"NO COUNTRY FOR OLD

MEN"

Adapted Screenplay by
JOEL COEN & ETHAN COEN

Based on the Novel by

CORMAC MCCARTHY
 1

FADE IN:

EXT. MOUNTAINS - NIGHT

Snow is falling in a gusting wind. The voice of an old man:

VOICE OVER
I was sheriff of this county when I
was twenty-five. Hard to believe.
Grandfather was a lawman. Father
too. Me and him was sheriff at the
same time, him in Plano and me
here. I think he was pretty proud
of that. I know I was.

EXT. WEST TEXAS LANDSCAPE - DAWN/DAY

We dissolve to another West Texas landscape. Sun is rising.

VOICE OVER
Some of the old-time sheriffs never
even wore a gun. A lot of folks find
that hard to believe. Jim
Scarborough never carried one.
That's the younger Jim. Gaston
Boykins wouldn't wear one. Up in
Comanche County.

We dissolve through more landscapes, bringing us to full

day. None of them show people or human habitation.

VOICE OVER
I always liked to hear about the
old- timers. Never missed a chance
to do so. Nigger Hoskins over in
Bastrop County knowed everbody's
phone number off by heart. You can't
help but compare yourself against
the old- timers. Can't help but
wonder how they would've operated
these times.
There was this boy I sent to the
gas chamber at Huntsville here a
while back. My arrest and my
testimony. He killed a fourteen-
year-old girl.
Papers said it was a crime of
passion but he told me there wasn't
any passion to it.

EXT. WEST TEXAS ROAD - DAY

The last landscape, hard sunbaked prairie, is surveyed in

a long slow pan.
 2

VOICE OVER
Told me that he'd been planning to
kill somebody for about as long as
he could remember. Said that if
they turned him out he'd do it
again.

The pan has brought into frame the flashing light bars of
a police car stopped on the shoulder. A young sheriff's
deputy is opening the rear door on the far side of the
car.

VOICE OVER
Said he knew he was going to hell.
Be there in about fifteen minutes.
I don't know what to make of that.
I surely don't.

Close on a pair of hands manacled behind someone's back.

A hand enters to take the prisoner by one arm.

VOICE OVER
The crime you see now, it's hard to
even take its measure. It's not
that I'm afraid of it.

Back to the shot over the light bars: the deputy, with a
hand on top of the prisoner's head to help him clear the
door frame, eases the prisoner into the backseat. All we
see of the prisoner is his dark hair disappearing into the
car.

VOICE OVER
I always knew you had to be willing
to die to even do this job -- not
to be glorious. But I don't want to
push my chips forward and go out
and meet something I don't
understand.

The deputy closes the back door. He opens the front passenger
door and reaches down for something-apparently heavy-at his
feet.

VOICE OVER
You can say it's my job to fight it
but I don't know what it is
anymore.

The deputy swings the heavy object into the front

passenger seat. Matching inside the car: it looks like an
oxygen tank with a petcock at the top and tubing running
off it.

VOICE OVER
...More than that, I don't want
to know. A man would have to put
his soul at hazard.
 3

The deputy slams the door.

 4

On the door slam we cut to Texas highway racing under

the lens, the landscape flat to the horizon. The siren
whoops.

VOICE OVER
...He would have to say, okay, I'll
be part of this world.

INT. SHERIFF LAMAR'S OFFICE -

DAY THE DEPUTY

Seated in the sheriff's office, on the phone. The

prisoner stands in the background. Focus is too soft for
us to see his features but his posture shows that his
arms are still behind his back.

DEPUTY
Yessir, just walked in the door.
Sheriff he had some sort of a thing
on him like one of them oxygen
tanks for emphysema or somethin'.
And a hose from it run down his
sleeve...

Behind him we see the prisoner seat himself on the floor

without making a sound and scoot his manacled hands out under
his legs. Hands in front of him now, he stands.

DEPUTY
...Well you got me, sir. You can
see it when you get in...

The prisoner approaches. As he nears the deputy's back he

grows sharper but begins to crop out of the top of the frame.

DEPUTY
...Yessir I got it covered.
As the deputy reaches forward to hang up, the prisoner is
raising his hands out of frame just behind him. The
manacled hands drop back into frame in front of the
deputy's throat and jerk back and up.

Wider: the prisoner's momentum brings both men crashing

backward to the floor, face-up, deputy on top.

The deputy reaches up to try to get his hands under the

strangling chain.

The prisoner brings pressure. His wrists whiten around

the manacles.
 5

The deputy's legs writhe and stamp. He moves in a clumsy

circle, crabbing around the pivot-point of the other
man's back arched against the floor.

The deputy's flailing legs kick over a wastebasket, send

spinning the castored chair, slam at the desk.

Blood creeps around the friction points where the cuffs

bite the prisoner's wrists. Blood is being spit by the
deputy.

The prisoner feels with his thumb at the deputy's neck and
averts his own face. A yank of the chain ruptures the carotid
artery. It jets blood.

The blood hits the office wall, drumming hollowly.

INT. SHERIFF LAMAR'S BATHROOM - DAY

The prisoner walks in, runs the water, and puts his
wrists, now freed, under it.

INT. OFFICE - DAY

Close on the air tank. One hand, a towel wrapped at the

wrist, reaches in to hoist it.

EXT. ROAD - LATE DAY

Road rushes under the lens. Point-of-view through a

windshield of taillights ahead, the only pair in sight.

A siren bloop.

The car pulls over. A four-door Ford

sedan. The police car pulls over behind.

The prisoner -- his name is Anton Chigurh -- gets out of

the police car and slings the tank over his shoulder. He
walks up the road to the man cranking down his window,
groping for his wallet.

MAN
What's this about?
CHIGURH
Step out of the car please, sir.
The motorist squints at the man with the strange apparatus.

MAN
Huh? What is...
 6

CHIGURH
I need you to step out of the
car, sir.

The man opens his door and emerges.

MAN
Am I...
Chigurh reaches up to the man's forehead with the end of the
tube connected to the air tank.

CHIGURH
Would you hold still please, sir.
A hard pneumatic sound. The man flops back against the car.
Blood trickles from a hole in the middle of his forehead.

Chigurh waits for the body to slide down the car and crumple,
clearing the front door. He opens it and hoists the air tank
over into the front seat.

EXT. ARID PLAIN - DAY

Seen through an extreme telephoto lens. Heat shimmer

rises from the desert floor.

A pan of the horizon discovers a distant herd of

antelope. The animals are grazing.

Reverse on a man in blue jeans and cowboy boots sitting on

his heels, elbows on knees, peering through a pair of
binoculars. A heavy-barreled rifle is slung across his
back. This is Moss.

He lowers the binoculars, slowly unslings the rifle and looks

through its sight.

The view through the sight swims for a moment to refind the
herd. One animal is staring directly at us, its motion
arrested as if it's heard or seen something.

Close on Moss's eyes, one at the sight, the other

closed. He mutters:

MOSS
Hold still.
He opens the free eye and rolls his head off the sight to
give himself stereo.

Close on the hatch-marked range dial on the sight. Moss

delicately thumbs it.
 7

He eases the one eye back onto the sight.

Point-of-view through the sight: Moss adjusts to bring

the cross-hairs back down to the staring animal.

Moss's finger tightens on the trigger.

Shot: gunbuck swishes the point-of-view

upward. Moss fights it back down.

The point-of-view through the sight finds the beast

again, still staring at us.

The sound of the gunshot rings out across the

barial. Short beat.

The bullet hits the antelope: not a kill. The animal

recoils and runs, packing one leg.

The other animals are off with it.

MOSS
Shit.
He stands and jacks out the spent casing which jangles
against the rocks. He stoops for it and puts it in his shirt
pocket.

EXT. ARID PLAIN - LATER

Moss is on foot, rifle again slung over his shoulder,

binoculars around his neck. He is looking at the ground.

An intermittent trail of blood.

Moss's pace is brisk. Distances are

long. He suddenly stops, staring.

On the ground is the fresh trail of blood, the glistening

drops already dry at the periphery. But this trail is
crossed by another trail of blood. Drier.

Moss looks one way along this older trail:

His point-of-view: flatlands. Scrub. No movement.

He looks the other way.
A distant range of mountains. No
movement. He stoops to examine the
trail.
 8

He paces it 'til he finds a print clear enough to give

him the animal's orientation.

He stands and looks again toward the distant mountains.

He brings up the binoculars.

His point-of-view: landscape, swimming into focus, heat

waves exaggerated by the compression of the lens.

Panning, looking for the animal.

Movement, very distant. The animal is brought into focus:

a black tailless dog, huge head, limping badly,
phantasmal by virtue of the rippling heat waves and the
silence.

Moss lowers the glass. A moment of thought as he gazes

off. He turns and heads in the direction from which the
dog came. EXT. RISE NEAR BASIN - MINUTES LATER

Moss tops a rise. He scans the landscape below.

Not much to see except-distant glints, off something not
native to the environment.

Moss brings up the binoculars.

Parked vehicles: three of them, squat, Broncos or other off-

road trucks with fat tires, winches in the bed and racks of
roof lights.

On the ground near the trucks dark shapes lie still.

EXT. BASIN - MINUTES LATER

Moss is walking cautiously up to the site, unslung rifle

at the ready.

Flies drone.

He circles two dead bodies lying in the grass, covered

with blood. A gut-shot dog of the same kind we saw limping
toward the mountains lies beside them. A sawed-off shotgun
with a pistol stock lies in the grass.

The tires and most of the window glass are shot out of
the first pickup Moss approaches.

He opens the door and looks inside.

The driver is dead, leaning over the wheel. Moss shuts

the door.
 9

He opens the door of the second truck.

The driver, sitting upright, still in shoulder harness,

is staring at him.

Moss stumbles back, raising the rifle.

The man does not move. The front of his shirt is covered
with blood.

MAN
Agua.

Moss stares at
him
MAN
...Agua. Por Dios.
MOSS
Ain't got no water.
On the seat next to the man is an HK machine pistol. Moss
looks at it. He looks back at the man. The man is still
staring at him. Without lowering his eyes Moss reaches in
and takes the pistol.

Moss straightens up out of the truck and slings the

rifle back over his shoulder. He snaps the clip off the
machine pistol, checks it and snaps it back on.

Moss crosses to the back of the truck and lifts the tarp
that covers the truck bed.

A load of brick-sized brown parcels each wrapped in plastic.

He throws the tarp back over the load and crosses back
to the open cab door.

MAN
Agua.

MOSS
I told you I ain't got no agua. You
speak English?

A blank look.

MOSS
...Where's the last guy?
The injured man stares, unresponsive. Moss persists:
 MOSS
Ultimo hombre. Last man standing,
must've been one. Where'd he go?

MAN
...Agua.
Moss turns to scan the horizon. He looks at the tire tracks
extending back from the truck. He thinks for a beat.

MOSS
(to himself)
I reckon I'd go out the way I
came in...

He starts off.
Through the truck's open door:

MAN
La puerta... Hay lobos...
MOSS
(walking
off) Ain't no
lobos.

EXT. FLATLAND NEAR THE BASIN - LATER

Moss stops to look out at a new prospect. Flatland, no

cover. He raises the binoculars.

MOSS
If you stopped... to watch your
backtrack... you're gonna shoot
my dumb ass.

He doesn't see anything. He lowers the glass,

thinking. He raises the glass again.

MOSS
...But. If you stopped... you
stopped in shade.

He sets off.

EXT. NEAR THE ROCK SHELF -

DAY A POINT-OF-VIEW

Through the binoculars, some time later. One lone shelf

of rock throws shade toward us. Heat shimmers in
between.
Hard sun makes the rock shadow impenetrable. But there is a
booted foot sticking into the sun toe-up like the nub on a
sundial.

Moss lowers the binoculars.

He looks at his watch.

11:30.
He sits
down.

FAST FADE

EXT. NEAR THE ROCK SHELF -

DAY THE WATCH

12:30.
Moss lowers the wristwatch and raises the binoculars
again. The shadow has shifted. The foot hasn't moved.
Moss gets up and walks toward
it. EXT. ROCK SHELF - MINUTES
LATER

Moss arrives at the rock shelf.

The man's body is tipped to one side. His nose is in the
dirt but his eyes are open, as if he is examining
something quite small on the ground.

One hand holds a .45 automatic.

Next to the body is a boxy leather document case.

Moss looks at the man. He takes the gun, looks at it,

sticks it in his belt.

He drags the document case away from the body and opens it.

Bank-wrapped hundreds fill it. Each packet is stamped

"$10,000."

Moss stares. He reaches in to rifle the stacks, either to

confirm that the bag is full or to estimate the amount.

He stands, looks around, looks back the way he came.

EXT. CATTLEGUARD ROAD - DAY
HIS TRUCK

Moss's pickup is parked by a cattleguard off a paved

but little-used road.

Moss is just arriving. He throws in the document case,

the rifle and the machine pistol, climbs into the cab and
slams the door.

EXT. DESERT AIRE TRAILER PARK - TWILIGHT

Moss's truck pulls into a trailer park that sits alongside

the highway on the outskirts of Sanderson, Texas. An old
sign with a neon palm tree identifies the park as the
Desert Aire.

Moss gets out of the truck next to a double-wide. Lights

glow inside. He takes the case and machine pistol, gets
down on his back next to the trailer and scoots underneath
it.

His point-of-view: plywood and plastic pipes. He pulls some

insulation aside and crams the machine pistol up under the
pipes.

INT. TRAILER - NIGHT

Moss enters carrying the document case. A

twentysomething woman in cutoff jeans and a halter top
watches TV. This is Carla Jean.

CARLA JEAN
What's in the satchel?
MOSS
It's full a money.
CARLA JEAN
That'll be the day.
Moss is crossing to a back bedroom. Before he disappears
inside Carla Jean sees the pistol stuck in the back of
his waistband.

CARLA JEAN
...Where'd you get the pistol?
MOSS
At the gettin' place.
He emerges without the case or the gun and crosses to the
refrigerator. He takes a beer from the refrigerator and peels
its pulltab.
 CARLA JEAN
Did you buy that gun?
MOSS
No. I found it.
CARLA JEAN
Llewelyn!
MOSS
What? Quit hollerin'.
He walks back sipping the beer and sprawls on the couch.

CARLA JEAN
What'd you give for that thing?
MOSS
You don't need to know everthing,
Carla Jean.

CARLA JEAN
I need to know that.
MOSS
You keep running that mouth I'm
gonna take you in the back and screw
you.

CARLA JEAN
Big talk.
MOSS
Just keep it up.
CARLA JEAN
Fine. I don't wanna know. I don't
even wanna know where you been
all day.

MOSS
That'll work.
INT. TRAILER BEDROOM - NIGHT

We are drifting down toward Moss as he lies in bed next

to Carla Jean. He lies still, eyes closed, but he is
shaking his head. As the camera stops he opens his eyes,
grimacing.

MOSS
All right.
He looks at the bedside
clock.
Its LED display: 1:06.

He swings his legs off the bed, looks back at Carla Jean,
and pulls the blanket up over her shoulder.

INT. TRAILER KITCHEN - NIGHT

Close on a gallon jug as Moss hold it under the tap,

filling it with water.

Carla Jean appears in the doorway, looking sleepy.

CARLA JEAN
Llewelyn.
MOSS
Yeah.

CARLA JEAN
What're you doin', baby?
MOSS
Goin' out.
CARLA JEAN
Goin' where?
MOSS
Somethin' I forgot to do. I'll be
back.

CARLA JEAN
What're you goin' to do?
Moss turns from the sink, screwing the top onto the jug.

MOSS
I'm fixin' to do somethin'
dumbern hell but I'm goin'
anyways.

He starts toward the front door.

MOSS
...If I don't come back tell
Mother I love her.

CARLA JEAN
Your mother's dead, Llewelyn.
MOSS
Well then I'll tell her myself.
INT. TRUCK/EXT. CATTLEGUARD ROAD - NIGHT
A MAP

A detailed topographical survey map, illuminated by a

flashlight.

Moss is studying it in the cab of his

truck. After a beat he folds the map.

He checks the .45 taken off the corpse with the money.
Wider: the pickup truck parked outside the cattle guard.
After a beat, the truck drives over the grate onto the
unpaved part of the road, jogging up the uneven terrain.

Through the windshield, the view is pitch black except

for the boulders and scrub picked out by the crazily
bouncing headlights.

EXT. BASIN - NIGHT

DOOR SLAM

We are close on the water jug slapping against Moss's leg

as we pull him through the darkness. The shape of his
parked truck is just visible behind him, silhouetted on
the crest by the glow of the moon already set.

Walking across the basin to the near truck Moss freezes,

noticing:

Its driver's-side door: closed.

Moss scans the horizon. Its only blemish remains his own
pickup.

He jogs the few remaining paces to the pickup. He sets

down the gallon jug. Softly:

MOSS
Hello?...
No answer.

He opens the door.

The man's body is still held upright by the shoulder

harness but his head, flayed by buckshot, is tipped away.

Moss glances at the bed of the truck.

Empty.

He again looks at the horizon.

Now another pickup stands in silhouette next to his own.
Two men are there.

Moss covers behind the dead man's truck. He eases his

head out for another look.

Only one man visible now.

Sounds hard to identify. Something airy. Up on the crest his

pickup rocks and settles. Its tires are being slashed.

The other pickup's engine coughs to life. Headlights and

roof lights go on.

Moss again covers behind the vehicle.

A search-spot sweeps back and forth across the basin

tableau of bodies and trucks. After a few trips back and
forth something happens to the spot: its weaving light
begins to bounce. We can hear the jouncing suspension of
the pickup as it trundles down the incline.

But the light tells the perspective of the slowly approaching

truck. Moss stays in the lee of his sheltering vehicle as he
runs, doubled over, directly away from the light, keeping to
the shadow that wipes on and off.

A gunshot. Its impact kicks up dirt just ahead of Moss to

his right.

Moss turns to see:

Two jogging men flanking the truck like infantry escorting

a tank. One has just halted to fire; the other is now
raising his gun.

Moss tacks and sprints and rolls under a second abandoned

pickup to his left. Another shot sounds and misses.

Bullets plunk into the metal of the truck body. One

bullet skips off the dirt in front of the truck and
pings up into the undercarriage.

Moss is elbowing out the far side, next to a body lying

by the truck's passenger door.

The firing has stopped: Moss steals a look over the hood:

The pursuing pickup is slowing so that the two gunmen can

swing onto the running boards.

The truck accelerates and as it veers around the first

abandoned pickup its lights swing off Moss's cover truck.
Moss sprints off, doubled over, at a perpendicular to his
previous path. He hits the ground, pressing himself into the
earth, head between his forearms.

He elbows away as the truck bears on his former cover.

EXT. RIVER GORGE - DAWN

He tops the small rise and straightens and flat-out runs.

We hear the pickup's engine racing and see, behind Moss,
its spot sweeping backlight across the crest.

Moss is running towards the declivity of a river gorge. Sky

there is pink from unrisen sun.

Moss bears on the gorge, panting.

The pickup bounces up into view on the crest behind him,

roof lights blazing. It is pointed off at an angle. Its
spotlight sweeps the river plain.

It finds Moss. The truck reorients as it bounces down in

pursuit. A muzzle flash precedes the dull whump of the
shotgun.

Moss races on toward the river. Another shotgun whump.

Moss stumbles, turns to look behind him.

The truck, gaining ground. A man stands up out of the

sunroof, one hand on top of the cab, the other holding a
shotgun.

Moss is almost to the steep riverbank. Another whump of the

shotgun.

Shot catches Moss on the right shoulder. It tears the

back of his shirt away and sends him over the crest of
the river bank.

Moss airborne, ass over elbows, hits near the bottom of the
sandy slope with a loud fhump.

He rolls to a stop and looks up.

We hear a skidding squeal and see dirt and dust float

over the lip of the ridge, thrown by the truck's hard
stop.

As Moss pulls off his boots we hear voices from the men
in the truck.

There is the clank of its tailgate being dropped and

sounds of activity on the hollow metal of its bed.
Moss tucks his boots into his belt and runs splashing
into the fast-moving water. A look back:

Something shakes the scrub down the steep slope.

Moss backpedals deeper.

Bursting out of the scrub at the foot of the slope: a huge

black dog with a large head and clipped ears. It bounds
toward Moss.

Moss turns and half stumbles, half dives into the river.
Underwater a very dull whump followed by the fizz of
buckshot.

Moss breaks the surface of the water, gasping, and looks

back:

Figures on the ridge. Below, the dog hitting the water.

Another gunshot from the bank. Where it hits we don't know.

River current and Moss's strokes speed him away.

EXT. RIVER BEND - DAWN

He sweeps around a bend. He finds his feet under him and

staggers onto a sandbar and then splashes through some
outwash to the far bank.

The pursuing dog's head bobs rhythmically in the water.

Moss pulls the gun from his belt. He takes the clip out and
ejects the chamber round.

The dog finds his stumpy legs much closer to the sandbar:
his massive head dips and waggles as he lurches out of
his swim. He emerges from the river and bounds across the
sand.

Moss shakes the gun and blows into the barrel.

The dog splashes through the riverwash that separates him

from the human.

Moss reinserts the clip. He chambers a round as the dog runs

snarling and as the dog leaps he fires.

Moss fires twice more quickly, not waiting to see whether

the first round told.

The dog lands, stopped but not dead. It jerks and gurgles.

MOSS
Goddamnit.
He is looking out at the river. His boots are drifting by.
EXT. RIVER BANK - DAY

Moss has climbed the far bank and found a seat on a rock.
It is now full day. Moss has taken off his shirt and has
his neck craned round and his back upper arm twisted
toward him. Where the buckshot hit, his arm is purpled and
pinpricked.
He meticulously picks shirt fiber out from where buckshot
packed it into the flesh.

He finishes. He rips swatches from his shirt. He starts

wrapping his bare feet as he gazes off.

His point-of-view: a lot of landscape, a highway in the

distance. An eighteen-wheeler shimmies along in the heat.

EXT. GAS STATION/GROCERY - SHEFFIELD - DAY

At an isolated dusty crossroad. It is twilight. The

Ford sedan that Chigurh stopped is parked alongside
the pump.

INT. GAS STATION/GROCERY - DAY

Chigurh stands at the counter across from the elderly

proprietor. He holds up a bag of cashews.

CHIGURH
How much?
PROPRIETOR
Sixty-nine cent.
CHIGURH
This. And the gas.
PROPRIETOR
Y'all getting any rain up your way?
CHIGURH
What way would that be?
PROPRIETOR
I seen you was from Dallas.
Chigurh tears open the bag of cashews and pours a few
into his hand.

CHIGURH
What business is it of yours
where I'm from, friendo?

PROPRIETOR
I didn't mean nothin' by it.
 CHIGURH
Didn't mean nothin'.
PROPRIETOR
I was just passin' the time.
CHIGURH
I guess that passes for manners in
your cracker view of things.

A beat.
PROPRIETOR
Well sir I apologize. If you don't
wanna accept that I don't know what
else I can do for you.

Chigurh stands chewing cashews, staring while the old man

works the register and puts change on the counter.

PROPRIETOR
...Will there be somethin' else?
CHIGURH
I don't know. Will there?
Beat.

The proprietor turns and coughs. Chigurh stares.

PROPRIETOR
Is somethin' wrong?
CHIGURH
With what?
PROPRIETOR
With anything?
CHIGURH
Is that what you're asking me? Is
there something wrong with
anything?

The proprietor looks at him, uncomfortable, looks away.

PROPRIETOR
Will there be anything else?
CHIGURH
You already asked me that.
PROPRIETOR
Well... I need to see about closin'.
 CHIGURH
See about closing.
PROPRIETOR
Yessir.
CHIGURH
What time do you close?
PROPRIETOR
Now. We close now.
CHIGURH
Now is not a time. What time do you
close.

PROPRIETOR
Generally around dark. At dark.
Chigurh stares, slowly chewing.

CHIGURH
You don't know what you're
talking about, do you?

PROPRIETOR
Sir?
CHIGURH
I said you don't know what you're
talking about.

Chigurh chews.

CHIGURH
...What time do you go to bed.
PROPRIETOR
Sir?
CHIGURH
You're a bit deaf, aren't you?
I said what time do you go to
bed.

PROPRIETOR
Well...
A pause.

PROPRIETOR
...I'd say around nine-thirty.
Somewhere around nine-thirty.
 CHIGURH
I could come back then.
PROPRIETOR
Why would you be comin' back? We'll
be closed.

CHIGURH
You said that.
He continues to stare, chewing.

PROPRIETOR
Well... I need to close now --
CHIGURH
You live in that house behind the
store?

PROPRIETOR
Yes I
do.
CHIGURH
You've lived here all your life?
A beat.

PROPRIETOR
This was my wife's father's place.
Originally.

CHIGURH
You married into it.
PROPRIETOR
We lived in Temple Texas for many
years. Raised a family there. In
Temple. We come out here about four
years ago.

CHIGURH
You married into it.
PROPRIETOR
...If that's the way you wanna
put it.

CHIGURH
I don't have some way to put it.
That's the way it is.
He finishes the cashews and wads the packet and sets it on
the counter where it begins to slowly unkink. The
proprietor's eyes have tracked the packet. Chigurh's eyes
stay on the proprietor.

CHIGURH
...What's the most you've ever lost
on a coin toss?

PROPRIETOR
Sir?
CHIGURH
The most. You ever lost. On a
coin toss.

PROPRIETOR
I don't know. I couldn't say.
Chigurh is digging in his pocket. A quarter: he tosses
it. He slaps it onto his forearm but keeps it covered.

CHIGURH
Call it.
PROPRIETOR
Call
CHIGURH
it?
PROPRIETOR
Yes.
CHIGURH
For
what?
Just call it.
PROPRIETOR
Well -- we need to know what it
is we're callin' for here.

CHIGURH
You need to call it. I can't call
it for you. It wouldn't be fair. It
wouldn't even be right.

PROPRIETOR
I didn't put nothin' up.
CHIGURH
Yes you did. You been putting it up
your whole life. You just didn't
know it. You know what date is on
this coin?
 PROPRIETOR
No.

CHIGURH
Nineteen fifty-eight. It's been
traveling twenty-two years to get
here. And now it's here. And it's
either heads or tails, and you have
to say. Call it.

A long beat.

PROPRIETOR
Look... I got to know what I
stand to win.

CHIGURH
Everything.

PROPRIETOR
How's

CHIGURH
that?
You stand to win everything. Call
it.

PROPRIETOR
All right. Heads then.
Chigurh takes his hand away from the coin and turns his
arm to look at it.

CHIGURH
Well
done. He hands it
across. CHIGURH
...Don't put it in your pocket.
PROPRIETOR
Sir?
CHIGURH
Don't put it in your pocket. It's
your lucky quarter.

PROPRIETOR
...Where you want me to put it?
 CHIGURH
Anywhere not in your pocket. Or
it'll get mixed in with the others
and become just a coin. Which it is.

He turns and goes.

The proprietor watches him.

EXT. DESERT AIRE - NIGHT

It is full night.
Moss is pushing open the door to his trailer. We see
Carla Jean inside.

CARLA JEAN
Llewelyn? What the hell?
Moss enters and the door closes.
INT. MOSS' TRAILER - LATER

Carla Jean is finishing bandaging his arm.

MOSS
Odessa.
CARLA JEAN
Why would we go to Odessa?
MOSS
Not we, you. Stay with your mother.
CARLA JEAN
Well -- how come?
MOSS

Right now it's midnight Sunday. When the courthouse opens

nine hours from now someone's gonna be callin in the
vehicle number off the inspection plate on my truck. And
around nine- thirty they'll show up here.

CARLA JEAN
So... for how long do we have to...
MOSS
Baby, at what point would you quit
botherin' to look for your two million
dollars?

Carla Jean stares, thinking.

 CARLA JEAN
What'm I supposed to tell Mama?
MOSS
Try standin' in the door and hollerin:
Mama I'm home.

CARLA JEAN
Llewelyn --
MOSS
C'mon, pack your things. Anything
you leave you ain't gonna see
again.

Carla Jean begins peevishly tossing things into a bag:

CARLA JEAN
Well thanks for fallin' all over
and apologizing.

MOSS
Things happened. I can't take 'em
back.

EXT. CATTLEGUARD ROAD - NIGHT

POINT-OF-VIEW THROUGH
WINDSHIELD
It is night. No other vehicles on this paved
road. Our car turns off and rattles over a
cattleguard.

Parked on the other side is a Ramcharger. Its passenger door

starts to open.

Outside: Chigurh emerges from his Ford.

The man emerging from the truck wears a Western-cut suit.

MAN
Mind ridin' bitch?
EXT. BASIN - NIGHT
THE RAMCHARGER

Bouncing through ungraded terrain.

It stops and discharges the three men-the driver and his
partner, both in suits, from either side, and then
Chigurh from the middle seat.

They have pulled over at Moss's truck.

 CHIGURH
This his truck?
He is opening the door and looking at the plate riveted
inside.

MAN
Mm-hm.

CHIGURH
Screwgie.

The man reaches into a pocket and hands over a

screwdriver. As Chigurh works it under the plate:

CHIGURH
...Who slashed his tires?
DRIVER
Wudden us.
EXT. BASIN - NIGHT

A flashlight beam picks out the dog carcass.

DRIVER
That's a dead dog.
CHIGURH
Thank you.
Chigurh plays the flashlight around the scene. Dead
bodies on the ground.

CHIGURH
...Where's the transponder?
MAN
In the truck. I'll get it.
DRIVER
These are some ripe petunias.
Chigurh gives his flashlight to the driver.

CHIGURH
Hold this please.
He bends down and takes a 9 mm. Glock off of one of the
dead bodies and checks the clip. The other man is
returning from the truck. He hands Chigurh a small
electronic receiver.

CHIGURH
...You getting anything on this?
 MAN
Not a bleep.
CHIGURH
All right...
Chigurh stands and holds his hand out for his flashlight.

The driver hands it to him. Chigurh shines it in his face

and shoots him through the forehead. As the man falls
Chigurh pans the light to the other man who has watched his
partner drop. He looks up, puzzled, and is shot as well.

EXT. BELL'S RANCH - MORNING

A horse trailer is backed up to a small stable with its gate

down.

Sheriff Bell, sixties, in uniform, slaps a horse on the

ass and gives it a "Hyah!" to send it clattering up the
ramp and into the trailer.

His wife, Loretta, appears. She wears a heavy robe and

holds a coffee mug.

LORETTA
I thought it was a car afire.
BELL
It is a car afire. But Wendell said
there was something back country
too.

LORETTA
When is the county gonna start
payin' a rental on my horse.

BELL
Hyah!
He is sending a second horse up into the trailer.

BELL
...I love you more'n more, ever day.
LORETTA
(unmoved)
That's very
nice.

Sheriff Bell puts up the gate and pins it. She watches.

LORETTA
...Be careful.
 BELL
I always am.
LORETTA
Don't get hurt.
BELL
I never do.
LORETTA
Don't hurt no one.
BELL
Well. If you say so.
EXT. CATTLEGUARD ROAD - DAY

The pickup with horse trailer rattles up next to a parked

squad car. Just beyond the cattle guard the Ford sedan is
blazing. Sheriff Bell gets out of the truck and joins his
deputy, Wendell, looking at the car. After a beat of staring:

BELL
You wouldn't think a car would burn
like that.

WENDELL
Yessir. We should a brought wieners.
Sheriff Bell takes his hat off and mops his brow.

BELL
Does that look to you like about
a '77 Ford, Wendell?

WENDELL
It could be.
BELL
I'd say it is. Not a doubt in my
mind.

WENDELL
The old boy shot by the highway?
BELL
Yessir, his vehicle. Man killed
Lamar's deputy, took his car,
killed someone on the highway,
swapped for his car, and now here
it is and he's swapped again for
god knows what.
 WENDELL
That's very linear Sheriff.
Bell stares at the fire.

BELL
Well. Old age flattens a man.
WENDELL
Yessir. But then there's this
other. He nods up the ridge away
from the highway.

BELL
Uh-huh.
He walks back toward the trailer.

BELL
...You ride Winston.
WENDELL
You sure?
BELL
Oh, I'm more than sure. Anything
happens to Loretta's horse I can
tell you right now you don't
wanna be the party that was
aboard.

EXT. BASIN - DAY

The two men on horseback pick their way through the scrub
approaching Moss's truck. Sheriff Bell is studying the
ground.

BELL
It's the same tire tread comin
back as goin'. Made about the same
time. You can see the sipes real
clear.

Wendell is standing in the stirrups, looking up the ridge.

WENDELL
Truck's just yonder. Somebodies
pried the inspection plate off the
door.

Bell looks up, circling the truck.

BELL
I know this truck. Belongs to a feller
named Moss.

WENDELL
Llewelyn Moss?
 BELL
That's the boy.
WENDELL
You figure him for a dope runner?
Bell sits his horse looking at the slashed tires.

BELL
I don't know but I kindly doubt it.
BASIN - DAY
BY THE
BODIES

The two lawmen are dismounting.

WENDELL
Hell's bells, they even shot the
dog.

They walk towards the near truck.

WENDELL
...Well this is just a deal gone
wrong.

Sheriff Bell stoops to look at casings.

BELL
Yes, appears to have been a
glitch or two.

WENDELL
What calibers you got there, Sheriff?
BELL
Nine millimeter. Couple of .45 ACP's.
He stands, looking at the truck.

BELL
...Somebody unloaded on this
thing with a shotgun.

WENDELL
Mm.
Bell opens the door of the truck. Looks at the dead driver.

WENDELL
...How come do you reckon the
coyotes ain't been at 'em?
 BELL
I don't know...
He shuts the door softly with two hands.

BELL
...Supposedly they won't eat a
Mexican.

Wendell is looking at the two corpses close together, wearing

suits.

WENDELL
These boys appear to be
managerial.
Bell walks back toward the bed of the truck as Wendell
appraises:

WENDELL
...I think we're lookin' at
more'n one fracas.

A gesture toward the scattered bodies.

WENDELL
...Wild West over there...
A nod down at the two men in suits with head wounds.

WENDELL
...Execution here.
Bell, at the back of the truck, wets a finger and runs it
against the bed and looks at it.

BELL
That Mexican brown dope.
Wendell strolls among the bodies.

WENDELL
These boys is all swole up. So this
was earlier: gettin set to trade.
Then, whoa, differences... You
know: might not of even been no
money.

BELL
That's possible.
WENDELL
But you don't believe it.
 BELL
No. Probably I don't.
WENDELL
It's a mess, ain't it Sheriff?
Bell is remounting.

BELL
If it ain't it'll do til a mess
gets here.

EXT. MOSS' TRAILER - DAY

AIR TANK

We follow it being toted along a gravel path and up three

shallow steps to a trailer door.

A hand rises to knock. Tubing runs out of the sleeve and

into the fist clenched to knock. The door rattles under
the knock. A short beat.

The hand opens to press the nozzle at the end of the tube
against the lock cylinder. A sharp report.

INSIDE

A cylinder of brass from the door slams into the far wall
denting it and drops to the floor and rolls.

Reverse on the door. Daylight shows through the lock.

The door swings slowly in and Chigurh, hard backlit,

enters. He sets the tank down by the door. He looks
around.

He ambles in. He opens a door.

The bedroom, a messy aftermath of hasty packing.

The main room. Mail is stacked on the counter that

separates a kitchen area.

Chigurh flips unhurriedly through the pieces. One of them

is a phone bill. He puts it in his pocket.

He goes to the refrigerator. He opens it. He looks for a

still beat. He decides.

He reaches out a quart of milk. He goes to the main room

sofa and sits. He pinches the spout open and drinks.
He looks at himself in the dead gray-green screen of the
facing television.

INT. DESERT AIRE OFFICE - DAY

Chigurh enters. Old plywood paneling, gunmetal desk,

litter of papers. A window air-conditioner works hard.

A fifty-year-old woman with a cast-iron hairdo sits

behind the desk.

WOMAN
Yessir?

CHIGURH
I'm looking for Llewelyn Moss.
WOMAN
Did you go up to his trailer?
CHIGURH
Yes I did.
WOMAN
Well I'd say he's at work. Do you
want to leave a message?

CHIGURH
Where does he work?
WOMAN
I can't say.
CHIGURH
Where does he work?
WOMAN
Sir I ain't at liberty to give out
no information about our
residents.

Chigurh looks around the office. He looks at the woman.

CHIGURH
Where does he work?
WOMAN
Did you not hear me? We can't
give out no information.

A toilet flushes somewhere. A door unlatches. Footsteps

in back.

Chigurh reacts to the noise. He looks at the woman. He

turns and opens the door and leaves.
INT. TRAILWAYS BUS - DAY

Some of the passengers are getting out. Moss is up in the

aisle reaching a bag down from the overhead rack. He lifts
the document case from the floor where Carla Jean still
sits next to the window.

CARLA JEAN
Why all the way to Del Rio?
MOSS
I'm gonna borrow a car. From Eldon.
Carla Jean nods at the document case.

CARLA JEAN
You can't afford one?
MOSS
Don't wanna register it. I'll
call you in a couple days.

CARLA JEAN
Promise?
MOSS
Yes I
do.
CARLA

JEAN
I got a bad feelin', Llewelyn.
MOSS
Well I got a good one. So they ought
to even out. Quit worrying about
everthing.

CARLA JEAN
Mama's gonna raise hell.
MOSS
Uh-huh.
CARLA JEAN
She is just gonna cuss you up'n down.
MOSS
You should be used to that.
CARLA JEAN
I'm used to lots of things, I
work at Wal-Mart.
 MOSS
Not any more, Carla Jean. You're
retired.

CARLA JEAN
Llewelyn?

MOSS
Yes

CARLA JEAN
ma'am?
You are comin back, ain't ya?
MOSS
I shall return.
EXT. MOSS'S TRAILER - DAY

Wendell is knocking at its door. Sheriff Bell stands one

step behind him.

WENDELL
Sheriff's Department!
No answer.

BELL
Look at the lock.
They both look. A beat.

WENDELL
We goin' in?
BELL
Gun out and up.
Wendell unholsters his gun but hesitates.

WENDELL
What about yours?
BELL
I'm hidin' behind you.
Wendell eases the door open.

WENDELL
Sheriff's Department!
INT. MOSS' TRAILER - DAY

The men cautiously enter, Wendell leading.

 WENDELL
...Nobody here.
He lowers his gun and starts to holster it.

BELL
No reason not to stay safe.
Wendell keeps the gun out.

WENDELL
No sir.
He goes to the bedroom door as Sheriff Bell, seeing the lock
cylinder on the floor, stoops and hefts it.

He looks up at the wall opposite the door: the small

dent. Wendell pulls his head out of the bedroom.

WENDELL
...I believe they've done lit a shuck.
BELL
Believe you're right.
WENDELL
That from the lock?
Sheriff Bell stands and wanders, looking around.

BELL
Probably must be.
WENDELL
So when was he here?
BELL
I don't know. Oh.
He is at the counter staring at something.

BELL
...Now that's aggravating.
WENDELL
Sheriff?
Sheriff Bell points at the carton of milk.

BELL
Still sweating.
Wendell is agitated.
 WENDELL
Whoa! Sheriff!
Sheriff Bell unhurriedly opens a cabinet. He looks closes
it, opens another.

WENDELL
...Sheriff, we just missed him! We
gotta circulate this! On the radio!

Sheriff Bell takes a glass from the cabinet.

BELL
Well, okay...
He pours milk into the glass.

BELL
...What do we circulate?
He sits on the sofa and takes a sip from the milk.

BELL
...Lookin' for a man who has
recently drunk milk?

Wendell stares at him.

WENDELL
Sheriff, that's aggravating.
BELL
I'm ahead of you there.
Wendell gazes around the trailer, shaking his head.

WENDELL
You think this boy Moss has got any
notion of the sorts of sons of bitches
that are huntin' him?

BELL
I don't know. He ought to...
Sheriff Bell takes another sip.

BELL
...He seen the same things I seen
and it made an impression on me.

EXT. BUS STATION CAB STAND - DEL RIO - DAY

Moss emerges from the station and goes to a cab.

As he sits in:

MOSS
Take me to a motel.
CABBIE
You got one in mind?
MOSS
Just someplace cheap.
INT. DEL RIO MOTEL LOBBY - DAY
RATE CARD

The rates for Charlie Goodnight's Del Rio Motor Court are
under its address of Highway 84 East and an ovalled AAA logo:

Single Person $24.00

Double Bed/Couple $27.00

2 Double Bed/Couple $28.00

2 Double Bed/3 $32.00
People
Voices play off:

WOMAN
You tell me the option.
MOSS
The what?
WOMAN
The
option.

Wider shows that we are in a motel lobby. A woman faces Moss

across a Formica counter top She has handed him the framed
rate card.

WOMAN
...You pick the option with the
applicable rate.

MOSS
I'm just one person. Don't matter
the size of the bed.

INT. MOTEL ROOM - DAY

Wide on the room. Twin-bed headboards are fixed to the
wall but only the far one has a bed parked beneath it.
Moss sits on the bed, phone to his ear. It rings a couple
times.

He gives up, hangs up, rises.

INT. BATHROOM - DAY

Moss stands in front of the mirror, twisted around to examine

the buckshot wound. He shrugs his shirt back on.

Holding on the mirror we see him walk back into the

main room and stop, looking around. He looks slowly up
to the ceiling.

INT. MOTEL ROOM - DAY

CLOSE ON A SCREW

Being unscrewed. Wider shows us Moss, standing on the

bed, unscrewing the vent on an overhead airduct.

He gets down off the bed, unzips his duffle bag and takes
the document case out of it. He opens the case, takes out
a packet of bills, counts out some money and puts it in
his pocket. He refastens the case.

He goes to the window and cuts off a length of the curtain

cord. He ties the curtain cord to the handle of the document
case. He goes to the closet, leaving the case on the bed.

He reaches into the empty closet, lifts the coat rail off
its supports and lets the hangers slide off onto the
floor.

INT. LOOKING DOWN THE AIRDUCT - DAY

The duct hums with a low, airy compressor sound. The

galvanized metal stretches away to a distant elbow. The
document case is plunked down in the foreground and then
gently pushed down the length of the tube by the coat pole.
The free end of the cord trails off the handle for retrieval.

INT. MOTEL ROOM - DAY

THE DUFFLE

Moss unzips it and pulls out the machine pistol and the
.45 that he took off the dead man. He lifts the mattress
and stashes the machine pistol underneath. He checks the
chamber of the .45 and stuffs it in his belt.
INT. MOTEL ROOM/EXT. PARKING LOT - DAY
THE WINDOW
Moss pulls back one curtain to look out at the
lot. Nothing there disturbs him.
He closes the curtains, crossing one over the
other. He goes out the door, shutting it softly
behind him. INT. ROADSIDE DINER - DAY

PHONE BILL
A pencil taps at a Del Rio number that repeats on the
bill. We hear phone-filtered rings.

The rings are cut off by the clatter of a hang-up. The

pencil moves to an Odessa number, the only other repeat on
the short list of toll calls.

We cut up to Chigurh as he finishes dialing, in the booth

of a roadside diner. Dusk.

Phone-filtered rings. Connection; a woman's voice:

WOMAN
Hello?
CHIGURH
Is Llewelyn there?
WOMAN
Llewelyn?! No he ain't.
CHIGURH
You expect him?
The woman's voice is old, querulous:

WOMAN
Now why would I expect him? Who
is this?

Chigurh stares for a short beat, then prongs the phone.

INT. A SMALL GENERAL STORE - DAY

Moss is standing in front of a rack of cowboy boots at the

back of the store. He looks up at an approaching salesman,
a bow-legged old man in a white shirt.
 SALESMAN
Hep
you?
MOSS
I need the Larry Mahan's in
black, size 11.

SALESMAN
Okay.

MOSS
You sell socks?
SALESMAN
Just white.
He gathers up a brown paper bag from a pharmacy.

MOSS
White is all I wear. You got a
bathroom?

INT. BATHROOM - DAY

Moss is sitting on the toilet taking off socks with bloody

soles. Sneakers sit on the floor. The pharmacy bag sits
next to them.

He sprays disinfectant on his feet. He takes out

bandages. INT. SHOE STORE - DAY

Moss is returning. The bowlegged salesman stands in the aisle

holding aloft a pair of boots.

SALESMAN
Ain't got Larries in black but I
got 'em in osta-rich. Break in
easy.

INT. CAB/EXT. DEL RIO MOTEL - NIGHT

It is rolling to a stop in front of Charlie Goodnight's

Del Rio Motor Hotel.

Moss fishes for his wallet but stops, looking.

Parked in the street in front of the motel is an offroad

truck with roof lights.

MOSS
Don't stop. Just ride me up past
the rooms.
 DRIVER
What
room?
MOSS
Just drive me around. I want to see
if someone's here.

The cab rolls slowly up the lot.

MOSS
...Keep going.
His pivoting point-of-view of his room. The window shows
a part between the curtains.

MOSS
...Keep going. Don't stop.
DRIVER
I don't want to get in some kind
of a jackpot here, buddy.

MOSS
It's all right.
DRIVER
Why don't I set you down here and
we won't argue about it.

MOSS
I want you to take me to another
motel.

DRIVER
Let's just call it square.
Moss reaches a hundred-dollar bill up to the driver.

MOSS
You're already in a jackpot.
I'm trying to get you out of
it. Now take me to a motel.

The driver reaches up for the bill then turns the cab out
of the parking lot onto the hiway. Moss turns to look at
the receding lights of the motel.

EXT. THROUGHWAY INTERCHANGE - NIGHT

PAVEMENT

Rushing under the lens, lit by headlights.

From high up we see a throughway interchange as Chigurh's
Ramcharger takes the right fork of the highway under a green
sign for Del Rio.

INT. THE RAMCHARGER - NIGHT

Chigurh looks down at the passenger seat. On it lies the

transponder, powered on but silent. Next to it is a machine
pistol with a can-shaped silencer sweated onto the barrel.

The transponder beeps once.

Chigurh looks up. We are approaching a steel bridge. The

headlights pick up a large black bird perched on the aluminum
bridge rail.

The passenger window hums down.

Chigurh picks up the pistol and levels the barrel across the
window frame.

The truck bumps onto the bridge, its tires skipping over the
seams in the asphalt. As it draws even the bird spreads its
wings and Chigurh fires-a muted thump like a whoosh of air.

From high overhead: the bullet hits the guardrail making

it hum as the Ramcharger recedes and the bird lifts into
the darkness, heavily flapping its wings.

INT. CAFE - MORNING

Morning. Bell sits drinking coffee. Wendell stands in the

aisle handing something over.

WENDELL
He labs from Austin on the man by
the highway.

Bell takes the papers and starts to look at them.

BELL
What was the bullet?
WENDELL
Wasn't no bullet.
This brings Bell's look up.

BELL
Wasn't no bullet?
WENDELL
Yessir. Wasn't none.
 BELL
Well, Wendell, with all due respect,
that don't make a whole lot of
sense.

WENDELL
No sir.
BELL
You said entrance wound in the
forehead, no exit wound.

WENDELL
Yes sir.
BELL
Are you telling me he shot this boy
in the head and then went fishin'
around in there with a pocket
knife?

WENDELL
Sir, I don't want to picture that.
BELL
Well I don't either!
A beat during which both men picture it, ended by an arriving
waitress.

WAITRESS
Can I freshen that there for you
Sheriff?

The Sheriff's distressed look swings on to her.

BELL
Yes Noreen you better had. Thank
you.

WENDELL
The Rangers and DEA are heading out
to the desert this morning. You
gonna join 'em?

BELL
I don't know. Any new bodies
accumulated out there?

WENDELL
No sir.
BELL
Well then I guess I can skip it.
Heavens to Betsy, Wendell, you
already put me off my breakfast.
EXT. SPORTING GOODS STORE - DAY

Moss pushes off from the wall he was leaning against: someone
inside the glass double doors is stooping to unlock them.

INT. SPORTING GOODS STORE - GUN COUNTER - DAY

The clerk is handing a shotgun across the counter.

CLERK
Twelve gauge. You need shells? Moss
looks the gun over.

MOSS
Uh-huh. Double ought.
CLERK
They'll give you a wallop.
He pushes the shells across.

MOSS
You have camping supplies?
ANOTHER COUNTER

A clerk stares at Moss.

CLERK
Tent
poles.
MOSS

Uh-huh.
CLERK
You already have the tent?
MOSS
Somethin' like that.
CLERK
Well you give me the model number
of the tent I can order you the
poles.

MOSS
Never mind. I want a tent.
CLERK
What kind of tent?
MOSS
The kind with the most poles.
 CLERK
Well I guess that'd be our ten-foot
backyard Per-Gola. You can stand up
in it. Well, some people could
stand up in it. Six foot clearance
at the ridge. You might just could.

MOSS
Let me have that one. Where's the
nearest hardware store?

INT. MOSS' NEW MOTEL ROOM - DAY

He has the shotgun wedged in an open drawer and is sawing

off its barrel with a hacksaw.

MINUTES LATER

Moss sits on the bed dressing the barrel with a file.

He puts down the file, looks at the barrel. He slides the

forearm back and forward again and lets the hammer down with
his thumb. He looks the gun over, appraising, and then opens
the box of shells and starts feeding in the heavy waxed
loads.

INT. FIRST MOTEL LOBBY - DAY

Moss enters carrying a new duffle bag. The same woman is

behind the counter.

MOSS
Could I get another room.
WOMAN
You want to change rooms?
MOSS
No, I want to keep my room, and get
another one.

WOMAN
Another additional.
MOSS
Uh-huh.You got a map of the rooms?
She inclines her head to look under the counter.

WOMAN
Yeah we had a sorta one.
She finds a brochure and hands it across. It shows a car
from the fifties parked in front of the hotel in hard
sunlight.
Moss unfolds the brochure and studies.

MOSS
What about one forty-two.
WOMAN
You can have the one next to
yours if you want. One twenty.
It ain't took.

MOSS
No, one forty-two.
WOMAN
That's got two double beds.
EXT. MOTEL PARKING LOT - DAY

An arcing point of view on the window of Moss's old room.

The curtain still slightly open.

A reverse shows Moss crossing the lot from the office

carrying his long nylon duffle bag, studying the room. He
looks further down the street.

The truck with the roof lights is still parked

there. INT. 2ND MOTEL ROOM

Two double beds. Moss is listening at the wall. He goes

to the bed and unzips the duffle bag and pulls out the
sawed- off shotgun. He lays it on the bed. He pulls the
tent poles and some duct tape out of the duffle.

INT. CHIGURH'S TRUCK/TWO LANE HIGHWAY - LATE DAY

CHIGURH

Driving slowly down the street with frequent glances down

at the receiver on the seat next to him. The receiver
lights ups and bleeps one time.

Chigurh slows and looks around at the buildings that line

the two-lane highway.

INT. 2ND MOTEL ROOM - LATE DAY

Moss is standing on a desk chair unscrewing the plate from

the overhead airduct. He lays it aside and raises a
flashlight and peers into the airduct.
INT. MOTEL DUCT - LATE DAY

Down the length of the duct we see an elbow junction ten

feet away. The end of the document case is just visible
sticking out into the elbow.

CHIGURH

The receiver is bleeping slowly as the car creeps along.

Up at a distant intersection is Charlie Goodnight's Del
Rio Motel.

INT. 2ND MOTEL ROOM

Moss rips off a length of duct tape. He wraps it around

two tent poles placed end-to-end but an inch apart, not
butting. He gives the tape several winds.

EXT. MOTEL PARKING LOT - LATE

DAY CHIGURH

He is slowly driving the parking lot, the receiver now in

his lap.

The beeping frequency peaks and then starts to fall off.

Chigurh puts the truck in reverse and eases back to the peak.

His point-of-view: window with parted

curtains. INT. 2ND MOTEL ROOM - LATE DAY

Moss experiments with the tape-joint, angling then

straightening the two poles. Satisfied, he starts taping
on a third length of pole.

INT. MOTEL LOBBY - NIGHT

Chigurh stands across the counter from the clerk who

looks at him, waiting.

He is frowning at the rate card.

INT. CHIGURH'S MOTEL ROOM -
NIGHT DOOR

It swings slowly in toward us. Chigurh stands in the doorway.

The room-number bangle hangs off the key in the knob.

He stares in for a beat.

He enters slowly and reaches up for the light switch. He
doesn't turn it on. He drops his hand. He reaches up again,
feeling it.

He looks around the room. He takes the key and closes the
door behind him.

MOSS

Moss pulls three wire hangers off the closet rack. He

takes them to the bureau and picks up a sidecutter.

CHIGURH

He walks over to the

bathroom. He turns on its
light, looks.

He leaves the door open. He goes to a closet, opens it,

looks.
He goes to the door of the room but doesn't open it. He
stands with his back against it and looks at the room.

The bathroom door.

The closet door.
Chigurh goes to the bed and sits to take off his boots.
MOSS

Moss snips the last of the wire hangers' hooks off with
the sidecutter. He wraps the three hooks with duct tape
to make a sturdier one.

He wraps more tape to attach this hook to the end of

the three-link pole.

CHIGURH

From a bag he withdraws a twelve-gauge automatic shotgun

fitted with a silencer big around as a beer can.

He checks the loads.

He picks up the regularly beeping receiver, turns it off,

and slips it into his pocket.

He hoists the air tank.

MOSS

He is standing on the chair below the airduct, stooping

to pick up the jury-rigged pole leaning nearby. He
straightens and feeds the length of the pole into the
duct, using the joints to angle it in.

INT. MOTEL DUCT - NIGHT

Inside the duct: he watches the pole play in, illuminated

by the flashlight he has left resting inside.

EXT. MOTEL WALKWAY - NIGHT

STOCKINGED FEET
We track on the feet padding down the exterior walkway.
INT. MOTEL DUCT - NIGHT

MOSS
Peering along the airduct, both hands up next to one ear
awkwardly maneuvering the pole.

He lays the far, hooked end over the protruding corner of

the document case. He pulls.

The pole slides off the case.

EXT./INT. 1ST MOTEL ROOM - NIGHT
CHIGURH

He stands at the door of Moss's first room. He eases an ear

against it.

He steps back.

He punches out the lock cylinder with the airgun and

kicks in the door, raising the shotgun.

A Mexican in a guyabera reclines on one of the two double

beds.

He is scrabbling for a machine pistol on the nightstand.

Chigurh fires three times quickly. The damped blasts have

the low resonance of chugs into a bottle.

MOSS

Head still in the airduct, frozen, listening.

EXT./INT. 1ST MOTEL ROOM - NIGHT
CHIGURH

Also frozen, back against the wall outside the room, to

one side of the open door.

After a beat he steps back into the open doorway leveling

the gun.

Inside the room: no movement. Much of the man on the bed is

spattered against the chewed-up headboard.

The bathroom door is ajar, its light

on. A long beat.

Movement in the wedge of light.

Immediately, chugs from the shotgun chew up bathroom door
and nearby wallboard.

A cry from inside. A brief chatter of machine

pistol. INT. MOTEL DUCT - NIGHT

MOSS'S POV
Along the air vent.

The machine-pistol chatter crosses the cut.

We hear bullets snap through metal. The sound brings on

indirect light as holes are punched in the duct somewhere
around the bend.

Moss holds still as the galvanized metal faintly

thunders. The flashlight resting on it wobbles.

EXT./INT. 1ST MOTEL ROOM - NIGHT

CHIGURH
Gun leveled, at the open door.
Again, no movement.

He advances into the room, gun pointing at the bathroom

door. As he advances he swings the gun briefly over at the
closet door and fires. The splintered-in door reveals no
occupant.

Chigurh angles around the double bed to get a view of

that wedge of bathroom floor visible through its door.
Blood is pooling out from the right.
Chigurh fires at the baseboard to the right of the door.
INT. MOTEL DUCT - NIGHT

Moss makes another attempt to hook the bag. The hook takes.
Moss drags the case inches out into the duct's bend
before the hook slides off again.

INT. 1ST MOTEL ROOM BATHROOM - NIGHT

CHIGURH

He uses the shotgun barrel to push open what's left of

the bathroom door.

The mirror over the facing sink gives a view of most of

the hidden side of the bedroom/ bathroom party wall.
Partial view of a man pressed against the wall, standing
in the tub in the corner. From his posture and the one
visible hand he seems unarmed.

Chigurh enters the bathroom.

The cornered man is unhurt but terrified. He holds up

his hands.

MAN
No me mate.
The man on the floor is quite dead. A machine pistol lies
in one out-flung hand.

Chigurh looks back up at the survivor.

CHIGURH
How'd you find it?
MAN
No me mate.
Chigurh walks unhurriedly to the tub. The man watches
him, hands up, vibrating.

Chigurh reaches with his free hand and pulls the shower
curtain most of the way round, hiding the man. He angles the
nose of the shotgun in and fires.

MOSS

The hook again snags a strap on the case. Moss pulls,

carefully.
INT. 1ST MOTEL ROOM - MAIN ROOM - NIGHT

Chigurh emerges from the bathroom. His socks are sodden

with gore. He sits on the bed and peels them off. He rubs
the bottom of each foot with the ankle of each sock and
drops the socks to the floor.

He rises and opens three bureau drawers, which are empty,

and leaves them open.

He pulls open what remains of the closet door.

Empty. He looks under the bed.

He stands, looks around.

He looks up. His look lingers.

Close on the airduct grille: it is dusty. Rub-marks have

made four dark bands across the dusty slats. Chigurh's
fingers rise into frame and meet the grille, roughly
aligning with the finger marks in the dust.

Close on a screwhead: a dime enters and engages the screw

and starts turning it.

INT. MOTEL DUCT - NIGHT

From inside the duct: fingers reach through the grille

and Chigurh's hand pushes it up into the duct, then
angles it and withdraws it. Faintly, under the distant
airy drone of the compressor, we hear the grate clatter
to the floor.

The back of Chigurh's head appears. He aims a flashlight

away down the far length of the duct. A beat.

He pivots to face us.

His point-of-view: the length of the duct, empty, with

a drag-mark through the middle of the dust.

Back to Chigurh. His look holds.

He ducks out.

INT. 1ST MOTEL ROOM - NIGHT

In the room: Chigurh steps down from the chair and pulls the
receiver from his pocket and turns it on.

It beeps once.
Silence.
Frowning, looking down at the receiver, Chigurh makes a
slow sweep with it. The silence holds-snapped off by car
steady as we cut to:

INT. STATION WAGON - NIGHT

Moss, with his duffle bag and document case, sits in

the passenger seat of an old station wagon. The driver
is an elderly man in a yoked shirt.

After a beat, eyes fixed on the road, the old man shakes his
head.

OLD MAN
Shouldn't be doin' that. Even a
young man like you.

Moss gives him a look. A beat.

MOSS
Doin' what. The old man gazes at
the road.

OLD MAN
Hitchhikin'.
He shakes his head again. Silent driving. The old man
murmurs:

OLD MAN
Dangerous.
EXT. DOWNTOWN HOUSTON - DAY
BOOMING UP

We are looking out as a foreground building slips by and

we rise to get an ever-higher perspective on downtown
Houston, hazy under a noon sun.

INT. OFFICE - DAY

A man standing behind a large desk-behind him, floor-to-

ceiling windows-has no small talk for Carson Wells, the man
entering.

MAN
You know Anton Chigurh by sight, is
that correct?

Carson Wells sits in front of the desk, his manner

affable. He rests a booted foot across one knee.
 WELLS
Yessir, that's correct. I know
'em when I see 'em.

MAN
When did you last see him.
WELLS
November the 28th, last year.
MAN
You seem pretty sure of the date.
Did I ask you to sit?

WELLS
No sir but you struck me as a man
who wouldn't want to waste a
chair. I remember dates. Names.
Numbers. I saw him on November
28th.

The man gazes. He nods.

MAN
We got a loose cannon here. And
we're out a bunch of money, and the
other party is out his product.

WELLS
Yessir. I understand that.
The man looks at him, appraising. He nods again and slides a
bank card across the table.

MAN
This account will only give up
twelve hundred dollars in any
twenty-four hour period. That's up
from a thousand.

Wells rises to take the card and then reseats himself.

WELLS
Yessir.
MAN
If your expenses run higher I
hope you'll trust us for it.

WELLS
Okay.
MAN
How well do you know Chigurh.
 WELLS
Well enough.
MAN
That's not an answer.
WELLS
What do you want to know?
MAN
I'd just like to know your opinion
of him. In general. Just how
dangerous is he?

Wells shrugs.

WELLS
Compared to what? The bubonic
plague? He's bad enough that you
called me.
He's a psychopathic killer but so
A beat. what? There's plenty of them around.

MAN
He killed three men in a motel in
Del Rio yesterday. And two others
at that colossal goatfuck out in
the desert.

WELLS
Okay. We can stop that.
MAN
You seem pretty sure of
yourself. You've led something
of a charmed life haven't you
Mr. Wells?

Wells rises.

WELLS
In all honesty I can't say that
charm has had a whole lot to do with
it.

He thumps once at his chest.

WELLS
...I'm wondering...
MAN
Yes?
WELLS
Can I get my parking ticket validated?
The man gazes.

MAN
...An attempt at humor, I suppose.
WELLS
I'm sorry.
MAN
Goodbye, Mr. Wells.
EXT. EAGLE PASS TOWN SQUARE - DUSK

Moss is getting out of the station wagon with his duffle and
document case.

It is a town square. Among the old buildings is the Hotel

Eagle, identified by a neon above the front door.

INT. HOTEL EAGLE LOBBY - NIGHT

Moss enters. Behind the front desk an older man sits reading
Ring magazine. He has a hand-rolled cigarette.

MOSS
One room, one night.
CLERK
That's twenty-six dollars.
MOSS
You on all night?
CLERK
Yessir, be here til ten tomorrow
morning.

Moss pushes a hundred along with smaller bills across the

desk.

MOSS
For you. I ain't asking you to do
anything illegal.

The clerk looks at the hundred-dollar bill without reaching.

CLERK
I'm waitin' to hear your
description of that.
 MOSS
There's somebody lookin' for me.
Not police. Just call me if anyone
else checks in tonight.

INT. SECOND-FLOOR HALLWAY - NIGHT

Moss is mounting the stairs from the lobby. The

carpeted hallway is lined by transom-topped doors.
Moss goes to a door halfway down on his left.

INT. HOTEL ROOM - NIGHT

Moss enters a room with old oak furniture and high

ceilings. He sets the document case next to the bed.

He unzips the duffel and takes out the shotgun which he

lays on the bed, and then goes to the window. He parts the
curtain to look down.

The street is empty. Mexican music floats up faintly from

a bar somewhere not far away.

INT. HOTEL ROOM - LATER

The room is dark. The music is gone.

We are looking straight down on Moss lying, clothed, on

the bed. We are booming straight down toward him.

After a beat he shakes his head. He opens his eyes,

grimacing.

MOSS
There just ain't no way.
He sits up and turns on the bedside lamp.

The shot gun and document case are on the floor by the
bed. Moss swings the document case onto the bed and
unclasps it and upends the money onto the bed. He feels
the bottom of the case, squeezing it with one hand inside
and one hand
out, looking for a false bottom. He eyeballs the case,
turning it over and around.

He starts riffling money packets.

He finds one that binds. It has hundreds on the outside

but ones inside with the centers cut out. In the hollow
is a sending unit the size of a Zippo lighter.

He holds the sender, staring at

it. A long beat.
From somewhere, a dull chug. The sound is hard to read-a
compressor going on, a door thud, maybe something else.

The sound has brought Moss's look up. He sits listening. No

further sound.

Moss reaches to uncradle the rotary phone by the bed. He

dials 0.

We hear ringing filtered through the handset. Also, faintly,

offset, we hear the ring direct from downstairs.

After five rings Moss cradles the phone.

He goes to the door, reaches for the knob, but hesitates.

He gets down on his hands and knees and listens at the crack
under the door.

An open airy sound like a seashell put to your ear.

Moss rises and turns to the bed. He piles money back into
the document case but freezes suddenly-for no reason we
can see.

A long beat on his motionless back. We gradually become

aware of a faint high-frequency beeping, barely audible.
Its source is indeterminate.

Moss clasps the document case, picks up his shotgun and

eases himself to a sitting position on the bed, facing the
door.

He looks at the line of light under it.

The beeps approach, though still not loud. A long wait.

At length a soft shadow appears in the line of light

below the door. It lingers there. The beeping-stops.

A beat. Now the soft shadow becomes more focused. It

resolves into two columns of dark: feet planted before the
door.

Moss raises his shotgun toward the

door. A long beat.

Moss adjusts his grip on the shotgun and his finger

tightens on the trigger.

The shadow moves, unhurriedly, rightward. The band of light

beneath the door is once again unshadowed.

Quiet. Moss stares.

The band of light under the
door. Moss stares.

Silently, the light goes out.

Something for Moss to think about. He stares.

The hallway behind the door is now dark. The door is defined
only from his side, by streetlight-spill through the window.

Moss stares. He shifts, starts to rise, doesn't. A beat.

A report -- not a gunshot, but a stamping sound, followed

by a pneumatic hiss.

It brings a dull impact and Moss recoils,

hit. He winces, feeling his chest.

The door is shuddering creakily in.

It is all strange. Moss gropes in his lap and picks something
up. The lock cylinder.

The creaking door comes to rest, ajar.

Moss fires. The shotgun blast roars in the confined space

and for an instant turns the room orange. The chewed-up
door wobbles back against the jamb and creakily bounces in
again. Moss has already risen and is hoisting the document
case.

FROM OUTSIDE HIS WINDOW

Moss finishes draping his shotgun by its strap across

his back and climbs out onto the ledge with the document
case. He swings the document case out and drops it.

The bracketing for the hotel's sign gives Moss a handhold.

He grabs it as inside the room the door is kicked open. Moss
swings down as, with a muted thump, orange muzzleflash
strobes the room.

Moss drops.

EXT. HOTEL EAGLE SIDEWALK - NIGHT

Moss lands and grabs the document case and straightens. He

is at the hotel entrance, standing in the light coming
through the etched glass of the double doors.
He looks at his own shadow thrown onto the street. He plunges
through the doors into the lobby as a gun thumps and
crackling shot chews the sidewalk.

INT. LOBBY - NIGHT

Moss hurries across the lobby. A glance to one

side: A booted foot sticks out from behind the
front desk.

Moss slows approaching the stairway. He risks a look

around the stairway wall.

Ascending balusters fade off into the blackness of the

second- story hallway.

Moss sags. He looks back across the lobby at the front door.

He unhitches his shotgun. He remains still for a moment

holding the shotgun, back against the protected side of the
wall.

He quickly swings out and with shotgun aimed up the

stairs he crosses to the back lobby.

He quietly pushes open the back door.

EXT. SERVICE ALLEY - NIGHT

OUTSIDE
Moss emerges into a shallow service alley, dark and dirty.

He is at a run when we hear soft tock and a garbage can

in front of him snaps and wobbles.

He turns looking up, backpedaling. Another tock

accompanies a muzzleflash in a dark second-story window.

Moss fires his shotgun: loud. Chips fly off the brickface
and the window shatters.

Moss rounds the alley corner. He stops and squats.

EXT. DOWNTOWN EAGLE PASS STREET - NIGHT

Wide: dark, deserted downtown Eagle Pass, Moss a lone figure

resting at a corner.

Close on Moss panting. He takes stock, painfully feeling

at his upper chest where the lock hit, then touching
gingerly at his side, beneath the ribs, newly bloody. He
sighs.
He listens. No noise. He gets to his feet with the
document case in one hand and shotgun in the other. He
waits a beat, back against the wall.

He swings out and fires the shotgun into the alley and
then spins back and runs a short block and rounds the next
corner and stops to rest.

EXT. EAGLE PASS STREET - NIGHT

He waits for his breath to slow. He brings up the shotgun

and readies himself.

He swings out to look back around the

corner. The street is empty.

He waits, at the ready for whatever might emerge from the

alley mouth a short block away.

Long beat. Stillness.

A panicky thought brings his look and the shotgun

swinging back around: the man could round the block the
other way.

Empty street.

Two empty streets: Moss doesn't know which way to cover,

which way to go.

He stands looking each way, trying to devise a plan. No basis

for a plan.

Quiet hesitation.

Now, a sound: engine noise.

An old pickup rounds a corner two blocks up. It rattles

toward him.

Moss lowers the shotgun. He keeps it to the hidden side

of his body.

The pickup dutifully stops at a flashing red traffic

light. It comes on through the intersection.

Moss strides out into the street. He swings the shotgun

up and gives the driver a raised palm to halt.

INT. PICKUP/EXT. EAGLE PASS STREET - NIGHT

The truck stops and Moss opens the passenger door and
swings the case in and climbs in after.
The driver, an older man, gapes at him, frightened.

MOSS
I'm not going to hurt you. I need
you to --

The windshield stars.

A quick second round pushes part of the windshield in.

Rounds come in without pause, cracking sheet metal,

blowing the cab's rear window into the truckbed, twisting
the rear- view.

A round seems to have caught the driver in the throat:

a gurgling scream as he claws at his windpipe, blowing
out blood.

Moss, quicker to react, has already ducked below the dash.

A snap of the driver's head and a new freshet of blood

from a shot to the head. The screams turn to low gurgles.

Moss, jammed almost in to the driver's lap, frantically

gropes for the shift.

He throws the pickup into drive and stamps at the

accelerator, driving blind as bullets continue to pour in.

He raises his head enough to see his side-view. It shows

sluing, bouncing, empty street, rough guide for steering.

A tremendous jounce up onto the curb then off it, the

driver's body swaying in its restraint.

The passenger side window shatters: we are passing the

gunman.

Now Moss sits up to steer looking out front. Behind him

through the shot-out back window the dark street is
suddenly punctured by muzzleflash. It comes, for the first
time, with a report: the low chug of the muted shotgun.

Rattle of shot against sheet metal.

Moss floors the gas to roar into a turn. The street sweeping
out of view behind him produces one more chugging
muzzleflash.

EXT. EAGLE PASS STREET - NIGHT

The pickup bounces but Moss, sitting fully up, can now steer.
He goes half the length of the block and then yanks the wheel
hard, braking. The pickup smashes a parked car and jacks
around to a halt.

Moss emerges from the pickup with his shotgun and goes to
the sidewalk and backtracks. He covers behind a parked
car.

He sits leaning back against the car, waiting.

His point-of-view: his own reflection in the facing

storefront, a lot of the driver's blood on him.

He sinks
lower. A long
beat.

Footsteps. They approach without hurry.

A gritty boot turn at the corner. The footsteps come closer
still.

They pass and recede toward the pickup.

We cut to Chigurh approaching the pickup, shotgun held at

ease across his body.

He slows.

Moss: he hears the slowing steps. He tightens his grip

on his shotgun and tenses.

Chigurh: slowing further, he sees:

Bloody boot prints outside the passenger

door. Moss rises.

Chigurh is turning.
He dives as, behind him, Moss fires.

Shot peppers two parked cars -- the one Moss rammed and
the one behind.

Chigurh dived between them: hit or not?

Moss advances down the middle of the street. He angles

his head: anything under the cars?

He fires twice. Buckshot claws up the pavement and the

car bodies and tires, and the cars sink hissing to their
rims.

Moss crosses to the far curb, still advancing. No one

behind the cars.
He looks up and down the street.
Nothing to see.

He goes to the pickup truck, driver's side. He opens the

door and reaches over the driver's corpse for his lap
belt.

EXT. EAGLE PASS BORDER AREA - NIGHT

Deserted.

The pickup truck rattles into frame.

Moss emerges. He hoists out the case. He leaves the

shotgun. It is very quiet.

He looks around.
The Rio Grande bridge.

Moss walks unsteadily toward it, pressing his free hand

to his side.

A thought stops him. He turns.

His bloody boot prints point at him like comic book

clues. His shoulders sag.

EXT. RIO GRANDE BRIDGE - NIGHT

Minutes later. Moss heads down the right-hand walkway in
stockinged feet, boots tucked into his belt.

He turns and looks back toward the U.S.

side. Empty walkway.

He proceeds on. Three youths are approaching from the Mexican

side. Fart types, they are laughing and walking unsteadily.

As they approach they gape at Moss, covered with blood.

The lead boy, holding a beer, wears a light coat.

MOSS
I'll give you five hundred bucks
for your shirt and your coat.

The three boys stare at

him. At length:
 YOUTH
Let's see the money.
Moss unpeels bills from a moist wad. The top one is bloody.

SECOND YOUTH
...Were you in a car accident?
MOSS
Yeah.
YOUTH
Okay, lemme have the money.
MOSS
It's right here. Give me the coat.
YOUTH
Lemme hold the money.
Moss does.

MOSS
Gimme the clothes.
The youth starts to peel them.

MOSS
...And let me have your beer.
YOUTH
...How much?
SECOND YOUTH
Brian. Give him the beer.
MINUTES LATER

The boys are receding. Moss pours the beer over his head,
rubbing blood away.

He opens his shirt. He inspects the wounds in his

midriff, entrance and exit. Pulsing blood laps weakly
out. He shrugs off his shirt, wraps it around his waist
and knots it.

He starts to put on the new shirt. Something stops him.

He pauses.

He vomits into the roadbed.

He straightens slowly and puts on the new

shirt. He looks out.
He is not yet over the river: wind stirs the cane on the
bank.

He looks up: Chain-link fence encloses the walkway to a

height of about twelve feet, curling inward at the top.

He looks down the walkway. The three boys are distant

figures. He looks up the walkway.

A few paces up a light pole stanchion stands flush to the

guardrail that separates road and walkway.

He goes to the stanchion and uses it to hoist himself

onto the guardrail, his free hand holding the case.

Standing on top of the curved metal rail and holding the

post for balance, he kneebends down and up and heaves the
case.

It sails clear of the chain-link fence. A short beat and

we hear a thump.

Moss pants for a moment, recovering from the strain of the

toss. He eases himself off the guardrail and goes to the
fence and looks at the bank below. One gnarled tree stands
out in the cane. The case, wherever it landed, is not
visible.

EXT. GUARDSHACK MEXICAN SIDE - NIGHT

There is a lighted guardshack at the end of the walkway.

Inside, a uniformed guard.

Moss walks unsteadily up. He tilts the beer bottle in

salute at the guard.

The guard impassively lets him proceed.

EXT. MEXICAN SQUARE - DAWN

BLACK
In black, an insanely cheerful mariachi song.

Fade in on the mariachis. We are looking steeply up at

them, dutch-angled. They beam down at us, energetically
thumping their oversized guitars and bajo sextos.

We boom woozily up and start to un-dutch.

Reverse on Moss struggling to a sitting position on the park

bench where he'd been lying. A public square.
Back to the mariachis. Beaming, singing.
Their smiles gradually fade.

The playing falls off to silence.

In the silence, birds chirp. The musicians are looking
quizzically down.

Moss's arm swings up in the foreground, extending a

bloody hundred-dollar bill.

On Moss. His coat has swung open to expose his bloody

midriff. His look up is glazed.

MOSS
Doctor.
The mariachis stare. Moss waggles the bill.

MOSS
...Medico. Por favor.
INT. RAMCHARGER/EXT. WAL-MART - DAY

We are close on a patch of its front seat. Day. The

pickup is parked. The piece of upholstery we are looking
at has blood soaked into it.

On the sound of the door opening we cut wider. We are in the

parking lot of a Wal-Mart. Chigurh, climbing in, tosses a
brown paper bag onto the passenger side. He has a dark towel
wrapped around one leg. As he slides behind the wheel the
wrapped part of his leg slides over the bloodstain.

INT. RAMCHARGER/EXT. PHARMACY - DAY

TRAVELING POINT OF VIEW
A small-town main street. We are driving past a pharmacy.
Chigurh, looking.

He parks.
He takes a scissors from the Wal-Mart bag and a box of
cotton. He opens the box and cuts a little disc out of the
cardboard.

He takes a new shirt out of the bag and begins to cut through
one sleeve.
EXT. PHARMACY - DAY
SHOOTING PAST A PARKED CAR

Chigurh limps toward us. He holds a coat hanger bent straight

with the balled-up shirtsleeve hooked at one end.

Chigurh arrives, looks up and down the street.

He unscrews the gas cap, feeds the coat hanger in to

soak the shirt, pulls it back out. He tapes the
cardboard disc over the open gas tank. He unhooks the
wet shirtsleeve and jams it up over the disk. He lights
it and exits.

INSIDE THE PHARMACY - DAY

A beat pulling Chigurh limping up the aisle, and then the

car explodes out front. The plate glass storefront blows
in.

The few people inside rush out; Chigurh doesn't react.

The pharmacy counter in back is deserted. Chigurh lifts a

hinged piece of counter to enter and starts looking
through the stock.

He pulls out a packet of syringes, Hydrocodone tablets,

penicillin.

INT. SMALL TOWN MOTEL ROOM - DAY

Chigurh dumps the pharmaceuticals into the bathroom sink.

In the room outside he sits on the bed and takes off his
boots. He unknots the towel from around his leg and
stands and unbuttons his pants and starts cutting from
the crotch down with a heavy scissors. One thigh is a
mess of clotted blood and torn fabric.

INT. MOTEL BATHROOM - DAY

BATH

Chigurh lowers himself into bath water that quickly turns

pink. He laves water over his bloody thigh. There is a
dark red hole, one half inch across, pulsing blood into
the bath water Torn pieces of fabric from his pants are
embedded in the bleeding skin.

A SHAVING MIRROR

We are looking at the wound in a magnifying mirror. Forceps

enter and pluck a tiny piece of blood-soaked fabric from the
skin.
RUNNING WATER

A bathroom tap. The forceps enter. They are rinsed,

shaken off.

Wider: Chigurh sits on the closed toilet with the

mirror sitting on the edge of the tub, angled toward
the wound. Chigurh works on cleaning it.

INT. SMALL TOWN MOTEL ROOM - DAY

The main room. The TV is on now. Chigurh enters from the

bathroom with his leg bandaged. He sits on the bed and tears
open the packaging of a syringe.

He plunges it into an ampule of

penicillin. He injects himself.

INT. SHERIFF'S OFFICE - DAY

Sheriff Bell sits writing in a large leatherette
checkbook. He projects:

BELL
Anything on those vehicles yet?
A raised female voice from the front office:

VOICE
Sheriff I found out everything there
was to find. Those vehicles are
titled and registered to deceased
people.

Molly, the secretary, appears at the doorway.

VOICE
...The owner of that Blazer died
twenty years ago. Did you want me
to see what I could find out about
the Mexican ones?

BELL
No. Lord no.
He holds out the checkbook.

BELL
...This month's checks.
MOLLY
That DEA agent called again. You
don't want to talk to him?
 BELL
I'm goin' to try and keep from it
as much as I can.

MOLLY
He's goin' back out there and he
wanted to know if you wanted to
go with him.

Sheriff Bell is putting things away.

BELL
Well that's cordial of him. I guess
he can go wherever he wants. He's a
certified agent of the United
States Government.

He
rises.
BELL
...Could I get you to call Loretta
and tell her I've gone to Odessa?
goin' to visit with Carla Jean Moss.

MOLLY
Yes Sheriff.
BELL
I'll call Loretta when I get there.
I'd call now but she'll want me to
come home and I just might.

MOLLY
You want me to wait til you've quit
the building?

BELL
Yes I do. You don't want to lie
without what it's absolutely
necessary.

Molly trails him into the front office.

BELL
...What is it that Torbert says?
About truth and justice?

MOLLY
We dedicate ourselves daily anew.
Something like that.
 BELL
I think I'm goin' to commence
dedicatin' myself twice daily. It
may come to three times before it's
over...

A loud truck-by from the street outside. Sheriff Bell's eyes

track the passing vehicle.

BELL
...What the hell?
EXT. STREET - DAY

Sanderson outskirts.

Sheriff Bell passes a flatbed truck with a flapping tarp and

briefly blurps his siren to pull it over. He parks on the
shoulder in front of the truck and then walks back to the
driver who watches his approach, chewing gum with blithe
unconcern.

DRIVER
Sheriff.

BELL
Have you looked at your load lately?
A MINUTE LATER

Both men are at the back of the truck.

BELL
That's a damned outrage.
DRIVER
Oh. One of the tiedowns worked lose.
Bell whips the tarp back to expose eight corpses wrapped
blue sheeting bound with tape.

BELL
How many did you leave with?
The driver is still smiling.

DRIVER
I ain't lost none of 'em, Sheriff.
BELL
Couldn't you all of took a van
out there?
 DRIVER
Didn't have no van with four-
wheel drive.

Sheriff Bell pulls the tarp down and ties it. The driver
watches without helping.

DRIVER
...You going to write me up for
improperly secured load?

Sheriff Bell cinches the knot tight.

BELL
You get your ass out of here.
INT. HOSPITAL ROOM - DAY
Moss, in bed, stirs at an off screen voice:

VOICE
I'm guessin'... this is not the
future you pictured for yourself when
you first clapped eyes on that money.

Moss blearily focuses on:

A fancy crocodile boot.

His look rises from the boot, crossed on his visitor's

knee, up to the man's face.

Carson Wells smiles at him from the bedside chair.

WELLS
...Don't worry. I'm not the man that's
after you.

MOSS
I know, I've seen him. Sort of.
Wells is surprised.

WELLS
You've seen him. And you're not dead.
He nods, impressed.

WELLS
...But that won't last.
MOSS
What is he supposed to be, the
ultimate bad-ass?
 WELLS
I don't think that's how I would
describe him.

MOSS
How would you describe him?
WELLS
I guess I'd say... that he doesn't
have a sense of humor. His name is
Chigurh.

MOSS
Sugar?

WELLS
Chigurh. Anton Chigurh. You know
how he found you?

MOSS
I know how he found me.
WELLS
It's called a transponder.
MOSS
I know what it is. He won't find me
again.

WELLS
Not that way.
MOSS
Not any way.
WELLS
Took me about three hours.
MOSS
I been immobile.
WELLS
No. You don't understand.
Wells sits back and studies Moss.

WELLS
...What do you do?
MOSS
I'm retired.
 WELLS
What did you do?
MOSS
I'm a welder.
WELLS
Acetylene? Mig? Tig?
MOSS
Any of it. If it can be welded I
can weld it.

WELLS
Cast

MOSS
iron?

WELLS
Yes.
I don't mean braze.
MOSS
I didn't say braze.
WELLS
Pot metal?
MOSS
What did I say?
WELLS
Were you in Nam?
MOSS
Yeah. I was in Nam.
WELLS
So was I.
MOSS
So what does that make me? Your buddy?
Wells sits smiling at
him. A beat.

WELLS
Look. You need to give me the
money. I've got no other reason to
protect you.
 MOSS
Too late. I spent it -- about a
million and a half on whores and
whiskey and the rest of it I just
sort of blew it in.

Wells' smile stays in place.

WELLS
How do you know he's not on his way
to Odessa?

Moss stares at him. A beat.

MOSS
Why would he go to Odessa?
WELLS
To kill your wife.
Another beat.

MOSS
Maybe he should be worried. About
me.

WELLS
He isn't. You're not cut out for
this. You're just a guy that
happened to find those vehicles.

Moss doesn't respond.

WELLS
...You didn't take the product, did
you?

MOSS
What product.
WELLS
The heroin. You don't have it.
MOSS
No I don't have it.
WELLS
No. You don't.
He
rises.
 WELLS
...I'm across the river. At the
Hotel Eagle. Carson Wells. Call me
when you've had enough. I can even
let you keep a little of the money.

MOSS
If I was cuttin' deals, why
wouldn't I go deal with this guy
Chigurh?

WELLS
No no. No. You don't understand. You
can't make a deal with him. Even if
you gave him the money he'd still
kill you. He's a peculiar man. You
could even say that he has
principles. Principles that transcend
money or drugs or anything like that.
He's
not like you. He's not even like me.
MOSS
He don't talk as much as you, I
give him points for that.

INT. COFFEE SHOP - ODESSA - DAY

Sheriff Bell rises from a booth, taking off his hat.

BELL
Carla Jean, I thank you for comin'.
She sits. He sits.

CARLA JEAN
Don't know why I did. I told you, I
don't know where he is.

BELL
You ain't heard from him?
CARLA JEAN
No I
ain't.
BELL

Nothin'?
CARLA

JEAN
Not word one.
BELL
Would you tell me if you had?
 CARLA JEAN
Well, I don't know. He don't need
any trouble from you.

BELL
It's not me he's in trouble with.
CARLA JEAN
Who's he in trouble with then?
BELL
Some pretty bad people.
CARLA JEAN
Llewelyn can take care of hisself.
BELL
These people will kill him, Carla
Jean. They won't quit.

CARLA JEAN
He won't neither. He never has.
BELL
I wish I could say that was in
his favor. But I have to say I
don't think it is.

CARLA JEAN
He can take all comers.
Bell looks at her. After a beat:

BELL
You know Charlie Walser? Has the
place east of Sanderson?

She shakes her head, shrugs.

BELL
...Well you know how they used to
slaughter beeves, hit 'em with a
maul right here to stun 'em...

Indicates between his own eyes.

 BELL
...and then truss 'em up and slit
their throats? Well here Charlie has
one trussed up and all set to drain
him and the beef comes to. It starts
thrashing around, six hundred pounds
of very pissed-off livestock if
you'll pardon my... Charlie grabs his
gun there to shoot the damn thing in
the head but what with the swingin'
and twistin' it's a glance-shot and
ricochets around and comes back hits
Charlie in the shoulder. You go see
Charlie, he still can't reach up
with his right hand for his hat...
Point bein', even in the contest
between man and cow the issue is
not certain.

He takes a sip of coffee, leaving room for Carla Jean to

argue if inclined.

She does not.

Sheriff Bell hands a card across.

BELL
...When Llewelyn calls, just tell
him I can make him safe.

She takes the card. Sheriff Bell sips.

BELL
...Course, they slaughter beeves
different now. Use a air gun.
Shoots out a rod, about this far
into the brain...

He holds thumb and forefinger a couple inches apart.

BELL
...Sucks back in. Animal never
knows what hit him.

Another beat. Carla Jean stares at him.

CARLA JEAN
Why you tellin' me that, Sheriff?
BELL
I don't know. My mind wanders.
EXT. RIO GRANDE BRIDGE - AFTERNOON

Late Day.

Carson Wells grabs a light pole stanchion to hoist himself

onto the guardrail. He stands atop it, eyeing the chain-link
fence across the walkway.

He climbs down and crosses to the fence and looks down:

The brown, sluggish water of the Rio Grande.

LOOKING DOWN THE WALKWAY

Carson Wells enters frame and recedes down the walkway.
When he draws even with the next stanchion he looks down
through the fence:

Cane on the riverbank, and one gnarled

tree. INT. HOTEL EAGLE LOBBY - NIGHT
Twilight. Carson Wells enters the hotel and crosses the
lobby. INT. STAIRWAY - NIGHT

Carson Wells appears around the corner and we pull him as

he mounts the stairs. When he is about halfway up a
figure -- focus does not hold him -- rounds the corner
behind and silently follows, holding a fat-barreled
shotgun loosely at his side.

After a few steps Carson Wells stops, frowning, cued by we

don't know what. Focus drops back as he turns. Chigurh raises
the shotgun.

CHIGURH
Hello Carson. Let's go to your room.
2ND HOTEL EAGLE ROOM - NIGHT

Chigurh sits into a chair drawn up to face the armchair where

Carson Wells sits.

WELLS
We don't have to do this. I'm a
daytrader. I could just go home.

CHIGURH
Why would I let you do that?
WELLS
I know where the money is.
 CHIGURH
If you knew, you would have it with
you.

WELLS
I need dark. To get it. I know
where it is.

CHIGURH
I know something better.
WELLS
What's that.
CHIGURH
I know where it's going to be.
WELLS
And where is that.
CHIGURH
It will be brought to me and placed
at my feet.

Wells wipes his mouth with his hand.

WELLS
You don't know to a certainty.
Twenty minutes it could be here.

CHIGURH
I do know to a certainty. And you
know what's going to happen now.
You should admit your situation.
There would be more dignity in it.

WELLS
You go to hell.
A beat.

CHIGURH
Let me ask you something. If
the rule you followed brought
you to this, of what use was
the rule?

Another beat.

WELLS
Do you have any idea how goddamn
crazy you are?
 CHIGURH
You mean the nature of this
conversation?

WELLS
I mean the nature of you.
Chigurh looks at him equably. Wells holds his look.

WELLS
...You can have the money. Anton.
The phone rings.

Wells looks at the phone. Chigurh hasn't

moved. Wells looks at Chigurh, waiting for a
decision. The low chug of the shotgun.

Aside from his finger on the trigger, Chigurh hasn't

moved. He sits staring at Wells's remains for a beat.

Now his look swings onto the phone. He watches it ring twice
more.

He picks it up and listens without

speaking. After a beat:

MOSS'S
...Hello?

VOICE
Yes?
Another beat. CHIGURH

MOSS'S VOICE
Is Carson Wells there.
A longer beat.

CHIGURH
Not in the sense that you mean.
Moss doesn't answer. Chigurh gives him a beat, and then:

CHIGURH
...You need to come see me.
MEXICAN HOSPITAL WARD - NIGHT

We intercut Moss, in his hospital robe, at a public phone on

the ward. He stands tensed with the phone to his ear.
Finally:

MOSS
Who is this.
CHIGURH
You know who it is.
A beat.

CHIGURH
...You need to talk to me.
MOSS
I don't need to talk to you.
CHIGURH
I think that you do. Do you know
where I'm going?

MOSS
Why would I care where you're going.
CHIGURH
Do you know where I'm going?
No answer.

INT. 2ND HOTEL EAGLE ROOM - NIGHT

Chigurh cocks his head, noticing something on the floor. He

adjusts to sit back and raise his boots onto the bed.

On the floor where his feet were, blood is pooling out from
Wells's chair.

CHIGURH
...I know where you are.
MOSS
Yeah? Where am I?
CHIGURH
You're in the hospital across the
river. But that's not where I'm
going. Do you know where I'm going?

MOSS
Yeah. I know where you're going.
 CHIGURH
All
right.
MOSS
You know she won't be there.
CHIGURH
It doesn't make any difference
where she is.

MOSS
So what're you goin' up there for.
A beat.

CHIGURH
You know how this is going to turn
out, don't you?

MOSS
No. Do you?
CHIGURH
Yes, I do. I think you do too. So
this is what I'll offer. You
bring me the money and I'll let
her go. Otherwise she's
accountable. The same as you.
That's the best deal you're going
to get. I won't tell you you can
save yourself because you can't.

MOSS
Yeah I'm goin' to bring you
somethin' all right. I've decided to
make you a special project of mine.
You ain't goin' to have to look for
me at all.

Moss slams the phone onto its hook, then slams it twice
more for good measure.

Chigurh, in the hotel room, cradles his

phone. INT. COFFEE SHOP - DAY

Sheriff Bell sits at his usual booth, but with an

unaccustomed look: reading glasses. He has been looking at a
newspaper
but is now peering over his glasses up at Wendell who
apparently interrupted his reading.

BELL
The motel in Del Rio?
Wendell nods.
 WENDELL
Yessir. None of the three had ID on
'em but they're tellin' me all
three is Mexicans. Was Mexicans.

BELL
There's a question. Whether they
stopped bein'. And when.

WENDELL
Yessir.
BELL
Now, Wendell, did you inquire about
the cylinder lock?

WENDELL
Yessir. It was punched out.
BELL
Okay.
WENDELL
You gonna drive out there?
BELL
No, that's the only thing I
would've looked for. And it sounds
like these boys died of natural
causes.

WENDELL
How's that, Sheriff?
BELL
Natural to the line of work they
was in.

WENDELL
Yessir.

BELL
My lord, Wendell, it's just all-out
war. I don't know any other word
for it. Who are these folks? I
don't know...

He rattles the paper.

 BELL
...Here last week they found this
couple out in California they would
rent out rooms to old people and
then kill em and bury em in the
yard
and cash their social security checks.
They'd torture em first, I don't
know why. Maybe their television
set was broke. And this went on
until, and here I quote...

He looks through his glasses at the paper.

BELL
..."Neighbors were alerted when a
man ran from the premises wearing
only a dog collar." You can't make
up such a thing as that. I dare you
to even try.

He peers over his glasses at Wendell who respectfully

shakes his head and tsks.

Sheriff Bell rattles the paper again.

BELL
...But that's what it took,
you'll notice. Get someone's
attention.
Diggin graves in the back yard
didn't bring any.

Wendell bites back a smile. Sheriff Bell gazes at him

over his glasses for a long beat, deadpan.

BELL
...That's all right. I laugh myself
sometimes.

He goes back to the paper.

BELL
...There ain't a whole lot else you
can do.

EXT. BORDER SHACK - DAY

Moss, a coat thrown over his hospital robe, is standing

before a uniformed INS official on the Rio Grande bridge.

The official, who looks like a marine drill instructor,

is chewing. He chews for a long beat, staring at Moss.

He finally spits tobacco juice and pats his lower lip with a
handkerchief.
 OFFICIAL
Who do you think gets through
this gate into the United States
of America?

MOSS
I don't know. American citizens.
OFFICIAL
Some American citizens. Who do
you think decides?

MOSS
You do, I reckon.
OFFICIAL
That is correct. And how do I decide?
MOSS
I don't know.
OFFICIAL
I ask questions. If I get sensible
answers then they get to go to
America. If I don't get sensible
answers they don't. Is there
anything about that that you don't
understand?

MOSS
No sir.
OFFICIAL
Then I ask you again how you come
to be out here with no clothes.

MOSS
I got an overcoat on.
OFFICIAL
Are you jackin' with me?
MOSS
No sir.
OFFICIAL
Don't jack with me.
MOSS
Yes sir.
OFFICIAL
Are you in the service?
 MOSS
No sir. I'm a veteran.
OFFICIAL
Nam?
MOSS
Yes sir. Two tours.
OFFICIAL
What outfit.
MOSS
Twelfth Infantry Batallion. August
seventh nineteen and sixty-six to
July second nineteen and sixty-
eight.

The official stares at him, chewing, sour.

OFFICIAL
Wilson!
GUARD
Yessir.
OFFICIAL
Get someone to help this man. He
needs to get into town.

INT. GENERAL STORE - DAY

The clerk who earlier sold him the boots:

CLERK
How those Larries holdin' up?
Moss is walking up in his boots and overcoat and hospital
robe.

MOSS
Good. I need everything else.
CLERK
Okay.
MOSS
You get a lot of people come in
here with no clothes on?

CLERK
No sir, it's unusual.
EXT. RIVER BANK - DAY

We are looking across the Rio Grande. Moss appears over

the near edge of the river bank, newly clothed, and
holding the document case.

As he reaches the top of the bank he frowns and twists his

neck, responding to an irritation. He feels around with his
free hand inside the back of the shirt collar. A sharp yank.

His hand comes away with a small tag.

INT. GREYHOUND STATION - DEL RIO - DAY

The document case is resting on a small foreground counter.

Moss is at a pay phone, one hand holding the phone to his
ear, the other resting on the case.

The voice on the phone is old, female, and querulous:

VOICE
She don't want to talk to you.
MOSS
Yes she does. Put her on.
VOICE
Do you know what time it is?
MOSS
I don't care what time it is. Don't
you hang up this phone.

VOICE
I told her what was going to
happen, didn't I. Chapter and
verse. I said: This is what will
come to pass. And now it has come
to pass --

Scuffing sounds, a sharp "Mama!", and then, into the phone:

CARLA JEAN
Llewelyn?
MOSS
Hey.
CARLA

JEAN
What should I do?
MOSS
You know what's goin' on?
 CARLA JEAN
I don't know, I had the sheriff
here from Terrell County --

MOSS
What did you tell him?
CARLA JEAN
What did I know to tell him. You're
hurt, ain't you?

MOSS
What makes you say that?
CARLA JEAN
I can hear it in your voice.
MOTHER
(distant)
There is falseness in his voice!
MOSS
Meet me at the Heart of Texas motel
in El Paso. I'm gonna give you the
money and put you on a plane.

CARLA JEAN
Llewelyn, I ain't gonna leave you
in the lurch.

MOSS
No. This works better. With you
gone and I don't have the money, he
can't touch me. But I can sure
touch him. After I find him I'll
come and join you.

CARLA JEAN
Find who? What am I supposed to
do with Mother?

MOSS
She'll be all right.
CARLA JEAN
She'll be all right?
MOTHER
(distant)
Be all right! I've got the cancer!
MOSS
I don't think anybody'll bother her.
OFFICE HALLWAY - DAY
A LOCK CYLINDER

It blows in. The hole shows a brightly lit cinderblock wall

behind.

The door swings open and the air tank is swung in and
deposited on carpet.

Wider: Chigurh enters the carpeted hallway from the

cinderblock stairwell, holding the tricked-out shotgun.

The hallway is white wallboard, doors opening off it at

long intervals. Chigurh stands still and listens. Nothing
but the hum of ventilation.

He walks quietly to the one open door twenty feet away.

INT. OFFICE - DAY

He enters.
The man who hired Carson Wells is behind his desk, in
front of the floor-to-ceiling windows. He looks up from
papers, slipping off his reading glasses. On seeing the
shotgun he opens a desk drawer and starts to rise.

Chung -- the shotgun blast knocks him back. Shot pits but
doesn't break the window.

A man in a suit rises and turns from the chair opposite the
desk, very slowly, as if to advertise that he is not a
threat.

Chigurh ignores him and rounds the desk to look at the

man gurgling on the floor.

After a beat, still looking down at the man he has shot:

CHIGURH
Who are you?
A long beat.

MAN AT CHAIR
...Me?

CHIGURH
Yes.

MAN AT CHAIR
Nobody. Accounting.
Chigurh finally looks up at him.
 CHIGURH
He gave Acosta's people a receiver.
MAN AT CHAIR
He feels... he felt... the more people
looking...

CHIGURH
That's foolish. You pick the one
right tool.

Chigurh inclines his head toward the pocked glass of the

picture window.

CHIGURH
...For instance. I used birshot. So
as not to blow the window.

MAN AT CHAIR
I see.
He still has not moved, one hand still touching the armrest.

MAN AT CHAIR
...Are you going to shoot me?
Chigurh looks at him.

CHIGURH
That depends. Do you see me?
The man stares at him for a beat.

MAN AT CHAIR
No.
INT. CAB - ODESSA - DAY
EYES IN A REAR-VIEW MIRROR

Eyes in a weathered face shift back and forth between

road and mirror, where they give nodding acknowledgment
to the passenger.

MOTHER'S VOICE
And I always seen this is what it
would come to. Three years ago I
pre- visioned it.

Wider shows Carla Jean and her mother in the back of the
moving cab.
 CARLA JEAN
It ain't even three years we been
married.

MOTHER
Three years ago I said them very
words. No and Good.

DRIVER
Yes ma'am.
MOTHER
Now here we are. Ninety degree
heat. I got the cancer. And look at
this. Not even a home to go to.

DRIVER
Yes ma'am.
MOTHER
We're goin' to El Paso Texas.
You know how many people I know
in El Paso Texas?

DRIVER
No ma'am.
She holds up thumb and forefinger curled to make an 0.

MOTHER
That's how many. Ninety degree heat.
EXT. BUS STATION - ODESSA - DAY

The cab is stopped outside the depot. Carla Jean and her
mother and the driver are at the trunk struggling over bags.

CARLA JEAN
I got it Mama.
MOTHER
I didn't see my Prednizone.
CARLA JEAN
I put it in, Mama.
MOTHER
Well I didn't see it.
CARLA JEAN
Well I put it in. That one. You
just set there. I'll get tickets
and a cart for the bags.
As Carla Jean goes to the station a man emerges from a car
pulled up behind. He is a well-dressed Mexican of early
middle age.

MEXICAN
Do you need help with the bags, madam?
MOTHER
Well thank god there's one
gentleman left in West Texas. Yes
thank you. I am old and I am not
well.

MEXICAN
Which bus are you taking?
MOTHER
We're going to El Paso, don't ask
me why. Discombobulated by a no-
account son-in-law. Thank you. You
don't often see a Mexican in a
suit.

MEXICAN
You go to El Paso? I know it. Where
are you staying?

INT. BUS STATION - DAY

Carla Jean is at a phone booth.

After a short wait, a pickup and a filtered:

SHERIFF BELL
Carla Jean, how are you.
CARLA JEAN
Sheriff, was that a true story
about Charlie Walser?

BELL
Who's Charlie Walser. Oh! Well, I,
uh... True story? I couldn't swear
to ever detail but... it's
certainly true that it is a story.

CARLA JEAN
Yeah, right. Sheriff, can you
give me your word on somethin'?

SHERIFF BELL'S OFFICE - DAY

We intercut Sheriff Bell in his office.

BELL
Yes ma'am?
 CARLA JEAN
If I tell you where Llewelyn's
headed, you promise it'll be just you
goes and talks with him -- you and
nobody else?

BELL
Yes ma'am, I do.
CARLA JEAN
Llewelyn would never ask for
help. He never thinks he needs
any.

BELL
Carla Jean, I will not harm your
man. And he needs help, whether
he knows it or not.

EXT. ROAD - DAY

CHIGURH

A driving point-of-view approaching Chigurh, who leans

against his Ramcharger, its hood up, stopped on the shoulder
on the opposite side of the road.

Reverse shows a man in an El Camino. Chickens in stacked

cages squawk and flutter in the bed.

The man slows and rolls his window down to lean out.

MAN
What's the problem there, neighbor.
MINUTES LATER

The man has pulled his vehicle over nose-to-nose with

Chigurh's. He is rummaging in the car behind the seat.
His voice comes out muffled:

MAN
Yeah, that'll suck some power. Over
time.

CHIGURH
You from around here?
The man emerges with jumper cables.

MAN
Alpine. Born 'n bred. Here ya go.
He hands one pair of leads to Chigurh.
 CHIGURH
What airport would you use.
MAN
Huh? Airport or airstrip?
CHIGURH
Airport.
MAN
Well -- where ya goin'?
CHIGURH
I don't know.
MAN
Just lightin' out for the territories,
huh. Brother, I been there... Well...

He takes off his hat and draws a sleeve across his brow,
thinking.

MAN
...There's airstrips.
He turns with his pair of leads to clamp them onto his
battery. On his back:

MAN
...The airport is El Paso. You want
some place specific you might could
be better off just drivin' to
Dallas. Not have to connect.

He turns back around to face Chigurh who stands there, still

holding his pair of leads.

MAN
...You gonna clamp them, buddy?
Chigurh is looking at him blandly.

CHIGURH
Can you get those chicken crates
out of the bed.

The man stares at him.

MAN
What're you talkin' about?
EXT. CAR WASH - DAY
COIN SLOT

Quarters are fed in. Wider as Chigurh unholsters the wand

at a self-service car wash.

He sprays the spatter-pattern rust-colored stain off the

roof of the cab of the El Camino.

Water drums as he sprays chicken feathers out of the bed.

EXT. MOTEL - EL PASO - DAY

Moss is turning the key in his room door, a new vinyl gun
bag slung over his shoulder.

At the cut the roar of a plane climbing overhead recedes.

Out of it, a voice:

WOMAN
Hey Mr. Sporting Goods.
Moss looks.

A woman sunbathes at the central court swimming pool. A

lot of hard light.

MOSS
Hey yourself.
The woman is pretty in a roadhouse-veteran sort of way. Her
voice carries a flat echo, slapping off the surface of the
pool.

WOMAN
You a sport?
Moss slings the bag into the room onto the bed and then
turn and leans against a veranda post.

MOSS
That's me.
WOMAN
I got beers in my room.
Moss holds up his left hand to show the ring.

MOSS
Waitin' for my wife.
 WOMAN
Oh. That's who you keep lookin' out
the window for?

MOSS
Half.
WOMAN
What else then?
MOSS
Lookin' for what's comin'.
WOMAN
Yeah but no one ever sees that. I
like a man that'll tell you he's
married.

MOSS
Then you'll like me.
WOMAN
I do like you.
A beat. Lapping water.

WOMAN
...Beer. That's what's comin',
I'll bring the ice chest out here.
You can stay married.

Building jet roar from another climbing plane.

MOSS
Ma'am I know what beer leads to.
The woman laughs. Before the plane overwhelms it:

WOMAN
Beer leads to more beer.
INT. SHERIFF BELL'S CRUISER -
DAY SHERIFF BELL

Driving.
As he drives he refers to one side of the road, a commercial
strip, looking for something. We hear the fading roar of a
large airplane.

The tock tock of distant gunfire brings his look around. A

beat. Another tock. The chatter of machine-gun fire. Another
single shot.
Sheriff Bell stamps the accelerator and hits his siren.
EXT. MOTEL STREET - DAY

Point-of-view racing toward the motel: a pickup with a

rack of roof lights roars out. Tire squeals, machine-gun
chatter and dog barks. The truck turns toward us, then
slews around and speeds away, fishtailing.

EXT. MOTEL COURTYARD - DAY

Point-of-view turning into the central court: a man is

crawling on his belly along the veranda toward the
street.

Sheriff Bell skids to a halt and gets out. We hear

screams, a child crying.

Sheriff Bell jogs toward the crawling man, one hand on

his holstered gun.

Behind the man on the veranda is his abandoned machine

pistol. He is a Mexican in a guyabera.

Sheriff Bell yells at a scared face in a cracked door:

BELL
Call police.
He is still jogging. A glance to the side:

Rough point-of-view of a woman's body, belly-down at the

lip of the pool, head and upper torso in the water.

Rough point-of-view forward: an open room door. Booted feet

stick out.

Sheriff Bell arrives. Moss is face-up, mostly inside the

room. The new gun bag is next to him. The gun is in
hand. He is still.

Voices. Sheriff Bell glances off.

BELL
...Call your local law
enforcement. I'm not on their
radio.

EXT. MOTEL - NIGHT

Night. The entrance is blocked by police vehicles.

People stand around in knots. Sheriff Bell is talking to the

local sheriff. A door slam attracts his look.
Carla Jean has gotten out of the far side of a cab. On the
near side the driver is leaning in to help her mother out.
After a couple of rocking attempts she has enough inertia to
come to her feet outside the vehicle.

Carla Jean is advancing slowly toward Sheriff Bell,

taking in the scene.

Sheriff Bell steps toward her.

Her eyes track his hand as he raises it to his hat. He

takes it off.

BELL
Carla Jean...
CARLA JEAN
No.
INT. HOSPITAL/MORGUE - NIGHT

Looking down a long corridor flanked by a wall of

stainless steel drawers. At the far end stands Bell, hat
in hand, staring down into an open drawer just in front
of him. A long beat.

EXT. HOSPITAL / MORGUE - NIGHT

The local sheriff, Roscoe Giddins, stands smoking under

the port cochere in front of the hospital. Sheriff Bell
emerges from the building.

A long beat.

BELL
I don't know who she is.
He puts his hat back on.

ROSCOE
I thought maybe she was with your
boy there.

BELL
No ID in her room?
ROSCOE
Not hardly nothin' in her room. And
that establishment was no stickler
on registration. Well...

The two men start walking.

 ROSCOE
...County'll bury her. Here Lies
Female, Unknown. Her Number Was Up.

A walking beat.

ROSCOE
...Buy you a cup of coffee before
you drive home?

COFFEE SHOP - EL PASO - NIGHT

Roscoe and Sheriff Bell face each other over coffee.

BELL
No money in his room there?
ROSCOE
Couple hundred on his person. Those
hombres would've taken the stash.

BELL
I suppose. Though they was
leavin' in a hurry.

ROSCOE
It's all the goddamned money, Ed
Tom. The money and the drugs. It's
just goddamned beyond everything.
What is it mean? What is it leading
to?

BELL
Yes.

ROSCOE
If you'd a told me twenty years ago
I'd see children walkin' the
streets of our Texas towns with
green hair and bones in their noses
I just flat out wouldn't of
believed you.

BELL
Signs and wonders. But I think once
you stop hearin' sir and madam the
rest is soon to follow.

ROSCOE
It's the tide. It's the dismal
tide. It is not the one thing.
 BELL
Not the one thing. I used to think I
could at least some way put things
right. I don't feel that way no
more.
A beat.

BELL
...I don't know what I do feel like.
ROSCOE
Try "old" on for size.
BELL
Yessir. It may be that. In a nutshell.
EXT. COFFEE SHOP PARKING LOT - NIGHT

The two men are walking out.

ROSCOE
None of that explains your man though.
BELL
Uh-huh.
ROSCOE
He is just a goddamn homicidal
lunatic, Ed Tom.

BELL
I'm not sure he's a lunatic.
ROSCOE
Well what would you call him.
BELL
I don't know. Sometimes I think
he's pretty much a ghost.

ROSCOE
He's real all right.
BELL
Oh yes.
ROSCOE
All that at the Eagle Hotel. It's
beyond everything.

BELL
Yes, he has some hard bark on him.
 ROSCOE
That don't hardly say it. He shoots
the desk clerk one day, and walks
right back in the next and shoots a
retired army colonel.

They have reached Sheriff Bell's cruiser and he sits in.

BELL
Hard to believe.
ROSCOE
Strolls right back into a crime scene.
Who would do such a thing? How do
you defend against it?

Roscoe closes the door for Sheriff Bell.

ROSCOE
...Good trip Ed Tom. I'm sorry we
couldn't help your boy.

He is walking away.

Sheriff Bell sits thinking in the cruiser. He makes no

move for the ignition.

A long beat.
EXT. MOTEL

Now very late, empty of onlookers and emergency vehicles.

Sheriff Bell's cruiser pulls up just inside the
courtyard. He cuts his engine.

Sheriff Bell sits looking at the motel.

Very quiet. After a long beat he gets out of the car. He

pushes its door shut quietly, with two hands.

He looks up the veranda.

The one door, most of the way up, has yellow tape across
it. Its loose ends wave in a light breeze.

Sheriff Bell looks up the street.

Nothing much to attract his attention.
EXT. MOTEL VERANDA

Sheriff Bell steps up onto the veranda. He takes slow, quiet

steps.
We intercut his point-of-view, nearing the door marked by
police tape.

As he draws close to the door he slows.

The yellow tape is about chest high. Above it is the lock

cylinder. It has been punched hollow.

Sheriff Bell stands staring at the lock.

Very quiet. The chick, chick, of the tape-ends against

the door frame.

Still.

INT. MOTEL
ROOM INSIDE

Chigurh is still also. Just on the other side of the

door, he stands holding his shotgun.

From inside, the tap of the breeze-blown tape is dulled but

perceptible. It counts out beats.

Chigurh is also looking at the lock cylinder.

The curved brass of its hollow interior holds a reflection

of the motel room exterior. Lights and shapes. The
curvature distorts to unrecognizability what is reflected,
but we see the color of Sheriff Bell's uniform.

The reflection is very still. Then, slow movement.

OUTSIDE

Sheriff Bell finishes bringing his hand to his holstered

gun. It rests there.

Still once again.

His point-of-view of the lock. The reflection from here,

darker, is hard to read.

INSIDE

Chigurh, still.
OUTSIDE
Sheriff Bell, his hand on his holstered gun. A long beat.
His hand drops.
He extends one booted toe. He nudges the door inward.

As the lock cylinder slowly recedes, reflected shapes

scramble inside it and slide up its curve. Before the door is
fully open we cut around:

FROM INSIDE

The door finishes creaking open. Sheriff Bell is a

silhouette in the doorway.

A still beat.

At length Sheriff Bell ducks under the chest-high police

tape to enter.

The worn carpet has a large dark stain that glistens near
the door. Sheriff Bell steps over it, advancing slowly.
The room is dimly lit shapes.

There is a bathroom door in the depth of the room.

Sheriff Bell advances toward it. He stops in front of
it.

He toes the door. It creaks slowly open.

INT. MOTEL BATHROOM

The bathroom, with no spill light from outside, is pitch

black.

Sheriff Bell reaches slowly up with one hand. He gropes

at the inside wall.

The light goes on: bright. White tile. Sheriff Bell

squints. A beat.

He takes a step in.

He looks at the small window.

He looks at the window's swivel-catch,

locked. INT. MAIN ROOM

Sheriff Bell emerges from the bathroom. He sits heavily

onto the bed.

He looks around, not for anything in particular. His look

catches on something low, just in front of him:

A ventilation duct near the baseboard. Its opening is

exposed; its grille lies on the floor before it.
Sheriff Bell stares.

At length he leans forward. He nudges the grille aside.

On the floor, a couple of screws. A coin.

EXT. WEST TEXAS CABIN -

DAY A CAT
Licking itself on a plank floor, stiffened leg pointing
out. It suddenly stops and looks up, ears perked.

A frozen beat, and then it bolts.

The camera booms up to frame the barren west Texas
landscape outside the window of this isolated cabin. A
pickup truck is approaching, trailing dust. The cat
reenters frame outside, running across the rutted gravel
in front of the house as the pickup slows.

INT. WEST TEXAS CABIN - KITCHEN - DAY

Ellis, an old man in a wheelchair, has one clouded eye.

ELLIS
Min back!
Sheriff Bell enters.

BELL
How'd you know I was here.
ELLIS
Who else'd be in your truck.
BELL
You heard it?
ELLIS
How's that?
BELL
You heard my -- you havin' fun with
me?

ELLIS
What give you that idea. I seen one
of the cats heard it.

BELL
But -- how'd you know it was mine?
 ELLIS
I deduced it. Once you walked in.
Sheriff Bell stares at him.

BELL
How many a those things you got now?
ELLIS
Cats? Several. Wal. Depends what
you mean by got. Some are half-
wild, and some are just outlaws.

BELL
How you been, Ellis?
ELLIS
You lookin' at it. I got to say you
look older.

BELL
I am
older.
ELLIS
Got a letter from your wife. She
writes pretty regular, tells me the
family news.

BELL
Didn't know there was any.
ELLIS
She just told me you was
quittin'. Sit down.

Sheriff Bell lifts an electric percolator off the counter.

BELL
Want a cup?
ELLIS
'Predate it.
BELL
How fresh is this coffee?
ELLIS
I generally make a fresh pot ever
week even if there's some left
over.

Sheriff Bell pours some.

BELL
That man that shot you died in prison.
 ELLIS
In Angola. Yeah.
BELL
What would you a done if he'd
been released?

ELLIS
I don't know. Nothin'. Wouldn't
be no point to it.

BELL
I'm kindly surprised to hear you
say that.

ELLIS
All the time you spend tryin' to get
back what's been took from you
there's more goin' out the door.
After a while you just try and get a
tourniquet on it.

He taps a cigarette ash into a mason jar lid on the table in

front of him.

ELLIS
...Your granddad never asked me
to sign on as deputy. I done that
my own self. Loretta says you're
quittin'.

BELL
Yes, you've circled round.
ELLIS
How come're you doin that?
BELL
I don't know. I feel overmatched.
A beat.

BELL
...I always thought when I got older
God would sort of come into my life
in some way. He didn't. I don't
blame him. If I was him I'd have the
same opinion about me that he does.

ELLIS
You don't know what he thinks.
 BELL
Yes I
do.
A beat.

ELLIS
I sent Uncle Mac's badge and his old
thumbbuster to the Rangers. For
their museum there. Your daddy ever
tell you how Uncle Mac come to his
reward?

Sheriff Bell shrugs.

ELLIS
...Shot down on his own porch there
in Hudspeth County. There was seven
or eight of 'em come to the house.
Wantin' this and wantin' that. Mac
went back in and got his shotgun but
they was way ahead of him. Shot him
down in his own doorway. Aunt Ella
run out and tried to stop the
bleedin'. Him tryin to get hold of
the shotgun again. They just set
there on their horses watchin' him
die. Finally one of 'em says
somethin' in Injun and they all
turned and
left out. Well Mac knew the score
even if Aunt Ella didn't. Shot
through the left lung and that was
that. As they say.

BELL
When did he die?
ELLIS
Nineteen zero and nine.
BELL
No, I mean was it right away or in
the night or when was it.

ELLIS
Believe it was that night. She
buried him the next mornin'.
Diggin' in that hard caliche.
A beat.
 ELLIS
...What you got ain't nothin' new.
This country is hard on people.
Hard and crazy. Got the devil in it
yet folks never seem to hold it to
account.

BELL
Most
don't.
ELLIS
You're discouraged.
BELL
I'm... discouraged.
ELLIS
You can't stop what's comin.
Ain't all waitin' on you.

The two men look at each other. Ellis shakes his head.

ELLIS
...That's vanity.
After a beat, a fast fade.
EXT. GRAVESITE - ODESSA - DAY

In black we hear the chink-chink-chink of chain being

played out and the hum of a motor.

We cut to a dark foreground shape being lowered in sync

with the clinking sound. As it drops it clears a tombstone
Progressively revealed:

The name, Agnes Kracik.

Her dates: 1922-1980.

The inscription: Beloved Mother.

Off that we cut to Carla Jean, standing by in a black
dress and dark veil.

EXT. A SMALL SUBURBAN HOUSE - DAY

A parched square of grass in front of the house. A rusty

station wagon pulls into the driveway and stops. Carla
Jean gets out.
INT. KITCHEN

Carla Jean enters and puts on the kettle. She opens the
cupboard looking for something.

KITCHEN - LATER

Carla Jean sits at the kitchen table drinking tea. She

looks out the window.

Across the street kids are running through a sprinkler that

chugs in the yard.

INT.
BEDROOM
BEDROOM
DOOR

The door opens and Carla Jean enters holding her hat and
veil. She throws the light switch and stops, hand frozen,
looking into the room.

After a beat:

CARLA JEAN
I knew this wasn't done with.
Chigurh sits at the far end of the room in the late-afternoon
shadows.

CHIGURH
No.

CARLA JEAN
I ain't got the money.
CHIGURH
No.
CARLA JEAN
What little I had is long gone and
they's bill aplenty to pay yet. I
buried my mother today. I ain't
paid for that neither.

CHIGURH
I wouldn't worry about it.
CARLA JEAN
...I need to sit down.
Chigurh nods at the bed and Carla Jean sits down, hugging
her hat and veil.
 CARLA JEAN
...You got no cause to hurt me.
CHIGURH
No. But I gave my word.
CARLA JEAN
You gave your word?
CHIGURH
To your husband.
CARLA JEAN
That don't make sense. You gave your
word to my husband to kill me?

CHIGURH
Your husband had the opportunity to
remove you from harm's way. Instead,
he used you to try to save himself.

CARLA JEAN
Not like that. Not like you say.
CHIGURH
I don't say anything. Except it was
foreseen.

A beat.

CARLA JEAN
I knowed you was crazy when I saw
you settin' there. I knowed exactly
what was in store for me.

CHIGURH
Yes. Things fall into place.
EXT. HOUSE

Minutes later.
A beat.

The front door swings open and Chigurh emerges.

He pauses with one hand on the jamb and looks at the sole of
each boot in turn.

He goes to the pickup in the driveway.

INT. PICKUP/EXT. INTERSECTION - A MINUTE LATER

He is driving.

His point-of-view: coming upon an empty intersection, his

light green.

Back to Chigurh.

He just starts to turn his head to the

right. A huge crash.

EXT. INTERSECTION
Chigurh's pickup has been T-boned by an old crate of a
pickup. Both vehicles slide to a halt amid broken glass
in the middle of the intersection.

The windshield of the truck that ran the light is mostly

gone. The driver is draped dead on the wheel.

After a beat the door of Chigurh's truck is pushed open. He

staggers out, heavily favoring one leg where the jeans are
shredded and bloody at the thigh. One arm is also bloody and
hangs limp. Blood runs down his face from a scalp wound.

He staggers to a lawn and sits.

He looks up.

Two teenage boys have come out of somewhere. They goggle

at him.

BOY 1
Mister there's a bone stickin'
out of your arm.

CHIGURH
I'm all right. Let me just sit
here a minute.

BOY 2
There's an ambulance comin. Man
over yonder went to call.

CHIGURH
All right.
BOY 1
Are you all right? You got a bone
stickin' out of your arm.
 CHIGURH
What will you take for that shirt?
The two boys look at each other. They look back.

BOY 2
What shirt?
CHIGURH
Any damn shirt. I need something to
wrap around my head and I need a
sling for this arm.

Boy 2 unbuttons his shirt.

BOY 2
Hell mister, I'll give you my shirt.
Chigurh uses his teeth to clamp the shirt and rips it
and wraps a swatch around his head. He twists the rest
of the shirt into a sling and puts the limp arm in.

BOY 1
Look at that fuckin' bone.
CHIGURH
Tie this for me.
The two boys look at each other.

CHIGURH
...Just tie it.
Boy 2, the one now wearing a T-shirt, ties it.

Chigurh pulls a bill clip from his pocket and draws a

bill out with his teeth. He holds it out to the boy.

BOY 2
Hell mister, I don't mind helpin'
somebody out. That's a lot of
money.

CHIGURH
Take it. Take it and you didn't see
me. I was already gone.

BOY 2
Yessir.
Wide on Chigurh limping off.

We can just hear the boys, small:

 BOY 1
Part of that's mine.
BOY 2
You still got your damn shirt.
BOY 1
That ain't what it was for.
BOY 2
Maybe, but I'm still out a shirt.
INT. BELL'S KITCHEN - DAY

Loretta pours Sheriff Bell and then herself morning coffee.

BELL
Maybe I'll go ridin.
LORETTA
Okay.
BELL
What do you think.
LORETTA
I can't plan your day.
BELL
I mean, would you care to join me.
LORETTA
Lord no. I'm not retired.
A beat.

Sheriff Bell sips his coffee.

BELL
Maybe I'll help here then.
A beat.

Loretta takes a sip.

LORETTA
Better
not.

They both sip.

LORETTA
...How'd you sleep?
 BELL
I don't know. Had dreams.
LORETTA
Well you got time for 'em now.
Anything interesting?

BELL
Well they always is to the party
concerned.

LORETTA
Ed Tom, I'll be polite.
BELL
Okay. Two of 'em. Both had my
father. It's peculiar. I'm older
now'n he ever was by twenty years.
So in a sense he's the younger man.
Anyway, first one I don't remember
so well but it was about meetin' him
in town somewheres and he give me
some money and I think I lost it.
The second one, it was like we was
both back in older times and I was
on horseback goin' through the
mountains of a night.

EXT. SNOWY MOUNTAIN PASS - NIGHT

We cut to night, and snow. It is the image that the movie

began with. Continuing in voice over:

VOICE OVER
...goin' through this pass in the
mountains. It was cold and snowin',
hard ridin'. Hard country. He rode
past me and kept on goin'. Never
said nothin' goin' by. He just rode
on past and he had his blanket wrapped
around him and his head down...

The rider passes as described, horses' hooves drumming

and scattering divots of earth and snow.
 VOICE OVER
...and when he rode past I seen he
was carryin' fire in a horn the way
people used to do and I could see
the horn from the light inside of
it. About the color of the moon. And
in the dream I knew that he was
goin' on ahead and that he was
fixin' to make a fire somewhere out
there in all that dark and all that
cold, and I knew that whenever I got
there he would be there. Out there
up ahead.

The rider recedes and the image fades, the horn bearing fire
going last.

THE END