No Country for Old Men Chapter XIII Summary

How It All Goes Down

  • Our unlucky final chapter has only one section.
  • Bell thinks about his father—and about how he never did him justice.
  • Bell is now older than the oldest age his daddy lived to be.
  • Bell, Sr. was a horse trader, but Bell is a lawman, so he feels like he "was a better man" (13.2) than his daddy, even though he feels bad to think that.
  • Bell had two dreams after his daddy died. The first one he doesn't remember very well. In it, he met his daddy in town, his daddy gave him money, and he lost it. Smooth move, dream sheriff.
  • But the second dream Bell does remember.
  • In this dream, Bell and Papa Bell rode on horseback together through a mountain pass.
  • Daddy, wrapped in a blanket, rode past his son, "fixin to make a fire somewhere out there in all that dark and all that cold" (13.2), and Bell knew that Pops would be there when he arrived.
  • But Papa Bell never arrived. "And then I woke up" (13.2).
  • The end.
  • Chigurh is still out there.
  • Sweet dreams.