John Grady's last words in Chapter I are that he wants to stay at La Purisima hacienda for "about a hundred years." The hacienda is a large ranch covering about 26,000 acres in the Mexican state of Coahuila. The area has desert as well as grasslands and is edged on the west by the Sierras, where some elevations are as high as 9,000 feet. Natural springs and lagunas, or lakes, provide adequate water. La Purisima is one of the few haciendas left in Mexico where the owner, Don Hector (also called Rocha) a descendant of the original owner, still lives on the estate. His wife lives in Mexico City, and he flies an airplane back and forth between residences. Don Hector runs a thousand head of cattle and loves horses. He has a pack of silver greyhounds and brings friends to go hunting. Rawlins observes that they have no guns, and John Grady thinks they are going to hunt coyotes with ropes. Don Hector is a gentleman sportsman. The greyhounds for hunting and the observation that the men are probably hunting coyotes with ropes shows that his relation to nature, and thus, the horses, is different from John Grady's. John Grady would hunt a coyote if it were necessary because the coyote was killing calves, for example. Don Hector, on the other hand, entertains himself with and uses creatures for sporting purposes.
John Grady and Rawlins begin working, branding, marking, castrating, and dehorning cattle. On the third day, the vaqueros, or Mexican cowboys, bring in a small herd of wild colts from the mesa. They are of varied size, conformation, and color and spook easily. John Grady guesses that they have never seen human beings, and Rawlins says that the horses are worthless. John Grady argues with him and says that there are a few good ones. He points out the head on one horse. Rawlins says, "You used to be awful particular about horses." John Grady nods, and replies, "Well, I aint forgot what they're supposed to look like." They both think that the one thing going for the horses is that they have not been broken by the Mexicans, not because they do not come to respect some of the vaqueros, but because they know that a horse broken incorrectly is harder to fix than starting with a very wild, but untouched, horse.
