No Country for Old Men Read Online Free PDF Page A

edge of the floodplain in the moonlight. He flattened himself in the
     rocks. In addition to the other bad news his thoughts ran to scorpions and rattlesnakes.
     The spotlight kept rowing back and forth across the face of the ridge. Methodically.
     Bright shuttle, dark loom. He didnt move.
    The truck crossed to the other side and came back. Tooling along in second gear, stopping,
     the motor loping. He pushed himself forward to where he could see it better. Blood kept
     running into his eye from a cut in his forehead. He didnt even know where he'd gotten it.
     He wiped his eye with the heel of his hand and wiped his hand on his jeans. He took out
     his kerchief and pressed it to his head.
    You could head south to the river.
    Yeah. You could.
    Less open ground.
    Less aint none.
    He turned, still holding the handkerchief to his forehead. No cloud cover in sight.
    You need to be somewhere come daylight.
    Home in bed would be good.
    He studied the blue floodplain out there in the silence. A vast and breathless
     amphitheatre. Waiting. He'd had this feeling before. In another country. He never thought
     he'd have it again.
    He waited a long time. The truck didnt come back. He made his way south along the ridge.
     He stood and listened. Not a coyote, nothing.
    By the time he'd descended onto the river plain the sky to the east carried the first
     faint wash of light. It was the darkest this night was going to get. The plain ran to the
     breaks of the river and he listened one last time and then set out at a trot.
    It was a long trek and he was still some two hundred yards from the river when he heard
     the truck. A raw gray light was breaking over the hills. When he looked back he could see
     the dust against the new skyline. Still the better part of a mile away. In the dawn quiet
     the sound of it no more sinister than a boat on a lake. Then he heard it downshift. He
     pulled the .45 from his belt so that he wouldnt lose it and set out at a dead run.
    When he looked back again it had closed a good part of the distance. He was still a
     hundred yards from the river and he didnt know what he'd find when he got there. A sheer
     rock gorge. The first long panes of light were standing through a gap in the mountains to
     the east and fanning over the country before him. The truck was ablaze with lights, roof
     rack and bumper spots. The engine kept racing away into a howl where the wheels left the
     ground.
    They wont shoot you, he said. They cant afford to do that.
    The long crack of a rifle went caroming out over the pan. What he'd heard whisper overhead
     he realized was the round passing and vanishing toward the river. He looked back and there
     was a man standing up out of the sunroof, one hand on top of the cab, the other cradling a
     rifle upright.
    Where he reached the river it made a broad sweep out of a canyon and carried down past
     great stands of carrizo cane. Downriver it washed up against a rock bluff and then bore
     away to the south. Darkness deep in the canyon. The water dark. He dropped into the cut
     and fell and rolled and rose and began to make his way down a long sandy ridge toward the
     river. He hadnt gone twenty feet before he realized that he had no time to do that. He
     glanced back once at the rim and then squatted and shoved himself off down the side of the
     slope, holding the .45 before him in both hands.
    He rolled and slid a good ways, his eyes almost shut against the dust and sand he was
     plowing up, the pistol clutched to his chest. Then all that stopped and he was simply
     falling. He opened his eyes. The fresh world of morning above him, turning slowly.
    He slammed into a gravel bank and gave out a groan. Then he was rolling through some sort
     of rough grass. He came to a stop and lay there on his stomach gasping for air.
    The pistol was gone. He crawled back through the flattened grass until he found it and he
     picked it up and turned to scan the rim of the river