Part 17 unfolds as Glan­ton and a group of twen­ty-one men, along with a dog and an odd cart con­tain­ing an idiot in a cage, set off from a small town into the vast desert. The whiskey keg, altered to hold whiskey dis­guised as water, is a cru­cial part of their jour­ney. As they depart, the idiot, locked away in the cage, cries out hoarse­ly at the sun, as if plead­ing for some­thing he can­not grasp. Glan­ton, now rid­ing in a new sad­dle, takes charge of the group, while David Brown, posi­tioned at the rear, wres­tles with dark thoughts about aban­don­ing his broth­er. The group’s inter­ac­tions with the local sav­ages are trans­ac­tion­al, as they trade the dis­guised whiskey for gold and sil­ver, but Glan­ton remains unin­ter­est­ed in the exchange, instead choos­ing to focus sole­ly on the road ahead, unmoved by the com­pli­ca­tions of their deal­ings.

They ride west­ward through the harsh desert, pass­ing the remains of a ruined crock­ery fur­nace and wit­ness­ing the haunt­ing beau­ty of saguaro forests beneath a dark­en­ing sky. The land­scape grows even more des­o­late as they trav­el fur­ther, with no water in sight, and Glan­ton reflects on the death and destruc­tion that has come before them. He specif­i­cal­ly thinks of the Delawares, all of whom were killed, and it shapes his per­spec­tive as he con­tem­plates the future of his jour­ney. That night, as they gath­er around the camp­fire, Glan­ton becomes intro­spec­tive, reflect­ing on his own fate and his role with­in the vast, indif­fer­ent uni­verse. He acknowl­edges his own agency over his future, res­olute in his deci­sion to press on, regard­less of what lies ahead, know­ing that the path before him is fraught with chal­lenges that will test his resolve.

The jour­ney con­tin­ues, and the group even­tu­al­ly encoun­ters a rag­tag group of Mex­i­cans led by Colonel Gar­cia, who is on a mis­sion to hunt down the Apach­es. The Mex­i­cans, dressed in ragged clothes and armed with makeshift weapons, are a far cry from the sea­soned fight­ers Glanton’s group rep­re­sents. Glan­ton, observ­ing them, feels a dis­con­nect from their cause, view­ing their strug­gles as insignif­i­cant in com­par­i­son to his own goals. After part­ing ways with the Mex­i­cans, Glan­ton and his men set­tle for the night, dis­cussing their thoughts on war and the nature of their exis­tence in this bru­tal world. The judge, ever philo­soph­i­cal, expounds his views on war, stat­ing that it is an eter­nal force in human­i­ty, one that pre­cedes every­thing else. He asserts that war is the ulti­mate val­i­da­tion of man’s worth, a fun­da­men­tal force inter­twined with moral­i­ty and exis­tence itself. Brown, how­ev­er, express­es skep­ti­cism about the judge’s views, spark­ing a tense exchange about the com­plex rela­tion­ship between war, human nature, and moral­i­ty.

As they trav­el across an even dri­er land­scape, the group faces hunger, dis­com­fort, and a grow­ing sense of futil­i­ty. The judge, how­ev­er, con­tin­ues to assert his belief that men are inher­ent­ly play­ers in the grand game of life, with every con­flict and strug­gle only serv­ing to define their exis­tence. The next day, the group cross­es a lava bed, where they dis­cov­er an ancient femur, mark­ing a sym­bol­ic inter­sec­tion between their cur­rent strug­gles and the dis­tant past. The judge takes a moment to pay homage to time and exis­tence, dis­cussing the greater truths that lie beneath the sur­face of their jour­ney. His reflec­tions, steeped in a strange sense of rev­er­ence for his­to­ry and the pas­sage of time, con­trast with the harsh real­i­ty that the group faces. Despite the judge’s philo­soph­i­cal mus­ings, the men remain res­olute in their jour­ney, com­mit­ted to con­tin­u­ing across the unfor­giv­ing desert, their path marked by relent­less chal­lenges and the con­stant reminder of their vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty in this vast and des­o­late land­scape.