Sin Killer

by Larry McMurtry

  When pressed to go with the hunting party, Toussaint Charbonneau flatly refused.

  “I’ve lost one Indian and I expect he’s dead—I’m sticking with the other two,” Charbonneau said. “It’s a bit frosty for hunting, anyway.”

  Lord Berrybender was hardly pleased by Charbonneau’s refusal. He liked to suppose that everybody on the boat worked for him and him only. That a man would refuse to hunt with him because Captain Clark had enjoined him to look after two mangy savages hardly showed the proper spirit, in Lord B.’s view. Charbonneau might have a French name, but he exhibited a very American sense of independence, a national trait that Albany Berrybender had no use for at all, since it led commoners to ignore the wishes of their betters, as Charbonneau had just done.

  It was Captain Aitken—worried for His Lordship’s safety—who asked Venetia Kennet to see if Tasmin would attempt to talk sense to her father.

  “He doesn’t know what he’s letting himself in for, Miss Kennet,” Captain Aitken said. “He thinks because the sun’s come out for a few minutes he won’t freeze—but he will freeze, and so will his men.”

  Tasmin had been brushing the fine cap she had made for Jim Snow, enjoying the soft feel of the furs; she was not pleased to hear a pounding on her cabin door—very probably it was only Father Geoff, wanting to complain about the tedium of Walter Scott, whose Kenilworth he found lacking in both concision and wit. She opened the door with some reluctance and was astonished to see an obviously distressed Venetia Kennet standing there. Never in the years of their troubled acquaintance had Vicky Kennet pounded on her door.

  “Goodness, Vicky! What is it?”

  “It’s His Lordship,” Vicky said. “He proposes to go off hunting, despite this fearful cold. Captain Aitken thought he might listen to you—that you might try to dissuade him.”

  “Captain Aitken has an exaggerated view of my influence over Papa, I fear,” Tasmin said. “I’ve never talked him out of doing anything he wanted to do, and no one else has either.”

  “I know—he is so willful,” Vicky said, fearing that the case was hopeless.

  “In my opinion a man as soaked with brandy as Father is very unlikely to freeze—but that doesn’t mean the help won’t,” Tasmin said. “We can ill afford to lose many more servants—at least they can shoot guns if we find ourselves under attack.”

  She shrugged on one of the great gray capotes and followed Vicky Kennet to the lower deck, where a pirogue with two freezing engagés in it waited to ferry the hunting party to shore. Except for Lord Berrybender himself, the hunting party was in low spirits. Gladwyn and the lad Tim also had been issued the great gray coats, but both were shivering violently despite them. They looked like men about to ascend the scaffold. Yet Mary Berrybender, wearing only a thin sweater, stood by the almost naked Hairy Horn and neither seemed at all bothered by the extreme chill.

  Tasmin wasted no time on niceties.

  “Papa, do stop this folly,” she said. “It’s so cold it broke the bottom out of Bobbety’s thermometer—it’s obviously quite insane for you to go ashore.”

  “No business of yours, that I can see,” Lord Berrybender said brusquely. “Anyway, the sun’s out—things will soon be melting, I expect.”

  “No sir, no!” Captain Aitken pleaded. “The sun will be gone by the time you reach shore.”

  Lord Berrybender ignored him and turned toward the ladder, but Tasmin quickly blocked his access.

  “Here’s the count,” she said. “You’ve already lost your wife, one child, a boatman, two Poles, our good Fräulein, and a smattering of toes and fingers. Now you stand ready to deprive us of Gladwyn and Tim, neither of whom is likely to survive such profound chill.”

  Lord Berrybender flushed red at her words—the impertinence! To the horror of the company he grabbed Tasmin by the hair and gave her a violent shaking; then he shoved her so hard that she spun across the deck and fell in the startled Piegan’s lap. The man just saved her from a nasty fall.

  “I will hunt, and I will hunt now!” Lord Berrybender shouted. “I don’t think I’ve quite sunk to the point where I must carry my own weapons, either.”

  Without another word he descended into the pirogue and settled himself. He too wore one of the great gray coats. Gladwyn and Tim, offered no options, climbed slowly into the boat, being careful with the guns.

  “Cold as it is you’ll have to do the butchering quick,” Charbonneau advised. “Otherwise the meat will freeze.”

  “I don’t propose to butcher them—I just propose to kill them,” Lord B. said. “Might take a tongue or two, if I’m in the mood.”

  With that he waved impatiently, and the pirogue made for the icy shore. The buffalo had moved off the river, but thousands were still in sight, a mile or two west.

  “Best not to lose sight of the river, sir!” Captain Aitken shouted, cupping his hands. His voice echoed off the low bluffs to the west.

  “Well, Vicky, so much for my influence,” Tasmin said. “All I got was my hair pulled.”

  Father Geoff popped out of the galley, licking one of Cook’s great spoons. Lately he had been spending a good deal of time with Cook, feeling that the shipboard cooking might profit from a little French expertise.

  “What’s the fuss?” he asked.

  “No fuss, particularly—what’s on that spoon?” Tasmin asked.

  “Pudding,” Father Geoffrin said.

  As they watched, the sun disappeared. A dark blue bank of cloud, moving over them from the north, swallowed it so completely that no ray shone through. On the shore they could just see the three gray forms slipping and sliding on the ice. Soon the three men were dots against the shallow snow.

  “I fear that’s the end of Papa,” Mary said. “I can’t think why he is so unwise.”

  Captain Aitken, heartsick, said nothing. He stood at the rail, watching the deep cold cloud. Soon he heard the first distant pops from Old Gorska’s Belgian gun.

  51

  He heard a kind of snuffle . . .

  “GREAT sport! Great sport!” Lord Berrybender yelled, in high exuberance. “Never had such fine sport in my life. Keep loading, man. How many would you say are down, so far?”

  “Tim would be the one to ask, Your Lordship,” Gladwyn said, feeling that his hands might simply snap off, like twigs. He could not load properly with gloves on, and yet when he took his gloves off, his hands got so cold they would barely grasp a gun. Young Tim had already peeled half the skin off one hand by foolishly grasping one of the freezing gun barrels with an ungloved hand. Now, of course, the gun barrels were warm from Lord Berrybender’s rapid fire, but that was no consolation to Tim, whose peeled palm burned like fire.

  “Forty, I’d say, Your Lordship,” Tim yelled. All around, within a radius of less than one hundred yards, great brown beasts lay sprawled, some dead, some still belching bright crimson blood into the snow.

  “Good lad—do take a few tongues,” Lord B. instructed. “Cook will be impatient if we neglect such a fine opportunity to bring back tongues.”

  As soon as Gladwyn handed him a rifle he turned and fired, this time killing a buffalo cow that was no more than thirty feet from where he stood. Instead of fleeing, as most animals did when under assault, the buffalo seemed quite indifferent to the shooting. Of course, the wind had risen, snow was beginning to blow a bit. Still, the odd thing was, the buffalo did seem to be massing together, milling around in a formless herd. One cow passed between himself and Gladwyn—another nearly stepped on Tim, who had not yet mastered the knack of neatly severing a buffalo’s tongue from its bleeding mouth.

  “I say, Your Lordship, they do seem to be crowding rather close,” Gladwyn said, becoming alarmed. Buffalo were everywhere.

  “The wind’s keening so—I suppose they can scarcely hear the shots,” Lord Berrybender said, as a great shaggy beast ambled past him, its coat snow-streaked, not ten feet away.

  “I do rather wish they’d spread out,” Lord Berrybender said. “It’s rather mor
e sporting if I have to do at least a bit of aiming.”

  He took a gun from Gladwyn—the man was shivering damnably—and shot the great shaggy bull, only to experience a startling change: the immediate disappearance of everything. Snow suddenly whirled around him so blindingly that when he held out the empty rifle to Gladwyn, not merely Gladwyn but the rifle and even his own arm disappeared into a swirl of white. He heard a kind of snuffle, then a buffalo just brushed him as it went past. Lord Berrybender felt it but could not see it. For a moment he thought he just glimpsed Gladwyn, but then the man vanished again. Lord Berrybender stood stock-still, his arm still extended, the empty rifle growing heavy in his hand. He expected, of course, that Gladwyn would take it and reload it, and yet he didn’t. Lord Berrybender withdrew the gun and tried to pull up the big floppy hood of his capote, only to have the hood fill with snow before he could even pull it over his head. He pulled it over his head anyway—the snow melted and then froze again as it dribbled down his cheeks, forming an icicle just below his chin—it was the first time his chin had sprouted an icicle in his life.

  Then he felt a hard bump and was sent sprawling—a buffalo had stumbled into him in the blinding whirl of snow. Lord Berrybender just managed to keep his grip on the rifle. When he tried to struggle up he found that someone else had a grip on the rifle too—the briefly lost Gladwyn it was! The two men were less than three feet apart, and yet could not see each other.

  “Am I to reload, Your Lordship?” Gladwyn yelled, and then realized at once that the task was hopeless. He could scarcely see the Belgian gun, and could no longer manage the powder and shot. Fortunately he had clung grimly to a second rifle, which was loaded. This he handed to Lord Berrybender.

  “Wrong gun! Wrong gun! Where’s my Belgian?” Lord B. wanted to know. He had become extremely fond of Old Gorska’s excellent gun.

  Gladwyn was shaking so hard that he couldn’t answer; in fact he had no idea what he’d done with the Belgian gun—though a moment later he realized it was squeezed between his shaking legs.

  “Have to use this one, sir,” he screamed, and Lord B. did use the second rifle, firing point-blank into the side of a great beast that had just loomed out of the snow, only feet away. The buffalo fell just in front of them, its shaggy coat steaming. Gladwyn could not resist—he thrust his freezing hands into the wounded animal’s shaggy fur. Lord Berrybender, his own hands far from warm, did the same.

  “Getting a bit thick, in fact,” he said. “I believe I’ve killed forty-two buffalo, if Tim’s count was right—perhaps the prudent thing would be to make for the boat.”

  Gladwyn’s teeth were chattering so violently that he feared they might shatter. In the privacy of his modest quarters Gladwyn sometimes wrote verse; he thought he might just have a rhyme—“chatter, shatter”—if he could just hold it in mind until he could write it down.

  “Where exactly is the boat, sir?” he asked.

  Lord Berrybender, his hands warming as he pressed them against the buffalo, looked about and saw only white—uniform, monotonous white.

  “I’m afraid I haven’t the faintest notion,” he admitted. “Never much of a head for directions . . . got lost in my own deer park more than once. I expect Tim will know—just the kind of thing a stable boy would know.”

  “But where is Tim, Your Lordship?” Gladwyn asked.

  “Gad, can’t be far,” Lord B. said. “He was just taking a tongue.”

  Suddenly a moment of absolute panic seized him. Where was Tim? More important, where was the Missouri River, the pirogue, the engagés, the steamer Rocky Mount, the languid but pliable Venetia Kennet?

  “Tim, Tim, Tim!” Lord B. yelled, at the top of his voice. “Time to retreat, lad—come lead us home.”

  The howling, keening wind snatched his words and whirled them away so swiftly that even if Tim had been on the other side of the fallen buffalo he might not have heard them.

  Tim, for his part, had lost not only the tongue he had just cut out of the buffalo, but the knife he had used to remove the tongue. Both dropped from his freezing fingers and were instantly lost. He was too cold even to yell—when he opened his mouth, cold filled it. By inadvertence he made the same discovery Gladwyn had made: the buffalo he knelt by was still breathing and still warm; also it was large enough to form a kind of barrier. Tim squeezed as close to it as he could get, even warming his icy cheeks in the thick fur. Though a moment before he felt certain that his would be a frigid doom, the fact that the animal he was pressed against still pulsed with the heat of life gave Tim a little hope. The buffalo would be his shelter and his stove. He thought of his three jolly brothers, all safely back in England, cheerfully shoveling out the Berrybender stables and making crude assaults on the milkmaids’ virtue now and then. What a happy lot was theirs! Just faintly, once or twice, he thought he heard His Lordship calling, but Tim didn’t answer; he knew he mustn’t be tempted to leave his shaggy stove.

  “The lazy rascal, where is he, now that he’s needed?” Lord Berrybender complained. A great many buffalo were trampling and snuffling around them, on the whole rather welcome since they somewhat broke the chilling wind.

  “Lost as us, I expect, Your Lordship,” Gladwyn said, his teeth still chattering-shattering. “Lost as us.”

  “I wouldn’t object to a spot of fire, if any wood could be found,” Lord B. said. “Expect they’ll send a party to get us, soon. Stout Captain Aitken knows his job—he won’t desert us.”

  “Perhaps not, but how will he find us, sir—I mean with the atmosphere being so thick?” Gladwyn asked.

  Lord Berrybender considered the comment, unhappily. The atmosphere was damnably thick—the sun that he had been counting on to melt things was absolutely gone; darkness was not far off. A shore party might stumble around for hours before lighting on them, crouched as they were behind a fallen buffalo.

  “Kick around a bit, Gladwyn . . . there must be wood around here somewhere,” His Lordship said. “Kick around, won’t you? Be cheery to have a spot of fire.”

  52

  She remembered the terrible wind that had keened and roared . . .

  DESPITE the bitter cold, as the great inconstant wall of storm advanced toward them from the north, one by one the company aboard the steamer Rocky Mount left the warmth of cabin, galley, and bridge, to stand by the rail on the lower deck, watching the terrible storm come.

  “Wotan is angry,” Mary said. “He means to bury the whole world in snow.”

  “Don’t know about that, but it’s a fine blizzard, I guess,” Charbonneau said. “The Bad Eye predicted it.”

  “Bosh, I don’t hold with these red prophets,” George Catlin said. “Why not predict a blizzard, since it’s winter?”

  “They say he can hear a snowflake form,” Mary said. “They say he can hear the swan’s breath.”

  “And now our own Papa has very likely gone to his death in this year of our Lord 1832,” Buffum said.

  “The spirit of the hunt was on him,” Señor Yanez remarked, startling everybody. Señor Yanez rarely spoke.

  “Yes, and the old brute’s taken two innocents with him,” Tasmin said.

  She remembered the terrible wind that had keened and roared, underneath the hail. Now the wind was keening again, and the snow wall had snuffed out the sun’s light—there was only a ghostly glint on the snow.

  Father Geoffrin shivered violently.

  “So desolate, these plains—such melancholy,” he said. “I often weep, and I don’t know why. Snow is so much more a thing to be welcomed when it falls on cobblestones . . . or ancient walls . . . or lamplighters . . . or the shawls of prostitutes.”

  “Any chance we could find them, Charbonneau?” Captain Aitken asked. The light was almost gone, the snow wall advancing fast, and the black watery lead that would take them up the Missouri was narrowing by the hour. Still, he could not steam away and leave a noble patron. The loss of Lord Berrybender would mean the end of his career. His employers would not forgive such a ca
lamity—none of them had been west of Cincinnati; they had rather rosy ideas about life on the wild Missouri.

  “No chance, George,” Charbonneau said. “The snow’ll soon be blowing so thick you can’t see the length of your arm. His Lordship would go.”

  “That he would—he nearly yanked my hair out when I tried to reason with him,” Tasmin said.

  Cook came out for a moment, took Father Geoffrin by the sleeve, and led him back inside. She had begun to rely heavily on his advice in the matter of sauces and spices.

  “It could not get this cold in Holland,” Piet Van Wely announced. “The people would not stand for it—there would be protests and someone would lose his position.”

  “In Denmark also there are no such snows,” Holger Sten declared. “Only where the Lapps live are there these snows—knowledge of the Lapps I do not claim.”

  Remembering, suddenly, Fräulein Pfretzskaner’s terrible end, which could so easily have been her own, Buffum began to sob.

  Venetia Kennet began to cry also. The thin, fading light filled her with the deepest melancholy, the darkest sorrow. His Lordship, her great hope, was gone, doubtless to be frozen—and now she found herself pregnant with his bastard. Cook had confirmed her status only that day. The pregnancy that had once been her hope was now her despair. The seed at last had sprouted, but the noble seeder was gone.

  As Buffum sniffled and Venetia Kennet sobbed, a new sound reached them over the roar of snow—a high chant of some kind. They all turned and there was the Hairy Horn, calling out a high, eerie chant. He had thrown off his blanket—he faced the storm almost naked.

  “The Hairy Horn wishes to end his life’s journey soon,” Mary said. “The melody he offers up now is his death song.”

  “Wouldn’t pay too much attention to that claim,” Charbonneau said. “He’s said as much before and yet he’s still eating a good portion of vittles, every day.”