No country for old men - By Cormac McCarthy Page 0,17

there. What could that be an instrument of? You see the problem. To separate the act from the thing. As if the parts of some moment in history might be interchangeable with the parts of some other moment. How could that be? Well, it’s just a coin. Yes. That’s true. Is it?

Chigurh cupped his hand and scooped his change from the counter into his palm and put the change in his pocket and turned and walked out the door. The proprietor watched him go. Watched him get into the car. The car started and pulled off from the gravel apron onto the highway south. The lights never did come on. He laid the coin on the counter and looked at it. He put both hands on the counter and just stood leaning there with his head bowed.

When he got to Dryden it was about eight oclock. He sat at the intersection in front of Condra’s Feed Store with the lights off and the motor running. Then he turned the lights on and pulled out on highway 90 headed east.

The white marks at the side of the road when he found them looked like surveyor’s marks but there were no numbers, just the chevrons. He marked the mileage on the odometer and drove another mile and slowed and turned off the highway. He shut off the lights and left the motor running and got out and walked down and opened the gate and came back. He drove across the bars of the cattleguard and got out and closed the gate again and stood there listening. Then he got in the car and drove out down the rutted track.

He followed a southrunning fence, the Ford wallowing over the bad ground. The fence was just an old remnant, three wires strung on mesquite posts. In a mile or so he came out on a gravel plain where a Dodge Ramcharger was parked facing toward him. He pulled slowly alongside it and shut down the engine.

The Ramcharger’s windows were tinted so dark they looked black. Chigurh opened the door and got out. A man got out on the passenger side of the Dodge and folded the seat forward and climbed into the rear. Chigurh walked around the vehicle and got in and shut the door. Let’s go, he said.

Have you talked to him? the driver said.

No.

He dont know what’s happened?

No. Let’s go.

They rolled out across the desert in the dark.

When do you aim to tell him? the driver said.

When I know what it is that I’m telling him.

When they came to Moss’s truck Chigurh leaned forward to study it.

Is that his truck?

That’s it. Plates is gone.

Pull up here. Have you got a screwdriver?

Look in the jockeybox there.

Chigurh got out with the screwdriver and walked over to the truck and opened the door. He pried the aluminum inspection plate off of the rivets inside the door and put it in his pocket and came back and got in and put the screwdriver back in the glovebox. Who cut the tires? he said.

It wasnt us.

Chigurh nodded. Let’s go, he said.

They parked some distance from the trucks and walked down to look at them. Chigurh stood there a long time. It was cold out on the barrial and he had no jacket but he didnt seem to notice. The other two men stood waiting. He had a flashlight in his hand and he turned it on and walked among the trucks and looked at the bodies. The two men followed at a small distance.

Whose dog? Chigurh said.

We dont know.

He stood looking in at the dead man slumped across the console of the Bronco. He shone the light into the cargo space behind the seats.

Where’s the box? he said.

It’s in the truck. You want it?

Can you get anything on it?

No.

Nothing?

Not a bleep.

Chigurh studied the dead man. He jostled him with his flashlight.

These are some ripe petunias, one of the men said.

Chigurh didnt answer. He backed out of the truck and stood looking over the bajada in the moonlight. Dead quiet. The man in the Bronco had not been dead three days or anything like it. He pulled the pistol from the waistband of his trousers and turned around to where the two men were standing and shot them once each through the head in rapid succession and put the gun back in his belt. The second man had actually half turned to look at the first as he fell. Chigurh stepped between them and bent and pulled away