Blood Meridian or the Evening Redness in the West
Chapters - Cormac McCarthy
Chapter 1: I
The kid is born in Tennessee in 1833 during the Leonid meteor shower. His mother dies in childbirth, his father is a drunken schoolmaster, and the boy grows up illiterate with a taste for violence. At fourteen he runs away, drifting west through Memphis, Saint Louis, and New Orleans, where he fights sailors and is shot twice by a Maltese boatswain. He eventually makes his way to Texas and rides into Nacogdoches.
In Nacogdoches, the kid attends a tent revival led by Reverend Green. An enormous bald man - Judge Holden - enters and denounces the reverend as an imposter, a fraud, and a criminal. The crowd erupts into violence, and the tent collapses in gunfire. At the bar afterward, the judge reveals he had never met the reverend and invented all the accusations, which amuses the crowd greatly.
During sixteen days of rain, the kid encounters Toadvine, a branded and earless man, after a violent fight on the walkway behind a hotel. The next morning they form a rough alliance. Toadvine leads the kid upstairs to settle a score with a man named Sidney, setting fire to the hotel door. They beat Sidney and the hotel clerk and flee as the hotel burns. The kid retrieves his mule and rides west out of town, passing the judge on horseback who watches the burning hotel and smiles.
POV: The Kid·On page: Reverend Green, Judge Holden, Toadvine
Chapter 2: II
The kid rides west across the prairie alone, surviving on almost nothing. He encounters an old hermit living in a sod hut who shares his water and meagre food - the remains of a prairie hare. The hermit, a former slaver from Mississippi, shows the kid a dried and blackened human heart he claims cost two hundred dollars. He philosophises darkly about the nature of man and evil. During the night, the hermit crawls disturbingly close to the sleeping kid, who departs at first light.
The kid falls in with a drove of cattle herders coming down from Abilene, who feed him and give him a knife and some provisions. After four days he reaches San Antonio de Bexar, passing a dead-cart loaded with corpses on his way in. He enters a Mexican cantina and offers to sweep the floor in exchange for a drink. The barman reneges on the deal and pulls a pistol, but the kid disarms the weapon, then beats the barman savagely with bottles, blinding him in one eye.
The kid wakes the next day in a ruined church among buzzards and bones. He finds his mule's tracks and follows them to the river, where he bathes, a wretched figure at the edge of the frontier.
POV: The Kid
Chapter 3: III
The kid is recruited by Sergeant Trammel to join a filibustering expedition under Captain White, who plans to invade Mexico. The captain delivers a grandiose speech about manifest destiny, the degeneracy of the Mexican people, and the spoils of war awaiting those brave enough to seize the land. The kid is promised a horse, a rifle, and land in Sonora.
At the camp outside town, the kid trades his old mule for a stock saddle, a bridle, a blanket, and a small gold coin. That evening, the kid and two other recruits - the second corporal and a boy from Missouri named Earl - venture into the Laredito district for drinks. In the cantina, an old Mennonite warns them that they will be stopped at the river, and that crossing into Mexico with the filibusters will mean their deaths. The recruits berate and dismiss the old man.
The night ends in violence. By dawn, Earl lies dead in the courtyard with his skull broken, killed by unknown hands. The Mennonite appears once more and offers a final observation before departing through the gate.
POV: The Kid·On page: Captain White, Sergeant Trammel, Earl, The Mennonite
Chapter 4: IV
The kid rides out with Captain White's company of forty-six men, crossing the Rio Grande into Mexico. The journey is brutal - men die of cholera and are buried in shallow graves in the desert. Wolves follow the column, and the wagons deteriorate in the harsh terrain. They cross a vast pumice plain where they find the bones and belongings of previous travellers.
The company discovers a desert homestead where they find water and an old man hiding in the stable, terrified beyond speech. They bivouac and repair wagons before pressing on through ruined villages and empty country. On the horizon, a massive dust cloud appears - what seems at first to be a herd of cattle driven by a handful of riders.
The herd proves to be a screen for a Comanche war party. In a sudden and devastating attack, hundreds of painted warriors on horseback descend upon the company with lances, bows, and war cries. The filibusters are overwhelmed. Men are shot with arrows, lanced, scalped alive, and mutilated. The kid's horse is killed under him. The scene is one of absolute carnage - a massacre from which few will escape.
POV: The Kid·On page: Captain White, Sergeant Trammel
Chapter 5: V
The kid rises from among the dead after the Comanche massacre and walks south through the night. He meets Sproule, a wounded survivor whose arm is badly injured. Together they follow the war trail, discovering horrific scenes - dead babies hung from a tree, a destroyed village with its inhabitants slaughtered, and a church filled with forty scalped and partly eaten bodies.
They struggle across the desert, desperate for water. They encounter Mexican bandits riding Captain White's horse, who taunt them and offer only a sip of water before riding on. That night a vampire bat attacks Sproule. The kid digs for water in a dry wash and they press on, eventually hitching a ride in a carreta driven by a Mexican family.
Sproule dies in the night in a small town. Soldiers arrest the kid and parade him through a village where a travelling medicine show displays Captain White's severed head in a jar of mescal. The kid is thrown into a stone corral with three other survivors. After several days, they are marched to Chihuahua City and imprisoned. In the dungeon, the kid recognises a tall figure in the darkness - Toadvine.
POV: The Kid·On page: Sproule, Toadvine·Mentioned: Captain White
Chapter 6: VI
In Chihuahua City, The kid and Toadvine are chained prisoners cleaning the streets under a cruel overseer they call Brassteeth. They share a cell with a veteran of Doniphan's campaign who tells tales of the Mexican-American War - the battle of Mier, the taking of Chihuahua City, and the desecration of a Lipan burial cave.
One day, a fearsome company of scalp hunters rides through the streets - savage men in animal skins bearing necklaces of human ears, with half-naked Indian warriors among them. At their head, outsized and childlike, rides Judge Holden, bowing and smiling to the ladies. Their leader is a small black-haired man named Glanton, who kicks open the governor's palace doors and the whole company rides inside.
Toadvine learns that Glanton has a contract with Governor Trias to hunt Apache scalps at a hundred dollars each and a thousand for the head of the Apache leader Gomez. He negotiates their release, claiming all three prisoners are seasoned Indian killers. Three days later, the kid, Toadvine, and the veteran ride out with the scalp hunters, the governor's blessing upon them, through streets lined with cheering crowds and girls throwing flowers.
POV: The Kid·On page: Toadvine, Judge Holden, John Joel Glanton
Chapter 7: VII
The company rides north from Chihuahua. Two men named Jackson - one white, one black - nurse a dangerous enmity between them. That morning, a Prussian arms dealer named Speyer delivers a crate of powerful Colt Whitneyville revolvers. Glanton tests one by shooting a cat, chickens, a goat, and the church bell in rapid succession.
The company rides through the mountains, joined by Bathcat, a fugitive from Van Diemen's Land, and a contingent of Delaware Indians. At the town of Corralitos they camp near the smelting works. From there they ride to Janos, an old walled presidio. Along the way, a family of itinerant jugglers - a magician, his wife, a boy, and a girl - join the column seeking safe passage.
At the evening camp, the juggler performs a fortune-telling act with cards. Black Jackson draws the fool card; the kid draws the four of cups. When the woman reads Glanton's fortune, she becomes agitated, speaking of a wheelless carriage on a dark river, a card of war and vengeance. Glanton threatens to shoot her. The judge steps through the fire to restrain him. In Janos, Glanton shoots and scalps an old Apache woman in the town square without hesitation. That night, black Jackson performs as a strongman in the jugglers' sideshow.
POV: The Kid·On page: John Joel Glanton, Judge Holden, John Jackson, John Jackson, Speyer, Bathcat, Toadvine, Tobin, David Brown, McGill, Webster, Sam Tate, Charlie Brown
Chapter 8: VIII
In Janos, Toadvine, the kid, and Bathcat drink in a cantina where an old Mexican man warns them about the blood that Mexico has absorbed, speaking of war and dreams. His son lies dying in the corner, stabbed during a card game. They leave the cantina and hear the night watchman calling the hour.
The company rides north from Janos through the ransacked Apache meat-camp. Black Jackson catches up alone, having been absent. The veteran - referred to as Chambers - has deserted. The judge questions Toadvine about the desertion, and two Delaware scouts also disappear.
They cross through the mountains under the Animas peaks into open country. That night at camp, the simmering feud between the two Jacksons comes to its conclusion. White Jackson, drunk and armed, orders the black man away from the fire. Black Jackson withdraws but returns from the darkness with a bowie knife and, in a single stroke, decapitates the white man. Glanton rises but says nothing. In the morning the headless body sits among the ashes, and the company has not ridden an hour before Apaches attack.
POV: The Kid·On page: Toadvine, Bathcat, John Jackson, John Jackson, John Joel Glanton, Judge Holden, Tobin·Mentioned: Chambers
Chapter 9: IX
Glanton's company fights off an Apache ambush on a dry lake bed, the kid firing methodically with his Walker revolver. Toadvine kills an Apache warrior whose body the judge meticulously examines, taking a madstone and a small skin bag before scalping the corpse.
The company crosses treacherous terrain - hollow ground that booms beneath the horses' hooves, a gypsum lake that blinds several horses with reflected sunlight. McGill's horses keep failing. The two Delawares who had deserted return bearing the veteran's horse, still saddled; Glanton burns all the veteran's belongings.
They discover an abandoned stagecoach containing three dead men and take what weapons and horses they can. At the ruins of the Santa Rita del Cobre copper mines, they find four half-starved prospectors barricaded in the old presidio, one shot through the chest and a snakebitten horse grotesquely swollen. A Mexican boy of about twelve crouches in a corner. The judge lectures on geology, holding up rocks as evidence of the earth's origins. In the morning, the boy is found dead with a broken neck. The squatters join the company, and as they ride out, the dying man sings hymns that follow them up through the junipers.
POV: The Kid·On page: John Joel Glanton, Judge Holden, Toadvine, John Jackson, McGill, David Brown, Doc Irving, Sam Tate, Bathcat
Chapter 10: X
The expriest Tobin tells the kid the story of how the company first encountered Judge Holden. Reduced to fourteen men after a skirmish on the Little Colorado, with almost no gunpowder left, they found the judge sitting alone on a rock in the middle of the desert, smiling as if he had been expecting them. He carried a fine rifle inscribed in Latin - Et In Arcadia Ego - and had no horse, no canteen, no explanation for his presence.
Glanton took him in, and the judge immediately set a new course toward distant mountains. While a hundred Apache warriors tracked them across the plain, the judge spent his nights studying bats and botanising. He led them to a cave rich in bat guano from which he extracted saltpetre, then burned charcoal from alder wood. On a volcanic peak, surrounded by approaching savages, the judge scraped brimstone from the crater rim. He mixed the ingredients with the men's urine, spread the foul paste on sun-heated rocks to dry, and produced gunpowder.
With this improvised powder, the company lured the Apaches up the cone by waving a white shirt and crying for mercy, then opened fire. They killed fifty-eight on the slope and nine more fleeing across the lava, shooting at extraordinary distances with the homemade ammunition. Tobin concludes his account and the kid asks what the judge is a judge of, but Tobin hushes him.
POV: The Kid·On page: Tobin, Judge Holden·Mentioned: John Joel Glanton, David Brown
Chapter 11: XI
The company rides into high mountain forests. A grizzly bear attacks, seizing a Delaware warrior and carrying him off into the woods. The remaining Delawares track the bear for three days but find nothing - the land has swallowed both beast and man. They return, divide the lost warrior's possessions, and never speak his name again.
The riders descend through a deep gorge where ancient pictographs of Spanish conquistadors are carved into the rock, and make camp in the ruins of an Anasazi cliff dwelling. The judge sketches artefacts into his ledger - flints, potsherds, a steel foot-piece from a suit of Spanish armour - then destroys each original after recording it. When Webster objects to being drawn, the judge discourses on the nature of representation and tells a parable about a harnessmaker who murdered a kind traveller.
The judge then delivers a lecture on the Anasazi, on fathers and sons, on the nature of ruins and civilisation. He argues that all progression from higher to lower orders is marked by ruins and nameless rage, and that whoever builds in stone seeks to alter the structure of the universe. Tobin asks about the proper way to raise a child. The judge answers that children should be put in pits with wild dogs. The company pushes deeper into the mountains, tracking the Gileño Apaches. Glanton tames a wild dog from an abandoned Apache village. Scouts report fires fifty miles to the south.
POV: The Kid·On page: Judge Holden, John Joel Glanton, Tobin, Webster, David Brown, Toadvine
Chapter 12: XII
For two weeks, Glanton's company rides by night in complete silence, shoes stripped from their horses, burying their stool like cats. They cross into ever more hostile country south of the Rio Grande, enduring hailstorms and lightning. They discover five smouldering wagons and the mutilated bodies of murdered argonauts - the work of white bandits disguised as Indians.
The Delawares locate the Gileño Apache encampment along the shore of a shallow lake - upward of a thousand souls with their women and children. At dawn, nineteen riders attack. Glanton rides his horse through the first wickiup. The slaughter is total and indiscriminate - warriors, women, children, Mexican slaves, even dogs. McGill is run through with a lance and Glanton shoots him dead. The company harvests scalps and strips of hide from the dead.
Glanton pursues the Apache chief, who is shot from his horse by Webster at extreme range. The chief dies in Glanton's arms. The judge informs Glanton that the head is not Gomez - it belongs to a pureblooded Apache, not the Mexican renegade they seek. The judge rides out bearing a captured Apache child on his saddle.
They drive five hundred horses south with the Apaches in pursuit, fighting running battles for eight days. The kid pushes an arrow through David Brown's thigh to save him. Tobin rebukes him afterward, warning that God will not love him forever. One morning, Toadvine discovers the judge has killed and scalped the Apache child. He puts his pistol to the judge's head but cannot pull the trigger. On the twenty-first of July 1849, they ride into Chihuahua City to a hero's welcome, bearing the desiccated heads of their enemies on poles through streets filled with music and flowers.
POV: The Kid·On page: John Joel Glanton, Judge Holden, Toadvine, Tobin, David Brown, McGill, Webster, Sam Tate, Doc Irving, John Jackson, Bathcat
Chapter 13: XIII
Glanton and his scalp-hunters arrive in Chihuahua City to a hero's welcome, parading their collection of 128 scalps and eight severed heads before the governor. They bathe, outfit themselves in new finery, and attend a lavish banquet hosted by Governor Angel Trias. Judge Holden arrives last, dressed in a custom linen suit, and converses with the governor in a language no one else speaks. The company is paid in gold and a riotous ball ensues, degenerating into pistolfire and destruction that continues for days, terrorising the citizenry.
The company rides out and descends upon the town of Coyame, initially welcomed as saviours but leaving the town stripped bare. The kid, Toadvine, and Bathcat discuss their unease as Glanton leads the massacre of peaceful Tigua Indians camped along the river. At the Hueco tanks, the judge copies ancient rock paintings into his ledger and then deliberately destroys one of the designs.
Suspicion arises in Chihuahua when Toadvine is detained at the palace gates over questions about human teeth found among the scalps. The company is escorted out under armed guard. They pass through mountain villages, and at the town of Nacori a violent confrontation erupts in a cantina when a local man stabs a company member named Grimley. The judge shoots the attacker, triggering a general slaughter. Doc Irving and David Brown fight alongside the others as Tobin shoots down fleeing survivors from the street.
The company ambushes a troop of mounted Mexican lancers in a mountain village, killing them all. They pursue the surviving lancers across the plains toward Chihuahua City, overtaking and slaughtering the last nine. They bury the bodies and destroy the evidence, then re-enter the city with the scalps of murdered Mexican villagers. The Sociedad is disbanded, the bounty rescinded, and soon a price of eight thousand pesos is posted for Glanton's head. The company turns west into the setting sun.
POV: The Kid·On page: Judge Holden, John Joel Glanton, Tobin, Toadvine, Bathcat, David Brown, John Jackson, Doc Irving, Grimley, John Dorsey, Henderson Smith, Charlie Brown
Chapter 14: XIV
The company rides west through mountain storms into the Sierra Madre, descending into the old stone mining town of Jesús María. They take rooms at an inn and emerge the next morning into the streets, where Judge Holden dances in a doorway to a fiddler's tune and pours pulque into an old man's ear trumpet. The company's drunken revelry terrorises the town over the feast of Las Animas, with the judge sitting alone offering candy skulls to passing children.
Glanton suffers a violent fit and is bound to his bed while the judge tends him. Outside, a little girl goes missing and search parties scour the mineshafts. When Glanton recovers, he cuts down the Mexican flag, drags it through the streets behind a mule, and is shot at from the windows. A firefight erupts between the Americans and the townsfolk. Six of the company are killed, and the survivors are joined by Frank Carroll and Sanford, two Americans who had been residing in the town. A priest baptises the wounded Americans before they are executed.
Fleeing into the mountains, the company encounters a conducta of 122 mules bearing flasks of quicksilver. David Brown shoots the lead muleteer and the company systematically drives the mules off the escarpment, sending them crashing down with their loads of mercury shattering into bright silver rivers on the rocks below. At a river ford, the judge discovers that John Jackson is missing. Two Delawares are sent back and return before dawn with Jackson, who had been left behind naked save for a blanket and a single pistol.
The company descends through tropical jungle toward the western sea. The judge rides ahead collecting bird specimens and plant samples, pressing leaves into his book and stalking butterflies. Toadvine questions his purpose, and the judge delivers a speech about claiming dominion over all creation. They arrive at the town of Ures, capital of Sonora, drawing a vast following of beggars and spectators. A wild fandango ensues with roasted goats, whores, a string band, and eventually vicious dogfights that Glanton ends by killing the wounded dogs with his knife. At dawn, Glanton and the judge appear in their suits - one in white, one in black.
POV: The Kid·On page: Judge Holden, John Joel Glanton, Tobin, Toadvine, David Brown, John Jackson, Doc Irving, Frank Carroll, Sanford, Bathcat, Dick Shelby, John Gunn
Chapter 15: XV
The company rides north from Ures carrying a new contract for Apache scalps from the governor of Sonora. A boy named Sloat, abandoned by a gold train, joins them. After weeks of fruitless wandering, they massacre a pueblo on the Nacozari River. Two days later they encounter General Elias and over five hundred Sonoran cavalry. A running fight kills three of Glanton's men and wounds seven more, including Dick Shelby.
Glanton holds a lottery with arrows, red-tasselled ones marking those who must stay behind with the wounded. The kid draws a red arrow. A Delaware executes the two wounded Indians with his warclub, then rides off. Tate departs, leaving the kid alone with Shelby and a dying Mexican. Shelby, shot through the hip, pleads alternately for death and rescue. The kid refuses to kill him but leaves him water and rides out as the Mexican army approaches on the horizon.
The kid finds Tate with a lame horse and they ride together, sharing one mount. A sudden norther brings blinding snow. They are ambushed in the night by Elias's scouts; the kid shoots one man and escapes into the darkness. Alone in the mountains, he walks for days through bitter cold, eating handfuls of snow. He watches from a high rimland as distant armies clash on the plain below. Descending through a canyon, he finds a lone tree burning on the desert, surrounded by creatures drawn to its light.
He follows the tracks of the main company, finds the burned remains of the Nacozari scalps, and catches a loose horse. Rejoining the battered company, he finds them haggard and bloodied. Judge Holden rides alongside him, wearing a wreath of desert scrub, smiling. The judge kills a horse for meat and the kid holds it for him. They reach Santa Cruz, a ruined presidio town, and shelter in a stable where, as they undress in total darkness, their bodies crackle with static electricity, each man shrouded in pale fire.
POV: The Kid·On page: Judge Holden, John Joel Glanton, Tobin, Toadvine, David Brown, Sam Tate, Webster, Sloat, Dick Shelby, General Elias, Harlan·Mentioned: Frank Carroll, Sanford
Chapter 16: XVI
The company rides north through the Santa Cruz valley, past the ruined hacienda at San Bernardino where wild bulls with old Spanish brands charge them, killing a horse ridden by James Miller. At the abandoned mission of Tumacacori, Judge Holden delivers a lecture on its history and architecture. Inside the ruined church, a man named Prewett shoots a hermit from the parapet. The judge speaks to the surviving brother in German, learning they had jumped ship years ago and gone mad in this isolation.
They find the lost scouts hanging from a fire-blackened tree - the last Delawares, the Vandiemenlander, and a man named Gilchrist - tortured and roasted by Apaches. At the presidio of Tucson, they encounter Chiricahua warriors outside the walls. Glanton's horse bites the ear of the Apache leader's mount, nearly triggering a battle. The judge defuses the tension. Mangas Colorado, a huge and imposing chief, arrives and negotiates. Glanton agrees to trade a barrel of whiskey for gold in three days.
Lieutenant Couts, commanding the small garrison, tries to maintain order. Glanton and the judge recruit men from among the town's vagrants. They visit a crude sideshow where a man named Cloyce Bell displays his imbecile brother in a cage. At an eatinghouse, the owner Owens refuses to serve them alongside John Jackson. David Brown gives Owens a pistol and tells him to shoot Jackson. Jackson shoots Owens dead instead. When Couts comes to investigate, the judge brazenly denies everything, citing points of law. At the farriery, the judge lifts an enormous iron meteorite overhead and wins a wager by throwing it past a mark ten feet away.
POV: The Kid·On page: Judge Holden, John Joel Glanton, Tobin, Toadvine, David Brown, John Jackson, James Miller, John Prewett, Mangas Colorado, Lieutenant Couts, Owens, Harlan, Cloyce Bell·Mentioned: Bathcat
Chapter 17: XVII
The company rides out of Tucson at dusk with twenty-one men, a dog, and Cloyce Bell's imbecile brother in a cage lashed to a flatbed cart. They carry a whiskey keg rigged with a hidden sheep-stomach flask containing only three quarts of whiskey, the rest filled with water. They exchange this fraudulent keg with Mangas Colorado's Apaches for gold and silver, then ride west before the deception is discovered.
They pass through vast saguaro forests and cross barren jornadas. Glanton sits staring into the fire, a man complete at every hour who has forsworn all weighing of consequence. They encounter Colonel Garcia with a ragged legion of nearly a hundred Sonoran troops - men so poorly equipped some carry only ropes. Glanton pushes through without a word.
Around the campfire, Tobin speculates about celestial bodies and Judge Holden delivers a monologue declaring there are no men anywhere in the universe save on earth, that the world is a hat trick in a medicine show. He performs a coin trick, seeming to send a gold coin circling the fire on an invisible tether. David Brown calls him crazy. The judge cracks an antelope bone and speaks of war as the ultimate game, the truest form of divination, declaring war is god. Doc Irving and Jackson argue scripture against him, but the judge's philosophy goes unanswered.
They cross a terrible desert of dead animals and abandoned wagons, passing a crucified Apache mummy. At the Tinajas Atlas the judge discovers an enormous petrified femur and lectures on paleontology. They reach the Colorado River and find a camp of cholera-stricken emigrants and Yuma Indians. Dr Lincoln, a ferryman from New York, operates a makeshift ferry. Glanton rides with the judge into the Yuma camp and meets the chiefs - Caballo en Pelo, Pascual, and Pablo - dressed in absurd cast-off finery.
POV: The Kid·On page: Judge Holden, John Joel Glanton, Tobin, David Brown, Doc Irving, John Jackson, Cloyce Bell, Mangas Colorado, Colonel Garcia, Dr Lincoln, Caballo en Pelo, James Robert (the imbecile), Pascual, Pablo
Chapter 18: XVIII
Glanton and Judge Holden return from the Yuma camp at dawn, having struck a deal to conspire in seizing the ferry. At the crossing, women discover the imbecile in his cage. Sarah Borginnis, a huge woman, confronts Cloyce Bell about his brother's condition and takes charge. The women carry James Robert to the river, bathe him, burn his cage, and dress him in new clothes.
That night they present the cleaned-up imbecile before the campfires, but after dark he sheds his clothes and wanders naked to the river, where he nearly drowns. The judge, on his midnight rounds and naked himself, wades in and rescues the fool, carrying him back to camp like a great midwife.
POV: The Kid·On page: Judge Holden, John Joel Glanton, Toadvine, Cloyce Bell, Sarah Borginnis, Caballo en Pelo, James Robert (the imbecile)
Chapter 19: XIX
Judge Holden persuades Dr Lincoln to allow them to fortify the hill and charge the howitzer. When the Yumas attack the crossing, David Brown and Long Webster fire the howitzer loaded with rifleballs, devastating the attackers. Glanton and his riders charge from the willows and finish the survivors. The judge and Glanton then seize control of the ferry, raising fares and eventually robbing travellers outright. Bodies begin drifting past the Yuma camp.
Brown, Webster, and Toadvine are sent to San Diego for supplies. Brown wakes in a hide hut with no memory of the prior night. Webster and Toadvine are arrested. Brown visits a farrier to have the barrels of a fine English shotgun cut down; the farrier refuses and Brown does the job himself. At the beach, the three men see the ocean for the first time. Brown sets a young soldier on fire in a bodega and is jailed. He bribes a soldier named Petit with tales of buried treasure, then murders the boy in the mountains after their escape.
Glanton rides to San Diego, hangs the alcalde from a ceiling beam until he reveals Brown has already escaped, and terrorises the town before returning alone to Yuma. He finds the judge ruling the hilltop compound, draped in robes with Jackson similarly attired beside him. The doctor is reduced to a desperate supplicant. An atmosphere of depravity pervades - enslaved girls, drunken revelry, the imbecile made to dance.
At dawn, Jackson stands on the ferry and is struck by Yuma arrows. The savages swarm the hill. Dr Lincoln is beheaded. Gunn, Wilson, and Henderson Smith are slain. Caballo en Pelo splits Glanton's skull with an axe. The judge, holding the howitzer under one arm with a lit cigar over the touch-hole, backs out past the terrified Yumas with the imbecile at his side and disappears into the woods.
POV: The Kid·On page: Judge Holden, John Joel Glanton, Toadvine, David Brown, Webster, Doc Irving, John Jackson, Dr Lincoln, Petit, Henderson Smith, Caballo en Pelo, John Gunn, Wilson, James Robert (the imbecile), Pascual, Pablo
Chapter 20: XX
The kid and Toadvine flee upriver through a running fight with the Yumas, the kid carrying an arrow lodged against the bone in his leg. They walk for two days across the desert and reach the wells at Alamo Mucho, where they find Tobin alone and unarmed. The kid defends the well against pursuing Yumas, shooting several with precise marksmanship while Tobin shades the gunsight with his hat.
At dawn the judge appears crossing the desert with the imbecile on a leather lead, both naked, the judge draped in strips of dried meat. He offers to buy Toadvine's hat for a hundred dollars in gold and negotiates with an almost formal civility. Tobin urges the kid to shoot the judge while he is unarmed, but the kid refuses. The judge offers five hundred, then seven hundred and fifty dollars for the kid's pistol.
The kid and Tobin set out west. They encounter David Brown riding across a mosaic pavement of jasper and carnelian, leading a spare horse. Brown learns of Glanton's death and rides east toward the wells. At Carrizo Creek, the judge - now armed with Brown's rifles and dressed in his clothing - ambushes them. A firefight plays out among thousands of sheep bones. Tobin is shot through the neck but survives. The kid kills both of the judge's horses to prevent pursuit. The judge calls out legal arguments about property rights in dead horses. Under cover of darkness, the kid and Tobin escape into the desert, but at dawn they can see the judge and the imbecile following on the horizon.
POV: The Kid·On page: Judge Holden, Tobin, Toadvine, David Brown, James Robert (the imbecile)·Mentioned: John Joel Glanton