All The Pretty Horses by Cormac McCarthy

Winner of the National Book Award 1992

"That night he dreamt of horses in a field on a high plain where the spring rains had brought up the grass and the wildflowers out of the ground and the flowers ran all blue and yellow far as the eye could see and in the dream he was among the horses running and in the dream he himself could run with the horses and they coursed the young mares and fillies over the plain where their rich bay and their rich chestnut colors shone in the sun and the young colts ran with their dams and trampled down the flowers in a haze of pollen that hung in the sun like powdered gold and they ran he and the horses out along the high mesas where the ground resounded under their running hooves and they flowed and changed and ran and their manes and tails blew off of them like spume and there was nothing else at all in the high world and they moved all of them in a resonance that was like a music among them and they were none of them afraid horse nor colt nor mare and they ran in that resonance which the world itself and which cannot be spoken but only praised.

In the morning two guards came and opened the door and handcuffed Rawlins and led him away. . . "(161-162).

"He can talk, said the captain. It is better when everybody is understand. You cannot stay here. In this place. You stay here you going to die. Then come other problems. Papers is lost. Peoples cannot be found. Some peoples come here to look for some man but he is not here. No one can find these papers. Something like that. You see. No one wants these troubles. Who can say that some body was here? We dont have this body. Some crazy person, he can say that God is here. But everybody knows that God is no here.
The captain reached out with one hand and rapped with his knuckles against the door.
You didnt have to kill him, said John Grady.
Como?
You could have just brought him back. You could have just brought him on back to the truck.
You didnt have to kill him.
. . .
A man cannot go out to do some thing and then he go back. Why he go back? Because he change his mind? A man does not change his mind.
The captain made a fist and held it up. . . When I come back there is no laughing. No one is laughing. You see. That has always been my way in this world. I am the one when I go someplace then there is no laughing. When I go there then they stop laughing" (180-181).

"The captain stood uncertainly.
Why you come back? he said.
I come back for my horse. Let's go.
The captain nodded at the wound in his leg, still bleeding. The whole trouserleg dark with blood.
You going to die, he said.
We'll let God decide about that. Let's go.
Are you no afraid of God?
I got no reason to be afraid of God. I've even got a bone or two to pick with Him.
You should be afraid of God, the captain said. You are not the officer of the law. You dont have no authority" (272).