Part 3 of Blood Merid­i­an opens with the young boy alone in a des­o­late land­scape, sit­ting beneath trees by a riv­er, vul­ner­a­ble and exposed to the harsh world around him. It is here that he encoun­ters a mys­te­ri­ous rid­er, who is clothed in buck­skin and seems to car­ry an aura of self-impor­tance. The rid­er intro­duces him­self as a recruiter for Cap­tain White’s army, a man active­ly seek­ing new sol­diers to fight against Mex­i­cans despite the offi­cial end of the war. Ini­tial­ly, the boy feels indif­fer­ent to the offer, stat­ing that he has no real inter­est in trav­el­ing to Mex­i­co and lacks the expe­ri­ence need­ed for sol­dier­ing. But the recruiter’s per­sis­tence and promis­es of wealth, land, and a brighter future catch the boy’s atten­tion. The recruiter claims that every sol­dier will receive a horse, ammu­ni­tion, and the poten­tial to become a large landown­er, stir­ring some­thing inside the boy.

The boy is hes­i­tant, but the recruiter’s words res­onate with him as they jour­ney through bar­ren streets, lined with dilap­i­dat­ed huts and signs of decay. The recruiter’s enthu­si­asm about des­tiny and oppor­tu­ni­ty begins to awak­en a sense of hope in the boy, and despite his reluc­tance, he is drawn into the idea of a new life and the pos­si­bil­i­ties that await. As they reach the captain’s quar­ters, the boy is sub­ject­ed to a brief inter­ro­ga­tion, where he is asked about his back­ground. He shares his painful expe­ri­ence of being robbed by a group of men—Mexicans, blacks, and whites—who left him with noth­ing but an old knife. The cap­tain lis­tens close­ly, then express­es his dis­dain for the Mex­i­can peo­ple, describ­ing them with con­tempt and pre­dict­ing their down­fall if the Amer­i­cans do not inter­vene to pre­vent it.

The boy sits silent­ly, absorb­ing the captain’s harsh words, real­iz­ing that the future of the coun­try, as the cap­tain sees it, lies in their hands. The recruiter reas­sures the boy, telling him that despite his lack of equip­ment, he will be pro­vid­ed with a horse and prop­er gear for the jour­ney. As the prepa­ra­tions for the upcom­ing cam­paign begin, the boy becomes immersed in the new iden­ti­ty he is begin­ning to form among the oth­er recruits, men who share sto­ries of their past expe­ri­ences and forge bonds of cama­raderie. How­ev­er, this cama­raderie soon takes a dark­er turn when they arrive at a can­ti­na. The mood shifts from excite­ment to some­thing more sin­is­ter as the group indulges in alco­hol and boasts about their vio­lent pasts. The cheer­ful ener­gy of the night quick­ly trans­forms into some­thing much more vio­lent, with a dead­ly con­fronta­tion occur­ring amidst the chaos. This event blurs the line between youth­ful exu­ber­ance and the ugly real­i­ty of the world they inhab­it, leav­ing a last­ing impres­sion on the boy.

This chap­ter presents the boy’s inter­nal con­flict as he is pulled between the promis­es of adven­ture, wealth, and the bru­tal real­i­ty of the life he’s step­ping into. The con­trast between the recruiter’s ide­al­is­tic rhetoric and the vio­lent, unpre­dictable nature of the world around them is stark. The vio­lence in the can­ti­na, the boast­ful dis­cus­sions of bru­tal­i­ty, and the trag­ic death of a fel­low rev­el­er high­light the dis­con­nect between the boy’s ini­tial hopes and the real­i­ty of war and blood­shed. The boy’s deci­sion to join the army marks the begin­ning of a jour­ney that will irrev­o­ca­bly change him, lead­ing him into a world where sur­vival is uncer­tain, and where the allure of adven­ture is over­shad­owed by the hor­rors of vio­lence. As he is exposed to the harsh­ness of this new world, the boy will con­front the moral dilem­mas of pow­er, dom­i­nance, and death, which will come to define his future. Through this nar­ra­tive, the chap­ter under­scores the frag­ile bound­ary between youth’s inno­cence and the bru­tal­iz­ing forces of con­flict.