All the Pretty Horses: Part 3 Summary & Analysis

They ride all day into the mountains and the country they’d first crossed four months earlier. At a break for lunch, John Grady sits and watches Rawlins, who won’t meet his eyes. The guards say little to each other and nothing to the Americans. At night they stop and offer them coffee and a dish of pale, stringy, sour food. On the third day, they ride back into the town of Encantada. John Grady asks a pair of young girls watching them to get them cigarettes. Rawlins groans at this attempt, and remains stony in response to John Grady’s jokes. John Grady says they should get out of this together, and that Rawlins doesn’t get to choose a time when the trouble started and blame it all on him.

John Grady says he had asked the officials to wake Don Héctor: they said he’d been awake a long time, and then laughed. He might have betrayed them because of some lie, he says, but Rawlins says it could have been for some truth as well. John Grady says he can’t start over, but doesn’t see the point in “slobbering” over it or blaming someone else. Rawlins says he tried to reason with him, but John Grady replies that some things aren’t reasonable. He’s the same person he always was, he never promised Rawlins he’d be safe down here, and he doesn’t believe in signing on until it stops being pleasant and you quit. Rawlins says he never quit him.

The girls return with cigarettes, and ask if the two are American thieves. They reply that they’re famous thieves, bandoleros, before guards call the girls away.

They ride through the town and then stop before an adobe building with a corrugated tin roof, entering a school with floors of pine boards and windows with missing planes of glass. A stout man in a khaki uniform watches the prisoners expressionlessly, and the guards lead them out to a small stone building with an iron-shod door. There’s no light in the room, and the air smells of excrement. They can’t see anything, but out of the darkness a voice asks, “Is that you all?” It’s Blevins.

Blevins doesn’t know how long he’s been there, but it’s a long time. Rawlins accuses him of telling the guards to hunt them, but Blevins denies it. Still, they knew there were three of them, John Grady says. But Rawlins says they wouldn’t have hunted them if they’d gotten the horse back—Blevins must have done something. John Grady asks what he’s done, but he refuses to answer. An old man is sitting against the wall watching them, and John Grady asks him what the boy is accused of. He says it’s for the murder of three men. Rawlins says they’re dead men.

Only one of them died, Blevins pipes in. He had worked for a German family in Palau, 80 miles east, and after 2 months he’d returned to Encantada with the money he’d earned. He’d waited in front of a store until he saw the same man with his pistol go by. He snuck up behind him and snatched it from his belt. With prodding, Blevins admits that the man came at him and he shot him. As he returned to his horse, other men shot at him and he shot back, hitting two.

Rawlins says Blevins doesn’t know how much trouble he’s in. Blevins assumes he’ll be sent to the penitentiary—he isn’t old enough to be hung—but Rawlins says they’ll lie about his age. John Grady tells Blevins not to listen: there’s no capital punishment in Mexico. John Grady asks Blevins if they ever get to walk around, but he says he can’t walk—they’ve busted his feet. They sit in silence, listening to sounds of ranchero music from afar.

That night John Grady dreams of horses running in a high plain. He’s one of them, and their colors shine in the sun. There’s nothing but them in the world and they move in unison, none of them afraid.

In the morning two guards handcuff Rawlins and lead him away to the captain, who’s reading a three-day-old newspaper. He asks for identification, and Rawlins gives him his billfold with the photo of Betty Ward and money. The captain tells him to pull down his pants, and when he objects, the guard hits Rawlins across the head with a leather whip. Feeling nauseous, Rawlins obeys. Then the captain asks his address, date of birth, height, and weight. He says Rawlins must have a good memory—but that he’s not Lacey Rawlins. He asks why Rawlins came to work here. When asked how much they got paid, Rawlins says 200 pesos a month, and the captain asks the equivalent in Texas: a hundred dollars, or 800 pesos. The captain smiles and asks why they had to leave Texas. Rawlins says they didn’t have to.

The captain insists Rawlins tell him his real name. He says Blevins is Rawlins’ brother, and asks how many horses they stole, how many men they killed. Rawlins keeps denying everything and soon is close to tears. The captain asks the real name of the “assassin Blevins,” and Rawlins says he doesn’t know. The captain says he’s foolish. They let Rawlins go, and it’s John Grady’s turn. Rawlins says he can tell them whatever he wants—it won’t make a difference.

The captain tells John Grady that his friend told them everything, and it would be best for him to admit to everything right away. John Grady says he doesn’t know anything about Blevins—he just asked to ride with them. They’ve been working for Don Héctor at La Purísima, he says. The captain says Rawlins is the criminal Smith, but John Grady says they were raised together, went to the same school.

The captain leans back, taking a cigarette from his shirt pocket, and his posture seems artificial with his arm perched with a burning cigarette by his ear. He asks how old the assassin Blevins is, and John Grady says he doesn’t know. He tells John Grady to give him his billfold, and he spreads everything out. He asks why Blevins came here to steal horses, and John Grady says for all he knows the horse is his—at least he saw Blevins bring it into Mexico. The captain says these are not the facts, and John Grady has the chance to tell the truth here, before he is sent to Saltillo in three days and the truth will be in other hands. Here they can make truth or lose it. John Grady says there is only one truth—it’s what happened, not what someone says. The captain says his town was quiet and calm before Blevins came to steal horses. He says it isn’t true that Blevins was just a quiet boy who never did any harm and then came in and did such a thing. The truth is that Blevins was always like this.

Back in the cell, the boys watch Blevins being led away. John Grady tells him they’re going to Saltillo, and it seems like the captain wants to make some kind of a deal with them to keep quiet about Blevins. He says he thinks they want to kill Blevins. Rawlins says maybe they won’t, and, looking away, curses.

John Grady talks with the old man, who doesn’t know what crime he’s accused of. He’s been told he can go after signing papers, but he can’t read or write.

The guards bring in the buckets filled with beans as if they’re carrying slop for livestock. As they eat, Blevins asked what they’d told the guards about him. He said they could have tried to help him out, put in a good word for him, and Rawlins starts yelling and cursing at him. Damn you to hell, he keeps repeating, almost in tears, and John Grady tells him to let it go.

When John Grady asks the old man if they’ve mistreated him, he waves it off: he says there’s no intrigue for them in making an old man feel pain.

Three days later John Grady, Blevins, and Rawlins are led from their cell onto a truck. The captain and guards exchange words they can’t hear. The two young girls from earlier stand on the road, crying and watching. The three guards on the truck are young country boys, ordered not to speak to the prisoners.

They stop outside a bright blue house where an elegantly dressed man, whom John Grady calls a charro, or cowboy, comes out and gets into the front of the truck with the captain. Saltillo is 400 kilometers away, and Blevins says this will be a long trip. The boys don’t say anything. They stop in several towns along the way, and the guards give the prisoners orange soda. They turn south towards Torreón, and one guard looks from the road sign to the prisoners and then back again. They leave the road and barrel across rolling fields and meadows and finally stop in the yard of an abandoned estancia (small farm) by some ebony trees. The guards climb down with their guns, and Blevins asks, “What’s here?”

The captain takes one guard’s rifle, and that guard says “Vámonos” (Let’s go), but “just the boy.” Blevins asks what they’re going to do, and Rawlins says they won’t do anything. When he looks at John Grady, John Grady says nothing. The guard grabs Blevins’ arm, and he wrenches off his boot, handing the wrinkled peso notes inside it to John Grady. Blevins limps away, looking back once in terror, flanked by the captain and the charro. John Grady’s mouth is tight. Watching him, he thinks that Blevins seems not substantive enough to provoke anyone’s wrath. Rawlins warns him not to say anything. John Grady turns to look at him and the strange land and sky and says he won’t. After a while, Rawlins says they can’t just walk out there and shoot him. As John Grady looks at him they hear two short pistol pops. The captain comes back carrying the handcuffs.

The truck winds back out of the meadows and they reach Saltillo by ten that night. The square opposite the cathedral, where the captain stops to get out, is vibrant and busy. They finally make it to the massive doors of the prison. The captain stands watching them, as if they’re all waiting for something. But the captain seems to occupy another space, the privilege to those of the “irreclaimable act”—murder—to which John Grady and Rawlins are barred access. Once someone chooses that world he cannot leave it. The captain says that the man who accompanied him was the brother of the man Blevins killed, and had paid money to take revenge. This had surprised him, since in Mexico criminals are not killed. Instead other arrangements must be made.

The captain says they’re not the first Americans in this prison. He has friends there, and they’ll be making arrangements with them. They can’t stay in prison or they’ll die, and other problems—lost papers, lost people—will arise, making trouble for everyone. As the captain is about to go, John Grady says he didn’t have to kill Blevins. The captain turns and says he’ll tell him a story, since he was once young like him. At that time he used to hang out with older boys, and at one fiesta they all went to see one woman. The captain was the last, and the woman refused him since she was too young, or the men had played a trick on him. He says a man cannot do something and then go back; a man does not change his mind. When he came back, he says, none of the boys were laughing. Where he goes, people stop laughing—even here, when the charro lacked the courage to carry out the deed, the captain completed it.

The boys are led out onto an iron catwalk above the prison yard and into an iron-barred cell. The next morning the list of prisoners’ names is called, which takes an hour, but neither of them is on it. Rawlins jokes that they must not be in prison, then. They spend the entire first day fighting: that night Rawlins’ nose is broken. The one moral standard of the prison seems to be how ready one is to kill. When the fighting starts again, Rawlins says they’ll be killed. John Grady thinks they’ll either kill them or eventually leave them be—there’s no middle ground.

The brutal fighting eases off by the third day. After that they buy soap and tomato soup and try to recover. Rawlins wonders why no one’s looked after them better, if they think they’re rich Americans, as the captain had intimated. He says he never imagined there was such a place as this, but John Grady says there must be every kind of place you can think of.

Rawlins asks John Grady about the Spanish lingo he’s picked up here: words for cigarette butt, big shot, and asshole. Rawlins remarks how it was all over a horse, but John Grady says the horse had nothing to do with it. We think we’re some tough cowboys, Rawlins says, but we could be killed at any time.

Two days later a tall thin man, Pérez, asks them to come with him to his single-roomed house in the center of the prison. It has an electric light, a gas heater, and a carpet. He says to them that they enjoy fighting, and John Grady cuts Rawlins off to say yes, they do. Pérez says that Americans don’t stay long here—they don’t like it too much. Rawlins asks if he can get them out of here; Pérez shrugs and says yes. Rawlins asks why he doesn’t get himself out, and Pérez says he has political enemies, and needs money to make his own arrangements—getting out is very expensive. John Grady says they have no money: Pérez tells him nothing is possible without money.

Pérez says they’re naïve, because they think the struggle is for something like cigarettes, and they don’t understand the real situation, don’t “speak the language.” In a year they might understand, he says, but they don’t have time. He can only help them if they show him faith. John Grady and Rawlins push back their chairs and rise, and Pérez says they’re very foolish. He has power over those under his protection, he says, but the others are outside, in a world of possibility over which he has no control.

The next morning, an unknown man with a knife stabs Rawlins with an Italian switchblade. Rawlins runs to John Grady, and they cross the quadrangle to the gate shack. John Grady hands Rawlins over to the guard. In the next few days, John Grady is acutely aware of his every move, relying only on the few friends he’s made from Yucatán, Sierra León, and two brothers from Bautista. They all told him Pérez’s power is mysterious—some say he isn’t confined to the prison at all, and has a mistress in town. The guards claim to know nothing about Rawlins.

Three days after the stabbing, John Grady arrives at Pérez’s door. Pérez asks after his friend, and John Grady says that that’s what he’s come to ask him about. If he tells him straightaway, John Grady will just leave, Pérez says. He asks where John Grady learned Spanish, assuming it was from servants. Pérez asks why John Grady believes he’s responsible for Rawlins, and when John Grady says he’s not there to do business but just to ask about his friend, Pérez says Americans are so close-minded—their vision of the world is incomplete. He tells John Grady that a prison is like a beauty parlor: it’s full of gossip, since crimes are so interesting. John Grady says they didn’t commit a crime, and Pérez says just not yet. He says it’s not a matter of what the police find, but what they choose. Once John Grady is charged it’ll be too late.

John Grady asks what Pérez wants to know, and he says only what the world wants to know—if he has cojones, if he’s brave, so that the world can decide how much he’s worth. Rawlins isn’t dead, he tells John Grady, who pushes back his chair. Pérez says he hopes John Grady will think about his situation. He says Americans can be impractical, convinced that there are only good and bad things, and they’re superstitious. He once saw an American attack his own car with a hammer since it wouldn’t start. A Mexican wouldn’t do this, since he doesn’t believe a car is good or evil. There can be some evil in a man, but it’s not his own evil—evil can visit anyone. It’s the same with money, he says: Americans talk about tainted money, but money doesn’t have that special quality.

As John Grady turns to go, Pérez says he thought John Grady wanted to know what would happen out there. He says no one can know, and when John Grady says someone is in charge, Pérez replies that their confinement gives the false impression that things are in control.

John Grady tries to buy a knife, but no one will sell one to him. Finally he finds the Bautistas and gives one of them, Faustino, his money. Faustino says it’ll be ready that evening. John Grady doesn’t go eat at noon, and at four he waits to sit by Faustino until the switchblade is ready. He slides it into his pocket.

Half an hour later, John Grady heads into the dining hall for dinner. It’s Sunday, so many prisoners have eaten food brought by family members, and the hall is half empty. He chooses a corner table occupied only by a young boy (the cuchillero), smoking a cigarette, who has a tattoo of a blue jaguar being suffocated by an anaconda. As John Grady sits he suddenly realizes why the boy is alone, but it’s too late to stand up again. He looks up and sees that the guards are gone, and he continues eating, his heart pounding.

The boy stubs out his cigarette and John Grady hears sounds from beyond the prison walls, meaning that the dining hall is silent. He opens his knife against his leg. The boy stands and walks along the table with his tray. Suddenly he slices the tray towards John Grady’s head. John Grady flings his own tray against it, and rolls back to scramble to his feet. Glimpsing the boy’s knife, he pulls out his own and slices his tray at the boy once again, hitting his forehead. They begin to thrust and feint back and forth, and from the precise, calm movements of the “cuchillero” (knife-bearer) John Grady knows the boy is a hired assassin. As John Grady tastes blood from a cut, it occurs that he’s going to die here. The other prisoners have risen silently from their benches and are watching, accustomed to seeing death.

John Grady accidentally drops his tray and, touching his shirt, realizes it’s sticky with blood. He backs away and sinks to the floor. The cuchillero leans in and grabs John Grady by the hair, forcing his head back. As he prepares to cut his throat, John Grady reaches up and stabs him in the heart. The cuchillero pitches forward into John Grady’s arms. John Grady pushes the body away and staggers to the door.

Other prisoners are still watching John Grady, but no one follows as he walks to his room with blood sloshing in his boots. He flings away his knife. A tall man tells him to come with him: Pérez wants to help him. John Grady steps back, twisting out of the man’s grip. His vision blurs and he falls, barely perceiving the man picking him up and taking him to Pérez.

John Grady wakes up in a dark stone room, finding it difficult to breathe. He calls out but no one answers. He half wonders if he’s dead, and his despair leads to pain and then a renewed commitment to keep breathing. He struggles in excruciating pain out of the bed and to the door, which is locked. Finally, the door opens to blinding light, and a young man brings in a tray containing food and orange soda. John Grady asks the man to turn on the light, which he does before leaving the room again.

For the next three days, John Grady thinks about the terrible things probably done to his father in Goshee, and about everything he doesn’t know about him. He decides not to think of Alejandra—to save up those thoughts—and instead thinks of horses. He dreams of dead men standing around, silent but with terrible intelligence. He knows men have died in this room.

The next time the door opens, a man in a suit and carrying a leather bag comes in, saying he’s the doctor. He cuts away gauze over John Grady’s wound and rewraps the dressing over his stitches. He says John Grady is a fast healer. The next visitor wears what looks like a military uniform, and asks how soon John Grady can walk to his home. John Grady walks around the room to show him. The man says he’s fortunate, and then leaves. John Grady continues to sleep and wake, once enjoying roast chicken with a pear, which he savors, still thinking they might take him to the country and shoot him.

The next time John Grady wakes up, the man from the first visit comes in with a pile of clothes and boots. Two guards come in and he follows them into another part of the building, where he meets the “comandante,” the man in the military uniform, at his desk. The comandante slides an envelope to him, and John Grady asks where his friend Rawlins is. He says he’s outside. The comandante says they’re leaving, which John Grady finds difficult to believe. He’s led out to the street and sees Rawlins. They climb onto a bus waiting on the street.

Both say they thought the other had died, but then John Grady says they should sit and be quiet. It’s gray and raining outside, and some of the women on the bus peer back at the prison, which looks like a site of a siege from an earlier time, when the enemies were outside its doors.

At the centro (town center), John Grady suggests they get something to eat: he has a whole envelope full of money—the envelope that the comandante had slid to him. As they eat their steaks and fried potatoes, Rawlins lights a cigarette and asks why they’re not dead. Alfonsa the aunt must have paid them out, John Grady says. He expects it has to do with Alejandra—there is no other explanation. Rawlins says he was just in a hospital ward, and could have escaped. He says he doesn’t know why he didn’t, but he wouldn’t have left John Grady: he says, though, that doesn’t mean it wasn’t dumb. Rawlins says there was another boy in there, all cut up, who died. It seemed so peculiar to him, and he says dying isn’t in people’s plans, is it. Rawlins says they put a liter of blood into him, and asks if that means he’s part Mexican. John Grady jokes that he’s almost a half breed, but then says blood is blood, and doesn’t know where it’s from.

Rawlins says he knows John Grady wants to go back to the ranch for Alejandra and for the horses. Rawlins tells him not to go, but John Grady says he has made up his mind. Rawlins says there’s only one kind of a deal Alejandra could have made with Alfonsa, and John Grady says he knows, but she’ll have to tell him herself.

Rawlins gestures towards a kid across the street trying to sell newspapers, yelling to an empty road. Rawlins wipes his eyes, cursing and saying he keeps thinking about Blevins. He looks old and sad to John Grady, and says he keeps thinking how scared Blevins was. John Grady watches him and then says he, John Grady, isn’t Blevins. Rawlins says he knows that, but isn’t sure how much better off John Grady is.

Rawlins and John Grady find a hotel room and, after showering, talk about how they’re going to get their stitches out. They count out their money: 970 pesos, or about 120 dollars. John Grady splits the money in half. Rawlins asks what’s the worst thing John Grady’s ever done. John Grady says he doesn’t know, and Rawlins says that in the hospital he started thinking he wouldn’t be there if he wasn’t supposed to be there. He says he and his friend once sold a pickup truck-full of feed to some Mexicans and pocketed the money. John Grady says that isn’t so bad. Lying quietly in the dark, John Grady says Rawlins must know what happened in the mess hall. Rawlins says John Grady had no choice, but John Grady says he never thought he’d kill a man—Rawlins doesn’t need to try to make it right. He tells Rawlins he bought the knife with Blevins’ money. Rawlins repeats that he couldn’t have acted differently: John Grady says he knows, but it wasn’t Rawlins who did it.

The next morning, they buy new clothes and hats and buy Rawlins a ticket to Nuevo Laredo. They tell each other to take care, and John Grady watches Rawlins climb stiffly onto the bus. After standing for a while, John Grady turns and walks back through the rain to the hotel. For the next few days he looks for a surgeon. Finally he has the stitches removed, while the surgeon tells him not to look at the scar, since it’ll improve in time. A week later John Grady hitchhikes out of Saltillo on the back of a truck. Trying to brace himself, he stands with his hands outstretched on the roof of the truck, as if he’s someone bearing news for the country, a prophet being conveyed north.