Call and Gus could abide no horsetheives and saw it as a hang-worthy crime. Yet, they start their drive to Montana by stealing Pedro Flores’ horses. I struggled with this for a bit, but of course we are all full of hypocrisy and often see our own worst flaws reflected back to us in others (or even maybe project them onto others). Is that what I am meant to walk away with from this?
by betweentourns
3 Comments
Layers of rationalization.
The horses were previously stolen anyway.
They’re “only” Mexican. Stealing from Mexicans isn’t that bad.
They were never paid to enforce laws in Mexico.
etc and so forth.
As Cal and Gus saw it, they were stealing horses from a wealthy and notorious Mexican horse thief. It’s different because (a) Flores is Mexican, and Mexico had a very uneasy relationship with Texans in the 1870s, (b) Flores regularly violates American laws but gets away with it because he has a safe refuge in Mexico, beyond the jurisdiction of Texas Rangers, which frustrates Cal and Gus, and (c) Flores is (unjustly) wealthy and won’t suffer for long from the loss of the horses Cal and Gus take — because he’ll just steal some more.
Indeed, Cal and Gus would never have tried their theft if they hadn’t been traveling to Montana, far beyond Flores’s ability to retaliate. To Cal and Gus, they weren’t committing thievery so much as they were administering frontier justice on an old thief who had been getting away thievery because Mexico protected him. The horses they stole weren’t really Flores’s anyway, as they saw it.
Of course, that raises the question of where Flores stole those horses and whether there was a rightful owner out there to whom the horses should have been returned. So there’s still hypocrisy involved. But it’s more attenuated and easier to ignore than the kind of thievery Cal and Gus can’t abide.
Was that the raid across the river? I don’t think it was looked at the same as horse stealing.