- The chapter opens with a detailed description of the ranch's geography. Called a "hacienda" in Spanish, its full name is the Hacienda de Nuestra Señora de la Purísima Concepción. The hacendado, or ranch head, is a man named Don Héctor Rocha y Villareal, who at 47 is the only male heir in 170 years to reach such an age.
- There are upwards of 1,000 cattle on this ranch. Over one thousand, we tell you.
- John and Rawlins work the cattle for two days, branding and earmarking and castrating and dehorning and inoculating.
- Then the vaqueros bring down a herd of young wild colts, who become horrified once they're locked into a fenced pen. When Rawlins comments on how spooked the horses are, John Grady replies that "They dont know what we are" (1473).
- John suddenly gets the idea that he can break in all 16 of the wild horses in four days. That'll be impressive, no?
- Rawlins is skeptical, and so is the ranch manager.
- But the next morning John Grady takes down one horse that breaks from the pack. It's so wild it doesn't even smell like a horse, but a wild animal.
- All the while he holds the horse and talks to it in a low, steady voice. He's quite the smooth operator.
- John and Rawlins tie up a few more horses, and now the vaqueros gather and watch with great interest.
- By the time they're half done, the other eight horses are panicking, because their collective pack is broken down.
- At their mid-day meal, the vaqueros treat the boys with deference, but it's not clear if it's because they think they're awesome or mentally unbalanced. No one asks about their methods.
- In the afternoon, the crowd grows, and John Grady takes one horse aside to focus on, spending time fawning over it.
- When Rawlins asks what good all that sort of thing does, John replies that he doesn't know because he isn't a horse. Fair point, buddy.
- John Grady puts a saddle on the horse and rides it, with the horse remaining relatively calm. By now there's a crowd of about 50 people, picnicking and holding up babies. You know it's serious if people are holding up babies.
- Before the night is out, John rides all 16 horses, and there are about 100 people in the crowd, some of them having come from a village six miles to the south or even further.
- Someone presents John Grady with an Emmy in Horsebreaking, or might as well have.
- The horses, which were so wild that morning, now whine to each other in the dark as if one of them were missing. Ah, cruel civilization.
- Rawlins and John go to bed, dead tired. People offer them bad alcohol on the way. Suddenly, they're instant celebrities.
- The next day, they ride the horses a bunch of times—like the teacups in Disneyland, but even more tiring and repetitive.
- In the afternoon, John rides one of the new horses through the country, and he encounters the girl on the black Arabian horse once again. The Arabian horse seems to almost look down on John's mustang with disgust.
- The rider simply pulls up next to him, looks, nods, and rides on. To put it mildly, John is somewhat smitten by the sight of her blue eyes. Love is in the air.
- Three days later the boys get sent to the mountains with a couple of young vaqueros and an old cook and war veteran named Luis.
- At night Luis tells them stories of people who lived and died in the country. He talks about the evils of war and how horses are mirrors of people's souls, and how horses also love war, because it is already within their very being—"no creature can learn that which his heart has no shape to hold" (1641), as the narrator puts it.
- Luis continues, talking about how horses share one soul, and that the soul is a horrible thing to behold, much like the state of our bedrooms.
- John asks him if the same is true of men, and Luis answers that there is no such communion among people, and the idea that people can be understood at all is probably an illusion.
- The boys work for a few more weeks breaking horses, and then John has a meeting with the head of the ranch, Don Héctor.
- They have a casual chat in English about John and about famous horses. At one point Don Héctor asks if he and Rawlins rode from Texas alone, to which John lies and says yes. Then Don Héctor offers to show John some horses.
- There's a break in the narration, and suddenly we're with Rawlins and John, who seem to be discussing an opportunity that John received that will split them up.
- When Rawlins turns in to eat, John has taken his stuff out of their bunkhouse.
- Later that day, John encounters Don Héctor's daughter and her black Arabian horse again in the barn. They finally exchange words: "Buenas tardes," meaning "good afternoon." She rides off on the horse. Seriously, you can cut the romantic tension with (insert sharp object here).
- That night, John dreams of wild horses, who would have never seen a man before yet in whose souls John would come to reside.
- John and Rawlins go up into the mountains a week later, and they discuss Don Héctor's daughter. We learn she goes to some fancy school in Mexico City and she is 17 years old. Rawlins more or less explicitly tells John that she's out of his league. We also learn her name as they go to sleep: Alejandra. Best name ever.
- They ride into a store the next day and spend some of their last cash on new clothes in preparation for an evening on the town.
- That night Rawlins, John Grady, and a boy from the ranch stand around in a dance hall and pass around a bottle of alcohol.
- The narrator notes that Alejandra is dancing with another boy, but she smiles at John as their eyes meet. Quickly we jump forward to where they are dancing together, and she tells John in English that she's glad he came, and she knew that he would come.
- Later, sitting down, John talks about how his grandfather died and the ranch was sold, and how Alejandra has been away at school for three years.
- Soon they decide to go back to the dance floor, and Alejandra mentions she will introduce John to her pretty friend. Right after she says this, the narrator cuts to John riding back alone with the smell of Alejandra's perfume on his shirt.
- Some time later, the narrator relates a tale in which Don Héctor sent a man named Antonio to collect a horse all the way from Lexington that he bought through an agent.
- John examines the horse and Don Héctor allows John to ride him. Don Héctor and John Grady compare their judgments of different mares.
- Despite their disagreements, they both believed that an interest in cattle was the ultimate redeeming feature of a horse, that horses were put on earth to herd cattle, and that cattle was the only wealth proper to mankind.
- Antonio collaborates with John Grady in convincing Don Héctor to let him ride the horse as much as possible. In truth, though, John Grady just wants to be seen riding the horse—specifically, to be seen riding it by Alejandra. (Seriously, horseback riding will win you boyfriends/girlfriends at least 95% of the time.)
- One day he sees Alejandra by the lake gathering flowers. He hasn't spoken to her since the dance and she went to Mexico City afterward.
- They meet unexpectedly on the road one evening, and Alejandra says she wants to ride his horse, even without a saddle on. Alejandra speaks commandingly and John is all hot and sweaty from his ride. Again, no sexual tension here, right?
- Alejandra says to ride her horse back, and John points out that this will get him in trouble, but Alejandra says that he is already in trouble and rides off. So John rides the black Arabian horse back and sneaks past the ranch house.
- The last time John sees Alejandra before she leaves for Mexico City, she rides out of the mountains like something real and yet still a dream: "real horse, real rider, real and sky and yet a dream withal" (1896).
- A week after she leaves, John's invited up to the main house to play chess with the Dueña Alfonsa, Alejandra's grandaunt and godmother and a figure of antiquity and tradition. She speaks with an English accent.
- After brief introductions they begin the game. John Grady doesn't notice that she is missing two fingers on her left hand until the game is well underway.
- John wins the first game, and she makes a move during the second game that leads John to think she might be testing him to see whether he'd throw the game.
- John wins that game as well, at which point it's 2 hours past his bedtime. They play one more game, which Alfonsa wins.
- Alfonsa offers John a snack, which he refuses because he says it'll make him have crazy dreams to eat that late at night. Alfonsa mentions that dreams are durable, but John's skeptical, saying they're only in a person's head. Alfonsa says she doesn't consider that the condemnation that he does.
- Alfonsa mentions that she lost her fingers in an accident while shooting live pigeons. She also notes the scar on John's cheek, which she correctly guesses he got from a horse. She says that scars remind us of our past, and that the events that cause them can't be forgotten.
- From there, she abruptly mentions that Alejandra will be in Mexico City for two weeks and then return for the summer. Which makes John swallow hard.
- Alfonsa says that she isn't actually that old fashioned, and that she disagrees strongly with Alejandra, which is like struggling with her own past self.
- She says that she grew up in a world of men, but this didn't prepare her to live in a world of men. She was rebellious. Uh oh.
- She is sympathetic to Alejandra, but says that she won't have her unhappy, or gossiped about. See, Alejandra thinks she can just dismiss gossip, but Alfonsa knows better: the consequences of gossip can be really bad, not excluding bloodshed.
- For this reason, she says that John Grady cannot be seen riding with her without supervision, and that he's gotta consider her reputation.
- John says that he never meant not to be considerate, but Alfonsa counters that "this is another country," and that "here a woman's reputation is all she has" (1956). A man can lose his honor and regain it, but a woman cannot.
- Later, John relates the incident to Rawlins, who's skeptical that Alejandra's even interested in him in the first place. Rawlins warns him that although Don Héctor likes him, he won't stand for John courting his daughter.
- Five nights later Alejandra comes to get John in his sleep. This starts a series of nights in which they ride out at night together along the mesa.
- One night they take off their clothes to bathe in the lake, and have something of a… passionate encounter.
- Several such more encounters occur for nine nights straight in John's bed, and then Alejandra leaves again for Mexico City.
- John and Don Héctor talk about the horses, and then play a game of billiards in a room that used to be a chapel.
- Don Héctor talks of how Alfonsa was educated in Europe (where she got what Don Héctor keeps calling "these ideas"), and was engaged to a man at odds with her father's political views. Both he and his brother ended up assassinated. Oops.
- Don Héctor speaks disparagingly of people who received European educations, especially about how their different reasonings led them into conflict. He expresses doubt over whether people can be improved by reason, and calls reason itself a "monster." Gee, have a little confidence, buddy.
- While Don Héctor beats John easily at billiards, he blames thinking too much for his bad luck on occasion. He talks of giving in to Alfonsa's demands to send Alejandra to France. He blames the French for his thinking too much. (Seriously, it has always been the thing to blame the French for everything.)
- A week after a tearful farewell with Alejandra, John smokes with Antonio and asks for advice on women when Antonio mentions that Alejandra is still around. He watches her plane leave the next day.
- A few days later, Don Héctor doesn't seem to be around anymore, and even the vaqueros disappear one evening, one by one.
- The next morning John is woken up at gunpoint. With no explanation, John Grady and Rawlins are handcuffed by uniformed men and led away up north on horses.