The Berrybender Narratives

by Larry McMurtry

  The old hunter, Dan Drew, in conversation with Jim, stopped and made Tasmin a very decent bow when she approached. For a man who lived in dangerous country, he seemed mild—lazy, even.

  “How do, miss?” he said. “The little one and I will just go locate that Dutchman and then I’ll get them back on board—I guess Jimmy will look after you, in the meantime.”

  “I hope he won’t mind,” Tasmin said. “I know that I’m rather a lot of trouble.”

  Jim Snow ignored her remark. He seemed rather embarrassed about something—Tasmin couldn’t guess what, though in fact she felt rather embarrassed herself, a condition she rarely experienced. Usually she preferred to brazen her way through dubious situations, and yet now she felt constrained and rather uncertain. What would happen? It had been an afternoon of kidnap, injury, and violent death. All logic suggested that she ought to hurry back to the safety of the steamer Rocky Mount as rapidly as possible; and yet, if there was one thing she did know, it was that she didn’t want to hurry back to the boat just yet. Though hardly tranquil in spirit, she felt she was exactly where she wanted to be: on a small ridge above the Missouri River, in a country filled with warring savages, and in the company of her unusual gentleman, Mr. Jim Snow.

  25

  . . . and here was this talky girl again.

  WHEN it came to Indians, Jim Snow trusted old Dan Drew’s judgment—if he said they were safe for a time, then they were—but the mere fact of safety did little to relieve the turmoil in his spirit. What was he doing, standing there with this English girl, a troublesome sort he had supposed himself well rid of ten days earlier? Why wasn’t he rid of her, when it was clear that the safest place for her was on the boat? The Osages, Kickapoos, and Pawnees were at war, with the Omahas and Otos likely to be drawn into the conflict. Even the river wasn’t safe, but it was far safer than the prairies. Two women had been taken already—at least that was Charbonneau’s opinion, and Dan Drew’s as well. A boy had been killed, by which tribe no one knew.

  Jim had known nothing of these tribal warrings until he had happened to spot a dozen Osage warriors, moving north and painted for battle. He hid, and once the war party passed, sought out Dan Drew, who knew the various Indian bands well; he often brought meat to them in times of famine. Because of his great generosity Dan Drew was safe, where other whites would soon have come under attack.

  Now the immediate danger had passed, but not without cost to the English, who had casually drifted ashore right into the thick of things; and here was this talky girl again. Though Jim Snow liked Pomp Charbonneau and Kit Carson and some of the other trappers, and could even tolerate talkative old Dan Drew, the fact was he usually liked to keep some distance between himself and his fellows; and yet that rule did not apply to the English girl, who had somehow taken over his attention in a way no one else ever had. There she stood, meek—for the moment—as a doe, having contrived to show up alone in her boat again just at the most dangerous moment possible. He should send her back to the steamer, and yet he didn’t want to. There was something about her he liked—why else had he come back for her?

  Tasmin, who had been censured countless times for her impatience, now waited patiently for Mr. Snow to decide their fate. Defiant when he awakened her in the boat, she now felt calmly passive. Whatever course of action they were to pursue was for Jim to suggest.

  “You still ain’t got no kit, but at least you’ve got shoes, this time,” he said, with an effort.

  “I had kit—you sank it when you sank my pirogue,” Tasmin said pertly. “It’s probably rather soggy now but if we could find the boat we’d find my kit.”

  “I’ll get it tonight,” Jim said.

  Without another word he turned and started walking away from the river. Tasmin felt confused—was she to be abandoned again? Had he rescued her only to leave? Disappointment was so sharp that tears started in her eyes, but then Jim Snow stopped.

  “Ain’t you coming?” he asked.

  Tasmin came—so little was her Raven Brave a man of words that he had not thought to ask her—and yet he must have followed the boat for days, waiting for an opportunity to see her, a realization she found deeply satisfying.

  When she caught up, Jim set a steady clip straight out into the prairie. Though she wore shoes this time, Tasmin still found it a rather scratchy experience.

  “Are you taking me to Santa Fe after all, Mr. Snow?” she asked.

  “Nope—just want a look at that dead buffalo,” he said.

  “Oh, did Papa at least kill one—he’s been so keen to,” she said; and then she saw the butchered beast itself, stiff in death, dried blood everywhere, and a vast cloud of black and green flies buzzing over the carcass.

  “He didn’t kill this one,” Jim said, lifting a snatch of white cloth off a weed. He had handed it to Tasmin.

  “This might be from Mademoiselle’s chemise,” Tasmin said. “She was in a rather immodest state, I’m afraid. I sent my sister Bess to make sure she didn’t get lost.”

  Then, to her surprise, Tasmin saw her father’s fine leather hunting seat, poked into the ground some little distance away. The sight startled her far more than the little scrap of chemise, for if there was one thing her father was particular about it was his sporting equipment. A catastrophe so great as to cause him to forget his hunting seat must have been a very considerable catastrophe indeed.

  “Why, they left Papa’s seat, careless fools,” she said. “We had better return it, when we go back, else someone will probably be flogged.”

  But were they going back? she immediately wondered. She could not in the least predict what Jim Snow’s intentions might be. The discovery of the scrap of chemise and the hunting seat was enough to convince Tasmin that something pretty drastic had occurred on the prairies. Jim Snow had walked off to the north, scanning the terrain. After a time he returned.

  Feeling a little weary, Tasmin sat for a moment on her father’s seat. The emptiness of the country seemed brutal—indeed, overwhelming. Tasmin, who had seldom been at the mercy of anything more powerful than her own moods and passions, felt suddenly at the mercy of those great prairies and the wild men who inhabited them. The plains had power of a different order than any landscape she knew; they made her feel melancholy and small. Without warning, her spirits slid. Had she been alone she might have cried, in puzzlement and misery—but she wasn’t alone. Jim Snow was nearby, looking rather carefully over the ground. He stooped and picked up a piece of black ribbon, which Tasmin at once recognized. Buffum had worn it as a choker, when in dramatic moods.

  “That’s my sister’s ribbon—she’s excessively fond of black,” Tasmin said.

  “Whoever took ’em went north,” Jim said. “Probably those scoundrelly Kickapoos.”

  On the steamer Rocky Mount all the talk of kidnap by wild savages had served mainly as a source of stimulation—idle blather from the women of the group. Tasmin had given the matter no real credence. Of course, they were forging into a stark frontier, where such things as abductions by savages were bound to happen now and then; but gleeful talk of ravishment and speculation about native proclivities and equipment had only been a mildly titillating part of shipboard life. Even now, holding what was plainly her sister’s ribbon, Tasmin could not quite accept the fact of kidnap. Bess might merely have dropped it—perhaps she and Mademoiselle had just taken fright and scampered back to the boat.

  “But it’s only Monsieur Charbonneau’s opinion that they were taken,” Tasmin said. “They might be on the boat—someone ought to look, at least, before leaping to dire conclusions.”

  In fact she didn’t want her tiresome sister or the frantic maid to have been kidnapped—it might produce a disappointing interruption of her time with the Raven Brave.

  “Nope, they’re gone,” Jim said. “Charbonneau was right.”

  “But how do you know—you said yourself that he was a fool,” Tasmin argued.

  “He is a fool, but not that big a fool,” Jim said, surprised yet
again by Tasmin’s determination to argue every arguable point. Neither of his own wives, Sun Girl and Little Onion, both Utes, had exhibited anything like such a level of temperament. But then, the two Utes had been trained to obedience, whereas this good-looking English girl had evidently been encouraged to dispute even the most obvious facts.

  “Look at the tracks, miss,” he said. “There were six Indians here, with horses—they ran down the two women and they took them.”

  “You need to get better sense,” he added mildly, a comment that stung Tasmin to sudden fury. She jumped up, yanked her father’s hunting seat out of the ground, and faced her rescuer.

  “Do please stop accusing me of lack of sense!” Tasmin raged. “I won’t hear it! If there is one point generally agreed on in our family it is that I am the one with sense.

  “It’s not that I lack sense, it’s that this dreadful place lacks everything!” Tasmin continued, fiercely, bosom heaving. “There’s not even a magistrate to summon, which is the usual procedure in instances of kidnap. If my sister’s gone, then there’s nothing at all to be done about it, that I can see.”

  Still in a high fury, she flung the leather seat as far as she could throw it.

  “I came ashore hoping that I might find you and that we might have a nice time together,” Tasmin said. “I assume you must want something of the sort, since you troubled to follow our boat. Don’t you want a nice time with me, Mr. Snow? I want our nice time very much, and I’m disgusted with my blinking sister for getting abducted and spoiling everything.”

  Tasmin felt the anger drain out of her—dejection immediately took its place. She it was who had insisted on her own good sense, and yet what sense did it make to have so strongly declared herself to a man she scarcely knew? A man, moreover, who had no fondness even for conversation and who seemed to possess nothing except a rifle and a bow—not much to put against the Berrybenders’ vast estates.

  Jim Snow flushed—it was such a long speech to sort out—and yet he was not one to deny joy when he felt it; and he did feel it.

  “If you mean you want to marry up, I’ll do it—sure!” he said. “I thought you might want to marry up with me—that’s why I followed the boat. But right now we need to go—this is warring time. More Indians could show up, and catch us like they caught your sister.”

  Tasmin was stunned. Did she, as he put it, want to marry up? Whatever could it be like, to marry, in such an absence of all context, this appealing but perplexing young man, when what she mainly wanted was to trim his hair and beard? Though the impulses that brought her such an unexpected proposal seemed wildly fanciful, Tasmin was pleased—deeply pleased—by Jim Snow’s frank statement. Dejection and rage turned to joy—though joy not unmixed with confusion. Her Raven Brave did want to have a nice time with her—it was the most honest acceptance Tasmin had ever received, a big improvement over the sort of fopperies that had come her way in England.

  But before the nice time could happen, the warring time had to be surmounted. She no longer felt the need to dispute it. It was time to trust the Raven Brave.

  Jim picked up the hunting seat, took Tasmin by the hand, and led her quickly back toward the river, stooping low and stopping whenever there was a bit of cover, to scan the prairies around them for whatever enemies might be.

  26

  Alarums of the most violent kind were heard from the near shore . . .

  CAPTAIN George Aitken, with the patient exercise of care and skill, had at last managed to ease the steamer Rocky Mount off the clinging sandbar when, it seemed, pandemonium suddenly rained upon him. Alarums of the most violent kind were heard from the near shore, shortly after which a canoe arrived, aslosh in bloody froth from Lord Berrybender’s foot, which seemed half shot away. Charbonneau was doing his best to manage a tourniquet, but the old lord’s outraged thrashings made it difficult. Venetia Kennet, leaning far over the rail to catch a glimpse of the nobleman she intended to marry, saw the bloody froth and the mangled foot and fainted dead away, toppling over the rail just beside the boat. It took three engagés to retrieve the heavy but momentarily lifeless cellist.

  Hearing the hubbub and sensing that something was terribly wrong, Fräulein Pfretzskaner began to blubber, upsetting Cook, who seized her heaviest ladle and rushed out on deck, prepared to defend her honor and perhaps even her life. Cries and lamentations soon reached the ear of George Catlin, who was on the upper deck—he was near to finishing the landscape he had labored on since the hailstorm passed; rattled by the intolerable noise, he ripped the canvas up and flung the pieces overboard. The pieces drifted down toward a pirogue that seemed to be filled with blood, from which several engagés were attempting to lift the body of Gorska Minor; the boy, an arrow through his throat, was evidently quite dead. George regretted the hasty destruction of his landscape—it had not been that far off—but how could a painter be expected to make delicate adjustments amid such a racket?

  Just then Captain Aitken came off the bridge, surveying the chaos below with his usual calm.

  “I believe there’s been an attack, Captain,” Catlin said.

  Captain Aitken continued his calm inspection.

  “Well, the West ain’t Baltimore, Mr. Catlin,” he said. “These English will go ashore.”

  He went down to the lower deck and administered the violently annoyed lord a dose of laudanum sufficient to put an elephant to sleep; then he attempted to comfort Gorska, who was crying out to his God and weeping bitterly over the loss of his son.

  “Who was it killed the lad?” the captain asked, once they had carried the old lord up to his stateroom, where he sprawled, mouth agape, across his bed in dope-induced sleep.

  Toussaint Charbonneau had no sufficient answer.

  “Gorska never saw an Indian—just looked around and saw the boy gasping for breath—that arrow cut his windpipe,” he said. He had been attempting to instruct Gladwyn on the correct use of the tourniquet, but Gladwyn was so worn out from having to help carry his master over more than a mile of prairie that he was in no state to comprehend a lecture on medical technique.

  “A Polish hunter wouldn’t know one Indian from another anyway,” Captain Aitken said. “Is someone bringing the young ladies, or are they dead too?”

  “Well, Lady Tasmin and little Mary are fine—Jim Snow and Dan Drew have them,” Charbonneau said. “I don’t know about the other two—most likely they were taken.”

  “Taken?” George Catlin said. “Taken?” Suddenly the stories of kidnap took on a different weight.

  Before Charbonneau could say more, Venetia Kennet, her clothes soaking, her long hair a wild wet tangle, stumbled into the stateroom, eyes wide with shock. Lord Berrybender’s right foot, or what was left of it, was extended off the bed, dripping into a bucket—the sight filled her with sudden horror. Her husband-to-be, once the handsomest nobleman in England, was now a deformed old man.

  “It’s only toes, mainly,” Captin Aitken said. “Many a man has lost a few toes, Miss Kennet. In a month His Lordship will be as good as new.”

  Black bile rose in Vicky’s throat and she stumbled away.

  “He’s not bleeding much now—ease off the tourniquet,” Captain Aitken said. “You best go talk to the chiefs, Charbonneau. I imagine they want calming.”

  “Yes, and so do the tribes,” Charbonneau said. “Dan Drew thinks it’s a general war—Osage, Pawnees, all the fine tribes.”

  When Charbonneau got downstairs he found every man on the lower deck armed to the teeth, which rather vexed him. Señor Yanez, evidently convinced that attack was imminent, had distributed muskets freely to the engagés, many of whom had only a rough idea of how to use them. The lower deck bristled with muskets and knives, a grave danger to the English party but hardly a threat to the Indians, who, in any case, were not in evidence.

  Worse yet, in the confusion, they had lost a chief: Big White. Either from impatience with being stuck on so many sandbars, or from disgust with the noisy company, he had taken his great war
club and gone. Neither the Piegan nor the Hairy Horn expressed the slightest interest in Big White’s whereabouts or intentions. And yet Big White was the chieftain Captain Clark had strongly urged Charbonneau to protect. Charbonneau, calm in the face of the old lord’s injury, the young ladies’ kidnapping, and the young Pole’s death, was rattled considerably by the disappearance of his famous charge.

  “I was told not to lose him and now I’ve lost him,” Charbonneau said. “If he gets kilt there’ll be hell to pay with the Mandans. I better go locate him, if I can.”

  At this Captain Aitken balked.

  “Sharbo, I can’t spare you,” he said. “I’ve got to have somebody handy who can parley with the red men, if they come. Big White’s an able man—I expect he can look out for himself.”

  “Damnation, I had meant to have him sit,” George Catlin said. “Full face, of course—no more profiles. I’ve learned my lesson.”

  In fact George was talking mainly to distract himself from a painful attack of nerves. Lady Tasmin had not reappeared, nor the brash little Mary, and as for Bess Berrybender and Mademoiselle Pellenc, the general view was that they were quite gone—“taken,” in the stark expression of the frontier.

  Toussaint Charbonneau and Captain George Aitken, each with his own worries, ignored the talkative painter—in Charbonneau’s view the man was lucky to be alive anyway, considering the rash liberties he had taken when he attempted to paint the volatile Piegan.

  Just then a second pirogue came slowly back from shore, this one carrying old Dan Drew, Mary Berrybender, a dazed, semiconscious Bobbety, and a rather scratched-up Piet Van Wely, his face much marked from the thorny thicket in which he had hidden during the time of anxiety, while the Indians were milling about.

  “Oh good, there’s Dan . . . just when we need him,” Charbonneau said. “Dan knows the country as well as any Indian—perhaps he’ll hunt Big White for me.”