Sin Killer

by Larry McMurtry

  “You said you’d do anything for me,” she told him. “You said you’d risk your life.”

  “Sí,” Joaquin replied, not without a certain alarm. “Whatever you ask.”

  “What I ask is two horses—we’re taking them now, you and I, and we’re going to catch up with the English,” she told him.

  “Steal horses?” Joaquin replied, shocked. Stroking him gently, as she might a greyhound, she led him around to the horse stalls.

  “I’ll take the thoroughbred,” she told him. “But señorita, I’m only a blacksmith—I can’t ride. Only my donkey, a little,” Joaquin protested.

  “I’ll help you,” Julietta assured him. Still, he looked horrified. She thought she might have to dispense a few more caresses, even take him quickly, to calm him down. But then she changed her mind. She had had enough of being mauled by this peasant. Let him just do as she commanded.

  “But señorita, they hang horse thieves,” Joaquin stammered, very frightened.

  Julietta softened her tone a bit. Unless treated gently, he might panic and betray her. He was not a tall man, but the sorrel horse was small—he should be able to manage. The thoroughbred was more skittish. There were no sidesaddles in the smithy—because of the threat from Indians, the ladies of Santa Fe were not encouraged to ride. Ladies out for a canter might never be seen again.

  “If they catch us they will hang me,” Joaquin repeated several times.

  “If you keep quiet they won’t catch us,” Julietta insisted. Avoiding the Plaza, she led the horses through the narrowest, darkest alleys she could find.

  When it was Joaquin’s turn to mount he swung himself onto the horse so awkwardly that the sorrel crow-hopped and threw him hard. Exasperated, Julietta dismounted and steadied the sorrel until Joaquin finally managed to crawl aboard and find his stirrups. The stars were still bright. Her aunt Eleanora was a notoriously late sleeper. It would be noon before anyone realized they had left. She thought the soldiers might conclude that Joaquin had accidentally left the stalls open, allowing two horses to escape; then he fled, for fear of punishment.

  The only person who saw the two riders make their way south under the starlight was an old woman whose habit, on starlit nights, was to sit out beside her little hut with her tame goose. She liked to study the heavens; she was called Oriabe, though some of those whose fortunes she told just called her Grandmother. Her goose squawked twice, when the lady and the blacksmith rode by. “Be polite, you’re just a goose,” Oriabe scolded. She liked to sit out all night, until the stars began to fade. She wished she had not seen the two riders. A large owl was hooting from a nearby tree when the riders passed. Owls, of course, were harbingers of bad fortune—fatal fortune, in fact. She knew this owl, which often hooted from that tree. Oriabe meant to have a word with the bird, someday soon. She meant to ask it to find another tree to sit in. Owls were sure to scare away people who might need their fortunes told, and besides that, it was hard to make a proper reading of the stars with a big owl hooting all the time.

  28

  If it seemed a good time to go north, he went north . . .

  JIM SNOW WAS USUALLY QUICK to decide on a course of action; once decided, he worked efficiently to carry out whatever plan he had made. The ability to weigh options and act on his decisions had served him well all during the years when he had acted singly. If it seemed a good time to go north, he went north; and on the whole he preferred north to south. The water supply was too chancy in the south.

  Now, though, having slipped out of Santa Fe ahead of arrest, Jim could not immediately decide on a plan. His family were already miles to the south—of course, one of the helpful things about travel in dry country were the dust clouds that any company threw up. Kit Carson was hardly out of sight before Jim spotted the dust of the first patrol—in the clear high air such dust clouds were visible many miles away.

  Jim had no difficulty in eluding these young soldiers—he merely went higher into the rocks. The soldiers were not skilled at mountain pursuit. They explored a ridge or two and gave up. Soon the dust cloud was moving in the opposite direction, back toward Santa Fe.

  Jim had gone north mainly because he wanted to intercept High Shoulders, who was hunting somewhere to the north. He wanted to prevent High Shoulders’ arrest. Jim looked around for a campfire, or some evidence that High Shoulders was in the vicinity, but he found nothing. The hills were empty.

  Finally he made a campfire himself and kept it going all night. If High Shoulders was nearby he would notice and investigate. High Shoulders had shown himself to be a skilled reader of country. Together they could easily catch up with the slow-moving ox-carts that were carrying their wives and children away south. Then a plan of rescue could be devised.

  Jim felt a mild annoyance with Kit, for being so henpecked that he had gone scuttling back to his Josie when he might have been helpful to Jim and the Berrybenders. Thanks to his association with the Bent brothers, Kit could go in and out of Santa Fe at will. He might easily have found out how many soldiers were in the escort, and whether the officer in command was reliable or unreliable. Information of that sort would have been useful, but Kit had felt no need to secure it, a lapse Jim meant to tax him for, the next time he saw him.

  Jim felt confident that he could catch up with his family and free them, but that would immediately create a real dilemma. Where was he to take them once he freed them? They could not go back to Santa Fe. If they went east to the Bents they ran the risk of being rearrested. The Bents were not strong enough to repulse a Mexican army. Besides, the Bents knew that they had to maintain good relations with the Mexicans—the very existence of their business depended on it. One wrong move and they might lose all their property, or even find themselves in jail.

  Then there was Texas, where Lord Berrybender talked idly of starting a cotton plantation; Lord Berry-bender took it for granted that, one way or another, they would get there, but Jim was less confident. He himself had never been much south of the Canadian River. Hugh Glass had been there: he did not paint a rosy picture. Between them and coastal Texas lay hundreds of miles of unknown country—unknown, that is, to whites but thoroughly known to the Comanches, the Kiowas, the Apaches—all, so far as Jim knew, implacable enemies of the whites. Oxcarts filled with women and children would surely tempt them: slaves for the markets in Mexico. At the moment the Berrybenders had an escort of soldiers, and Jim supposed the best plan would be to keep the escort, at least until they got past some of the Apaches. Reaching Texas from the south might be safer than trying to penetrate from the northwest.

  In the night Jim gave up trying to think too far ahead. Life was unpredictable—Tasmin, unpredictable herself, insisted it was. Jim could never figure out what Tasmin might do, and the two of them together could not really see what might be coming next.

  “Life happens day to day!” It was one of Tasmin’s favorite mottoes, and Jim had to admit that it seemed to be true. Even if he made, to his own satisfaction, a decision as to how to approach Texas, there was small likelihood that their arrival in that place would happen as planned. Crossing any hundred miles of country was sure to bring surprises.

  Around dawn Jim began to get an uneasy feeling. Someone or something was watching him. He thought he would have heard a man approach, even a stealthy man—yet he had not heard the rustle of a bush—nothing. He wondered if it might be a cougar. He was wearing buckskins. Joe Walker claimed that a cougar had once jumped him while he was wearing buckskins—Joe thought the cougar had mistaken him for a deer. As soon as the animal realized its mistake it ran away, as frightened by the encounter as Joe had been himself.

  Jim looked around him nervously—he didn’t want a mountain lion to land on his shoulders by mistake.

  He had camped beneath a steep hill—above him one hundred feet or so was a jumble of boulders—excellent hiding places for any man or animal that hoped to hide. High up Jim saw something move—he thought it might be a bear. Jim reached for his rifle; when he did th
e figure above him raised his rifle too, in salute. The fellow on the mountain had a hunched look—it was not the first time he had been mistaken for a bear; in fact, he cultivated the look, because it scared away fools, a species which Bill Williams—usually called Old Bill—did not suffer gladly.

  Jim was startled to see the man. Bill Williams was said to have moved into Ute country. What was he doing a day north of Santa Fe? It was the unpredictability principle again. Anyone was likely to be anywhere.

  Jim had only met Bill Williams once or twice and had no particular opinion of him, though Kit Carson and other mountain men held very firm opinions about him—and the opinions were hardly positive. He was said to have a thunderous temper and to think little of killing, whether the man killed was friend or foe. That in itself was a failing common enough among the mountain trappers, who over the years, in violent brawls, did much to thin their own ranks.

  Kit Carson, who knew Bill Williams well, having once trapped with him in the Ute country, raised a more uncommon possibility. Food had been scarce. Two or three men had fallen, and exactly what had occurred to them in that harsh time had never been made exactly clear. Jim particularly remembered one remark of Kit’s: “Nobody who knows Bill Williams walks in front of him in the starving times,” Kit said. “Keep that in mind if you’re ever with him when you’re about the only thing left to eat.”

  Jim remembered the remark as he waited for the hulking mountain man to make his way out of the boulders and come to camp. He did hunch along like a bear and his buckskins were black with use. Cleanliness had clearly never been of major interest to Bill Williams.

  “I hear you preach!” Bill Williams said loudly when he stumped into camp. He was of formidable size and had a wild mane of hair.

  “No, I don’t,” Jim told him. “I cry the Word a little, once in a while.”

  “I’ve preached all my life—converted sixty heathen so far,” Bill remarked, looking at Jim in a none too friendly way.

  “When you’ve converted sixty heathen to the Lord you can call yourself a preacher,” Bill Williams continued, speaking loudly, as if daring Jim to challenge his claims.

  “I don’t know enough scripture to be able to convert folks,” Jim admitted.

  “And yet you call yourself the Sin Killer,” Bill Williams said, tilting his head to one side and looking at Jim suspiciously.

  “No, I call myself Jim Snow,” Jim replied. “Some of the boys called me Sin Killer when I was younger. It’s just a nickname.”

  “Well, I may borrow it, if I keep going with my converting,” the man said. “You can get another nickname.”

  Jim was beginning to find the man’s tone irritating. There was no friendliness in anything Bill Williams said. Jim didn’t like his rude tone—he did not like being insulted at his own campfire.

  “If you can’t be polite, then I’ll fight you,” Jim told him. “I won’t have rude behavior.”

  “You won’t, eh! You puppy!” Bill said, his face coloring with fury. “I shot a sneaking Ute this morning and I might just shoot you, if you sass me.”

  “The Ute was probably my brother-in-law—did you kill him?” Jim asked.

  “No, but I put a bullet in the sneaky skunk,” Bill replied. “He got in some brush and I didn’t care to flush him out—I left him for the bears. And it don’t mean a goddamn pickle to me that you’re related to the man.”

  He leveled his rifle at Jim but as he did Jim stooped quickly, plunging his hands into the hot ash of the campfire—then he flung the ash and any coals that might be in it right into Bill Williams’s face. The ashes were not particularly hot, but they blinded the man for a second, and two or three small coals went down his shirt, causing him to hop and yelp—he dropped his rifle as he attempted to shake out the burning coals. There was one fair-sized stick still smoking in the campfire. Jim snatched it and hit Bill Williams hard, right in the face, causing his nose to explode with blood. The man fell backwards, blinded, blood-smeared, and still writhing from the coals inside his shirt.

  “If I let you live don’t ever talk rude to me again,” Jim told him. He put his foot on the man’s throat and exerted just enough pressure to make him gasp. “You’re just a walking bag of sin and I will kill you if I see you again.”

  He picked up Bill Williams’s rifle and went to his horse.

  “That’s my rifle—I need it,” Bill Williams managed to gasp.

  “It was your rifle but you lost it through bad manners,” Jim told him. “Santa Fe’s just down the hill. You’ll find plenty of rifles there.”

  “Down the hill fifty miles, you mean,” the man said, sitting up. “A bear could get me before I make it to town.”

  “I hope one does,” Jim told him. “If my brother-in-law’s dead you won’t have nothing to fear from bears because I’ll come back and finish you myself.”

  “You’re a sneaking rascal if I ever met one,” Bill Williams told him. “Next time I meet you it’ll be a different story.”

  Jim had been about to mount but he turned back, unsheathed his knife, and stood over the fallen man.

  “The next time can be now,” he told him. “Get up and get out your knife or else leave off your threats.”

  Bill Williams considered his assailant, trying to calculate whether he could make a lunge for Jim’s legs and bring him down.

  Jim waited, just out of reach of such a move. “You stole my rifle like a common thief—I guess you would fight, goddamn you!” Bill Williams shouted.

  The blasphemous phrase was too much for Jim—he felt the Word coming out, as it had not come since the day he yelled it at the four Osage warriors who were chasing him and Tasmin along the Missouri shore. He stood over Bill Williams and poured it out, a wild, unintelligible babble, shocking the mountain man so much that he began to scoot backward, alarmed. Jim still held his knife as the Word poured out.

  Then he stopped, his chest heaving. “Don’t be cussing at me,” he warned. “If you do I’ll break your old scrawny neck.”

  Bill Williams, watching the knife, thought his hour had come. He had seen a terrible change— the mild young man had become the Sin Killer indeed. Bill Williams didn’t say another word. Over the years he had fought and won many fights. When he let his violence out he was a powerful foe. But his violence, which had frightened many and flattened more, did not worry this boy—a boy who had thrown coals in his face and then flattened him with a hot stick. Bill Williams did not want to see what he might do if he used the knife.

  Jim Snow put the knife away, got his horse, and rode slowly up the hill.

  29

  Jim found him, barely conscious . . .

  HIGH SHOULDERS, though not mortally wounded, had lost a great deal of blood—the bullet had passed through above his hip. Jim found him, barely conscious, in some thick underbrush well up the slope. Bill Williams had not been exaggerating about the bears, either. There was grizzly sign everywhere.

  High Shoulders now knew a little English. “My wife?” he asked. “Where my wife?” “Headed south but traveling slow,” Jim indicated. “We need to get this bleeding stopped— then we’ll soon catch up with the folks.”

  The next day, though, a sandstorm struck, more severe than any Jim had experienced. They tore up a shirt and made dust masks, but the masks were little help. The upper sky was an ugly brown and the stinging, swirling sand thicker at ground level than any Jim had tried to travel in. High Shoulders, still weak, rode the mare, which Jim led. When the reins were fully extended he could only just see the horse’s head. Once he dropped a rein and thought he had lost the horse—but for the fact that he stepped on the dropped rein he might have lost the horse. Even the most violent sandstorms usually blew themselves out in a few hours, but this one didn’t; it lasted a day and a night, and when it did stop the air was so full of unsettled dust that it scarred the nasal passages.

  Jim had never been lost, in any weather; he trusted his sense of direction as absolutely as he trusted his pulse. But for a few
hours at the height of the storm, Jim wondered if, after all, he was lost. He couldn’t see the horizon or the sky and only vaguely sensed the movement of the sun. The feeling was unsettling—High Shoulders, in a kind of sick daze, could be little help. When the storm struck they were due west of Santa Fe. At first the wind came out of the east, but then shifted north and later south. It was in his face. Finally it became so intense that he thought best to stop. He helped High Shoulders down, tied a rag around the mare’s eyes, and waited, sheltered by a little bank of rocks. Tired, he sat and let the sand cover his lap. At one point, sensing movement, he saw a rattlesnake slither across his lap. Jim didn’t move—in a moment the snake slithered away.

  The wait proved beneficial to High Shoulders. His strength began to return. But he could not stop asking about his wife—he wanted to know when he could be back with her, a question Jim couldn’t answer until the dust cleared. The young Ute’s anxiety about his English wife was so intense that it was almost irritating. The plain, often woebegone girl had blossomed into a confident, appealing woman since joining her fate to High Shoulders’. Sitting in the sand, waiting for the air to clear, Jim wondered why some human linkages were so tight and others so loose. Mary Berry-bender and Piet Van Wely were never apart for more than an hour, and yet her father, Lord Berry-bender, seldom addressed a word to his wife, Vicky; he took no interest at all in the two healthy boys Vicky had borne him.

  He himself liked being with Tasmin and the little ones, but he was not driven by any need to hurry back to her. High Shoulders and Piet seemed to draw energy from their mates, but that was not the case with Tasmin and himself. Their conflicts were too frequent; they left Jim feeling worn out. What had changed in their situation was the children, all of whom looked at him with sad eyes when he prepared to leave.

  Finally the dust did settle out of the air. They discovered that they were not far from the Rio Grande. High Shoulders even thought he could see the dust of the Berrybender party far ahead— perhaps fifty miles off. Jim was skeptical—many travelers used the Camino Real. High Shoulders wanted to travel all night, to catch up with his wife, but Jim preached caution. The country was broken and he didn’t know it. In unfamiliar country it was best to go slow. More than once they came across signs of Indians: the remains of campfires, human scat, tracks here and there. Once Jim thought he saw a small man watching them from behind a ridge of rocks—he couldn’t be sure, but he knew there was nothing to be gained by taking unusual risks. The Berrybenders were somewhere ahead. They would catch them in a day, two days, three.