Blood Meridian: Chapter 10 Summary & Analysis

Some nights later, Tobin and the kid are sitting together around a campfire, the kid rather efficiently mending a strap. The two begin talking about the Judge, whom Tobin says is very gifted. The Judge even speaks, rather improbably, Dutch, which he claims to have learned from a Dutchman. Tobin spits and says he couldn’t have learned the language from ten Dutchmen; he concludes that God’s gifts are allocated very unequally. He goes on to say that the Judge is an excellent dancer and fiddler, and that he’s traveled the world.

Tobin suggests that perhaps the Judge’s immense learnedness just goes to show how little God cares about learning. Tobin believes that God may speak most profoundly to those who are silent, and that He also speaks to the least of creatures, including men. The kid says he’s never heard the voice of God, but Tobin says that when the voice stops the kid will know he’s really heard it all his life.

Tobin then begins to tell the kid about how the Judge first fell in with Glanton’s gang and saved them all. The gang was being pursued by Indians but had run out of powder for their guns, when they found in the middle of the desert the Judge sitting on a rock. He had no canteen, only pistols, gold and silver, and a rifled named Et In Arcadia Ego (“Even in Arcadia, I exist”).

A deputy in the gang, David Brown, wanted to leave the Judge on his rock, but Glanton overruled him and decided to equip the Judge to travel with the gang. As they rode, Glanton and the Judge began conversing with one another like brothers. The Judge seemed greatly pleased, as though everything had gone according to some plan he had made. The Judge advised that the gang change course for some mountains, and they did so. Tobin wonders aloud how the Judge knew what the mountains held and how to use it.

The Indians pursuing the unarmed gang were catching up. Even so, the Judge remained cheerful, taking notes on the bats flying about by night and even collecting plants by day as he rode toward the mountains. At night, the gang arrives at a cave full of the bats the Judge studied earlier. Tobin says that the Judge brought the gang there for the nitre, also known as saltpeter and potassium nitrate, a chemical found in bat guano that is of great importance in gunpowder.

Over the next two days, two deserters from the gang were discovered hanging from trees, killed by the pursuing Indians, skinned, and strung up. Because neither deserter had gunpowder on his person, Tobin infers that the Indians must have known by then that the gang in general had no gunpowder. Meanwhile, the Judge and a Delaware had set up a kiln; they distilled nitre from the guano and also manufactured powdered charcoal. This done, the gang rode down the mountain in the dark, not sure where the pursuing Indians were, though they must have been close.

After riding past wolves in the night, the gang reached a malpais, very unforgiving volcanic terrain. There the Judge delivered a sermon about how the earth contains “all good things” in itself, like an egg. Tobin recalls how there were hoof markings in the malpais and speculates that they were created by devils sent out to recapture sinners who had been ejected from Hell.

At the top of the volcanic cone of the malpais, with the pursuing Indians only ten miles away, the Judge began to chip away at the stone with his knife and encouraged others to do the same: it was brimstone, full of pure sulfur. The Judge mixed the nitre, charcoal, and sulfur together, then urinated on the mixture and told the gang to urinate on it too for their very souls. With his bare arms, the Judge kneaded the mass like “foul black dough,” then spread it thin to dry.

By then, the pursuing Indians had arrived at the base of the malpais and greedily began to climb up to kill the gang. The Judge told the men to bring their concoction to him, which he chopped to a powder when presented with it. He loaded it into Glanton’s pistol, and told Glanton to fire into the cauldron of the volcano: with a strange sound, the gun fired. All the men then loaded their guns with the “queer powder.” The Judge pretended to surrender to the Indians as the only survivor, only for the gang to rise up from behind him and butcher every single one of the Indians.

Tobin’s story is ended. The kid asks what, exactly, the Judge is a judge of, but Tobin hushes him, explaining that the Judge will hear him because he has ears like a fox.