Howdy, partner. I promise you no one says that in the 1,056 pages of The Border Trilogy, which feature the tribulations of some rather existential cowboys. All in all, Cormac McCarthy's vaqueros don't say much, but they especially don't talk in horsey clichés. Neither do they talk like people usually do in novels, by which I mean the type of novels popularised in the 19th century and still, for some mysterious reason, going strong today. But while other people in other books psychologise and speak, these people, in these semi-linked books, are mostly busy resisting rudimentary and wholly external forces: terrain and weather and enemies. Their needs are for clothing and food and water and shelter, and for safety from both malevolence and from natural and impersonal forms of danger. They need boots. They need rifles, saddle blankets, and canteens.
