Sin Killer

by Larry McMurtry

  “I’m sure you’d know best about that,” the priest said, but by then Tasmin had already turned away.

  36

  . . . tears of pain and frustration . . .

  “BUT none of us are used to walking, Pomp,” Tasmin said, tears of pain and frustration staining her cheeks—minutes earlier she had done the very thing Kit Carson had warned her about: she stepped on a small poisonous cactus, whose thorns pierced her moccasin and stuck deep in her heel. Now Pomp held her foot in his hand as, probing gently with a needle, he attempted to perform for her the service she had performed for Kit. One by one he was working the greenish thorns out of her foot.

  “We’re pampered gentlewomen, not mountain men,” Tasmin reminded him. “Even the grass here is like spikes, and the sun’s so bright I can’t possibly spot every vicious cactus that lies in my path.”

  “You best learn to look out for them,” her husband advised, politely.

  “Oh, shut up, Jimmy—even the experienced Kit Carson stepped on one not long ago—why am I expected to be more expert than Kit?” Tasmin asked.

  Jim Snow walked away—any attempt at counsel would only make Tasmin angrier. Let Pomp do the doctoring—she didn’t seem to get quite so angry with Pomp.

  ’Anyway I’m not the only sufferer,” Tasmin pointed out. “Vicky’s feet are severely blistered and so are Buffum’s.”

  Pomp had almost finished extracting the thorns— her foot was not really much damaged, but her point was unarguable. Of all the Englishwomen only Mary Berrybender was used to walking—until their feet toughened, there were bound to be problems. But with the company now down to two horses, one wagon, and the ox, there was no alternative to walking.

  “It’s only about five miles to the springs,” Pomp said, hoping to cheer Tasmin up at least a bit. “We can rest for a few days, once we get there.”

  “Two or three of you could ride on the ox,” Kit Carson suggested. “It’s big enough to carry two or three of you.”

  “But we’ll soon have to eat the ox,” Vicky pointed out. “Jim Snow said so this morning—eat it just as we ate the palfreys and most of the rest of our steeds. Why get used to riding a beast we will then immediately eat?”

  Tasmin let out a yelp—Pomp, probing with the needle, went a little too deeply in pursuit of the last tiny thorn.

  “This will pass,” Pomp assured her. “Your feet will soon toughen up. Look at Zeke. His feet look pretty bad, but he ran nearly a hundred miles on them.”

  ’And I’d run another hundred, if the Rappies got after me,” Zeke Williams piped. Since his rescue he spent most of his time staring at the womenfolk with his intense blue eyes. Cook felt strongly that the old fellow required careful handling if lustful assaults were not to occur.

  “I can’t be much cheered by the thought that my feet might soon look like Mr. Williams’s,” Tasmin allowed. Then she yelped again, but for the last time: Pomp had captured the final thorn. He rubbed her foot gently, to be sure he hadn’t missed any. The last thorn out, Tasmin at once felt the pain diminish. The group began to drift on. Buffum thought she might try the ox and had Jim Bridger lift her up, but just as she mounted, the ox slung its head to rid itself of flies; a string of slobber struck Buffum in the face.

  “I do despise ox spit,” Buffum said, immediately jumping back down.

  Pomp started to set Tasmin’s foot back on the ground, but Tasmin kicked at him with it—just a little teasing kick to make him look at her! Notice her! She wanted just to sit with him for a bit, now that the others had gone.

  Pomp didn’t immediately realize what Tasmin was about. He set the foot down anyway, but before he could stand up, Tasmin kicked at him with the other foot.

  “Remember that I’m a biped,” she told him. “Don’t neglect the other foot.”

  Pomp looked up then, right into Tasmin’s eyes, something he rarely did. In a place where every day’s march carried the threat of death, he didn’t feel that he should complicate matters by letting this powerful young woman, Jim Snow’s wife, fix her feelings on him. But he only had to look into her eyes for a moment to realize that her feelings were already firmly fixed.

  “You’re such an elusive gentleman, Monsieur Charbonneau,” Tasmin said. “I’ve not been ignored so adroitly in quite a long time.”

  Pomp didn’t turn his eyes away, and he still held her other foot.

  “There’s no thorn in this foot,” he said, giving the foot a light squeeze.

  “No, but there’s a thorn in my heart,” Tasmin told him quietly. “It aches rather as my heel ached before you operated. You could soothe it as easily as you soothed my foot, if you only would.”

  In the distance she saw Father Geoffrin walking with Clam de Paty—the priest was looking directly at her, an interference that infuriated her.

  “There’s that detestable Jesuit,” she said angrily. ‘At last I manage to obtain a brief interview with you, and wouldn’t you know he’d be looking. I’d like to slap him, and maybe I will.”

  The fact that Father Geoffrin was watching put Pomp more at ease, a shift that Tasmin immediately noticed.

  “You don’t care at all, drat you!” she said. “You are such a frustrating man, Pomp. I fell in love with you and I allowed you to know it—a very forward thing. I’m still in love with you. I thought I detected some interest—you returned my kisses, at least.”

  “I liked those kisses,” Pomp admitted. He still held her foot, but felt rather silly. Kit was watching them too, no doubt jealously. The company was inching on, but Pomp and Tasmin had not moved.

  “You’re such a rational fellow, Pomp,” Tasmin said, with a cutting smile. “I suppose my little importunings must seem silly to you. The geography hardly encourages a grand passion. In the days when we had to drink that horse slop I ceased to care whether you loved me at all, but I’ve had a cool drink or two and now the feeling’s back. I thought love was supposed to fatten on obstacles such as these—isn’t that what Mr. Shakespeare says?”

  At that Pomp smiled, amused despite himself by Tasmin’s steely persistence, her wit, her evident determination to do whatever it took to gain his affection— which, of course, she already had. But not many women would call up Shakespeare when they were on a burning plain, with the Arapahos likely to fall on them at any moment.

  “I’ve been gone from Shakespeare for a while,” Pomp admitted. “There’s probably something like that in the sonnets, though.”

  When Tasmin saw his shy, astonished smile she knew her gamble had not been wholly in vain. Perhaps he did want her still. He was just such a modest young man.

  She took back the foot she had thrust into his hand.

  “I’m hardly asking you for a wedding cake, Pomp,” she remarked. ‘After all, I’m married, and we have these numerous perils to surmount. But surely a kiss now and then wouldn’t be beyond you—or a confiding word, once in a while. I hate being always rebuffed, and why shouldn’t I hate it? It’s damned vexing to be able to command the attention of everyone except the one person whose attention I crave.”

  Together they walked back toward the company, Tasmin limping a little, her foot still sore. Pomp took her arm, a gesture of concern that pleased her mightily.

  “I’m worried about Pa,” he said, in an effort to explain what Tasmin took to be his inattention. “He’s sick. He’s traveled many a mile. I fear Pa’s playing out.”

  Ahead—far ahead—Tasmin could just see a green smudge on the horizon—it must be the spring Pomp had mentioned. Trees meant water, and water might mean a bath—clean clothes, even. Her thoughts began to fly ahead, and yet she had to admit that Pomp’s explanation was just. Toussaint Charbonneau did look as if he might be playing out. Pomp, the good son, would naturally be worried.

  “Perhaps we can rest for a few days, once we get to the spring,” Tasmin suggested. “Your father might improve.”

  Pomp didn’t answer. He didn’t look convinced. But he still held Tasmin’s arm—held it firmly, as she limped o
n, with a defiant look, toward the journalist and the priest.

  37

  He felt too tired, too sad . . .

  “THIS wilderness has destroy me,” Clam de Paty mumbled. He felt too tired, too sad even to make his English precise. What he had mumbled was the truth: the American wilderness had destroyed him. He did not want to walk across it—not even one more mile. He did not want to write about its mountain men, its savages, its grizzly bears, its mountains. He had come to America a famous man, a veteran of the Grande Armée, a man who had won medals; was he not the most famous journalist in the most civilized country in the world? Yet now, thanks to his bosses—always greedy for new information—he was destroyed, broken, finished, ended, afflicted with a numb despair. True, they had found a good spring, had drunk their fill, had bathed many times, had rested. And yet, all around them, the wilderness still yawned. Santa Fe was still hundreds of miles away. The nice young Monsieur Charbonneau could talk to him all he wanted about how easy the rest of the trip would be compared to what had already been endured, but young Monsieur Charbonneau was missing one big point: Clam de Paty no longer cared. The wilderness had finished him. All day and all night, as he shook and trembled, he thought of nothing but Paris, its cobblestones, its wines, its actresses.

  “Of course, it’s a dratted nuisance to have no claret,” Lord Berrybender allowed. “But aren’t you rather overdoing this, monsieur? This wilderness is amenable enough, as wildernesses go. I shot three buffalo yesterday—plenty of meat now for our march. Doubt we’ll have to eat horse meat again.”

  Clam de Paty didn’t respond. Why should he? The old Englishman was a fool. A Frenchman would have understood at once that when a man is finished, he is finished. There was no more to be said.

  “How vexing,” Mary Berrybender remarked. “That Frenchman declares that he will go no further. And now Monsieur Toussaint Charbonneau proposes to leave us and take Coal and Rabbit, a decision Pomp opposes.”

  There had been a sharp frost during the night—the prairie sparkled as if sown with diamonds, and edges of the green pool had a little rind of ice. Monty had cut his foot on a shard of glass, residue from the family that had been massacred near the spring. Monty, howling, raced off, leaving bloody footprints on the frosty grass. Tasmin was forced to run and catch him, and now had the task of binding up his cut.

  “Damn it, why did this child have to cut his toe half off?” Tasmin remarked. She was not very cheered by the thought that she soon would have two children to keep up with. Clam de Paty’s despair didn’t interest her—if he continued to balk, then he should be abandoned— but Toussaint Charbonneau’s departure was a matter for considerable concern. Old Sharbo and his cheerful wife, Coal, had been with them all the way from Saint Louis. The three little boys, Monty, Talley and Rabbit, had never been separated. And then there was Pomp, whose deep attachment to his father they all respected. Now the old man proposed to quit the company and take his wife and child back to the Missouri River, along whose banks he had lived much of his life.

  Little Onion helped Tasmin bandage Monty. Jim Snow and Jim Bridger were devising a harness for the ox, so it could pull the wagon—this meant that their two remaining horses could be used by the hunters.

  Tasmin expected long faces—she assumed everyone would be doing their best to dissuade the old interpreter from taking such a dangerous course of action; but instead she found the whole group chatting merrily. Tom Fitzpatrick and old Zeke Williams were advising Charbonneau about the likeliest routes. Old Charbonneau himself, who had been stumbling along, yellowish and tired, seemed suddenly to have a spring in his step—he looked on the whole rather jaunty.

  “Why, Monsieur Charbonneau, I’m so surprised that you’re leaving us,” Tasmin said. “Why this sudden urge to travel alone?”

  Toussaint Charbonneau tipped his filthy cap to her.

  “It’s just that I’m a river man, Lady Tasmin,” he said. “I reckon I’ve been up and down our good old Missouri more than thirty times and I’m longing to make another trip or two before I’m done. Our Pomp was born right on that river, you know—I’ve just got a yen to see it again. It’s a fine, fair river, if sometimes a little muddy.”

  Tasmin gave Coal a long hug—she was very fond of Coal, who had made Monty the rabbit-fur cap that had seen him snugly through a bitter winter. What Coal thought about the sudden departure, there was no guessing. Her look was stoical. Where her husband went, she too must go. Monty and Talley stood watching, solemn as judges, as Rabbit was put in his pouch. Pomp and his father held a long embrace, and then the Charbonneau family walked off east across the frosty plain, equipped with not much more than a rifle and a blanket. The mountain men gave a cheer and got back to their harnessing and packing. The great sunny distances soon swallowed up the little family.

  Tasmin expected Pomp to be sad—it seemed such a risky undertaking his father was attempting. And yet Pomp was in a perfectly good mood; like his father he seemed, if anything, rather jaunty.

  “But isn’t it risky?” Tasmin asked. “I thought there was smallpox along the river.”

  “Oh, Pa’s bound for Saint Louis, not the Mandans,” Pomp assured her. “He likes a visit with Captain Clark every year or two. He’ll soon be in Osage country, and Pa gets along with the Osage pretty well.”

  “I still think it’s odd,” Tasmin told him. “It seems that among you mountain men the best cure for jaundice or most other ills is just to set out—go to a new place. My Jimmy does it frequently. I don’t think I shall ever get used to it, and yet it seemed to have a tonic effect on your father.”

  “Yes—Pa’s not really a trapper or a fighter,” Pomp told her. “But as long as he can travel the Missouri he seems to get by pretty well.

  “Pa’s probably just lucky,” he added, reflecting. “Of all the men who went on the big trek with Captain Lewis and Captain Clark, only Pa and two or three others are alive. Most of them were better hunters than Pa—he’s never been much of a shot. Most of them were better at handling boats than Pa. All of them were better at tracking. And yet he’s alive and they’re dead.”

  “I hope some of his luck rubbed off on us,” Tasmin said. “I have a feeling we’re going to need it before we get home.”

  38

  Just so, as a boy . . .

  CLAM DE PATY, citizen of France, sat calmly by the fine, cool spring, throwing pebbles into the water as the Berrybender party prepared to leave. His weeping servant, Amboise d’Avigdor, had already stumbled away Just so, as a boy Clam had thrown pebbles into the Seine. Last-minute entreaties were pressed on him, but he maintained a dignified silence. Pomp Charbonneau sat with him a minute; he pointed out that many Indian tribes used these springs, not all of them friendly. Clam might have to fight—he could hardly hope to prevail. Also, bear tracks had been found—an old grizzly evidently came to the springs to water.

  All this information Clam ignored. He had explained that he was finished, destroyed; and that, it seemed to him, made matters clear enough. He had no more to say. If a bear came, so be it. If Indians came, so be it. He was under no obligation to travel endlessly on. The Americans and the English were welcome to mind their own business.

  It happened to be an exceptionally fine day. The mountain men and the Berrybenders were slow to get off, but finally they departed—the noise of the expedition grew faint in the distance. The only sound was the plop of pebbles, as Clam pitched them one by one into the water. A few crickets sounded. Small birds with skinny legs came and dipped their beaks into the greenish pond. After weeks of loud company, the solitude itself was refreshing.

  Clam possessed a fine whetstone—he thought it might be a good time to sharpen his saber, the saber he had used when he fought in the Grande Armée. It was a sword of Toledo steel; he enjoyed keeping its edge keen, attending to it whenever he had the leisure. Now, of course, he had perfect leisure. He had last used his saber in the clash with the Pawnees—the edge of the saber had been dulled when he struck the Pawnee boy�
�s horse. But the whetstone would soon restore an excellent cutting edge. When he finished his work he whacked at a grasshopper, cutting the creature in two.

  Clam then napped for a bit in the shade of one of the small cottonwood trees. He awoke feeling rather in a poetical mood, so he took out his notebook and a tiny anthology of poetry containing some verses of Voltaire. They seemed to Clam very bad verses—he himself, he felt quite sure, could do just as well. He thought he might compose an ode to the glory of France. When his body was found, as he hoped it would be, the ode would be there in his notebook, so that his public would know that Clam de Paty had died a patriot.

  But poetical composition, once Clam got down to it, proved to be a knotty business. His rhymes wouldn’t come, and he had little confidence in his meters. A few phrases seemed to hold promise, in an airy way. He thought he might change the ode to a roundel, a form at which he had once been pleased to consider himself fluent. He had composed some racy verses once to a lady’s garter—though the lady herself had been no lady; she was a petite actress named Thérèse whose teeth were crooked, causing her to lisp in a manner that, for a time, won the affections of theatergoers; but jaded creatures that they were, the theatergoers soon tired of Thérèse and her lisp. Clam tired of her too, though his little poem to her garter had been much admired by the beau monde at the time. In despair Thérèse took poison, but didn’t die. Her crooked teeth turned black—she was seen on the stage no more. Such was the way of Paris: actors, actresses, journalists like himself, even poets and the writers of satires had but a season; many of them took poison eventually, or flung themselves into the Seine and drowned. And yet that old crab Voltaire had lived to a ripe age, spouting his tedious verses all the while. Clam became a journalist; he placed his faith in facts; he succeeded; he made his name; he interviewed the great; he went to banquets—and it all led inevitably, it seemed, to his present situation. Here he sat, in happy solitude, his Toledo blade well sharpened, sitting by a pool of green water in the American West. He thought he might pass an hour or two versifying about the buffalo, a beast little acclaimed in French verse, so far as he knew. Perhaps a few of the shaggy beasts would come to water, but meanwhile, he took another nap.