The Spring 1980 issue of Northwestern University’s literary journal TriQuarterly included an early version of a chapter from Cormac McCarthy’s novel Blood Meridian. The TriQuarterly excerpt, published as “The Scalphunters,” is essentially Ch. XII of the finished 1985 Random House publication of Blood Meridian with some minor differences.
Consider, for example, the following paragraph–the seventh paragraph in “The Scalphunters” —
When the company set forth in the evening they continued south as before. The tracks of the murderers bore on to the west but they were white men who preyed on travelers in that wilderness and disguised their work in this way. The trail of the argonauts of course went no further than the ashes they left behind and the intersection of these vectors seemed the work of a cynical god, the traces converging blindly in that whited void and the one going on bearing away the souls of the others with them.
McCarthy significantly expands the passage in his final revision, underscoring Blood Meridian’s theme of witnessing:
When the company set forth in the evening they continued south as before. The tracks of the murderers bore on to the west but they were white men who preyed on travelers in that wilderness and disguised their work to be that of the savages. Notions of chance and fate are the preoccupation of men engaged in rash undertakings. The trail of the argonauts terminated in ashes as told and in the convergence of such vectors in such a waste wherein the hearts and enterprise of one small nation have been swallowed up and carried off by another the expriest asked if some might not see the hand of a cynical god conducting with what austerity and what mock surprise so lethal a congruence. The posting of witnesses by a third and other path altogether might also be called in evidence as appearing to beggar chance, yet the judge, who had put his horse forward until he was abreast of the speculants, said that in this was expressed the very nature of the witness and that his proximity was no third thing but rather the prime, for what could be said to occur unobserved?
Perhaps the most jarring difference though is that in “The Scalphunters” McCarthy refers to his erstwhile protagonist not as the kid but as the boy. Here’s a longish passage from The TriQuarterly edit to give you a taste of that flavor:
Brown let the belt fall from his teeth. Is it through? he said.
It is.
The point? Is it the point? Speak up, man.
The boy drew his knife and cut away the bloody point deftly and handed it up. Brown held it to the firelight and smiled. The point was of hammered copper and it was cocked in its blood-soaked bindings on the shaft but it had held.
Stout lad, ye’ll make a shadetree sawbones yet. Now draw her.
The boy withdrew the shaft from the man’s leg smoothly and the man bowed on the ground in a lurid female motion and wheezed raggedly through his teeth. He lay there a moment and then he sat up and took the shaft from the boy and threw it in the fire and rose and went off to make his bed.
When the boy returned to his own blanket the ex-priest Tobin leaned to him and looked about stealthily and hissed at his ear.
Fool, he said. God will not love ye forever.
The boy turned to look at him.
Dont you know he’d of took you with him? He’d of took you, boy. Like a bride to the altar.
Biblioklept 