The Berrybender Narratives

by Larry McMurtry

  Jim was staring at their son—he was shocked by his tininess. For a moment Tasmin had to struggle to choke back tears. The thing she had hoped for had happened; her husband had come back to his family, and yet somehow she still felt disappointed. Cook had explained that women who had just given birth were prone to sudden weepings; she didn’t want to cry just then, in front of Jim. He would take it wrong, and why not? What did she have to cry about now? Little Monty was a healthy baby—indeed, all three infants were fit as fiddles, a thing which Cook assured her was quite exceptional. And Jim himself seemed in a mild mood, diffident in relation to his son—so diffident that, so far, he had not dared touch him. And yet, the disorder within Tasmin’s breast persisted. Somehow the birth of Monty had made Jim Snow seem younger—perhaps weaker, also. She was now a mother, heir to responsibilities both great and grave. Her child must be kept well nurtured, protected, taught: all things Tasmin felt confident she could do, given an even chance. But would her Jimmy, whom she kept wanting to kiss, whose hair she still wanted to trim, really be a helpmate in this long endeavor? Would he stay with them, or would there be more casual departures after spats or quarrels, or in response, merely, to trapping opportunities or other vicissitudes of the plainsman’s life?

  It was only two weeks since Tasmin had given birth—a little kissing she would have welcomed, some touching, some tenderness, but, for the moment, not more. Still torn from her long birthing struggle, she felt none of the swelling passion that had linked her so tightly to Jim Snow. Of course, she would soon heal; their ruts, as he called them, might bind them again; but, as they stood together looking at the three infants hanging from their pegs, Tasmin felt a great tumult of feeling, and yet contented herself with holding her husband’s hand, while his other wife, Little Onion, watched cheerfully from her corner of the room. Tasmin wanted to ask Jim how things could have gotten so complicated, yet she didn’t speak because she knew it was a question he would have no way to answer, and no interest in anyway.

  Tasmin had become a woman—little Montague Snow was evidence of that—but her Jimmy, though formidably skilled, was still mainly a boy. How would it end? What would they ever do?

  31

  … Tasmin had lifted little Monty from her purplish nipple …

  JIM Snow, though relieved that his son, Monty, had at least the beginnings of a normal head of hair, tried not to show his own perplexity as he stood in the improvised nursery with his two wives. That he even had two wives, both of them in the same room of a trading post on the Yellowstone River, was a fair enough mystery in itself. Tasmin, his English wife, was slow of movement, not yet solidly back on her feet after her long labor—he had heard that it was often so with white women. Indian women were supposed to recover from childbirth more quickly, and yet Coal hadn’t. One reason they had been so long getting back to the post was because of Coal’s weariness. Joe Walker had been kind enough to lend the Charbonneaus a mule, otherwise Coal and her infant would have had to be left behind.

  Now Tasmin had modestly offered to go back to the tent with him, since she knew he would be more at ease there himself, but of course he couldn’t take one wife and leave the other. When he first came into the nursery after the moose hunt all three women were giving their babies suck, Coal sitting on the floor and Tasmin and Vicky sitting in chairs. It was Little Onion who handled the babies after their milky meal, expertly causing each to belch before returning them to their cradle boards. He had felt uncomfortable in the nursery and was about to leave but Tasmin had lifted little Monty from her purplish nipple so Jim could see his face, the wrinkled apple face of a small baby.

  “So, should we pack up?” Tasmin asked, a few days later. Jim didn’t know what to say. He was annoyed with himself for having drifted into such a morass of responsibility—it was all the result of having taken Sun Girl to wife in his first hard winter on the Green River. The snows had been heavy, the trapping hard. Having an energetic young Ute woman to do the camp chores was a big help—but then the situation with Little Onion had cropped up, just before Jim left the valley. Thanks to his effort to be courteous to Sun Girl he now had two wives, neither of whom he knew well, and he didn’t have Sun Girl, the most competent of the three. What made matters even more sticky was the Berrybender party itself—or what remained of it. Lord Berrybender was determined to set off on a big summer hunt up the Yellowstone valley, linking up with Drummond Stewart at some point; and Kit Carson, like a fool, had agreed to guide the Berrybenders all the way to Santa Fe, although he knew well that to go overland to Santa Fe meant passing through the lands of several tribes of Indians who were likely to be full of fight. None of it made sense to Jim. The old lord had already killed many buffalo, and every other game animal except the grizzly bear and the mountain sheep. In Jim’s view he would do well to avoid grizzlies, build a pirogue or two, and float his party back downriver to one of the normal disembarkment points for Santa Fe. Why strike out into the wildness of the West along one of the most dangerous routes of all? But when he said as much to Tasmin she merely shrugged.

  “I doubt Papa will turn back,” she said. “I think he’s keen to go shoot some woolly sheep, or whatever else he can find.”

  “Death’s what he’ll find, most likely,” Jim told her, but Tasmin shook her head.

  “No, but that’s what the rest of us will find,” she said. “Our help has dropped like flies already, but what is that to Papa? He’ll just hire more help.”

  As they stood before the drowsing infants Jim could feel Tasmin waiting, though not in the snappish way she had waited before the baby came—now, temporarily weakened, she was waiting for him to decide what to do.

  “We don’t need to put up the tent,” he said. “It’s warm enough—just bring a blanket or two and come outside with me.”

  “But, Jim, what about Monty? When he wakes up he’ll be hungry,” Tasmin reminded him. “He’s very young—he doesn’t sleep long.”

  She watched her husband closely, hoping to see that he was really happy to be a father. For a few minutes it seemed that he was. When told that Monty had weighed just seven pounds at birth, he was startled.

  “Seven pounds? Why, Kit thought he weighed at least twelve,” Jim said.

  “Nope, and if he had weighed twelve I doubt I would have lived,” Tasmin told him. Jim, so practical in most matters, clearly had no very clear notion of what babies weighed, or what the weight meant for the mother.

  They strolled out of the nursery, leaving the cheerful Little Onion in charge of the babies, and walked out of the post for a few minutes. Tasmin was still nervous, still diffident, only a little troubled by Jim’s evident indecisiveness where their future was concerned. They had not even settled where to sleep, much less any of the larger questions. When they were alone Tasmin did press a few mild kisses on him; Jim accepted these with an air of distraction, but he shook his head abruptly when she suggested that his hair and beard could use a trim.

  “Hush about my dern beard,” he said. “It’s just now growing good again.”

  Although rebuffed on that score, Tasmin was relieved to see that, outside the fort, under the bluish skies so high and wide, Jim did seem to be his full self again—not a talker, not easy, but not just a boy, either.

  “We ought to bring Monty out,” he said. “It’s too stuffy in there—he needs to get a good breath of this breeze.”

  Tasmin’s heart lifted. Jim wanted their baby to breathe the air that he had breathed all his life—the fine, windy air of the plains.

  “I’ll go get him—or do you want to?” she asked. At the question Jim looked dismayed.

  “You get him—he’ll recognize you,” he told her.

  32

  “Seven pounds ain’t enough to weigh.”

  MOVING faster than she had moved since her lying-in, Tasmin hurried to fetch the baby before Jim’s fatherly mood passed.

  Once back outside, she took Monty out of his pouch and cradled him in her arms. He awoke and uttered a few o
f his little mouse cries—protests that stopped instantly when Tasmin opened her shirt and gave him the breast.

  “He’s greedy, this boy of ours,” she said.

  Jim watched as Monty’s little mouth attacked Tasmin’s swollen nipple.

  “Seven pounds ain’t enough to weigh,” he said.

  “No, but he’s growing fast—I expect he’s already put on a pound or two,” Tasmin said. “When we go back in we can weigh him on Monsieur Boisdeffre’s scales.”

  She was not, though, in a hurry to go back in. It was a fair day, the long afternoon just beginning to wane. High white clouds spread shadows across the wavy plains, which were yellowish in places with the first wildflowers. Jim allowed Tasmin to rest her back against his chest—for a few minutes she dozed in unaccustomed peace. For the first time the two men in her life were in the same place. Monty’s mouth slipped off the nipple, he had gas, he wiggled and squirmed; Tasmin woke and patted him until he belched; but he still fretted, he was still hungry. When she lowered him to her bosom he eagerly attacked her other breast. So tiny, her little boy was, she thought, and yet a will was there—a young will, of course, but a will all the same. And Jim had a will too. She herself had been called willful many times in her life; now she wondered if she would ever again have the freedom to be willful in her own interest. In passion she had mated with Jim Snow and given birth to Monty; now, sitting in the waning sunlight of evening, looking south to the place where the Yellowstone River lost itself in the brown Missouri, she felt that her own always sharp identity was no longer either sharp or distinct. Like the waters, she was now a kind of junction, a place of merging, the channel through whom Jim and Monty had become part of each other—or at least she hoped they would. Rather as the two rivers constantly caved in their banks and ate whole acres of prairie, now these two males were doing as much with her. Their needs would soon cave her in, sweep through her, suck her away as Monty was sucking even now. Of course, it was peaceful and right that Monty would put on the weight that his father wanted him to have. It was right, too, that Jim would want to bring her out of the fort, under the vast sky—it was being outdoors, attentive to all that there was to attend to in nature, that made Jim Snow whole. And yet, beneath the peace and the feeling of rightness, Tasmin felt a bubble of apprehension forming in her—a small bubble, like the little milk bubbles Monty sometimes blew for an instant with his young breath. What chance did she have, in the circumstances she faced, to remain herself, Lady Tasmin Berrybender, mother but more than mother, wife but more than wife, a woman whole but also a woman separate from the needs of men?

  “Ho, now! Tom’s coming,” Jim said, suddenly alert.

  Tasmin looked where he pointed. Sure enough there was a kind of bobbing dot on the prairie—in her opinion it might just be a buffalo. She was reluctant to have their rare idyll interrupted by a bobbing dot— and yet it already had been, for Jim’s attention had shifted away from herself and the baby.

  “That’s Tom Fitzpatrick—I recognize the limp,” Jim said. “A mule kicked him when he was young and the leg never healed properly. It don’t slow him much, but it’s a limp.”

  Tasmin did her best to suppress her irritation. She had been enjoying her first moments with her young family, and now the mood was lost.

  “He’s hurrying along, Tom—that’s odd,” Jim told her. “Tom don’t usually hurry.”

  “I can’t help wishing Mr. Fitzpatrick would just leave us alone,” Tasmin said, with a touch of her old asperity. “You were gone such a long time, Jimmy. I was enjoying having you back, and I’m sure Monty feels the same way.”

  If her husband heard her, he gave no sign. His eyes were focused on the moving dot—lost from time to time in the dips of the prairie, but now clearly a man.

  “If Tom’s in such a dern hurry, it probably means bad news,” Jim said.

  Tasmin’s irritation soon faded into a kind of listlessness. The sight of Tom Fitzpatrick had caused Jim to forget her and the baby completely.

  “If you want, we’ll sleep out with you tonight,” she said. “Monty’s such a regular feeder—I have to keep him close.”

  Jim Snow leapt up suddenly—aquiver, as a hound might be, with some new scent the wind had borne him.

  “Tom’s running for his life,” he said. “We have to run too. Hold the baby tight.”

  “But why?” Tasmin asked—she could only just see Tom Fitzpatrick across the plain of waving grass and yellow wildflowers. She didn’t argue, though. Monty was hastily stuffed into his pouch—as soon as he was secured to the cradle board, Jim pressed her into a run. They were more than one hundred yards from the post; Tasmin feared her strength would give out before they reached safety. But she held out, half supported by her husband. She was gasping for breath— her legs trembled. Monty peered around him in puzzlement. They just made it inside the open gate of the stockade.

  “Go find Kit … find Boisdeffre, find Charbonneau,” Jim instructed. “Tell anybody who can shoot to get their guns.”

  Then he left her. As Tasmin stumbled on, meaning to do as he instructed, Jim raced across the wagon yard to the stables, where a laggardly Tim was in the process of shoeing Lord Berrybender’s fine mare Augusta. Buffum stood nearby, occasionally delivering a tart criticism.

  “I’d like to see you drive a horseshoe nail if you’d lost half your fingers,” Tim was saying, when, to his astonishment, Tasmin’s shaggy husband came racing over. Tim had just been just about to lift the mare’s foreleg, but before he could, Jim Snow grabbed the dangling halter and swung onto the filly’s back. Her nostrils flared in surprise, but in a moment Jim was racing through the gates of the stockade, the filly running flat out.

  “What can it mean, Tassie?” Buffum asked, running over to her sister. Tasmin, quite out of breath, couldn’t answer, and, in any case, didn’t know.

  Lord Berrybender stumbled out of the trading post on his crutches just in time to see his filly racing as if for the prize at Ascot, his American son-in-law clinging to her bare back.

  “What ho! Look at her run!” he said, rather pleased by the sight in spite of his disapproval of the son-in-law.

  “There are few things in life better than watching a good horse run,” he said. “But where’s he going, Tasmin? What’s he up to?”

  “A rescue,” Tasmin said. “Mr. Fitzpatrick is endangered. Jim says you should all get guns.”

  “Get guns—damn it, where are my guns? Call for Milly, she’ll know,” Lord B. said. “That traitor Señor Yanez would leave just when I need a gun in a hurry.”

  Mary, the quick sprite, raced up to the lookout tower in the corner of the stockade, and was rewarded with a fine view of the impending conflict.

  “Hey up there, you brat! What do you see? Tell us!” Tasmin demanded.

  “I see a fine sight!” Mary cried, making no effort to suppress her flair for histrionics. “The Sin Killer races to save the Broken Hand, who appears to be near the end of his strength. Many painted savages are in close pursuit.”

  Kit Carson ran out of the trading post carrying his musket. Pierre Boisdeffre and Toussaint Charbonneau were close behind. The latter two were both clearly in their cups. At the same moment Tasmin heard ululating war cries, high and chilling, suggesting that indeed many Indians were not far away.

  “Go hide—go hide! They’re Blackfeet,” Kit Carson urged, but Tasmin shook him off and ran to the gate, determined to see her husband as he raced into battle. Just as Tasmin reached the gate George Catlin came stumbling up, nearly exhausted. He had been painting a prairie landscape and happened to look up just as Jim Snow came racing out of the post. Though George could not see the Indians, one look at Jim was enough; abandoning easel, canvas, and paints, George ran for the fort as fast as he could go.

  “Too late!” Mary cried. “The Broken Hand will soon be speared by the fleet Piegan.”

  Tasmin, losing sight of her husband in the prairie’s dip, pulled herself up the steps to the tower where Mary was. Below her the
men were all fumbling with their rifles while Tim, Buffum, Bobbety, and Father Geoffrin watched apprehensively.

  Once high in the lookout tower, Tasmin finally saw the scene which had caused her husband to jump up in excitement: thirty or more Indians, still producing the ululating war cries, were closing in on the old Broken Hand. There was a long gap in the pursuit. One warrior, especially fleet, was many yards ahead of his fellows. He held a long lance and was almost close enough to touch Tom Fitzpatrick with it. The Broken Hand still ran grimly, though not very fast.

  Then Jim Snow flashed out of a dip and was on them just as the Piegan drew back his arm for the thrust. Startled in the extreme, the Piegan not only stopped, he dropped his lance. Jim Snow set the mare on her heels, jumped off, picked up the lance, and ran the fleet Piegan through with his own weapon, leaving him still standing and very surprised—the shaft of his own lance protruded from his chest.

  The other Blackfeet, though, were closing rapidly—this time, Tasmin thought, there were no stick-figure gods scratched in the rock to turn them. Jim remounted, swept up Tom Fitzpatrick with one arm, and held him across the filly’s back as they raced for the fort. Arrows began to fly, several of which hit the riders, but Jim didn’t slow and neither did the horse.

  Tasmin had reckoned for a moment that her hus band’s startling rescue would take the fight out of the Indians—after all, one of their own was staggering around mortally wounded, his lance stuck through his innards. But the Indians showed no sign of slowing, even though they were charging a well-fortified stockade where several riflemen were arming themselves for battle.

  “Shoot, Papa, why don’t you shoot?” Tasmin cried, wishing she had had the forethought to take the baby inside to safety.

  “Can’t yet—your husband and my horse are in the way,” Lord B. told her. “Can’t risk hitting my filly— already lost Royal Andrew, after all.”

  “Ravishment awaits, as I have long predicted,” Mary said.