How Cute Is Cormac!?

Ed Tom Bell: How many of those things you got now?
Ellis: Cats? Several. Well, depends what you mean by got. Some are half-wild, and some are just outlaws.
Ed Tom Bell: That man that shot you died in prison.
Ellis: Angola. Yeah...
Ed Tom Bell: What you'd done he had been released?
Ellis: Oh, I dunno. Nothing. Wouldn't be no point in it.
Ed Tom Bell: I'm kinda surprised to hear you say that.
Ellis: Well all the time ya spend trying to get back what's been took from ya, more is going out the door. After a while you just have to try to get a tourniquet on it. Your granddad never asked me to sign on as a deputy.
Ed Tom Bell: I always figured when I got older, God would sorta come inta my life somehow. And he didn't. I don't blame him. If I was him I would have the same opinion of me that he does.
Ellis: You can't stop what's comin'. It ain't all waitin' on you. That's vanity.

The Nurture of Jupiter (1635) by Nicolas Poussin depicts Zeus breaking off a horn. We can find the relevance of horns in many cultures around the world. From Italy and Roman mythology came the idea of the unicorn. Universally the horn represents abundance, the female anatomy and power for life/abundance and containment-perhaps the phallic for shape and seed, a vessel for drinking, for holding flowers, for protecting fire and is used as a lantern. The horn is also a symbol/reminder of Capricorn, and winter solstice the season metaphorically for old age and wisdom.

Notice that in the earlier dialogue Sheriff Tom Bell's Uncle Ellis makes a reference to a tourniquet because what we try retrieve stolen from us keeps slipping away...(what is stolen? pride? soul? life? compare Citizen Kane who compulsively tries to replace his loss of childhood with objects)

In Europe many romances and myths are related to an ancient story of Father Horn. A significant love-relationship, usually ending in marriage, is not only integral to romance as a genre but also to the hero's development. Typically, the hero will fall in love with a high-born woman, whom he marries only after significant obstacles impeding their union have been overcome. The reason these women figure so prominently, in fact, has mostly to do with heterosexual love and courtship. Yet the hero is not always the active pursuer and agent, nor is his female counterpart always the hapless damsel in distress. As if demonstrating the inherent power of transformation, gender roles can surprisingly reverse themselves in romance. At the end of No Country For Old Men an example of gender play reversal occurs between the Sheriff and his wife when she reminds him that he may be retired, but she is not. (The Vietnam vet also makes a comment about himself being retired, his wife works at a Superstore)

Loretta Bell: How'd you sleep?
Ed Tom Bell: I don't know. I had dreams.
Loretta Bell: Well you got time for 'em now. Anything interesting?
Ed Tom Bell: They always is to the party concerned.
Loretta Bell: Ed Tom? I'll be polite.
Ed Tom Bell: All right then. Two of 'em. Both had my father in 'em. It's peculiar. I'm older now than he ever was by twenty years. So, in a sense, he's the younger man. Anyway the first one I don't remember too well but it was about meeting him in town somewheres and he gave me some money. I think I lost it. The second one, it was like we was both back in the older times, and I was ahorseback, going through the mountains of a night, going through this pass in the mountains. It was cold and there was snow on the ground and he would rode past me and kept on going, never said nothing going by, just rode on past, and he had his blanket wrapped around him and his head down. When he rode past I seen he was carrying fire in a horn the way people used to do and I, I could see the horn from the light inside of it, about the color of the moon. And in the dream I knew that he was going on ahead, and he was fixing to make a fire somewhere out there in all that dark and all that cold... And I knew that whenever I got there he'd be there... Then I woke up.