How we cite our quotes: (Paragraph)
Quote #1
They rode singlefile down the cart track that served as a street. Half a dozen low houses with walls of mud brick slumping into ruin. A few jacales of brush and mud with brush roofs and a pole corral where five scrubby horses with big heads stood looking solemnly at the horses passing in the road. (768)
This desolate atmosphere—the mud houses, rut of a road, and lifeless horses—and the empty country surrounding creates an air of remoteness in the boys' initial passage into Mexico. This is definitely not a MetLife resort.
Quote #2
Rawlins shook his head. Drinkin cactus juice in old Mexico, he said. What do you reckon they're sayin at home about now?
I reckon they're sayin we're gone, said John Grady.
Rawlins sat with his legs stretched out before him and his boots crossed and his hat over one knee and looked out at the alien land and nodded. We are, aint we? he said. (807-9)
The characters' initial wonderment at being in Mexico—wondering about the people, food and customs—will later give way to more pressing concerns about survival. Also, "hittin' the Cactus Juice" should be everyone's new favorite phrase.
Quote #3
They were zacateros headed into the mountains to gather chino grass. If they were surprised to see Americans horseback in that country they gave no sign. […] The Mexicans sat their horses and took in their outfits with slow movements of their dark eyes. They themselves were a rough lot, dressed half in rags, their hats marbled with grease and sweat, their boots mended with raw cowhide […]. They smelled of smoke and tallow and sweat and they looked as wild and strange as the country they were in […]. They looked out over the terrain as if it were a problem to them. Something they'd not quite decided about. (888, 892)
The zacateros here are portrayed as cautious, rough like the land itself, but yet seemingly distant from it as they eye it with suspicion. This is the first time they encounter another group of men at length on the road; this is the sort of encounter that the narrator usually narrates in much more detail than people's passing kindnesses.