The Diezmo by Rick Bass

 

As it was, he died on the fifth day—in his last hours, he changed his mind and asked Sinnickson to remove the legs, though by that time he was too far gone and we had begun digging his grave even before he passed. We had him buried by that evening, still more bloody and fevered seed for that contested soil.

This brief novel of a godawful early expedition along and below the Border is rife with suffering all elegantly rendered by Mr. Bass.

There is much of the actual history intertwined with fleshing out from the author, and piquant observations such as the following abound.

 “Regardless of your beliefs in a hereafter, or a merciful God, we are flesh but once, and our choices must be made wisely.”

Or this example…

Charles McLaughlin was seated on one of the stone walls, sketching the scene before him quickly, and by the time Wallace and Cameron had the men and their stock rounded up, he had finished his sketch. Those of us who cared to look at it agreed that it was almost realistic, but we were a bit surprised that it had come from his hand, and from his eye. He had made the scene appear almost idyllic, with very little of the squalor. In that regard, the picture was false, but in the sense that it presented ourselves the way we would have liked to be seen, it was true.

Brief, well-observed, if a realistically unpleasant experience.

A superior work.