Blood Meridian: Chapter 7 Summary & Analysis

In the gang there are two men named John Jackson, one black, the other white. They have bad blood between them. As they ride under the mountains the white Jackson pulls up next to the black and whispers to him, and the black Jackson shakes the white off. Everyone in the gang watches, but no one cautions the Jacksons to hold off in their antagonism.

Earlier in the morning, the gang had met on the outskirts of Chihuahua City to receive a delivery, made by a Jewish arms dealer from Prussia named Speyer. Speyer produces and opens a box for Glanton, who lifts from it a huge pistol. He loads it and levels the pistol at a cat as it walks upon a wall; he fires. No blood, no cry—the cat just disappears. Glanton then fires into a group of birds, which explode into feathers. He then shoots, in quick succession, a goat, a clay container, and a bell. Glanton does not think the pistols are worth the fifty dollars asked for them, and he tells Speyer so.

Suddenly a group of armed Mexican soldiers ride into the courtyard and demand to know what’s wrong; Speyer and the Judge assure them, despite the dead animals, that everything is fine. A Mexican sergeant, Aguilar, is not convinced, but Judge Holden converses with him warmly and presents him to each member of the gang. When he comes to the vexed-looking black Jackson, the Judge introduces him to Aguilar very learnedly—drawing on accounts of the inferiority of the black race presented in the Bible, Greek poetry, anthropology, and science.

The black Jackson ignores Aguilar’s attempts to shake hands, and he asks the Judge what he’s told Aguilar. The Judge responds, in quasi-legal terminology, that Jackson doesn’t need to know the facts to fulfill his historical destiny, although the facts do require a third-party witness, in this case Aguilar. The Judge concludes that, although Aguilar is too ignorant to understand the meaning of the facts of Jackson’s racial heritage, the authority of the words themselves transcends this ignorance.

The Judge’s speech is received with silence from the gang, a few smiles, a half-witted guffaw. The black Jackson is sweating. The Judge proceeds to show Aguilar one of the just-delivered pistols and carefully explains how it works. He then presents Aguilar with some money and shakes hands with the soldiers under his (Aguilar’s) command. The Mexican soldiers ride into the street, and the scalp hunters, each armed now with a pair of pistols, set off upcountry.

After a day of riding, the gang makes camp. The narrator explains that Toadvine, the Kid, and Grannyrat are replacements for three scalp hunters who died earlier in the desert. As these three sit together, they watch the several Delawares, or Delaware Indians, who are part of the gang sitting apart. One crushes a coffee bean with a stone and another searches for a coal with which to light his pipe.

In the morning, the gang sets out. Toadvine becomes friendly with Bathcat, a.k.a. the Vandiemenlander, a fellow fugitive originally from Wales who migrated to Van Diemen’s Land (present-day Tasmania) to hunt aborigines. Bathcat offers a bet to Toadvine as to which Jackson will kill the other, but Toadvine declines. Bathcat predicts that black Jackson will kill white. Toadvine turns to his companion and sees that he’s wearing a necklace of human ears. The narrator also says that Bathcat has a number tattooed on his arm, which Toadvine will see first in a Chihuahua bathhouse and later within the year when cutting down Bathcat’s torso from a tree limb.

The gang marches on and camps that night in the corral of a hacienda, with watch fires burning all night. The narrator says that, two weeks earlier, a party of campesinos (farmers) had camped in the very same place, only to have been slaughtered by Apaches and then partly eaten by hogs. Glanton orders a goat killed for supper.

On the third day, the gang rides into the town of Corralitos. The townspeople come out and watch them pass with wonder. The gang camps in the town plaza. Glanton, the Judge, and two other members of the gang, David Brown and his brother Charlie Brown, ride out to the estate of General Zuloaga (a Mexican general and Conservative leader in the War of Reform), where they dine and pass the night without incident.

As they prepare to ride out in the morning, the gang is approached by a family of magicians—a father, mother, son, and daughter—seeking safe passage up to the town of Janos. A member of the family, an old man, tries to explain this to Glanton despite not speaking English, going so far as to have the company put on part of the show, with dancing dogs and juggling. Glanton says the family can travel in the rear, but makes no promises as to their safety.

The gang crosses the Casas Grandes River at noon. They pass the scene of a years-old massacre, where Mexican soldiers had slaughtered an encampment of Apaches, including women and children. Bones strew the ground.

At night, the gang makes camp. The family of magicians set up their tent, but it blows away on a strong wind into the wrathful darkness of the desert. The old magician is deepy saddened by this and sits by the fire while his family unpacks.

Glanton asks the old man if he tells fortunes; he does, and produces a pack of Tarot cards. He offers a card to Glanton, who declines; but the black Jackson accepts. Jackson draws a card with a picture of a fool and cat on it. A female magician begins chanting and says something in Spanish. Jackson asks Ben Tobin, an ex-priest in the gang, what the woman is saying, but Tobin dismisses fortune telling as idolatry.

Jackson then asks the Judge to tell him what the woman is saying. The Judge is picking “small life” from the folds of his skin and appears to be making a gesture of blessing until he flings something from his fingers to the fire. The Judge tells Jackson that the woman is saying he should avoid rum. Tobin says that this would not constitute a fortune, and the Judge agrees. He assures Jackson that he will, in the fullness of time, know everything, as will every man.

The Judge instructs the old magician to offer a card to the kid, who draws the Four of Cups. The Judge smiles. The kid orders the old magician to get away from him, but the magician doesn’t understand. A gang member from Kentucky called Tate (his first name is later given as Sam)—who served with Tobin and other gang members with McCulloch’s Rangers during the Mexican-American War—whispers to the old magician, who ceases to engage the kid. He asks whose fortune he should tell next.

Finally the Judge instructs the old magician to offer a card to Glanton. Glanton accepts, but as the magician reaches for the card drawn that he might see its image, the card vanishes from Glanton’s hand. Perhaps Glanton saw the image himself, perhaps he didn’t. The older female magician chants in Spanish that Glanton drew the card with an image of a wheelless cart on it that traverses a dark river, a card of war and vengeance, of loss in the night. Glanton tells the woman to shut up and draws his pistol but the Judge prevents him from shooting her.

In the morning, the gang, as well as the family of magicians, resume their journey and reach the crumbling walls of Janos in the afternoon. In the town square, Glanton meets up with two Delawares and a man named Marcus “Long” Webster who had ridden ahead of the gang as outriders. They have with them an old Apache woman, captured at a meat camp which the outrides found, where hunters dress and store animal carcasses. Glanton shoots her in the head, and the single Mexican member of the gang, Juan Miguel (called McGill throughout, an American mispronunciation of his name), scalps her while the family of magicians watch “like witnesses.”

The gang leaves the square and makes camp in a nearby grove. From there, Toadvine and the kid watch the family of magicians announce their entertainments to the beat of a drum. Bathcat leans over to them and points out black Jackson, who is in the square with the magicians, standing behind their tent. The old magician gives a signal, and his daughter pushes Jackson onto the stage, as it were, where he strides, strangely posturing, in the torchlight.