcely space of black at all and they fall all night in bitter arcs and it is so that their numbers are no less.

He keeps from off the king’s road for fear of citizenry. The little prairie wolves cry all night and dawn finds him in a grassy draw where he’d gone to hide from the wind. The hobbled mule stands over him and watches the east for light.

The sun that rises is the color of steel. His mounted shadow falls for miles before him. He wears on his head a hat he’s made from leaves and they have dried and cracked in the sun and he looks like a raggedyman wandered from some garden where he’d used to frighten birds.

Come evening he tracks a spire of smoke rising oblique from among the low hills and before dark he hails up at the doorway of an old anchorite nested away in the sod like a groundsloth. Solitary, half mad, his eyes redrimmed as if locked in their cages with hot wires. But a ponderable body for that. He watched wordless while the kid eased down stiffly from the mule. A rough wind was blowing and his rags flapped about him.

Seen ye smoke, said the kid. Thought you might spare a man a sup of water.

The old hermit scratched in his filthy hair and looked at the ground. He turned and entered the hut and the kid followed.

Inside darkness and a smell of earth. A small fire burned on the dirt floor and the only furnishings were a pile of hides in one corner. The old man shuffled through the gloom, his head bent to clear the low ceiling of woven limbs and mud. He pointed down to where a bucket stood in the dirt. The kid bent and took up the gourd floating there and dipped and drank. The water was salty, sulphurous. He drank on.

You reckon I could water my old mule out there?

The old man began to beat his palm with one fist and dart his eyes about.

Be proud to fetch in some fresh. Just tell me where it’s at.

What ye aim to water him with?

The kid looked at the bucket and he looked around in the dim hut.

I aint drinkin after no mule, said the hermit.

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