No Country for Old Men Read Online Free PDF

breaks above him, whacking the
     pistolbarrel across his forearm to shake out the dirt. His mouth was full of sand. His
     eyes. He saw two men appear against the sky and he cocked the pistol and fired at them and
     they went away again.
    He knew he didnt have time to crawl to the river and he just rose and made a run for it,
     splashing across the braided gravel flats and down a long sandbar until he came to the
     main channel. He got out his keys and his billfold and buttoned them into his shirtpocket.
     The cold wind blowing off the water smelled of iron. He could taste it. He threw away the
     flashlight and lowered the hammer on the .45 and shoved it into the crotch of his jeans.
     Then he shucked off his boots and pulled them inside his belt upside down at either side
     and tightened the belt as far as he could pull it and turned and dove into the river.
    The cold took his breath. He turned and looked back toward the rim, blowing and
     backpedaling through the slate-blue water. Nothing there. He turned and swam.
    The current carried him down into the bend of the river and hard up against the rocks. He
     pushed himself off. The bluff above him rose dark and deeply cupped and the water in the
     shadows was black and choppy. When he finally spilled out into the tailwater and looked
     back he could see the truck parked at the top of the bluff but he couldnt see anyone. He
     checked to see that he still had his boots and the gun and then turned and began to stroke
     for the far shore.
    By the time he dragged himself shivering out of the river he was the better part of a mile
     from where he'd gone in. His socks were gone and he set out at a jog barefoot toward the
     standing cane. Round cups in the shelving rock where the ancients had ground their meal.
     When he looked back again the truck was gone. Two men were trotting along the high bluff
     silhouetted against the sky. He was almost to the cane when it rattled all about him and
     there was a heavy whump and then the echo of it from across the river.
    He was hit in the upper arm by a buckshot and it stung like a hornet. He put his hand over
     it and dove into the cane, the lead ball half buried in the back of his arm. His left leg
     kept wanting to give out beneath him and he was having trouble breathing.
    Deep in the brake he dropped to his knees and knelt there sucking air. He undid his belt
     and let the boots drop into the sand and reached down and got the .45 and laid it to one
     side and felt the back of his arm. The buckshot was gone. He unbuttoned his shirt and took
     it off and pulled his arm around to see the wound. It was just the shape of the buckshot,
     bleeding slightly, pieces of shirtfiber packed into it. The whole back of his arm was
     already becoming an ugly purple bruise. He wrung the water out of his shirt and put it on
     again and buttoned it and pulled on the boots and stood and buckled his belt. He picked up
     the pistol and took the clip out of it and ejected the round from the chamber and then
     shook the gun and blew through the barrel and reassembled it. He didnt know if it would
     fire or not but he thought it probably would.
    When he came out of the cane on the far side he stopped to look back but the cane was
     thirty feet high and he couldnt see anything. Downriver was a broad bench of land and a
     stand of cottonwoods. By the time he got there his feet were already beginning to blister
     from walking barefoot in the wet boots. His arm was swollen and throbbing but the bleeding
     seemed to have stopped and he walked out into the sun on a gravel bar and sat there and
     pulled off the boots and looked at the raw red sores on his heels. As soon as he sat down
     his leg began to hurt again.
    He unsnapped the small leather holster at his belt and got out his knife and then stood up
     and took off his shirt again. He cut off the sleeves at the elbow and sat and wrapped his
     feet in them and pulled on the