Blood Meridian: Chapter 13 Summary & Analysis

In Chihuahua City, the scalp hunters go to the public baths where they strip and submerge themselves, turning the water to bloody filth. Behind them, merchants spread out European clothing and Spanish boots, from whom the scalp hunters buy many goods. The men exit into the square where the scalps they’ve taken are being hung like decorations.

Governor Trias invites Glanton and his officers to dine with him, but Glanton says that he does not dine separately from his men. Trias, accordingly, invites all of the scalp hunters to a great feast. Trias and the Judge sit next to one another and speak in a language no one else there understands.

When the meal begins, the Mexicans toast American heroes like Washington and Franklin. Ignorant of diplomacy, the scalp hunters toast their own national heroes as well, not even knowing the names of any Mexican heroes.

The scalp hunters eat so voraciously that the cook barricades the door to his kitchen. Trias attempts to make a toast, but the men at the table continue to scream out toasts of their own and demand more drinks. Glanton dumps the gold paid to the gang for their scalps out onto the table among the bones and rinds of the feast. The Judge arranges for musicians to play dance music, and while the other scalp hunters lurch and stomp, he skillfully dances with two ladies. Soon prostitutes are brought in, and Trias excuses himself while the scalp hunters become wilder and wilder, until they begin firing their pistols, fighting, and lighting furniture on fire.

Scenes like this are repeated night after night, as the scalp hunters plunge Chihuahua into debauchery. The locals come to distrust their so-called protectors—“better the Indians,” people write in charcoal on the city walls. On August 15, the scalp hunters vacate the city, and a week later are reported by cattle drovers to be in the town of Coyame eighty miles away.

Gómez and his Apaches had demanded tribute from the people of Coyame for years, and so the scalp hunters are heartily welcomed there, as saints, even. Three days later, the gang rides out and no one even follows them to the town gates, presumably because the men so abused the hospitality of the village.

The gang rides on toward Texas, where Glanton is wanted by the law. Four hundred miles to the east, in the U.S., live his wife and child, whom he will never see again. The men wander the border for weeks seeking the Apache. At Hueco Tanks (an area of low mountains and boulders with water-collecting fissures), the Judge sets to copying hieroglyphics painted on the wall into his ledger before destroying one of the originals. The next morning, the gang heads south, where in three day’s time they’ll massacre a band of peaceful Tigua Indians.

The day of the massacre comes. Toadvine tells the kid that the Tiguas aren’t bothering anyone, but no one responds. Bathcat notices that Toadvine is wearing a necklace of gold teeth. The scalp hunters go on to slaughter the Tiguas. After the massacre, Tigua women who had been upriver return to their camp to find everyone dead and scalped. They mourn through the ruins. The narrator says that every trace of the massacre will be forgotten.

After riding through the ruined town of Carrizal, bathing in a warm spring, leading their horses through difficult dunes (Los Medanos), and camping on a plain, the gang returns to Chihuahua City, where two soldiers stop Toadvine at the gate and Glanton announces, “I aint got nobody’s teeth.” Two days later, about a hundred Mexican soldiers escort the gang out of town.

The Americans next ride through the mountains, doffing their hats to the villagers they pass and whom they’ll murder within the month. They arrive at a village called Nacori, where they dismount to refresh themselves in a cantina. Tobin guards the horses. A funeral procession passes, and the juggler heading it explodes a rocket, which disturbs the Mexican horses but not the American. The narrator comments that this detail should have warned the Mexicans.

In the cantina, someone mutters an insult about the Americans. The kid demands to know who issued the insult, but is interrupted when another rocket explodes outside. The Americans, led by gang members John Dorsey and Henderson Smith, soon followed by the Judge and Charlie Brown, rush to the doorway, to be followed by a drunk Mexican with a knife; he stabs a scalp hunter named Grimley. The Judge shoots the drunk in the head, and a melee breaks out. Almost forty Mexicans are killed and scalped. The scalp hunters ride out, abandoning Grimley. A scalped survivor emerges from the cantina and asks to go home.

The scalp hunters ride into another village, unnamed, and lay waste to it while the citizenry run to the church and kneel before the altar. Four days later, the gang returns to the same village, to find the dead still in the streets being eaten by scavengers.

The Americans ride through the mountains into a mountain town where, at night, Mexican soldiers confront them. The Americans fire on them; many Mexicans die, and some retreat into the darkness. Glanton personally kills the Mexican captain, and orders five men to pursue the survivors into the mountains. Two days later the gang reunites, the surviving Mexicans having scattered into the woods and escaped.

Glanton discusses with the Judge and David Brown whether the Americans can overtake the Mexican soldiers who escaped before they make it to Chihuahua City. They decide that they better try, and are soon riding onto the plain where the Mexicans were last seen making camp. On the third day, about twenty miles outside of Chihuahua, the Americans catch up with the Mexicans and gun them down, ensuring that all evidence of the slaughter is burned and buried.

The scalp hunters then ride back into Chihuahua, where the Mexican government pays them unknowingly for the scalps of Mexican citizens. The city’s finances are now low, and the city government rescinds the bounty on Apache scalps. Within a week of the gang leaving the city, a bounty of eight thousand pesos is posted for Glanton’s head.