Blood Meridian

The gang rides for two weeks while it tracks the people who laid the distant fires. The men pass destroyed wagons strewn with human corpses. Eventually, Glanton’s gang finds a group of non-Apache Native Americans beside a lake. The Native Americans have greater numbers as well as women and children among them. Glanton tells his men to shoot only the people who can shoot back to save gunpowder. Everyone else, he says, should be killed by other means. If they do not kill everyone, he says, they should be “whipped and sent home” (109).

The gang slaughters the Native Americans, including the children and enslaved people. When 12 of the Native Americans try to fight back, they are gunned down. The few remaining men run away as Glanton’s men wipe out the small town. They burn the huts. When one of his men is injured, Glanton ignores the kid’s attempts to help him and unceremoniously kills the man. Like everyone else, the man will be scalped. Spotting a group of Apache in the distance, he quickly launches another raid and returns to the camp with the chief’s head “hanging by its hair from his belt” (112). Holden tells Glanton that the severed head does not belong to Gomez.

Glanton leads his men in search of the Apache chief. When one of the men asks his fellow gang members to remove an arrow from his thigh, they all refuse. The only person who will do so is the kid. The kid succeeds but he is warned that–had he not pulled the arrow out properly–he would have been killed. Holden takes a young Native American child from the conquered camp and, after several days on the trail, kills and scalps the boy. Toadvine is shocked by the murder and draws a gun on Holden. Holden barely reacts and tells Toadvine to “either shoot or take that away” (115). Toadvine withdraws the gun. The men continue to track the Native Americans, occasionally finding and killing outlying members of the group. They eventually reach Chihuahua City, and they are greeted with rapturous celebrations with “music and flowers” (116).

The people of Chihuahua City greet Glanton’s men like heroes. Glanton brandishes scalps taken from 120 people as well as eight severed heads. The men wash and change into new clothes before they collect their reward. They are invited to a banquet at the governor’s mansion. The banquet turns into a drunken, debauched, chaotic night. Many of the men continue drinking the next day and the day after. Soon, their drunken behavior scares the local people into remaining indoors and yearning for the time when they feared Gomez’s men. When they leave Chihuahua City, Glanton’s gang travels to Coyanne, where the people have also been terrorized by Gomez’s band of warriors and who also treat Glanton’s men to a glorious welcome. But their joy does not last long and, when the gang leaves a few days later, “not even a dog followed them to the gates” (120).

The gang travels north. Glanton is wanted in Texas; his wife and child live in the United States, and he knows that he cannot see them again. Glanton learns that a group of Tiguas Native Americans is camped nearby. Unlike Gomez and the Apache, the Tiguas are non-violent. Nevertheless, Glanton decides to attack them because their scalps are still valuable. Toadvine is appalled, but Bathcat notices that he is wearing a necklace of gold teeth. Though several of Glanton’s men voice their disapproval, they go with Glanton anyway. The Tiguas are brutally and quickly killed, and then Glanton’s gang resumes its journey. The men reach the seemingly ruined town of Carrizal with “their horses festooned with the reeking scalps of the Tiguas” (122). This time, however, they are not greeted as heroes.

The gang is marched out of Carrizal by soldiers, so they head west and arrive in the town of Nacori, just as a funeral is being held. The funeral fireworks shock the gang members, who run into the street drunkenly expecting a fight. Holden shoots a drunk Mexican “through the middle of the forehead” (124). Glanton’s men kill (and scalp) nearly 40 men in a bar and then leave. They set out on the road again, following a group of soldiers who escaped the bar fight. These soldiers are killed, scalped, and buried to hide what happened. Taking their scalps, Glanton’s men chase the survivors to stop them from reaching Chihuahua City. They catch and kill the men then return to the city. After unwittingly paying for Mexican scalps, however, the governor tells them that the bounty on scalps has been “rescinded” (129) because the city is now poor. The bounty on Gomez has also been withdrawn. Glanton leads his men away and, a week later, the governor places a bounty on Glanton’s head.

After riding through a heavy storm, the gang arrives in a town named Jesus Maria. The men take over a bar and Holden pays a fiddler to play music while he dances. Once again, the Americans drink heavily and become violent. When a priest tries to stop the debauchery, they beat him. The men drink the next day as the locals celebrate a religious festival. The day after, a drunk Glanton fires his pistol in the public courtyard until he is led away by Holden. As Holden comforts Glanton, the townspeople search for a missing girl.

Holden buys two puppies from a local boy for more money than they are worth. Then, he takes the dogs and throws them in the river. Bathcat, urinating nearby, shoots the dogs. When Glanton recovers, he desecrates a Mexican flag, and a gunfight breaks out in the town between the locals and the gang. Glanton leads his men out of the town, losing six men in the process. Some of those who were left behind escape; others are baptized and then shot. During their escape, Glanton’s gang shoots men leading a group of mules, and many mules fall off a cliff. When the gang camps for the night, Holden takes some men out to search for the missing Black Jackson. The men return later, bringing the naked Jackson with them.

The gang travels into a jungle and, after nine days, it encounters an incommunicative man with two donkeys. The gang leaves him behind. As the men travel, Holden collects exotic birds and leaves, describing them in his notebook. He explains to Toadvine that he does this to gain absolute control over nature and the earth. In his ideal world, “nothing must be permitted to occur upon it save by [Holden’s] dispensation” (138). Thus, the free birds are an “insult” (138). Eventually, the gang arrives in the town of Ures. The men go to a hostel although the German host vanishes before he can help them. The gang buys what it needs from the locals. Once again, the men become very drunk. In the morning, Glanton and Holden send boys to fetch their horses.