So Chapter I begins not only with a wake and a funeral in the cold of winter shortly before Christmas, but also with the impending loss of the ranch. The significance of the ranch is not its size; what matters is that it carries the entire history of John Grady's family, from the moment his great grandfather first came to America. John Grady tries valiantly to save the ranch. He hitchhikes to San Antonio to observe his mother, to try to understand her and find a way, then, to change her mind. He talks, not only to the lawyer, but to both of his parents, to no avail. Now the ranch will be acquired by an oil company, or worse, and who knows what will become of it.
Another significant loss in John Grady's life is the marriage of his parents. His father tells him that he and John Grady's mother shared a love of horses and says he thought that was enough. Obviously, and unfortunately, it was not. The freedom with which John Grady's mother leaves her family to pursue acting — and a younger male companion — is very unusual for the era. This loss of his parents' marriage — and of a cohesive family — prophesies the great fracture that would occur in American life with shocking percentages starting about 20 years after the novel takes place. More importantly, it foreshadows problems with which John Grady will struggle in his own life. Rawlins tells John Grady that women aren't worth it, but John Grady replies, "Yes, they are." However, even with his optimism about women, the problem of love and making a workable relationship are ones that John Grady will struggle with in the last half of All the Pretty Horses and Cities of the Plain, the third of McCarthy's trilogy and the sequel to John Grady Cole's story.
After the somewhat bizarre funeral of his grandfather, with the lawn chairs blowing about and the minister's words lost, John Grady Cole saddles his horse in the evening's long shadows and rides one of many solitary rides, to the western edge of the ranch where he imagines a past with painted ponies and riders of the lost nation, pledged in blood, as he dreams the scene. He thinks that when the wind is in the north he can hear them, the breath of the horses and their hooves shod in rawhide. He pictures in his mind a complete scene, from dogs and children and women to the giant serpent-like marks in the sand from their dragging travois poles. He hears their song and mourns their short and violent lives.
