Butcher's Crossing

by John Williams

“They got whores in Boston. But a whore in Boston, and a whore in Butcher’s Crossing; now, there’s two different things.”

In Butcher’s Crossing, a whore is a necessary part of the economy. A man’s got to have something besides liquor and food to spend his money on, and something to bring him back to town after he’s been out on the country.

Andrews had a sensation of sinking, as if he were being absorbed downward into a softness without boundary or mark.

“I’ve got them,” Miller whispered fiercely. “By God, they’re buffaloed!”

One bull had dropped so that its huge head rested upon the side of another buffalo; the head seemed to watch them as they approached, the dark blank shining eyes regarding them disinterestedly, then staring beyond them as they passed.

Disinterestingly is a choice

Alone in the great valley high in the mountains the four men, rather than being brought close together by their isolation, were thrust apart, so that each of them tended more and more to go his own way and fall upon his own resources.

Above the eastern trees, the sun was a fiery mass at which Andrews could not look directly; unhindered by mist or cloud, it burned upon them, instantly drying the sweat that it pulled from their faces and hands.

In the mornings he watched Miller go into the deep forest; and he always had the feeling that Miller did not so much go out of his sight as merge and become so intrinsic to the landscape that he could no longer be seen.