The Crossing

by Cormac McCarthy

  Yessir.

  What was he doin in there in the first place?

  He swung out of the bed onto the cold floor and reached for his clothes. I'll let him out, he said.

  His father stood in the door a moment and then went back out through the kitchen and down the hall. In the light from the open door Billy could see Boyd crumpled asleep in the other bed. He pulled on his trousers and picked up his boots off the floor and went out.

  By the time he'd fed and watered it was daylight and he saddled Bird and mounted up and rode out of the barn bay and down to the river to look for the indian or to see if he was still there. The dog followed at the horse's heels. They crossed the pasture and rode downriver and crossed through the trees. He pulled up and he sat the horse. The dog stood beside him testing the air with quick lifting motions of its muzzle, sorting and assembling some picture of the prior night's events. The boy put the horse forward again.

  When he rode into the Indian's camp the fire was cold and black. The horse shifted and stepped nervously and the dog circled the dead ashes with its nose to the ground and the hackles standing along its back.

  When he got back to the house his mother had breakfast ready and he hung his hat and pulled up a chair and began to spoon eggs onto his plate. Boyd was already eating.

  Where's Pap? he said.

  Dont you even breathe the steam and you aint said grace, his mother said.

  Yes mam.

  He lowered his head and said the words to himself and then reached for a biscuit.

  Where's Pap.

  He's in the bed. He's done ate.

  What time did he get in.

  About two hours ago. He rode all night.

  How come?

  I reckon cause he wanted to get home.

  How long is he goin to sleep?

  Well I guess till he wakes up. You ask more questions than Boyd.

  I aint asked the first one, Boyd said.

  They went out to the barn after breakfast. Where do you reckon he's got to? said Boyd.

  He's moved on.

  Where do you reckon he come from?

  I dont know. Them was mexican boots he was wearin. What was left of em. He's just a drifter.

  You dont know what a indian's liable to do, said Boyd.

  What do you know about indians, said Billy.

  Well you dont.

  You dont know what anybody's liable to do.

  Boyd took an old worn screwdriver from a bucket of tools and brushes hanging from the barn post and he took a rope halter off the hitchrail and opened the stall door where he kept his horse and went in and haltered the horse and led it out. He halfhitched the rope to the rail and ran his hand down the animal's foreleg for it to offer its hoof and he cleaned out the frog of the hoof and examined it and then let it back down.

  Let me look at it, said Billy.

  There aint nothin wrong with it.

  Let me look at it then.

  Go ahead then.

  Billy pulled the horse's hoof up and cupped it between his knees and studied it. I guess it looks all right, he said.

  I said it did.

  Walk him around.

  Boyd unhitched the rope and led the horse down the barn bay and back.

  You goin to get your saddle? said Billy.

  Well I guess I will if that's all right with you.

  He brought the saddle from the saddleroom and threw the blanket over the horse and labored up with the saddle and rocked it into place and pulled up the latigo and fastened the backcinch and stood waiting.

  You've let him get in the habit of that, said Billy. Why dont you just punch the air out of him.

  He dont knock the air out of me, I dont knock it out of him, Boyd said.

  Billy spat into the dry chaff in the floor of the bay. They waited. The horse breathed out. Boyd pulled the strap and buckled it.

  They rode the Ibanez pasture all morning studying the cows. The cows stood their distance and studied them back, a leggy and brocklefaced lot, part mexican, some longhorn, every color. At dinnertime they came back to the house stringing along a yearling heifer on a rope and they put her up in the pole corral above the barn for their father to look at and went in and washed up. Their father was already seated at the table. Boys, he said.

  You all set down, their mother said. She set a platter of fried steaks on the table. A bowl of beans. When they'd said grace she handed the platter to their father and he forked one of the steaks onto his plate and passed it on to Billy.

  Pap says there's a wolf on the range, she said.

  Billy sat holding the platter, his knife aloft.

  A wolf? Boyd said.

  His father nodded. She pulled down a pretty good sized veal calf up at the head of Foster Draw.

  When? said Billy.

  Been a week or more probably. The youngest Oliver boy tracked her all up through the mountains. She come up out of Mexico. Crossed through the San Luis Pass and come up along the western slope of the Animas and hit in along about the head of Taylor's Draw and then dropped down and crossed the valley and come up into the Peloncillos. Come all the way up into the snow. There was two inches of snow on the ground where she killed the calf at.

  How do you know it was a she? said Boyd.

  Well how do you think he knows? said Billy.

  You could see where she had done her business, said his father.

  Oh, said Boyd.

  What do you aim to do? said Billy.

  Well, I reckon we better catch her. Dont you?

  Yessir.

  If old man Echols was here he'd catch her, said Boyd.

  Mr Echols.

  If Mr Echols was here he'd catch her.

  Yes he would. But he aint.

  THEY RODE after dinner the three of them the nine miles to the SK Bar ranch and sat their horses and halloed the house. Mr Sanders' granddaughter looked out and went to get the old man and they all sat on the porch while their father told Mr Sanders about the wolf. Mr Sanders sat with his elbows on his knees and looked hard at the porch floorboards between his boots and nodded and from time to time with his little finger tipped the ash from the end of his cigarette. When their father was done he looked up. His eyes were very blue and very beautiful half hid away in the leathery seams of his face. As if there were something there that the hardness of the country had not been able to touch.

  Echols' traps and stuff is still up at the cabin, he said. I dont reckon he'd care for you to use whatever you needed.

  He flipped the stub of the cigarette out into the yard and smiled at the two boys and put his hands on his knees and rose.

  Let me go get the keys, he said.

  The cabin when they opened it was dark and musty and had about it a waxy smell like freshkilled meat. Their father stood in the door a moment and then entered. In the front room was an old sofa, a bed, a desk. They went through the kitchen and then on through to the mudroom at the back of the house. There in the dusty light from the one small window on shelves of roughsawed pine stood a collection of fruitjars and bottles with ground glass stoppers and old apothecary jars all bearing antique octagon labels edged in red upon which in Echols' neat script were listed contents and dates. In the jars dark liquids. Dried viscera. Liver, gall, kidneys. The inward parts of the beast who dreams of man and has so dreamt in running dreams a hundred thousand years and more. Dreams of that malignant lesser god come pale and naked and alien to slaughter all his clan and kin and rout them from their house. A god insatiable whom no ceding could appease nor any measure of blood. The jars stood webbed in dust and the light among them made of the little room with its chemic glass a strange basilica dedicated to a practice as soon to be extinct among the trades of men as the beast to whom it owed its being. Their father took down one of the jars and turned it in his hand and set it back again precisely in its round track of dust. On a lower shelf stood a wooden ammunition box with dovetailed corners and in the box a dozen or so small bottles or vials with no labels to them. Written
in red crayon across the top board of the box were the words No. 7 Matrix. Their father held one of the vials to the light and shook it and twisted out the cork and passed the open bottle under his nose.

  Good God, he whispered.

  Let me smell it, Boyd said.

  No, said his father. He put the vial in his pocket and they went on to search for the traps but they couldnt find them. They looked through the rest of the house and out on the porch and in the smokehouse. They found some old number three longspring coyote traps hanging on the smokehouse wall but those were all the traps they found.

  They're here somewheres, said their father.

  They began again. After a while Boyd came from the kitchen.

  I got em, he said.

  They were in two wooden crates and the crates had been piled over with stovewood. They were greased with something that may have been lard and they were packed in the crates like herrings.

  What caused you to look in under there? said his father.

  You said they was somewheres.

  He spread some old newspapers on the linoleum of the kitchen floor and began to lift out the traps. They had the springs turned in to make them more compact and the chains were wrapped around them. He straightened one out. The greaseclogged chain rattled woodenly. It was forked with a ring and had a heavy snap on one end and a drag on the other. They squatted there looking at it. It looked enormous. That thing looks like a bear-trap, Billy said.

  It's a wolftrap. Number four and a half Newhouse.

  He set out eight of them on the floor and wiped the grease from his hands with newspaper. They put the lid back on the crate and piled the stovewood back over the boxes the way Boyd had found them and their father went back out to the mudroom and returned with a small wooden box with a wirescreen bottom and a paper sack of logwood chips and a packbasket to put the traps in. Then they went out and fastened back the padlock on the front door and untied their horses and mounted up and rode back down to the house.

  Mr Sanders came out on the porch but they didnt dismount.

  Just stay to supper, he said.

  We better get back. I thank you.

  Well.

  I've got eight of the traps.

  All right.

  We'll see how it goes.

  Well. You probably got your work cut out for you. She aint been in the country long enough to have no regular habits.

  Echols said there wasnt none of em did anymore.

  He would know. He's about half wolf hisself.

  Their father nodded. He turned slightly in the saddle and looked out downcountry. He looked at the old man again.

  You ever smell any of that stuff he baits with?

  Yessir. I have.

  Their father nodded. He raised one hand and turned the horse and they rode out into the road.

  After supper they set the galvanized washtub on top of the stove and hand filled it with buckets and poured in a scoop of lye and set the traps to boil. They fed the fire until bedtime and then changed the water and put the traps back with the logwood chips and chunked the stove full and left it. Boyd woke once in the night and lay listening to the silence in the house and in the darkness and the stove ticking or the house creaking in the wind off the plain. When he looked over at Billy's bed it was empty and after a while he got up and walked out to the kitchen. Billy was sitting at the window in one of the kitchen chairs turned backwards. He had his arms crossed over the chairback and he was watching the moon over the river and the river trees and the mountains to the south. He turned and looked at Boyd standing in the door.

  What are you doin? said Boyd.

  I got up to mend the fire.

  What are you lookin at?

  Aint lookin at nothin. There aint nothin to look at.

  What are you settin there for.

  Billy didnt answer. After a while he said: Go on back to bed. I'll be in there directly.

  Boyd came on into the kitchen. He stood at the table. Billy turned and looked at him.

  What woke you up? he said.

  You did.

  I didnt make a sound.

  I know it.

  WHEN BILLY got up the next morning his father was sitting at the kitchen table with a leather apron in his lap and he was wearing a pair of old deerhide gloves and rubbing beeswax into the steel of one of the traps. The other traps were laid out on a calfskin on the floor and they were a deep blueblack in color. He looked up and then took off the gloves and put them in the apron with the trap and set the apron on the calfhide in the floor.

  Help me with the washtub, he said. Then you can finish waxin these.

  He did. He waxed them carefully, working the wax into the pan and the lettering in the pan and into the slots that the jaws were hinged into and into each link in the heavy fivefoot chains and into the heavy twopronged drag at the end of the chain. Then his father hung them outside in the cold where the house odors would not infect them. The morning following when his father entered their room and called him it was still dark.

  Billy.

  Yessir.

  Breakfast be on the table in five minutes.

  Yessir.

  When they rode out of the lot it was breaking day, clear and cold. The traps were packed in the splitwillow basket that his father wore with the shoulderstraps loosed so that the bottom of the basket carried on the cantle of the saddle behind him. They rode due south. Above them Black Point was shining with new snow in a sun that had not yet risen over the valley floor. By the time they crossed the old road to Fitzpatrick Wells the sun was up there also and they crossed to the head of the pasture in the sun and began to climb into the Peloncillos.

  Midmorning they were sitting their horses at the edge of the upland vega where the calf lay dead. Where they'd come up through the trees there was snow in the tracks his father's horse had made three days ago and under the shadow of the trees where the dead calf lay there were patches of snow that had not yet melted and the snow was bloody and trampled and crossed and recrossed with the tracks of coyotes and the calf was pulled apart and pieces scattered over the bloody snow and over the ground beyond. His father had taken off his gloves to roll a cigarette and he sat smoking with the gloves in one hand resting on the pommel of his saddle.

  Dont get down, he said. See if you can see her track.

  They rode over the ground. The horses were uneasy at the blood and the riders spoke to them in a sort of scoffing way as if they'd make the horses ashamed. He could see no traces of the wolf.

  His father stood down from his horse. Come here, he said.

  You aint goin to make a set here?

  No. You can get down.

  He got down. His father had slipped the packbasket straps and stood the basket in the snow and he knelt and blew the fresh snow out of the crystal print the wolf had made five nights ago.

  Is that her?

  That's her.

  That's her front foot.

  Yes.

  It's big, aint it? Yes.

  She wont come back here?

  No. She wont come back here.

  The boy stood up. He looked off up the meadow. There were two ravens sitting in a barren tree. They must have flown as they were riding up. Other than that there was nothing.

  Where do you reckon the rest of the cattle have got to?

  I dont know.

  If they's a cow dead in a pasture will the rest of the cattle stay there?

  Depends on what it died of. They wont stay in a pasture with a wolf.

  You think she's made another kill somewheres by now?

  His father rose from where he'd squatted by the track and picked up the basket. There's a good chance of it, he said. You ready?

  Yessir.

  They mounted up and crossed the vega and entered the woods on the far side and followed the cattletrail up along the edge of the draw. The boy watched the ravens. After a while they dropped down out of the tree and flew silently back to the dead calf.

  His father made the fir
st set below the gap of the mountain where they knew the wolf had crossed. The boy sat his horse and watched while he threw down the calfhide hairside down and stepped down onto it and set down the packbasket.

  He took the deerhide gloves out of the basket and pulled them on and with a trowel he dug a hole in the ground and put the drag in the hole and piled the chain in after it and covered it up again. Then he excavated a shallow place in the ground the shape of the trap springs and all. He tried the trap in it and then dug some more. He put the dirt in the screenbox as he dug and then he laid the trowel by and took a pair of c-clamps from the basket and with them screwed down the springs until the jaws fell open. He held the trap up and eyed the notch in the pan while he backed off one screw and adjusted the trigger. Crouched in the broken shadow with the sun at his back and holding the trap at eyelevel against the morning sky he looked to be truing some older, some subtler instrument. Astrolabe or sextant. Like a man bent at fixing himself someway in the world. Bent on trying by arc or chord the space between his being and the world that was. If there be such space. If it be knowable. He put his hand under the open jaws and tilted the pan slightly with his thumb.

  You dont want it to where a squirrel can trip it, he said. But damn near.

  Then he removed the clamps and set the trap in the hole.

  He covered the jaws and pan of the trap with a square of paper soaked in melted beeswax and with the screenbox he carefully sifted the dirt back over it and with the trowel sprinkled humus and wood debris over the dirt and squatted there on his haunches looking at the set. It looked like nothing at all. Lastly he took the bottle of Echols' potion from his coatpocket and pulled the cork and dipped a twig into the bottle and stuck the twig into the ground a foot from the trap and then put the cork back in the bottle and the bottle in his pocket.

  He rose and handed up the packbasket to the boy and he bent and folded the calfskin with the dirt in it and then stood into the stirrup of the standing horse and mounted up and pulled the hide up into the bow of the saddle with him and backed the horse away from the set.

  You think you can make one? he said.

  Yessir. I think so.

  His father nodded. Echols used to pull the shoes off his horse. Then he got to where he'd tie these cowhide slippers he'd made over the horse's hooves. Oliver told me he'd make sets and never get down. Set the traps from horseback.

  How did he do it?

  I dont know.

  The boy sat holding the packbasket on his knee.

  Put that on, his father said. You'll need it if you're goin to make this next set.