Blood Meridian

The kid rides his mule across the prairie, begging for money and stealing when he needs to. He sleeps in the open and makes himself a hat from leaves. When he sees a rising “spire of smoke” (16), he rides toward it and discovers a hut where an agitated hermit lives alone. After offering the kid salty water, the hermit suggests that the kid stay with him that night because a storm is about to arrive. Reluctantly, the kid agrees. The hermit describes his past life as a slave trader, claiming that he “made good money” and never got caught (18), but eventually his hatred for Black people became too much. He shows the kid a shriveled, blackened human heart that he keeps among his possessions. The heart belonged to an enslaved Black man; the hermit believes that women, whiskey, money, and Black people are the only things that have the power “to destroy the earth” (18). When the hermit launches into a long speech about religion, sin, and God, the kid sits quietly and listens. They eat together while the storm rages outside. The kid falls asleep.

The kid wakes in the night and sees the hermit staring at him. When questioned about his strange behavior, the hermit withdraws into the darkness. The next morning, the hermit is gone before the kid wakes up. The kid sets back out across the prairie on his mule. He meets a group of cowboys who offer him a meal and, eventually, a job. However, he decides to continue west toward a town named Bexar. On the edge of town, he passes three men with a cart filled with “a load of corpses” (21). He enters Bexar, passing dancers dressed in gaudy clothes, and finds a place to stay. Because he has no money, the kid tells the barman that he will work in exchange “for a drink” (21). The barman does not speak English but, after a short conversation with an old man sitting in the bar, the kid is allowed to stay. He begins to sweep the floor. When he is finished, he finds the barman. Rather than pay the kid, the barman tries to send him away. The barman points a flintlock pistol at the kid, but an old man intervenes before violence breaks out. Just as the situation seems calm, the kid hits the barman. The barman dies in the ensuing fight. Snatching a bottle from the bar, the kid finds a place to hide. He sleeps in a ruined church and wakes up with a hangover. The church floor is covered in animal waste and bones. His mule is gone and, when he searches for it outside, he finds rotting human bodies. He sees religious statues outside the church, shot by American soldiers who were “trying their rifles” (24). Tracking the mule, he eventually finds it grazing on a field of lush grass. He wanders into the nearby river to wash himself.

The next day, a man approaches the kid and tells him that an Army captain wants to recruit “the feller knocked in that Mexer’s head yesterday evenin” (25). The kid considers the offer of clothes, a horse, a weapon, and whatever he can loot from Mexico. He finds the leader, Captain White, and agrees to join White in the war against the Mexicans. The kid claims that he seems shabby because he was robbed, blaming a gang of Mexicans and Black people for the attack. White explains that the violence is continuing even though the United States and Mexico signed a peace treaty. He believes that the American soldiers were “sold out” by the politicians (28). He does not believe that Mexicans can govern themselves because he believes that they are a lesser race. White claims that the governor of California has empowered White and his men to be “the instruments of liberation in a dark and troubled land” (29) and to restore American control of the region. White accepts the kid into the group of soldiers.

The soldiers lead the kid into a nearby town and sell his mule. They get him new clothes and repair his boots. Then they head into a bar, where they meet “an old disordered Mennonite” (33), who warns them that—if they continue on their journey and cross the river—the United States government will not allow them to return. The Mennonite insists that they are embarking on a foolish, doomed mission. The soldiers ignore the Mennonite as they plan to take whatever land they can. They never intend to return. After a night of drunken revelry, the soldiers wake up and find one of their number dead outside the bar. After delivering a solemn warning, the Mennonite leaves them.

Five days later, the kid takes the dead soldier’s horse and rides with Captain White’s company toward Mexico. They pass coyotes chewing on dead men’s bones and hunt wild pigs and deer. At night, they roast the meat over fires and laugh together. After days on the road, some of the soldiers fall sick with cholera. White pushes the men on as more fall ill and die. They bury their dead at the side of the road using “the bladebones of antelopes” as shovels (36), while wolves follow the soldiers.

The soldiers push on, crossing a desert littered with sun-bleached bones. Dust covered, ragged, and starving, the men resemble ghosts moving along “the high road to hell” (37). When the days become too hot, they travel at night in silence. Their horses begin to stumble, and a lightning storm threatens to destroy their equipment. The soldiers begin to think they are riding through hell. They stop and pray for “just a few drops” of rain and then continue (38); eventually, rain begins to fall but it does not last. Soon, their supplies run out, and their horses begin to die.

They find a recently occupied hut and search for the occupants. They find water and an old man in the stable. Fearful, the old man urinates himself when dragged in front of White. Speaking through a translator, White decides that the old man is a “halfwit” (40). The old man runs away in the night while the men camp. The next day, they continue their march. They pass through ruined villages, then camp in a church and take apart its roof to build fires. The next day, the soldiers spot a herd of cattle, driven by Mexicans and Native Americans. White believes that they are “heathen stock thieves” (41), so he sets out to kill them. However, the cattle are a trap. White’s soldiers are ambushed by thousands of Comanche warriors. Many soldiers are killed and scalped. The survivors are tortured and raped. Men and horses groan and scream in agony.

Having survived the brutal attack, the kid waits until nightfall and then escapes. He travels south and meets a fellow survivor named Sproule. According to Sproule, as many as eight soldiers survived the ambush, including White. Sproule and the kid travel together in search of their fellow soldiers. Their journey brings them to a bush that is “hung with dead babies” (45). A nearby village is desolate and abandoned. They stop in the village to plan their next move. Sproule admits that he is suffering from consumption and a wound to his arm; he traveled south to Mexico to convalesce in the warm weather. While the kid searches for supplies, Sproule finds a church. Scattered around the church are the dead and partially cannibalized bodies of the villagers. Outside, Sproule tries unsuccessfully to scare two vultures away from a dead child.

The kid and Sproule walk again. After several days, they are dehydrated and close to death. They begin to hallucinate and head toward a “distant city very white against the blue and shaded hills” (49). The next morning, however, they wake up to find that the city was not real. Sproule’s wounded arm becomes infected, and he cannot continue. As they stop to rest in the “purgatorial waste” (49), a group of Mexicans finds them. The leader of the Mexicans is riding on White’s horse, and his men laugh at the two dying Americans. However, they share their water with the kid and Sproule then leave. The kid and Sproule sleep but they are woken by a vampire bat, which begins to drink Sproule’s blood.

Realizing that they need to continue their journey, they walk again. Sproule’s arm is rotting and “small worms [work] in the open wound” (52). They see a family riding a cart and demand to be taken to a town. By the time they reach the town, however, Sproule is dead. The kid is arrested by Mexican soldiers and marched through the town—past a traveling show filled with strange sights—to see White’s severed head in a jar. The kid claims that the dead man “aint no kin to me” (54). The Mexican soldiers throw the kid in jail. Inside, the kid recognizes the other prisoner as one of White’s soldiers. The man is from Georgia, and he provides the kid with a description of what happened after the ambush. Eventually, the Mexican soldiers take the two Americans to a larger jail in Chihuahua City. In this new jail, the kid is surprised to see Toadvine.