Content Warning: This summary section references sexual violence.

John Grady and Rawlins ride through the countryside as prisoners for three days to Encantada. Rawlins reveals that he asked the other men to get Don Héctor, but he refused to intervene in their arrest, suggesting that John Grady’s affair with Alejandra is the cause. Despite this, he doesn’t intend to leave John Grady.

In Encantada, they’re led to a dark cell that holds two other prisoners: Orlando, an old man who has been imprisoned for months because he cannot read the papers he’s been asked to sign, and Blevins, who has been beaten badly. The old man tells them that Blevins is accused of killing three men, which Blevins disputes. He says that he went back to retrieve his horse and gun, and shot a man in self-defense. Then he shot one of the rurales (rural police) that pursued him as he retrieved his horse. Blevins believes he’ll be sent to the penitentiary, but Rawlins and John Grady suspect he’ll be executed.

The next morning, Rawlins is brought before the captain of the station. When Rawlins refuses to strip for the captain, he is struck by a guard.