- On the ride up north, the truck picks up some farm workers who speak to John with courtesy. From his cheap new clothes, they figure he's gone to see his girlfriend, which he confirms.
- That brings a smile, and the narrator mentions that John would reflect on those smiles and the good will behind them for a long time to come, because of their power to heal people and make them feel safe.
- John walks and hitchhikes some more, encountering more friendly people along the way. Things are finally looking up, it seems.
- Seven weeks since his arrest, he returns to the hacienda. He meets Antonio, who tells him that Alfonsa is home but Don Héctor is in Mexico City with his daughter.
- Antonio brings him the things that were left in the ranch, and allows John to stay the night, but wants to act as though the conversation never happened.
- The next morning John Grady walks up to the house and speaks with Alfonsa's servants. He is told to wait until ten that night to see her. From their demeanor, John figures Alfonsa is not happy that he's back. (We'll let you guess whether he's right.)
- In the evening, John meets some of the vaqueros on the ranch, who say that he is welcome there. They're sad that Rawlins did not come as well, and figure that it is no accident that a man is born in one country and not another, and that the seasons of the land form the inner fortunes of man. No one talks of Alfonsa or Alejandra or her father.
- That night Alfonsa welcomes him with the cold shoulder. She reveals that officers had been to the ranch looking for him once before, but that Don Héctor had turned them away convinced that the facts were otherwise, and decided to perform his own investigation.
- He figured out that John had lied to Don Héctor about knowing Blevins, and so already had abused his trust.
- Although John had some idea earlier of why Alfonsa bought him out of prison, she makes it pretty clear: the condition is that he is not to see Alejandra again. Bummer.
- John says that she didn't have the right to do that, but Alfonsa points out that he would have died in the prison. So, you know, he should probably be grateful.
- John simply responds, "then I'd of died" (3383).
- Alfonsa reveals that she had defended John to Alejandra's mother, who was considerably less charitable, which surprises John, who thought Alfonsa bitter and jealous because of her unfortunate life circumstances.
- Alfonsa gives an expansive speech about life and Spanish society, calling all the world a puppet show whose strings can only be traced back to yet more puppets. She talks of her childhood, when Mexico was mired in terrible poverty and she became a freethinker through reading many books.
- She talks of the political popularity of Francisco Madero and his brother, Gustavo, who eventually courts her. She mentions the hunting accident which cost her two of her left fingers, which would have meant nothing to a boy but which was devastating for a girl. Her father began to view her as something disfigured.
- She seemed unmarriageable at that point. (Hey, society people can be d-bags.) But Gustavo, who himself had an artificial eye, continued to court her. However, Gustavo's and Francisco's idealism turned to revolutionary action, catching the eye of the dictator Díaz.
- See, while Francisco came to be the first president of the Mexican republic to be elected by popular vote, he was also the last for some time. His basic trust in human goodness also became his undoing. A coup began, resulting in Gustavo's gruesome death, which she describes in detail.
- Alfonsa ends her sob story by saying this is the community the idealistic Gustavo gave his life for. She says that we all come to be cured of our sentiments in the end. In history, there are no control groups or ways to test a "what-if" question.
- She says she doesn't want a conventional marriage for Alejandra, but John isn't a good alternative—and not because of his country of birth or youth or education, or general tendency to take on bunches of bad dudes with a knife or pistol.
- John protests that she won't let him make his case, but she says that all he has is the excuse that things happened beyond his control, and she has "no sympathy with people to whom things happen" (3426).
- Alfonsa even gives him permission to see Alejandra, but she claims that Alejandra won't break her word to Alfonsa and see him. She says she has told John about herself at length because one should know who one's enemies are, so as not to hate phantoms for a lifetime.
- When John says he doesn't hate her, Alfonsa says that he will.
- The next morning, John says goodbye to the vaqueros and rounds up the horses, including a grullo that Rawlins had ridden. John receives more money from Alfonsa through a servant, embraces Antonio, and then rides off.
- John encounters children in some farmlands whom he asks about his situation with Alfonsa and Alejandra. The children all conclude that, because he offended the grandaunt and the boy who committed the crime he was associated with is dead, he has no choice but to pray to God or consult with a wise man. John stays in a hotel and sleeps nearly 12 hours.
- John calls Alejandra on the phone and says he wants to see her, but she says she cannot. John says she had no right to make the promise she'd made even if they killed him. She agrees to leave one day early and say her aunt was ill in order to see him.
- John takes a train to Zacatecas and checks into a hotel. He meets Alejandra later that day on a train platform, and he is taken aback by how beautiful and mature she looks. Her eyes look sad, but John knows that while he is part of her sadness, he is not the reason for all of it.
- As they walk to the hotel, he takes her hand and tries to read her heart through it, but that fails miserably. They have dinner and John tells her everything about Blevins, the prison, and the man he killed.
- They sit in silence after, and Alejandra is crying when she looks up. When John asks her to talk about what she's feeling, she is reluctant at first, but then bombards him with questions asking how she knows who he is and what sort of man he is, or what kind of man her father is, or if John drinks whiskey. She asks what men are in general. (Seriously, we couldn't even tell you either.)
- John says he told her all there was to tell, and she responds by asking what good it is.
- Alejandra admits she told her father herself that they were lovers, which shocks John. Alejandra says it was because Alfonsa threatened to do it herself, and she couldn't stand for her to have that power. Her father almost went out to kill John right then.
- Alejandra says she destroyed everything and only wanted to die. When John says that he'll make it right, she says that he can't. John thought he'd seen despair before, but from the look in Alejandra's eyes now realizes that he hadn't.
- He's all insistent that he'll make it right, but she says he doesn't understand. She didn't think her father would or could stop loving her, but now she knows.
- They have sex in John's hotel room that night, and as she is crying in bed afterwards, he proposes marriage to Alejandra.
- She doesn't sleep that night, and in the morning, she says she saw him dead in a dream long ago, before any of this. She takes John to a plaza where her grandfather was killed during the revolution. She simply says she wanted to show John—there was only blood on the stones. And now they can go.
- They go back to the hotel to make love again and sleep until evening. Alejandra says she loves John, but cannot do what he asks.
- John sees his life clearly leading to that moment just then, and then sees it leading nowhere at all. He feels something cold and soulless enter him and he's not sure that it will ever leave.
- They walk to the train station, and she doesn't answer as he talks to her on the platform. He sees her off with a kiss.
- John pays his bill at the hotel and leaves. He gets very drunk at a bar and gets into a fight. The next morning, with almost no money, he sets out to hitchhike back to where his horse is.
- He buys some tortillas and ammunition and sleeps that night under the sky with no campfire, his heart full of agony.
- After some days of riding, he arrives at a sign pointing to the town of Encantada. He hesitates for a while, and then decides he isn't leaving his horse down there.
- John sneaks into the old prison/school at night, pistol in hand. He goes to the captain's desk and takes out a pair of handcuffs, and then sits down and puts his feet up. A maid comes in an hour later, and he makes her sit down in a corner of the room.
- The captain arrives next; he thinks about making a break for it, but John cocks his pistol. When asked by the captain what he wants, John says he came to get his horse.
- John leads the captain down to the cell he previously stayed in, where he sets free the old man he once shared the cell with and locks the maid in the cell, apologizing to her.
- John handcuffs the captain and has him lead the horse. They search for the horses that John and Rawlins initially rode in on.
- They manage to find Rawlins' horse, with John bluffing the horse's keeper by saying that he swore a blood oath with Blevins not to let the captain off alive. The keeper tells John that the other horses are at Don Rafael's hacienda.
- John leads them at gunpoint to where his horse Redbo and Blevins' big bay horse are being kept.
- Two men try to ambush John Grady as he leaves, but he gets the jump on one, disarming him. Alas, another snipes him in the leg with a rifle from a longer distance. John manages to make him run off by shooting the car he used for cover.
- John manages to escape with the four horses—Redbo, Rawlins' horse Junior, the grullo from the hacienda, and Blevins' horse—and the captain. John quickly finds riders in pursuit of them, and he takes shots at them with a rifle. The pursuers drop off to take another path.
- After losing the riders, John takes the captain and the horses into shelter under a rockslide. There, he sets the grullo free.
- John gives the captain a drink of water; the captain looks at John's wound and says he's going to die.
- When they camp later that night, John heats up his pistol's barrel on some coals and presses it down into the hole in his leg, cauterizing the wound. The captain is stunned, and the surrounding animals go quiet and the horses go a little crazy.
- After shaking in pain, John reaches for a water bottle but the captain kicks it away, pointing a rifle at him. The rifle isn't loaded, so John simply hauls the captain over by his handcuffs. He thought he might have killed the captain had the gun been loaded, and wonders what the good of pain is if it makes you stupid instead of the other way around. We have to admit he's got a point there.
- As they ride on into the night, the captain's condition seems to be worsening. The next day, the captain says he can go no further.
- John says that he isn't going to kill the captain, and that he isn't like him—moral superiority achievement unlocked.
- He pulls the captain's dislocated shoulder back into position.
- As they move on toward the early evening, John sees riders in the distance. However, they seem to elude them and make camp for the night.
- John dreams about horses moving through ancient ruins, with weathered writing, if there had ever been any at all. The horses move carefully through the ruins and John realizes that what's written in a horse's heart is more durable, since the rain can't wash it away.
- John wakes up to three men with pistols standing over him. A man holding a rifle asks John for the key to the handcuffs, and they free the captain.
- The rifleman asks John which of the horses are his. All of 'em, of course.
- The man confers with the others, and then he comes back with the captain, who is handcuffed again. The man also notes that the rifle is empty.
- The rifleman asks John where his serape is, and when he says he doesn't have one, the man gives John his own. Then the men walk out of the firelight toward their horses.
- When John asks them who they are, the man says "Hombres del país" (3785), which means "men of the country" in Spanish, and the men all ride on. Erm, okay.
- In the morning John rides out with the horses. He kills a doe for food, who looks at him without fear in her eyes as she dies.
- That night John's thoughts turn to the captain, wondering if he's still alive, and to Blevins. He thinks about Alejandra and how he thought he knew the sadness that lay in her shoulders, but he really knew nothing at all.
- The next day when John wakes up he realizes that his father is dead (via psychic link or something, one can only suppose, because the narrator doesn't say how).
- John continues to ride on through a small town, where he sees a wedding. The newly married couple seems to grow old right before his eyes, and the proprietor of a local café remarks that it's good God hides the truths of life from the young, else they wouldn't start out on life at all.
- John crosses the river just west of Langtry, Texas, stuffing his boots in the legs of his trousers and going naked just as he'd done on the way down to Mexico. Boom, he's back in America.
- As he lands on Texas soil, he thinks of his father who is dead in this country and weeps naked in the falling rain.
- John rides through Langtry, and one man working on a pickup truck jostles his companion as John passes. John thinks that he must appear as some sort of ghost out of the past to them.
- John asks the men what day it is, and they say the day of the week; John then asks them the date, and they say it's Thanksgiving. They point John to a café where he can get food and sell his rifle.
- John rides the border country for weeks seeking the owner of Blevins' horse. Around Christmas, three men swear in papers that the horse was theirs and get it impounded.
- John, not represented by a lawyer, tells the judge at the hearing that all he needs is to tell him about the horse. John tells the story from the beginning.
- The judge quizzes John on the number of hectares on the hacienda where he worked, the name of the husband of the hacendado's cook, and whether he has on clean shorts. He also asks to see the bullet hole. In the end, the judge orders the horse returned to John Grady. There's a win, we guess.
- That night John goes to meet the judge at his house, and says that he was bothered by how the hearing made him feel as if he were in the right about everything, which he didn't believe was the case.
- John says he felt like he did Don Héctor wrong, and admits killing the boy in the Saltillo prison. He says that while he had a reason to kill the boy in self-defense, it didn't help. It bothered him because he never even knew his name.
- He also expresses regret over his murderous feelings toward the captain, and suspects that those feelings came from in the fact that he didn't do anything to stop him from killing Blevins. So, guilt.
- John rides out of town and later arrives in Bracketville, Texas, where he hears the preacher Jimmy Blevins on the radio. He seeks out the real Blevins in the town of Del Rio.
- John visits the real Jimmy Blevins' house with the big bay horse that belonged to "Blevins" the kid. Jimmy Blevins and his wife don't know anything about the other Blevins or the horse.
- But Jimmy Blevins mentions that there are a lot of people with that name, some of them even Chinese babies that were named after him.
- They eat supper together, and Jimmy Blevins says a lengthy blessing that covers everything up to global issues. Then reaches for the cornbread, like ya do.
- During dinner, Blevins talks a lot about himself and how he got started as a radio preacher, generally acts like a self-centered buttface, and says that a man might harden his heart to God but that the volume of a loud radio could not be ignored.
- Jimmy Blevins stops talking and he eats two large platefuls, even though he is not a large man. When finished, he says that he has to get back to work, since God doesn't take holidays.
- Jimmy Blevins' wife talks about all the different things her husband has been asked to bless, including corpses. She talks about how he has listeners all over the world. As she finishes, a big, loud snore starts up inside the house. Classy.
- John Grady ends up never finding the owner of the horse. He rides up north toward the end of February, and gets back to San Angelo in March. He rides up to Rawlins' house and calls him out.
- John returns the horse named Junior to Rawlins, and John tells him everything that happened. Rawlins tells John that his dad died, which John supposed he already knew.
- When asked what he's going to do by Rawlins, John simply says he'll "head out," and he doesn't know where.
- Rawlins offers to let John stay and says that this is good country, but John insists that he will move on. He says he knows it's good country, but it isn't his. He doesn't know where his country is, or "what happens to country" (4041). With that, they part ways.
- John attends the funeral of Abuela, the mother of Luisa, who had worked at his ranch for 50 years. No one looks at him as he stands across the road holding his hat.
- He says goodbye in Spanish over her grave and nearly loses his balance as he turns around with his teary face to the wind, holding out his hands to steady himself or slow the world that seems to be rushing around him with no concern for anyone—rich or poor, young or old, living or dead.
- John rides past the oil fields and Native Americans that are still camped out near that land, who watch him wordlessly and without any sort of greeting, without curiosity. They seem to watch him only because they know he is passing and will vanish again.
- John rides off on Redbo into a red desert, leading Blevins' horse as well, with red dust kicking up around the horses' legs. The sky is reddened as a wind picks up near the evening. The country is barren and there are few cattle.
- Red winds continue to blow at John's face as he rides into the sun. The narrator remarks on the shadows of the rider and his two horses passing like one being, "passed and paled into the darkening land, the world to come" (4051).
- And then everyone felt happy and uplifted and positive about the future.