And with that declaration, Llewelyn Moss returns to the scene of the crime with water for the dying Mexican only to find him shot to death and himself in the rifle scope of someone after him. Moss fancies himself the hunter, hunting for his hunters. Moss readily knows that his quest is a mistake can't quell the compulsion to challenge himself. Moss pridefully believes that he can hunt the hunter as in doing so sets his own (and many other’s) destruction into motion.
Aside from Moss, the tale presents the reader with an additional pair of antithetical main characters. The first is a sociopathic assassin named Anton Chiguhr (when pronounced almost sounds like “sugar,” a most corrosive irony in the story). Chigurh executes his profession with a clean efficiency using a pistol and shotgun, each fitted with suppressors making their discharges little more than puffs. Chigurh also uses a penetrating captive bolt pistol usually employed in euthanizing livestock prior to slaughter. Not only does this implement aid Chigurh in murder, he also finds it handy in blowing out deadbolt locks.
The second main character is the local Sheriff Ed Tom Bell, a former World War II Veteran who is brighter than the majority of his peers and attempts to find and protect Moss. Bell is all old school. Each section of the book opens with a soliloquy by Bell, mostly addressing how things have changed in crime and law enforcement in the 30 years he has worked as a law man. Bell waxes Texan on many other related subjects that oddly interweave the story’s bleak narrative. Bell is pure deadpan, but not in any ironic, comical way. Bell is tired. He is worn down and profoundly emotionally confined by all he has experienced and what he is experiencing with this bad drug deal.
Once Moss realizes the pickle in which he finds himself, he dispatches Carla Jean to stay at her mother in El Paso until the matter of the 2.4 million dollars is reconciled. Chigurh is hired by an un-named businessman to recover the drug money and begins by hunting Moss when finding his truck at the scene of the drug deal. Chigurh makes it a point to murder all he meets, ostensibly never leaving a witness. He does, however, spare a gas station owner who correctly calls the flip of a coin. A technique employed by Chigurh as a metaphor for fate. Moss manages to elude Chigurh in spite of an electronic transmitter located in the file case of money, which is eventually found by Moss and discarded in a hotel room.
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