Kino kills the trackers
Kino kills the three trackers who have pursued his family into the mountains, but the gunshot from the attack inadvertently kills his infant son Coyotito, transforming the act of violent self-defense into the story's ultimate tragedy.
The Descent from the Cave
After the family has taken refuge in a shallow erosion cave high on a stone shoulder above a mountain spring, Kino realizes that the trackers—two on foot and one on horseback—will find them by morning. The trackers have already reached the pool below, and in the dusk Kino sees them settle for the night: two curl up to sleep like dogs while the third squats on the sand with a rifle between his knees. Kino knows there is no choice. He tells Juana, "There is a way," and when she protests that they will kill him, he replies, "If I get first to the one with the rifle, I must get to him first, then I will be all right. Two are sleeping." He strips off his white clothes, which would show up against the dark night, and hooks his amulet neck-string about the horn handle of his great knife so that it hangs down in front of him and leaves both hands free. Then, crouched and silent in the cave entrance, he is gone.
The Stalking
Kino edges like a slow lizard down the smooth rock shoulder, his spread fingers gripping the mountain and his bare toes finding support through contact. He has turned his neck-string so that the great knife hangs down from his back and cannot clash against the stone. His mouth is open so that even his breath makes no sound. The night is not silent—tree frogs twitter like birds and the high metallic ringing of cicadas fills the mountain cleft—and Kino's own music is in his head: the music of the enemy, low and pulsing, nearly asleep, while the Song of the Family has become as fierce and sharp and feline as the snarl of a female puma, driving him down on the dark enemy. It takes him a long time to reach the bottom and crouch behind a little dwarf palm, only twenty feet from the watcher. He kneads his legs against cramp and finds his muscles jerking after their long tension. He looks apprehensively to the east: the moon will rise in a few moments, and he must attack before it rises. Silently he draws the amulet string over his shoulder and loosens the loop from the horn handle of his great knife.
The Moonrise and the Cry
He is too late. As he rises from his crouch the silver edge of the moon slips above the eastern horizon, and Kino sinks back behind his bush. The ragged moon throws hard light and hard shadow into the cleft, and now Kino can see the seated figure of the watcher on the little beach beside the pool. The watcher gazes full at the moon, then lights another cigarette; the match illumines his dark face for a moment. There can be no waiting now. Kino's legs are as tight as wound springs. Then from above comes a little murmuring cry. The watcher turns his head to listen, stands up, and one of the sleepers stirs and asks what it is. The watcher says it sounded like a cry, almost like a human—like a baby. The other man dismisses it as a coyote pup. The cry comes again, and the watcher looks up the side of the hill to the dark cave. "Coyote maybe," he says, and Kino hears the harsh click as he cocks the rifle. "If it's a coyote, this will stop it," the watcher says as he raises the gun.
The Killing
Kino is in mid-leap when the gun crashes and the barrel-flash makes a picture on his eyes. The great knife swings and crunches hollowly; it bites through neck and deep into chest. Kino is a terrible machine now. He grasps the rifle even as he wrenches free his knife, whirls, and strikes the head of the seated man like a melon. The third man scrabbles away like a crab, slips into the pool, and begins to climb frantically up the cliff where the water pencils down, whimpering and gibbering as he tries to get up. But Kino has become as cold and deadly as steel. Deliberately he throws the lever of the rifle, raises the gun, aims deliberately, and fires. He sees his enemy tumble backward into the pool, strides to the water, and in the moonlight sees the frantic frightened eyes. Kino aims and fires between the eyes.
The Aftermath
Kino stands uncertainly. Something is wrong, some signal is trying to get through to his brain. The tree frogs and cicadas are silent now. Then Kino's brain clears from its red concentration and he knows the sound—the keening, moaning, rising hysterical cry from the little cave in the side of the stone mountain, the cry of death. The gunshot that killed the tracker has also killed Coyotito. The baby's cry, which drew the watcher's attention and precipitated the attack, has become the sound of his own death. Kino has killed three men and saved his family from the pursuers, but the price is the life of his son. The act of violent self-defense, executed with cold precision and animal ferocity, has accomplished its immediate goal—the trackers are dead—but has simultaneously destroyed the very future Kino was trying to secure. The pearl, which he still carries, has cost him everything.
