Glanton could see crouched in a corner a Mexican or halfbreed boy maybe twelve years old. He was naked save for a pair of old calzones and makeshift sandals of uncured hide. He glared back at Glanton with a sort of terrified insolence.
This is what Great Art does. It becomes more real than the real, more true than the truth.
They silently agreed on two things. That God put horses on earth to work cattle and aside from cattle there was no wealth proper to a man.
The ragged sparks blew down the wind. The prairie about them lay silent. Beyond the fire it was cold and the night was clear and the stars were falling. The old hunter pulled his blanket about him. I wonder if there’s other worlds like this, he said. Or if this is the only one.
Night fell long and cool through the woods about him and a spectral quietude set in. As if something were about that crickets and nightbirds held in dread.
The cold relentless circling of the intestate earth.
De todos modos el compartir es la ley del camino, verdad?
I know they’s a lots of things in a family history that just plain aint so. Any family. The stories get passed on and the truth gets passed over. As the saying goes.
You do not know what things you set in motion, he said. No man can know. No prophet foresee. The consequences of an act are often quite different from what one would guess. You must be sure that the intention in your heart is large enough to contain all wrong turnings, all disappointments. Do you see? Not everything has such a value.
Letzte Worte sind auch nur Worte.
Overseen all day by a goldtoothed pervert who carried a plaited rawhide quirt and harried them down the gutters on their knees gathering up the filth.
The task of the narrator is not an easy one, he said. He appears to be required to choose his tale from among the many that are possible. But of course that is not the case. The case is rather to make many of the one.
For the most part they were dead by rumor. A yellowed scrap of newsprint. A letter. A telegram.
She aint worth it. None of em are. He didnt answer for a while. Then he said: Yes they are. When.
Death is not a lover. Oh yes he is.
This is the nature of war, whose stake is at once the game and the authority and the justification. Seen so, war is the truest form of divination.
Deer and hare and dove and groundvole all richly empaneled on the air for her delight, all nations of the possible world ordained by God of which she was one among and not separate from.
What joins men together, he said, is not the sharing of bread but the sharing of enemies. But if I was your enemy with whom would you have shared me? With whom?
He woke before dawn and watched the gray day break. Slow and half opaque.
I ain’t ahead by a damn sight. I never will be.
They mounted, pistols in hand, saps of rawhide and riverrock looped about their wrists like the implements of some primitive equestrian game. Glanton looked back at them and then nudged forth his horse.