Marius Hancu <
marius...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hello:
>
> ~~~
> [Boy journeying across Texas then Mexico, in an irregular military
> company. American veterans badmouthing the Mexican army here.]
>
> He told how they'd taken the city of Chihuahua, an army of irregulars
> that fought in rags and underwear and how the cannonballs were solid
> copper and came loping through the grass like runaway suns and even the
> horses learned to sidestep or straddle them and how the dames of the
> city rode up into the hills in buggies and picnicked and watched the
> battle and how at night as they sat by the fires they could hear the
> moans of the dying out on the plain and see by its lantern the deadcart
> moving among them like a hearse from limbo.
>
> They had gravel enough, said the veteran, but they didnt know how to
> fight. They'd stick. You heard stories about how they found em chained
> to the trailspades of their pieces, limber-teams and all, but if they
> was I never seen it. We picked powder in the locks yonder. Blowed them
> gates open. People in here looked like skinned rats. Whitest Mexicans
> you'll ever see. Thowed theirselves down and commenced kissin our feet
> and such.
>
> Blood Meridian, by Cormac McCarthy
> ~~~
>
> "They had gravel enough": ?
He'd heard that, but had never seen any evidence of it. His opinion was