The Berrybender Narratives

by Larry McMurtry

Aldo saw no reason to mention that he had slept soundly for several hours.

  Only a yard or two from where they had spent the night the spring grass bore the imprint of a great body. The beast had been resting. Another step and they would have stumbled over it—but now, fortunately, there was no great beast in sight. The plain around them, from horizon to horizon, was entirely empty. They seemed to be the only two living things in the world. There was not even a bird in the sky.

  “A beast that large must have made a track,” Aldo said. “You Spaniards are such good trackers. Perhaps you can find its track.”

  “No, amigo, I am only a gunsmith,” Pedro admitted. “I have never tracked a thing in my life. You track it, if you know so much.”

  “I’ll certainly know if it was an elephant we woke up,” Aldo told him, confidently. He peered at the ground in a careful, studious manner.

  “I don’t see even one track,” he was forced to admit. “Perhaps this beast made a great jump, just to fool us.”

  “It was too big to jump much,” Pedro assured him. “Who knows where it went?”

  “If it comes at us, shoot good, amigo,” Aldo said. “Don’t miss next time.”

  “For that matter, you missed too,” Pedro reminded him.

  25

  … Little Onion came walking demurely…

  WHEN Little Onion came walking demurely up from the birthing hut to tell old Charbonneau that his wife, Coal, had at last been delivered of a healthy baby boy, Charbonneau wept in relief, somewhat to the astonishment of Jim Snow. The labor had taken two days and a night—perhaps Charbonneau was so glad to have the long wait over that he was crying in relief.

  “Hard to get into this world and easy to get out,” Joe Walker observed. Only Jim and Joe and Toussaint Charbonneau were left in camp—Pomp and the rest of the boys had gone south with Drummond Stewart, into the high Rockies, in search of bighorn sheep.

  “It ain’t always easy to get out, Joe,” Charbonneau said, once he had calmed down. “If you was tied to a Comanche torture stake I guess you’d think getting out was about as hard as getting in.”

  “I grant the point, that’s why I never go anywhere where there could be a Comanche,” Joe replied. “What will you name your boy?”

  Charbonneau had given the matter no thought. Coal’s labor had been so long that he half expected a death—the baby’s or the mother’s or both—such was not uncommon. Fortunately there had been two experienced Shoshone women in the camp, and their skills had at last prevailed. Jimmy Snow’s demure Ute maiden Little Onion was too young to have much experience as a midwife. Now that the matter had been resolved happily there was plenty of time to think of a name.

  “Don’t know,” he admitted. “What are you planning to name yours, Jimmy, if it comes out a boy?”

  Jim pretended not to hear the question—he had given no thought to naming, and in any case, it was none of Charbonneau’s business. To hide his annoyance he wandered over to the creek to try his luck with a little fish spear he had made.

  “Jimmy’s a touchy boy,” Joe Walker said. “I ought to charge him a hundred dollars for riding my mare halfway around the world.”

  The little mare, looking as fit as ever, grazed not far from the birthing hut. All the mountain men had been astonished that Jim had passed so quickly from the Knife River to the Green, skirting winter, skirting the Rockies, skirting the Sioux. Joe Walker found that, thanks to Jim, his mare was famous. Several of the trappers tried to buy her from him, but Joe made it clear that she was not for sale.

  Jim Snow thought highly of the mare, but he didn’t regard the ride as anything unusual. Mountain men tended to amble when they traveled—good hunting, an untrapped stream, native women, or general laziness might slow them down. They moved in fits and starts, capable of hurry when they needed to hurry, but otherwise taking their time and picking their way. They rarely held a steady pace, which is what Jim had done on his ride. He had known exactly where he was going and had no reason to linger along the way. Also, he had been lucky: the weather had been unusually warm, and he had not seen a single Indian in his crossing from the Mandan villages to the Ute country. The little mare liked to go, and go they did, straight across South Pass and into the Ute country, where, upon arriving, he discovered to his dismay that he only had one Ute wife, not two. Sun Girl had died the previous winter, only a few days after he had visited her for the last time; neither Little Onion nor anyone else in the camp could say exactly what it was that carried Sun Girl off. She was well one day, a little shaky the next day, and gone the second night.

  Jim was disappointed by this news—disappointed and a little disturbed. It was Sun Girl, mainly, whom he had ridden across the West to rejoin. She had been his first woman, and had always exerted herself vigorously to make him a good wife. Her sister, Little Onion, he scarcely knew; a plan had been afoot to sell the girl to an old man of another tribe; Jim had agreed to the marriage at Sun Girl’s request. Little Onion had been his wife for less than a week when he and Kit and Jim Bridger had trekked out of the mountains. It was Sun Girl he had counted on to give Tasmin instructions; Little Onion was very young, not more than fifteen, and very shy, something Tasmin wasn’t. Mortality had destroyed his whole plan. Uncertainly and a little reluctantly he had been traveling north with Little Onion when they ran into Drummond Stewart’s party. The tall Scot immediately offered Jim a place in his company, but Jim declined.

  Now old Charbonneau, relieved that his own wife had narrowly survived childbirth, had reminded Jim that his other wife, his English wife, would soon face a similar ordeal. He had told Tasmin he would be with her when their child came—then she had been freshly pregnant, and such a promise easy to make. Now he had come a long way south, and the wife he had hoped would help Tasmin learn proper behavior was dead. Her little sister, though polite and obedient, was not as experienced as Sun Girl had been.

  It was all vexing—deeply vexing. Jim stabbed with the little spear at several trout, but missed them all. Life had seldom presented him with situations that were so unclear. Usually, if it was a matter of guiding some company, he either took the job or didn’t. Weather conditions might affect his choice, or the makeup of the group, or something he had heard about Indian hostilities along the way; the choices were seldom hard to make. But here he was now with two wives, neither of whom he knew well. One morning, by the Missouri, he had seen a girl bathing; she had seen him at the same time. He had not found her particularly likable—she talked too much, and often acted foolishly—but they had come together in pleasure—come together often, for a period—and a child was coming, his child. Now that he had been away from Tasmin for some weeks, what had occurred between them seemed almost like a dream. His place, to the extent that he had one, was with the overland guides, or the mountain trappers, categories that frequently overlapped. He belonged with Kit and Pomp and Jim Bridger and the rest. What business did he have being married to an English girl? It was not that he didn’t like Tasmin. For all her boldness, he liked her; when she took him into her arms he felt feelings he had never felt before. But what was he to do with her? Should he bring her and the child with him on his treks? Would she live in whatever shelters he could throw up, with Little Onion? And what would Little Onion think of a woman who blabbed so much and yet could do little of a practical nature? There was such confusion in his thoughts that he missed and missed with the fish spear—and yet there had been many times when he fed himself with no more equipment than a fish spear and a flint.

  “Jimmy’s a strange lad,” Joe Walker observed to Charbonneau. The latter was trying to whittle himself a whistle out of a section of reed.

  “Maybe it was the lightning done it,” Charbonneau suggested. “I guess being struck by lightning would make a fellow a little strange.

  “That’s what the Hairy Horn thought, anyway,” he added.

  “Oh, that old fool!” Joe burst out. “His opinion is bound to be wrong.

  “Jimmy had a hard raising,” he
added, after some thought. “That old preacher was a rough one—put Jimmy off people, I guess.”

  “Mostly,” Charbonneau said. “But it didn’t put him off that English girl. That’s his problem now.”

  26

  Often she walked out beyond the stockade …

  IN the last month of her pregnancy, with the weather warming daily, Tasmin slowly withdrew from the chatty group at the trading post. She ceased teasing George Catlin, ceased insulting Father Geoffrin, ceased responding to anything that Buffum or Mary said. In the main, she waited, a dual waiting: for Jim Snow to come back, for the baby to come out. Often she walked out beyond the stockade and sat with her back to the poles, watching for her husband. She didn’t doubt that one day he would appear—rumors had already reached the post that he was on his way north, with old Charbonneau and his Hidatsa wife, Coal, who had borne her child.

  “Coal was first—I wonder which of us will be next, Vicky?” Tasmin asked. The two of them often sat together, saying little, glad to have a chair to support their increasingly substantial weight. To Tasmin it seemed extraordinary that women could be so stretched and not burst open—it was only with difficulty that she could see her own feet.

  “Perhaps they’ll come at the same time,” Vicky said. “The madonnas of the Missouri bringing forth their young in tandem.”

  “Yes, accompanied by a good deal of screeching, I fear,” Tasmin replied.

  Mary Berrybender, hearing that prediction, smiled in her sinister way.

  “Papa won’t like that, now that he’s back,” she said. “Papa is not one to tolerate undue noise.”

  “Then let him leave again, the old brute,” Tasmin said. “I intend to holler as loudly as I can—it’s said to help.”

  “Señor Yanez and Signor Claricia seem to have made good their escape,” Mary said. “Now Papa has no one to load his guns or harness his buggy horses. You shouldn’t have sent Kit Carson away—he might have helped Papa in this hour of distress.”

  “Kit was left here by my husband to be helpful to me,” Tasmin reminded her. “I sent him off to locate Jim and make him hurry back. This child is not going to be willing to remain unborn much longer.”

  “Perhaps Millicent can learn to load His Lordship’s guns for him,” Vicky remarked. “At least she’s become proficient at unloading a certain gun, if you take my meaning.”

  “I take it,” Tasmin said. “I suppose you’re happy to have been relieved of that chore, Vicky.”

  Venetia Kennet was relieved—it had been tedious to have to always be copulating with Lord Berrybender, at best, in recent months, an uncertain stud; nonetheless she could not but feel rather moody when she observed the stout laundress cooing over him, murmuring endearments, and even making so bold as to sit on His Lordship’s lap. Drummond Stewart had made, for a time, a fine copulator, but the Scot had then left abruptly, with no promises made; it might be that she would never see him again, in which case, once the baby came, she would have to bestir herself and recapture Lord Berrybender’s interest. She had no doubt that she could reclaim the old lord—after all, there was her skill with the bow—but a general sense of vexation, of the order of things not being quite right, beset her anyway.

  In idle moments—and most of their moments were idle—Tasmin and Vicky addressed themselves to the problem of names.

  “I doubt I shall bring forth a girl,” Tasmin said. “I’ve always rather fancied myself as the mother of sons. I think ’Edward’ might do. He would, of course, be called Eddie until he attains his growth.”

  “I too rather expect a son,” Vicky replied. “I was thinking ’Gustavus’ would be nice.”

  Father Geoffrin happened to overhear her remark.

  “No, no—that’s an odious name, reminiscent of the northern emperors,” he objected.

  “No one invited you to vote,” Tasmin reminded him. “I guess we can name our babies without any help from you, Geoff.”

  “Venetia can, she’s a commoner,” Father Geoff said. “You, however, have dynastic obligations to consider— at least you will once you get back to England.”

  “Who says I plan to go back to England?” Tasmin asked. “I married an American—for all you know I’m here to stay.”

  Father Geoffrin merely smiled wickedly and drifted off to find Bobbety, who was trying to explain to some Piegans what fossils were—he was hoping they’d bring him some.

  As usual, the catty Jesuit had managed to upset Tasmin in ways that caused discontent long after he himself had left the scene. Normal musings about what to name her baby now gave rise to a growing anxiety about what, in fact, the future did hold for herself and the child soon to come. When Jim Snow was actually with her she rarely worried. Even if he insisted on an inconvenient life in a tent she didn’t feel seriously troubled. Physically she had complete confidence in Jim—he would handle whatever came along. The slap and the sock he had given her the day he left had almost been forgotten—after all, everyone told her she was intolerable—Jim Snow had just made that point physically rather than verbally. Spats between husband and wife would occur—that one hadn’t dampened her enthusiasm where Jim was concerned at all.

  And yet, once he returned, then what? Lord Berrybender’s plan was to hunt in a generally southern direction through the summer and fall, going up the Yellowstone and across the Platte.

  Where would she and Jim and the baby be, while that progress was occurring? And after it occurred? Her father seemed to be planning to pass through Santa Fe and then hunt on down the plains and the southern forests until they came to New Orleans, where a ship could be procured to take such survivors as remained back to Portsmouth.

  Just thinking about the future—Platte River, Santa Fe, New Orleans, England—left Tasmin feeling low and confused. Jim Snow had once seemed willing to take her to Santa Fe. Would he still want to? Would he agree to stay with the Berrybender party, or did he mean for them to strike out on their own?

  The more Tasmin thought about these vague prospects, the gloomier she became. After all, it was only a rumor that Jim was on his way back. Perhaps he wasn’t. Perhaps her cursing and chattering had driven him off for good. What if he had decided that he preferred the simpler women of the Utes?—if they were simpler?

  George Catlin observed Tasmin, sunk in her low mood, sitting alone by the fireplace. There was melancholy in her gaze. It was in such low moments that he found Tasmin most appealing; with her brash self-confidence momentarily subdued she seemed vulnerable to any kindness.

  After watching her for a moment, George attempted to sneak out, but Tasmin sensed the movement and beckoned him with a lift of her chin.

  “Don’t be sneaking out, George—I need you,” Tasmin said.

  “You need me?” he asked, surprised.

  “Yes. I feel as though there’s a crowd inside me. I am extremely stretched. Could you just rub my back?”

  “Rub your back? Of course,” George agreed. But when he did put his hands on Tasmin’s back his pressure was very tentative.

  “No good—can’t you do anything right at all, George?” Tasmin chided. “Rub harder—much harder.”

  George rubbed harder, but still not hard enough.

  “Hard, George, really hard!” Tasmin insisted; she gave a sigh of pleasure when George complied, pressing his fingers into her back as hard as he could.

  “That’s good, keep it up,” Tasmin said, her eyes half closed.

  George Catlin was in the process of keeping it up, digging his fingers as hard as he could into Tasmin’s bent back, when he looked around and saw a young man step into the trading post, a stout young Indian woman just beside him. The young man said something to Pierre Boisdeffre. Tasmin, her eyes in a half doze, didn’t notice. George did another push or two and then looked at the young man a second time; then he at once jerked his hands away. The young man was Jim Snow.

  “I think you better wake up, Tasmin,” George said. “Your husband just came home.”

  27

>   But then Tasmin, overjoyed…

  JLM Snow stepped out of bright sunlight into the dim trading post and almost bumped into Pierre Boisdeffre, who was trying to untangle a heap of beaver traps. Once his eyes adjusted Jim saw George Catlin, over by the fireplace, but he didn’t immediately see Tasmin, who was bent over. Jim was, for the moment, most concerned to ease Little Onion’s intense anxiety. Shy anyway, Little Onion had never before been inside a trading post. For a minute Jim feared she might bolt back outside, but Little Onion, though extremely frightened, just managed to control herself.

  But then Tasmin, overjoyed to see him, came hurrying toward them, as fast as she could move in her heavy state.

  “Oh, Jimmy … it’s been such a wait!” she said, opening her arms to him. She saw a young Indian girl standing just inside the door but didn’t connect her with Jim Snow—Indian girls often showed up at the trading post.

  Just as Tasmin was about to fall into a long-awaited, long-imagined embrace, Little Onion, seeing a large white woman coming toward her husband, did just what Jim had been afraid she would do—she bolted back out the door, to the safety of the plains and the sky.

  Tasmin’s surge carried her close to Jim—though he grasped her arms, he did not embrace her.

  “Oh now, you’ve run her off,” he said. “Maybe Kit will slow her down.”

  “Run who off? Can’t I even kiss you?” Tasmin said in frustration, managing only the briefest peck.

  “Little Onion,” Jim told her. “She’s skittish. Quick too. If Kit don’t stop her there’s no telling where she’ll get to.”

  “I don’t understand,” Tasmin admitted. “Is she a friend of Kit’s? I don’t understand why he should stop her.”

  Jim felt awkward—he thought he must at some point have mentioned Little Onion’s name; he must have told Tasmin that she was one of his Ute wives— but perhaps he had not actually said her name. Even if he had said it, long ago in the Oto village, it would be natural enough for Tasmin to forget it.