He spends some afternoons talking with his father about why he didn't buy the ranch. His mother comes down the stairs and asks him what he is doing and he replies, 'Settin.'

Then John Grady enters the study of his grandfather. He rubs down his horse and goes to the kitchen for coffee. In the next scene John Grady and his friend Rawlins have returned from a ride and are discussing John Grady's mother, who has a boyfriend only two years older than John Grady. They arrange a horseback ride for Saturday. His father has little appetite and smokes too much, according to his son, who chastises him for the habit. John Grady meets his father in the lobby of a hotel in town, and they go to the Eagle Cafe to eat. The grandfather was the oldest of eight boys, the only one to live past the age of 25 and the first to die in the house. The original 1866 ranch had 2,300 acres the first house was one room made of sticks and wattle. The house in which John Grady grew up was built in 1872. McCarthy provides John Grady's family history, and we finally learn the protagonist's name. That evening John Grady saddles his horse for a ride near the old Comanche road, which comes down from the Kiowa country on the western section of the ranch. A storm is brewing, with spits of snow and lots of wind, which cause the preacher's words to be lost. He goes to the kitchen and has coffee with Luisa.Īt the funeral John Grady sees his father.

The only sounds are a clock ticking and the whistle of a train. A candle lights the room where his grandfather is laid in funeral cloth. Wearing a black suit, John Grady walks down a hallway where portraits of his ancestors hang. It is dark and cold in the early morning when he learns from the housekeeper that his mother is also in the house. It is the year 1949, and John Grady Cole has returned to the ranch for the wake of his grandfather. A death vigil serves as the opening scene in All the Pretty Horses.

Mccarthy all the pretty horses