strangles a deputy sheriff and uses a penetrating, air-powered captive bolt pistol to kill a stranger on the highway and escape in his car. He spares the life of a gas station owner who correctly guesses the result of Chigurh's coin toss. Hunting pronghorns in the desert, Llewelyn Moss comes across the aftermath of a drug deal gone bad. He finds several dead men and dogs, a wounded Mexican man begging for water, drugs in the vehicle, and two million dollars in a briefcase. He takes the money and returns home. Feeling guilty, Moss returns with water but finds the man dead. Two men in a truck pursue him, but he escapes into a river. Reaching home, he sends his wife, Carla Jean, to stay with her mother, then takes a taxi to a motel in Del Rio, where he hides the briefcase in his room's air duct. Chigurh, hired to recover the money, arrives to search Moss's home, where he uses his bolt pistol to blow the lock out of the door. Investigating the break-in, Terrell County Sheriff Ed Tom Bell observes the blown-out lock. Following a tracking device in the money, Chigurh goes to Moss's motel room and kills a group of Mexicans waiting to ambush Moss. Moss has rented a second room adjacent to the Mexicans' room with access to the duct where the money is hidden. He retrieves the briefcase before Chigurh opens the duct. Moving to a hotel in the border town of Eagle Pass, Moss discovers the tracking device, but Chigurh has already found him. Their firefight spills onto the streets, killing a bystander and wounding both. Moss flees across to Mexico, stashing the case of money along the Rio Grande. Finding Moss severely injured, a passing norteño band takes him to a hospital. Carson Wells, another hired operative, fails to persuade Moss to accept protection in return for the money. Chigurh cleans and stitches his own wounds with stolen supplies and sneaks up on Wells at his hotel. Unsuccessfully bartering for his life, Wells is murdered by Chigurh. Moss telephones the room, intending to bargain with Wells, but Chigurh answers the call instead and vows to kill Carla Jean unless Moss gives up the money. Moss retrieves the case from the Rio Grande and arranges to meet Carla Jean at a motel in El Paso, where he plans to give her the money