A nameless fourteen-year-old from Tennessee who drifts into the violence of the Texas-Mexico borderlands in the 1840s and joins the Glanton Gang. He is distinguished from his companions by a faint capacity for mercy that Judge Holden finds threatening. The novel tracks his journey from naive drifter to scarred survivor across decades of carnage.

A vast, hairless, seemingly ageless man of extraordinary intelligence who rides with the Glanton Gang. He speaks multiple languages, plays the fiddle, and is a skilled naturalist and scientist who argues a philosophy in which war is the ultimate human expression and he himself its perfect embodiment. He claims he will never die. The most terrifying figure in McCarthy's fiction and one of the great villains of American literature.

A fugitive from Van Diemen's Land (Tasmania), originally from Wales. He is big and raw-looking, missing two fingers on his right hand and most of his teeth, and wears a necklace of human ears.

A filibuster captain organising an irregular military expedition to invade the Mexican state of Sonora. He is grey-haired with sweeping moustaches, carries dragoon pistols, and speaks passionately of manifest destiny.

A veteran of Doniphan's campaign in the Mexican-American War, a tall Kentuckian imprisoned in Chihuahua City. He returned to Mexico seeking a woman he had left behind and tells stories of the battles at Mier and Chihuahua City.

One of Glanton's lieutenants, a hard and violent man. He rides with his brother and serves among the company's inner circle of leadership.

A man from a prominent Kentucky family who attended Transylvania College and went west because of a woman, riding with Glanton's scalp-hunting company.

The company's physician, such as he is. He tends to wounds reluctantly and has a mutual antagonism with David Brown, who calls him a mortician and a barber.

A black member of Glanton's scalp-hunting company who shares his name with a white man in the same party. He is capable and dangerous, unwilling to be subordinated.

A white member of Glanton's scalp-hunting company who shares his name with a black man in the same party. He nurses a dangerous, racially motivated hostility toward his namesake.

A small black-haired man who leads a company of scalp hunters under contract with the governor of Chihuahua. He is ruthless, decisive, and feared by his own men.

The formal and proper lieutenant commanding the small American garrison at the presidio of Tucson, recently returned from the coast with Major Graham's command.

A huge and imposing Chiricahua Apache chief who commands respect among his warriors. He is bandylegged, strangely proportioned, and speaks Spanish well.

A Mexican member of Glanton's company, solitary of his race in the group. He serves as a scalper and is sometimes called John McGill.

A Kentuckian member of Glanton's company who previously fought with McCulloch's Rangers. He serves as a reliable hand in skirmishes.

A huge woman with a great red face among the emigrants at the Colorado River crossing, fierce and maternal, who takes charge of caring for the mistreated imbecile.

Captain White's recruiter, a man dressed in buckskin with a dusty black plug hat and a small Mexican cigar. He rides a fine stockingfooted horse and seeks out fighting men for the expedition.

A young boy left sick and abandoned in Ures by a California-bound gold train, who recovers and joins Glanton's company when they ride north.

A Prussian Jewish arms dealer who supplies Glanton's company with powerful Colt Whitneyville revolvers in Chihuahua City, acting on behalf of a financier named Riddle.

A violent drifter with a strangely narrow head, no ears, and the letters HT and F branded on his forehead. He carries an immense bowie knife and is quick to fight.