No Country for Old Men: Chapter 4 Summary & Analysis

Bell reminisces about his service as sheriff. He was elected when he was twenty-five. His father was not a lawman, but his Grandfather was, and they were proud to be sheriffs together. He tells how he had just returned from WWII with some medals, and campaigned hard for his position as Sherriff. He ran a fair campaign, and his grandfather told him if talking badly about other candidates means you are losing.

Bell talks about his thirty-one year marriage to Loretta. They lost a little girl, he says, but he doesn’t want to talk about it. He says Loretta is a better person than he, but that isn’t saying a whole lot. He suggests that people think they know what they want, but generally they don’t, but sometimes, if you’re lucky, you get it anyways. He says that he has always been lucky. The luckiest day of his life was when he first saw Loretta, tipped his hat at her, and almost got a smile back. He says that people usually complain about bad things that happen to them, but don’t mention the good. He doesn’t think he has given God much reason to smile on him, but he believes God has blessed him anyway.

The narrative moves to the past. Bell sits in a café, reading the newspaper. There is a picture of Lamar’s deputy (the one whom Chigurh killed) on the front page. He notes that the deputy’s wife was only twenty years old. There is nothing he can do for her. He notes that Lamar would always be remembered for this tragedy.

Bell and Wendell go to Moss’s trailer. They enter cautiously, and Bell notes that there is no reason in the world not to be careful. They find the cylinder Chigurh knocked out of the doorknob on the floor, and see that it left a dent in the wall. They realize that Moss and Carla Jean left in a hurry. Bell opens the refrigerator and closes it, then looks in the freezer. They reflect on the situation, and Wendell wonders if Moss understands the nature of the dangerous people pursuing him. Bell notes that Moss and Carla Jean are in a world of trouble.

On Wednesday, Bell is sitting in the café reading the newspaper. A reporter from the San Antonio Star approaches and asks what is going on. Bell lies, telling the reporter the murders were a hunting accident. The man obviously knows this is not true, and lets Bell know this. Bell tells him that last year only two of the nineteen charges filed in the county court were not drug charges. He says he has a county the size of Delaware and the people need his help. He tells the reporter he has a full day ahead of him and he needs to eat his breakfast.

Bell and Torbert drive back out to the scene. Torbert says ten people are dead, including the man murdered on the highway, and Bell says there are ten that they know about. A helicopter arrives, and a DEA agent named McIntyre arrives on the scene. Bell is agreeable, but it is clear that he doesn’t like McIntyre. McIntyre examines Moss’s truck, and notes that the vehicle is not full of bullet holes like the others. Bell agrees facetiously to McIntyre’s simple observation. He is unwilling to pitch in any additional help for McIntyre. McIntyre says that Bell isn’t going to make this easy for him, but Bell says he is just messing around.

McIntyre walks around the scene with Bell and Torbert. He holds a handkerchief to his nose to block the smell of the dead bodies. He takes notes on a clipboard, and draws a rough sketch of the scene. He notes that there aren’t many guns. Bell tells him there weren’t as many as there should have been, but they have two in evidence. They talk about the missing heroin and money, and McIntyre says someone made off with it. Bell says that’s a reasonable guess, and McIntyre tells Bell he knows he didn’t understand that before he showed up. Additional law enforcement agencies are on their way, including Border Patrol, the rangers, and the DPS drug unit. Bell notes that this event will draw a bigger crowd than the flood of 1965. McIntyre lists the guns on scene, including a nine-millimeter Parabellum. Torbert repeats the name of the gun, and Bell nods, telling him to put that in his file.

The narrative shifts to Chigurh. He picks up a signal on the tracking device as he crosses the Devil’s River Bridge. His headlights shine on a large bird sitting on the bridge rail ahead. He rolls down the window and fires a shot at the bird. His pistol has been fitted with a makeshift silencer. The shot misses, hitting the guardrail, and the bullet ricochets off into the night. The bird flies away. Chigurh rolls the window and continues on.

The narrative then moves back to Moss. He pays the cab driver who brought him back to the motel, and enters the lobby. He tells the woman behind the counter he needs another room. She pulls a map of the motel from under the counter with a picture of a car from the fifties on it. She offers him the room next to the original room, but he picks on the opposite side of the building, knowing that the two rooms share the same air duct. In the new room, he uses the tent poles, some clothes hangers, and the supplies from the hardware store to make a hook to pull the briefcase through the vent into the new room.

As Moss attempts to get the briefcase through the vent, Chigurh drives through the motel parking lot with the tracking device in his lap. He goes into the motel office. It 12:42 am, and the woman looks like she has been asleep. Chigurh rents a room, goes to it and drops his bag off. Before he leaves he takes off his boots, then he goes into the hall, holding the tracking device and his shotgun, an automatic with a military stock and a parkerized finish. The shotgun has a special silencer that is a foot long and as big around as a beer can.

Chigurh walks by the doors, listening to the signal from the tracking device. After he finds the room, he goes back to his room and makes a mental note of the room’s dimensions. He gets his boots on, grabs his bolt gun and goes back. Using the bolt gun, he punches out the lock cylinder and kicks the door open. He finds a Mexican man who was waiting for Moss to return. The man reaches for a gun, but Chigurh shoots him three times, so quick it sounds like a single shot. He shoots another man through the bathroom door. When he goes into the bathroom, he finds the man slumped against the tub with an AK47, badly bleeding from his chest and neck. The man begs for his life, but Chigurh shoots him in the face.

Chigurh searches the room, finding Moss’s machinegun resting on the sink. He wipes the blood from the soles of his boots onto the carpet, and as he does, he sees the air duct. He bashes in the grate with the base of a lamp and looks inside. He can see the drag marks in the dust from the briefcase. Moss has already pulled the briefcase out through the vent in the other room and escaped. Chigurh takes his bloody shirt off and goes into the bathroom where he washes himself off.

The narrative moves to Bell as he enters his office. Torbert lays the coroner’s report on the desk in front of Bell. Bell tells him he knows how Chigurh killed the man on the highway. He asks Torbert if he’s ever been to a slaughterhouse. Torbert says he snuck into one when he was a kid. Bell asks how they killed the cows, and Torbert says a man would hit the cows in the head with a maul. Bell explains that nowadays, they have an air powered bolt gun they use to shoot the cows between the eyes. Torbert says he wishes Bell hadn’t told him that. Bell says he knows, and that he knew what Torbert was going to say before he said it.

The narrative switches to Moss. He takes a cab to the Hotel Eagle in Eagle Pass, Texas. The clerk is waiting at the desk as if he has been expecting him. Moss pays and goes to his room. The room has old-fashioned pushbutton light switches and old oak furniture. Suddenly, he realizes that the briefcase may be bugged. He finds the sending unit in the middle of a packet of bills, and realizes he is going to have to quit running on luck. He understands what is coming for him, he just doesn’t know when. In the bathroom, he looks at himself in the mirror. It has already occurred to him that he will never be safe again in his life, and he wonders if it is something that a person could get used to.

Moss goes to the front desk and gives the night clerk a hundred dollar bill. He tells the man he isn’t asking him to do anything illegal, and the man says he is waiting to hear his description of that. Moss says someone is looking for him, and he needs the man to call him if anyone checks in. The night clerk agrees.

The phone doesn’t ring, but something wakes Moss a couple of hours later. He gets up and presses his ear against the door. Hearing nothing, he goes into the bathroom, turns on the shower, and closes the shower curtain. He pulls out his bag of supplies and puts it on the chair in the corner. Realizing the phone might ring, he takes it off its cradle. He rumples the blanket and pillows on the bed, and realizing the phone off the hook might look conspicuous, hangs it back up and unplugs the chord. He goes back to the door, and getting down on his stomach, he puts his ear to the crack below the door. A cold wind comes through, as if a door has opened somewhere. He asks himself what he has done, and what he has failed to do.

Moss hides under the bed and waits with the shotgun facing the door. Chigurh enters the room, and pauses. Moss realizes Chigurh is not going to go into the bathroom, and decides it is too late to make any more mistakes, that it is too late do to anything at all, and he is going to die. He tells Chigurh from under the bed that he will blow him to hell if he turns around. He crawls forward, and commands Chigurh drop his gun. Moss does not know who Chigurh is, and notes that he seems oddly untroubled, even with a gun on him. Moss finds something about him faintly exotic, and notes that Chigurh is beyond his experience. He asks Chigurh what he wants, but Chigurh remains silent.

Moss pushes the bed to the side, and grabs the briefcase. Moss notes that Chigurh doesn’t even seem to notice. Keeping his gun on Chigurh, he tells him to leave the room. Outside the door, Moss sees Chigurh’s tracking device on the floor, but he leaves it there, deciding he’s taken enough chances. Moss tells Chigurh to stay where he is. Moss backs down the stairs, and then runs. He hasn’t thought far enough ahead to think about where he is going. In the lobby he sees the night clerk’s feet sticking out from behind the desk.

By the time Moss reaches the other side of the street, Chigurh is on the motel balcony. Moss feels a bullet tug at the bag on his shoulder. The next shot hits him in the shoulder, but he continues running. The final shot hits him in the side. He notes that Chigurh is quite a shot. Further down the road, Moss turns and fires his shotgun toward Chigurh, striking him with buckshot in the leg. Suddenly, a Cadillac spins out in the intersection. Two men get out and start firing at him. He fires two shots back and continues running. On the next street over, he sees himself in the storefront windows. Delirious, he looks up and finds himself sitting on the sidewalk. He tells himself to get up and survive.

Moss packs his gun in his bag, and crosses the bridge into Mexico. He feels cold and nauseous from blood loss. He pays a dime at the turnstile, and enters Mexico. Half way across the bridge, he meets a party of four young men coming back into the U.S. He pulls five hundred dollars from his pocket, and asks to buy one of the young men’s coats. They pass him before one man turns and asks what he will pay. He offers five hundred, but the young man doesn’t believe him. He tells him to show him the money. Moss hands him a hundred dollar bill and offers the rest when he hands over the coat. The man asks why there is blood on the money and Moss tells him he’s been shot. Nervous, the young man’s friends say let’s go, but he demands the rest of the money. Moss hands the money over, they give him the coat, and leave.

Moss stops on the bridge between the U.S. and Mexico, directly over the river. He throws the briefcase over the railing into some cane on the riverbank. He slides to the ground, and sits in a puddle of his own blood. When he finally motivates himself to survive, he continues into the town of Piedras Negras, Mexico. He goes to a park, and sits on a bench as the sun rises. Birds are calling in the eucalyptus trees, and a church stands in the distance. It seems very far away from him.

An old man approaches with a broom, and Moss calls out to him, asking if he speaks English. The man shrugs his shoulders. Moss tells him he needs a doctor, but the man doesn’t respond until Moss lifts himself up and shows the blood on the bench. The man asks in Spanish if he can walk, making a walking motion with his fingers. Moss nods, and the man asks if he has money. Moss hands him a hundred dollar bill, and the man takes it reverently.

A short while later, Chigurh comes out of the motel with a towel wrapped around his bullet-wounded leg. The Cadillac is still in the intersection, and he hears the gunfire of automatic weapons hitting the buildings. The two men firing the weapons are wearing raincoats and tennis shoes, which surprises Chigurh. They don’t look like men one would find in this part of the country. He climbs back up the steps and opens fire on them, killing one man and wounding the other. The man returns fire, shooting out windows and lights. Chigurh realizes that all of this is taking place one block from the Maverick County Courthouse, and knows that the authorities will soon arrive.

Chigurh goes down to the corner and shoots the remaining man in the back. He picks up an Uzi machine gun and rifles the dead man’s pockets for the clips. When he looks up he sees the man he shot in the back looking at him. The man asks Chigurh to help him. Chigurh looks the man in the eye, but the man looks away. Chigurh tells him to look at him, and the man looks, but quickly looks away again. He asks the man if he speaks English, and he says he does. Chigurh tells him not to look away—he wants the man to look at him. He shoots the man in the head and watches his own image degrade in the man’s consciousness. Then he leaves.