Sin Killer

by Larry McMurtry

  The Bad Eye immediately pulled the great cape the Englishman had given him over his head.

  “I am going in a trance now,” he said. “I’ll listen to the spirits—they might know about this.”

  He didn’t really know what to think about the strange news that the Sans Arc had themselves some kind of Buffalo Man, but he did know that when Draga used that deadly tone with him it was just as well to hurry up and get in a trance.

  59

  Three horsemen on unshod horses had recently passed . . .

  DESPITE the deep cold, Maelgwyn Evans and Toussaint Charbonneau went ashore and dutifully gathered up Lord Berrybender’s expensive guns. Then they made a bit of a search for Gladwyn—a search made with not much expectation that they would find the lost valet alive.

  “I guess we ought to try and scratch him out some kind of grave, if we find him,” Maelgwyn said. “It’s a hard way to go, froze in a blizzard like that.”

  “The wolves may not have left enough to bury,” Charbonneau said.

  They had gone not more than half a mile from the circle of dead buffalo dropped by Lord Berrybender when they came upon a puzzling scene. Three horsemen on unshod horses had recently passed. There was a dead wolf, newly skinned; a dead buffalo cow, not skinned, but partially butchered; a dead buffalo calf, mostly eaten by wolves; and one of Gladwyn’s shoes, covered with frozen blood. The shoe was close by the dead buffalo cow. A few live coals still glowed in the campfire.

  “I guess he ain’t dead, your Welshman,” Charbonneau said. “He’s just half barefooted.”

  “And besides that he’s taken,” Maelgwyn said.

  “That beats being dead,” Charbonneau replied.

  “Maybe . . . it depends on who took him, and what kind of mood they’re in,” Maelgwyn said. “Some Indians can be pretty mean—he might escape the ice and get the fire.”

  “That’s the chances a fellow takes—this Knife River country ain’t for me,” Charbonneau said. “It’ll cheer up Eliza, though . . . she’ll be glad to know that the fellow might be alive.”

  “Oh, you mean that girl who tried to jump overboard—the one I caught by the foot?” Maelgwyn asked.

  “That’s the gal, our clumsy Eliza—she’s bad about bustin’ the crockery,” Charbonneau said. “And here we didn’t even know she fancied the fellow till overboard she went.”

  60

  “Who says our pleasures are languid?”

  ONCE coaxed to bed, Jim Snow was not stingy with his attentions—Tasmin felt that her wait had been well worth it. They were at their conjugal occupations most of the morning, the satisfactions of which were intense; and yet all their sweet meltings and mergings did not quite reconcile Jim Snow to the closeness of the stateroom, or make him much less wary where possible enemies were concerned. His rifle was propped by the head of the bed, a circumstance that made Tasmin nervous. She was in the mood to let herself go and didn’t want to have to be worrying about a rifle.

  “What if it falls and goes off, like Papa’s did?” she asked. “What if I buck around too wildly and knock it over?”

  “Buck all you want—it won’t shoot,” Jim assured her. It was far too close in the stateroom—their bed was now a swamp of sweat. Jim wanted to open the window, or even the door, but people were always passing along the walkways—with the window open anyone would be sure to hear the sighings and squealings that went with a good long rut. As soon as they satisfied themselves for the day Jim meant to take Tasmin and get off the boat, back into the open air, where he could breathe better; but they were not soon finished.

  In one interlude Tasmin made Jim sit up in bed so she could trim his beard again. It was one of her favorite activities as a wife, trimming Jimmy’s beard and snipping a vagrant lock or two of his hair.

  “Where will we be when I drop our child, as you put it, Jimmy?” she asked.

  Jim Snow shrugged. “We’ll just be where we are—somewhere on the Yellowstone, probably, unless you’re still in the mood to go to Santa Fe—and this ain’t the best place to start from, or the best time of year to start.”

  “I just mean that I hope you’ll be with me and not off on one of your rambles,” she said. Though she still felt tremors of pleasure in her body, and was for the moment a happy wife, the thought of the child worried her. She did not want to be without him when it came.

  “Don’t be walking off like that, you hear?” he said, looking her directly in the eye. “I thought you’d soon come back or I would have chased you down.”

  As for where they would be when the baby came, what could he say? The baby was six months away, and they could all be in bad trouble within six hours, if the Sioux showed up in an ugly mood. Where they were when the baby came was not too important, as long as they were somewhere where game was plentiful.

  “Get your warmest clothes and let’s go,” he said. “I feel like I’m choking, from being in this close air.”

  “All right, Jimmy,” Tasmin said. “But all this rutting’s made me a little weak in the legs—I’m not sure I can tramp very far today.”

  She began to rake around in her tiny closet for anything that looked warm. Jim watched her pull out garment after garment, amazed at the supply of clothes his wife had. He felt sure he could get through his whole life with fewer clothes than she had just piled on the bed.

  Tasmin stuffed a valise, then put on the loose shirt of skins the Oto woman had sewed for her—she was gathering up hair-brushes and combs and a book or two when there was a knock on the door. Jim immediately took his gun, but Tasmin peeked out the window and saw that it was only her sister Mary.

  “It’s only our brat,” she said—“might as well let her in.”

  Mary, once in the room, stopped and sniffed.

  “I smell lubricious secretions,” she said; the look in her eye, as usual, was not entirely sane.

  “What of it?—there are very likely to be such odors when husbands and wives have been about their natural work,” Tasmin said.

  Jim Snow had never seen anyone quite like this little English girl who used strange long words; he recalled that when he first saw her she seemed to be talking to a serpent—a white-mouthed moccasin, in fact.

  “We have all been waiting patiently for you and Mr. Snow to finish fornicating—a number of crises need attention,” Mary said. “Are you through yet?”

  “For the moment,” Tasmin said. “Jim wishes to leave the boat—he finds the air rather close. What’s this about crises?”

  “Well, there’s Father’s amputation,” Mary said. “He still opposes it but medical opinion is that the limb will soon rot. And then there’s the ice—we’re stuck fast now. Captain Aitken was very much hoping Mr. Snow would visit him on the bridge before he departs. You can come too, Tasmin.”

  “Of course I can come,” Tasmin said. “I hope I don’t need you to invite me.”

  “Fortunately Monsieur Charbonneau and Mr. Evans have found all Papa’s guns,” Mary said. “Papa was much reassured.”

  “What about that third man—did they find him?” Jim inquired.

  “No, Gladwyn they did not find—merely one shoe, rather bloodstained.”

  “How odd,” Tasmin said. “The rest of Gladwyn must be somewhere.”

  “Abducted by red savages of the Sans Arc band, that is the theory,” Mary said. “Unfortunately the Piegan, Blue Thunder, left this morning, while you two were about your languid pleasures.”

  Tasmin gave her a thump on the head.

  “Watch your tongue,” she said. “Who says our pleasures are languid?”

  “That’s two out of three of Charbonneau’s Indians gone,” Jim observed.

  “Yes, Monsieur Charbonneau is very upset—the Piegan disappeared while they were looking for the guns—Monsieur feels the failure keenly,” Mary said.

  61

  “It’s win all, lose all, in this game, Sharbo . . .”

  CAPTAIN George Aitken, not entirely sober, had to face the fact of defeat. Upriver there
was no longer an open flow: the ice had come. Already several buffalo were sniffing around where, only the day before, there had been rushing water. With the Yellowstone still more than one hundred miles away, the captain had to admit that the race had been lost, and the boat might be too, unless he was lucky. He knew that no excuse available to him—sandbars, mud banks, broken paddles, ice that formed earlier than had been expected—would move his employers to tolerance. Sandbars and ice were merely words to them; they had never stood where he stood, looking at the unforgiving line of cloud and a few cautious buffalo, already testing their icy bridge over the Missouri. All his employers would consider was the fact that the steamer Rocky Mount had not got where it was supposed to deliver its expensive human cargo. The failure would be reckoned his fault—indeed, he reckoned it so himself, although, tracing his way back day by day, he could not fault any of his hour-to-hour decisions.

  “It’s win all, lose all, in this game, Sharbo,” he said. “Win all, lose all. And we ain’t winning.”

  Toussaint Charbonneau, upon discovering that the third of his charges—Blue Thunder, of the Piegan Blackfoot—had left the boat and vanished, immediately took to his cups. He felt himself beaten. Only the Hairy Horn, the one Indian he would have been glad to lose, remained on—indeed, could not be persuaded to leave—the boat. Captain William Clark was not going to like it.

  Only two weeks before, steaming past two villages of the Omahas, Charbonneau had awakened in the dawn, stirred, as he always was on that stretch of the river, by the memory of his Bird, Sacagawea. There, on the shore, were the remains of the fur king Manuel Lisa’s old fort, now fallen badly out of repair. It was in that same fort, twenty years before, that Sacagawea had been seized by a putrid fever; she had died just at dusk and had been buried that same night, outside the fort, as a precaution against the spread of the fever. Charbonneau could never float past her grave, as he had several times, without heaving a sigh and shedding a tear. He had been far from alone in mourning his Bird Woman. All the rough trappers vied to carry her to her grave; all acknowledged that she had been the finest woman in the fort. Even Manuel Lisa, who had seen more death on the Missouri River than any other man, came out of his quarters and stood in silence by Sacagawea’s grave.

  Every time he passed the spot where she lay it seemed to Charbonneau that Janey—as Captain Clark had called her—stretched out a hand to him, as if asking him to join her in easeful sleep—yet, somehow, his stubborn body kept living, despite many ills and discontents.

  Now here he was, stuck in the ice north of the Knife River, more than a week’s hard march from adequate shelter, with a bunch of English he didn’t much like, having lost two of the three Indians that had been specifically entrusted to his care by Captain Clark. They were important Indians, honored guests of the nation, and losing them was no small thing—if the Piegan happened to get killed, as Big White had, it would surely affect relations with the Blackfeet, and relations with the Blackfeet were never easy. It seemed to Charbonneau that he could have managed better if only his Bird had lived. Coal was a fine healthy girl, but only a child, really. It was not to be expected that she could manage things as well as Sacagawea, who, after all, had carried their boy, little Pomp, all the way from the Mandan villages to the Western ocean and back, on their great trek with the captains, while managing to keep himself in good order and half the company besides.

  When Tasmin and Jim, led by Mary and trailed by George Catlin, went up to the bridge they found that neither Captain Aitken nor Toussaint Charbonneau were in particularly good repair.

  “We’re stuck, Jimmy—stuck,” Captain Aitken said. “I was too slow about the river, and now we’re stuck.”

  He looked at Jim Snow and Lady Tasmin, blooming and blushing as if they had just awakened from a fine wedding night—the sight made George Aitken feel old.

  “Why is that so bad, Captain?” Tasmin asked. “You have a snug boat, and there seem to be plenty of buffalo around, in case we run low on vittles. We brought lots of ice skates—our brats can go ice-skating now and then.”

  George Aitken scarcely knew how to reply. Lady Tasmin was in a state of high health and happiness—she had no inkling of the perils that awaited them in the frigid months ahead. Jim Snow, her young mate, seemed to offer altogether the best hope. If Jim would agree to guide a land party over to the Yellowstone they might get through the winter without much loss. There was a wagon and a buggy in the hold, and four horses. If they could only get a little break in the weather, a few days of warming, the situation might yet be saved.

  Captain Aitken was about to ask Jimmy Snow to help them when pandemonium suddenly broke loose on the lower deck. There was a gunshot—then another gunshot. Then came a chorus of high screams, merging with low French curses and exclamations of despair from the engagés. Those on the bridge rushed to the rail and were astonished to see several engagés, evidently wild with terror, piling into one of the pirogues, which of course was immovably stuck in the ice.

  “Quick, Sharbo, go see!” Captain Aitken ordered. “Is the Hairy Horn running amok?”

  “Not the Hairy Horn—it’s our papa, I expect,” Mary said, darting fleetly down the stairs.

  Charbonneau tried to follow, but got his feet tangled up and fell flat on his face.

  “Get up, Sharbo, this won’t do,” the captain said, though he was none too steady himself.

  “Very likely it is only Papa—he’s always more or less amok,” Tasmin said. “I think that’s Vicky Kennet screaming—there’s no telling what outrage the selfish old brute has committed.”

  “He must be shooting at the Frenchies . . . they all look pretty scared,” Jim said.

  “Perhaps Father Geoff could speak to him—priests are supposed to soothe unruly souls,” George Catlin suggested.

  “You’re an optimist, George,” Tasmin said. “Our fine priest is probably hiding under a bed—either that or he’s in Mademoiselle’s room, reading indecent literature.

  “I expect you think we’re all crazy, we English, don’t you, Jim?” she asked, looking shyly at her husband. “These alarums are merely the stuff of day-to-day life, when the Berrybenders are assembled.”

  “We ought to be getting ashore,” Jim said politely.

  Tasmin was right—he did think the English were more or less crazy. His own main desire was simply to get away with Tasmin, to the emptiness and peace of the country, where it was easier to breathe and even easier to think.

  “Ha, the great theft is revealed,” Mary said, popping back up the stairs. “It’s the claret. Papa sent Vicky to fetch him a bottle from the keelboat, whereupon it was discovered that there is no more claret. The engagés drank it all, every bottle.”

  “All? A thousand bottles?” Tasmin asked.

  “All,” Mary repeated.

  “But why is Vicky screaming so, she’s not an engagé?” Tasmin asked.

  “No, but she’s being blamed,” Mary said. “Papa’s chasing her with a horsewhip.”

  “I wouldn’t mind if we left now, myself,” Tasmin said. Jimmy had taken her hand, which she liked very much. Once again she felt like a wife, wanted. She did not intend to make the mistake of leaving her husband again.

  “But Jim, we’ve the amputation to do, when His Lordship quiets down—and then we’ll be needing a guide, to get this bunch to the fort,” Captain Aitken pleaded.

  Jim looked at Tasmin—it was mainly her family involved. George Aitken was in a bad spot—it would be hard to deny him a little help.

  “Drat! Not for a minute of my life has Papa managed to do the convenient thing,” Tasmin said. “What should we do, Jimmy?”

  She gave his hand a squeeze, and to her delight he squeezed back.

  “He’s your pa, and he’ll die if we don’t get that leg off,” Jim said. “I guess we better sharpen the saw.”

  62

  Draga had brought some poison with her . . .

  WHEN the dark woman, Draga, came to the Sans Arc camp to attempt
to discredit him and have him put to death, Gladwyn confounded her by speaking in Gaelic. In the whole time that he had been captive not a word of English had passed his lips; if the people thought he was just an ordinary Englishman, they would probably kill him.

  In fact he knew little enough Gaelic—just a few songs and scraps of legend and rhyme, but to the Sans Arc it sounded like the babble of a Buffalo Man; it was enough to save him.

  There were, unfortunately, a number of skeptics in the Sans Arc camp, older people mostly, who didn’t believe for a minute that this skinny stranger had been born of a buffalo. But the Gaelic at least made them uncertain—no one had ever heard such strange speech. Three Geese, Gladwyn’s main sponsor, considered the fact that the stranger spoke an unearthly language proof enough of his extraordinary origin.

  “You see?” Three Geese said. “He is not speaking white man’s language. That’s buffalo he’s speaking.”

  Old Cat Head, the most flagrant of the skeptics, was not convinced.

  “I have never heard a buffalo speak like that,” he pointed out. “I have never heard a buffalo say anything.”

  Cat Head didn’t want to yield any ground to Three Geese, who had been much too full of himself since he brought the small white man to the village; but even he was rather startled by the strange language the white man babbled. At first Cat Head would have been happy just to hit the white man in the head with a good hatchet, but the strange babble caused him to waver. Even if the white man hadn’t come out of the womb of a buffalo, he was still a peculiar man. Cat Head thought he might be some kind of holy fool—there was no point in acting rashly. Killing a holy fool could bring all sorts of calamities down on the people.

  Draga did not welcome the presence of this Buffalo Man in the Sans Arc village. She knew he had come from the white men’s big boat—the Thunder Boat, the Bad Eye called it—and she told the people as much, but to her annoyance, she was greeted with insults and sneers. The Sans Arc had always been independent and aloof. They scorned corn growers such as the Mandans; they were people of the buffalo and did not consider themselves subject to Draga’s wishes, or the Bad Eye’s either. Draga had brought some poison with her but the Sans Arc were not about to let her poison their holy fool. They never let her near the little man, lest she stab him or try to interfere with his food.