Blood Meridian

Chapter III

The kid is lying naked under some trees when a man on horseback, later identified as Sergeant Trammel, approaches him. The kid takes up his knife; the man greets him. He asks if the kid is the one who mauled the Mexican bartender the day before, because, if he is, Captain White wants him to join an army of irregulars going to war against the Mexicans. The kid says that the war (presumably the Mexican-American War) is over, but the man replies that Captain White says otherwise, and promises the kid, at this point fully dressed, that war will give him the opportunity to rise in the world.