Blood Meridian: Chapter 9 Summary & Analysis

The gang doesn’t ride an hour before Apaches launch an ambush, riding across a lakebed. The scalp hunters take cover under bushes while arrows fall, and they begin to fire at their attackers, the kid calmly as though he’s done this before in a dream. After more shots are exchanged, the Apaches flee.

The gang rides down into the lakebed where they find a dead Apache, half naked and with multiple healed war wounds. Toadvine has shot this man in the chest. The Judge searches the dead man’s warbag and corpse, taking a madstone (a stony concretion, like a hairball, taken from animal innards and said to counteract poison) as well as a skin bag tied next to the dead man’s genitals. At last, the Judge scalps the corpse.

The gang rides on through the wasteland, through a lake of gypsum (present-day White Sands National Monument) and past dust spouts that are rumored to sweep men up only to drop them bleeding and broken on the desert floor before dispersing. At night the men camp and gaze rapturously into their campfires. In the morning the men wake to discover that some of their horses have gone blind with sunlight; these are shot, leaving the gang with only three spare horses.

At noon, the two Delawares who had separated from the gang at Janos return, bringing with them the horse that belonged to Grannyrat. Glanton burns Grannyrat’s saddle, blanket, and other effects. Then the gang rides on.

Two days later, the gang comes across a carriage drawn by six horses. The horses are shy and skitter away when approached, but Glanton eventually gains access to the carriage. Inside he finds two dead men and a dead boy, as well letters and tagged bags of ore samples. He takes the guns and ammunition he finds and orders his men to take two of the six horses that are harnessed to the carriage.

After riding up through the mountains, the gang camps; then they resume their trek in the darkness of morning, through a caldera. They pass through what was once a Mexican copper mine, later besieged by the Apaches. There they come across a large triangular building, from which smoke is rising. Glanton knocks on the door and tells whoever’s inside to come out if they’re white. A man bearing a rifle answers, and Glanton forces entry.

Inside the scalp hunters dismount and meet four men whose three other companions have been killed by the Apache. One of the survivors is propped against a wall, wounded beyond care. Though these squatters have been eating nothing but dead, stinking mule, the first things they ask for are whiskey and tobacco.

The four squatters have only two horses between them, one of which has been bitten by a snake, its head now enormously, grotesquely swollen. This poisoned horse totters toward the gang’s horses, only to be attacked by one. The four men explain that they haven’t killed the horse yet because they aim to eat it and don’t want it to rot too quickly. As the sun rises, Glanton sees that there’s a young Mexican or multiracial boy in the room, mostly naked. The Judge asks who the boy is, but the four squatters just shrug.

In the afternoon, the Judge explores the works of the mine and holds an impromptu lecture on geology. He says that natural objects like stones and trees, even more so than the Bible, are the words of God. Although the squatters listening to his lecture at first disagree, by lecture’s end they agree with the learned Judge, and he laughs at them for fools.

The gang passes the night around a campfire while outside a storm rages. Someone reports that, despite the lightning and rain, the Judge is standing naked outside reciting or composing aloud in the mode of epic poetry. In the morning, the snakebitten horse is dead, and the sky is clear. Toadvine and the Judge make small talk on the weather. The squatters inform Glanton that they want to join the gang, but Glanton ignores them.

In the meantime, someone finds the young boy dead, his neck broken and flopping. The three unwounded squatters gather around the body and speak of the boy’s virtues, while the wounded squatter sings hymns and curses God alternately. The scalp hunters mount and ride away, having left the squatters with some provisions.

At dusk, the gang hunts deer and makes camp. Then they move on. That night they come across a party of riders that seems like the mirror image of their own. The two parties parley before riding on, each going in the direction the other just came from. The narrator observes that all travelers just pursue “inversions without end upon other men’s journeys.”