@Goredho there was a passage in The Road that left a similar impression on me as the one in Blood Meridian:
The marchers appeared four abreast. Dressed in clothing of every description, all wearing red scarves at their necks. Red or orange, as close to red as they could find ... an Army in tennis shoes, tramping. Carrying three foot lengths of pipe with leather wrappings. Lanyards at the wrist. Some of the pipes were threaded through with lengths of chain fitted at their ends with every manner of bludgeon. They clanked past, marching with a swaying gait like wind up toys. Bearded, their breath smoking through their masks. Shh, he said, Shh. The phalanx following carried spears or lances tassled with ribbons, the long blades hammered out of truck springs in some crude forgery upcountry. The boy lay with his face in his arms, terrified. They passed two hundred feet away, the ground shuddering lightly. Tramping. Behind them came wagons drawn by slaves in harness and piled with goods of war and after that women, perhaps a dozen, some of them pregnant, and lastly a supplementary consort of catamites, ill-clothed aginst the cold and fitted with dog collars and yoked to each other.