John Grady rides to Torreon and phones Alejandra in Mexico City. Finally, she agrees to meet him in Zacatecas on her way to the hacienda. She will travel by train. He stables the grullo and catches a train and arrives in Zacatecas in the late afternoon. He gets a room in the Reina Cristina Hotel and walks around the old city. Alejandra's train is late and he almost doesn't recognize her in a blue dress and hat. She tells him he is thin. They walk and have dinner in a public place where the men stare at her. He tells her everything. Alejandra does not understand John Grady, or men in general, and says, "What are men?" Alejandra tells him that she told her father of their affair. "How could you tell him?" John Grady responds. Alejandra cries. She believes that her father did not kill John Grady in the mountains when the greyhounds came into the camp because he was afraid Alejandra would commit suicide if he did.
In the hotel room, John Grady asks Alejandra to go away with him. In the morning, she tells him she had a dream some time ago in which she saw him dead and she made a promise for his life. She takes him to the plaza where her grandfather died in 1914, serving under one of the Maderos. They go to the hotel room and make love, and she tells him she cannot go with him. He takes her to the train, where they part for the last time. He gets drunk, and in the morning he does not know where he is. He hitchhikes back to Torreon. He buys shells for his pistol and rides into the countryside. That night, he camps without a fire and listens to his horse grazing. He thinks about the pain of the world. Five days later, John Grady comes to a crossroads and decides to go the other way to La Encantada. "I aint leavin my horse down here."
