All the Pretty Horses Read Online Free PDF Page B

and west but there was no gate there.
    What do you want to do? said Rawlins.
    I dont know. I’d like to of got across this thing tonight.
    I aint leadin my horse down that highway in the dark.
    John Grady leaned and spat. I aint either, he said.
    It was growing colder. The wind rattled the gate and the horses stepped uneasily.
    What’s them lights? said Rawlins.
    I’d make it Eldorado.
    How far is that do you reckon?
    Ten, fifteen miles.
    What do you want to do?
    They spread their bedrolls in a wash and unsaddled and tied the horses and slept till daybreak. When Rawlins sat up John Grady had already saddled his horse and was strapping on his bedroll. There’s a cafe up the road here, he said. Could you eat some breakfast?
    Rawlins put on his hat and reached for his boots. You’re talkin my language, son.
    They led the horses up through a midden of old truckdoors and transmissions and castoff motorparts behind the cafe and they watered them at a metal tank used for locating leaks in innertubes. A Mexican was changing a tire on a truck and John Grady walked over and asked him where the men’s room was. He nodded down the side of the building.
    He got his shaving things out of his saddlebag and went into the washroom and shaved and washed and brushed his teeth and combed his hair. When he came out the horses were tied toa picnic table under some trees and Rawlins was in the cafe drinking coffee.
    He slid into the booth. You ordered? he said.
    Waitin on you.
    The proprietor came over with another cup of coffee. What’ll you boys have? he said.
    Go ahead, said Rawlins.
    He ordered three eggs with ham and beans and biscuits and Rawlins ordered the same with a sideorder of hotcakes and syrup.
    You better load up good.
    You watch me, said Rawlins.
    They sat with their elbows propped on the table and looked out the window south across the plains to the distant mountains lying folded in their shadows under the morning sun.
    That’s where we’re headed, said Rawlins.
    He nodded. They drank their coffee. The man brought their breakfasts on heavy white crockery platters and came back with the coffeepot. Rawlins had peppered his eggs till they were black. He spread butter over the hotcakes.
    There’s a man likes eggs with his pepper, said the proprietor.
    He poured their cups and went back to the kitchen.
    You pay attention to your old dad now, Rawlins said. I’ll show you how to deal with a unruly breakfast.
    Do it, said John Grady.
    Might just order the whole thing again.
    The store had nothing in the way of feed. They bought a box of dried oatmeal and paid their bill and went out. John Grady cut the paper drum in two with his knife and they poured the oatmeal into a couple of hubcaps and sat on the picnic table and smoked while the horses ate. The Mexican came over to look at the horses. He was not much older than Rawlins.
    Where you headed? he said.
    Mexico.
    What for?
    Rawlins looked at John Grady. You think he can be trusted?
    Yeah. He looks all right.
    We’re runnin from the law, Rawlins said.
    The Mexican looked them over.
    We robbed a bank.
    He stood looking at the horses. You aint robbed no bank, he said.
    You know that country down there? said Rawlins.
    The Mexican shook his head and spat. I never been to Mexico in my life.
    When the animals had eaten they saddled them again and led them around to the front of the cafe and down the drive and across the highway. They walked them along the bar ditch to the gate and led them through the gate and closed it. Then they mounted up and rode out the dirt ranch road. They rode it for a mile or so until it veered away to the east and they left it and set out south across the rolling cedar plains.
    They reached the Devil’s River by midmorning and watered the horses and stretched out in the shade of a stand of black-willow and looked at the map. It was an oilcompany roadmap that Rawlins had picked up at the cafe and he looked at it and he looked south toward the gap in the low