Free All the Pretty Horses by Cormac McCarthy

eat thisn.
    It’ll cook.
    What’s the strangest thing you ever ate?
    Strangest thing I ever ate, said Blevins. I guess I’d have to say that would be a oyster.
    A mountain oyster or a real oyster?
    A real oyster.
    How were they cooked?
    They wasnt cooked. They just laid there in their shells. You put hotsauce on em.
    You ate that?
    I did.
    How’d it taste?
    About like you’d expect.
    They sat watching the fire.
    Where you from, Blevins? said Rawlins.
    Blevins looked at Rawlins and looked back into the fire. Uvalde County, he said. Up on the Sabinal River.
    What’d you run off for?
    What’d you?
    I’m seventeen years old. I can go wherever I want.
    So can I.
    John Grady was sitting with his legs crossed in front of him leaning against his saddle and smoking a cigarette. You’ve run off before, aint you? he said.
    Yeah.
    What’d they do, catch you?
    Yeah. I was settin pins in a bowlin alley in Ardmore Oklahoma and I got dogbit by a bulldog took a chunk out of my leg the size of a Sunday roast and it got infected and the man I worked for carried me down to the doctor and they thought I had rabies or somethin and all hell busted loose and I got shipped back to Uvalde County.
    What were you doin in Ardmore Oklahoma?
    Settin pins in a bowlin alley.
    How come you wound up there?
    There was a show was supposed to come through Uvalde, town of Uvalde, and I’d saved up to go see it but they never showed up because the man that run the show got thowed in jail in Tyler Texas for havin a dirty show. Had this striptease that was part of the deal. I got down there and it said on the poster they was goin to be in Ardmore Oklahoma in two weeks and that’s how come me to be in Ardmore Oklahoma.
    You went all the way to Oklahoma to see a show?
    That’s what I’d saved up to do and I meant to do it.
    Did you see the show in Ardmore?
    No. They never showed up there neither.
    Blevins hauled up one leg of his overalls and turned his leg to the firelight.
    Yonder’s where that son of a bitch bit me, he said. I’d as soon been bit by a alligator.
    What made you set out for Mexico? said Rawlins.
    Same reason as you.
    What reason is that?
    Cause you knowed they’d play hell sowed in oats findin your ass down here.
    There aint nobody huntin me.
    Blevins rolled down the leg of his overalls and poked at the fire with a stick. I told that son of a bitch I wouldnt take a whippin off of him and I didnt.
    Your daddy?
    My daddy never come back from the war.
    Your stepdaddy?
    Yeah.
    Rawlins leaned forward and spat into the fire. You didnt shoot him did you?
    I would of. He knowed it too.
    What was a bulldog doin in a bowlin alley?
    I didnt get bit in the bowlin alley. I was workin in the bowlin alley, that’s all.
    What were you doin that you got dogbit?
    Nothin. I wasnt doin nothin.
    Rawlins leaned and spat into the fire. Where were you at at the time?
    You got a awful lot of goddamned questions. And dont be spittin in the fire where I got supper cookin.
    What? said Rawlins.
    I said dont be spittin in the fire where I got supper cookin.
    Rawlins looked at John Grady. John Grady had started to laugh. He looked at Blevins. Supper? he said. You’ll think supper when you try and eat that stringy son of a bitch.
    Blevins nodded. You let me know if you dont want your share, he said.
    What they dredged smoking out of the ground looked like some desiccated effigy from a tomb. Blevins put it on a flat rock and peeled away the hide and scraped the meat off the bones into their plates and they soaked it down with hotsauce and rolled it in the last of the tortillas. They chewed and watched one another.
    Well, said Rawlins. It aint all that bad.
    No it aint, said Blevins. Truth is, I didnt know you could eat one at all.
    John Grady stopped chewing and looked at them. Then he went on chewing again. You all been out here longer than me, he said. I thought we all started together.
    The following day on the track south they began to encounter small ragged