When a fictional world is viewed through the Transparent Eyeball, the objective witness, the world appears as real as we can make out our own: in fact more real, free of our imported filters. Not only is the landscape described in full stark detail, but also the horse-roping, the sootstained coffeepot, the rainwet trail poncho. The characters, by contrast, are mostly heard on the audio channel.
Curiously, the two protagonists from the first two books, John Grady and Billy Parham, each unique in their laconic likeability, together in the third volume appear indistinguishable, egoless, pithy, speaking often with double entendre, mingled sans translation with (small s) spanish, just part of the landscape. In this most essential wild west, we have the undiluted essence of (white) man in the elements, in his element, with a brother in blood or bloodshed, an alluring mexicana beguiling, enchanting.
Drama ensues of sublimated lust, saddled to honor and free self-determination. The horse, the rider, and the spirit, joined as one, by turns standing, watering, breathing at rest, neck on neck.
What other work was there for a simple young man, but freelance scalping or joining the army to do it, for the railroad and the new world it brought to the frontier. In the era of this trilogy (pre- and post-WWII) the old west was a relic, a vanishing theatre played by tragic characters trying to be free, to do their best at what they could do.
It was a history in the making, and in the making do—meager beans and charred tortilla, on the trail. Tracking wolf, or horse-thieves, or wild dogs. Witness to hunger and the ragged survivors of revolution, firing squads before bystanding children.
This heartbreaking world is rendered succinctly with tender moments of desert skies, inscrutable mountains, endless plains of greasewood and gravel. Now a glimpse, a generous encounter with an ancient tribal band; now a shared journey with a rickety gypsy caravan.
Fateful encounters with a widowed rancher, a proud haciendado, a barefoot campesina. A society of horsemen, cavaliers, steppe-runners. Some company men, some free agents, most for hire. These are the second survivors here, displacing the first nations. But their reign was fleeting, as they proved pawns in the stretch of human empire into nature’s heartland.
Confronted with raw vast nature, it was human nature to tame and settle and then sell to the highest bidder, or give it up in the end to the government, the army, the distant force come calling to Cowboy Country. In short, the Border Trilogy is a manual for how to see the world—as it was, as it is.
