The Berrybender Narratives

by Larry McMurtry

  He stopped his horse at once, but Sharbo and the two others passed him and walked right toward it.

  “Stop! It’s the Wandering Hill—don’t go near it,” he cried, but only Sharbo understood him, and even he didn’t stop.

  “Why, I thought the Wandering Hill was supposed to be way down on the Cimarron, where Jedediah Smith got killed,” Sharbo said. “Or was it by the Platte—I can’t be sure.”

  “It wanders, that’s why it’s called the Wandering Hill!” Greasy Lake chided. How stupid could Sharbo be? The fact that the devils kept the hill moving was well understood by all the tribes of the plains and mountains. The presence of the Wandering Hill explained why ten thousand buffalo had suddenly taken it into their heads to stampede; for it was known to the tribes that the devils inside the hill could bring disorder in the natural world whenever they chose to. At their whim water holes suddenly dried up in a day, or dry rivers suddenly surged with floodwaters. The devils could shake the highest mountains, causing walls of snow to come sliding down. Sometimes small bands of native people who had carelessly camped too close to the mountains were buried alive when the devils sent snow walls plummeting down.

  Once past the Wandering Hill the old nag Galahad suddenly lost his newfound energy and became, again, an old horse who could barely lift his feet. Greasy Lake well understood that the devils were toying with him now. The stampede of the buffalo had been merely a small demonstration of their power. These large-headed devils, he knew, were very old. They had been in the hill even before the People had slid off the back of the great turtle who had borne them to their places on the prairie.

  But it occurred to him that the small English witch might, for the moment, have a power of her own sufficient to hold the devils in check. It was not only large things that had power. The small rattlesnakes that abounded in the spring had venom much more powerful than that of the old fat snakes who lounged around their dens eating rats and ground squirrels. It was a tiny rattlesnake who had bitten Big Muskrat on his rod and turned it flaccid and black.

  “You shouldn’t have walked so close to the Wandering Hill,” Greasy Lake scolded, when he and Sharbo finally left the small yellowish mound behind them. “Powerful devils live there! It’s a wonder they didn’t shoot you with their grass-blade arrows.”

  Toussaint Charbonneau was usually respectful when Indians talked to him about mystical matters and things that went beyond what could be learned through the senses; but in his view the notion of a wandering hill was nonsense. There were several small conical hills, here and there on the prairies, that just happened to have a single tree on top of them— none of them moved, of course, but it was possible to believe that they moved because they looked so much alike.

  Nothing annoyed Greasy Lake more than to have some ill-informed white man try to explain away knowledge that the People had held for hundreds of summers. Hadn’t his own grandfather seen the Wandering Hill, far to the south by a stream called the Brazos? If Sharbo wanted to remain ignorant of the deeper truths of existence, that was, of course, his right; but he would regret his ignorance someday, when next he came upon the Wandering Hill; perhaps next time he would have no small English witch to protect him. Then he would see how quickly the merciless devils filled him full of arrows made from poisonous grass.

  “Explain it to me, Greasy,” Charbonneau asked—he knew the old man was annoyed by his dismissive attitude. “How could a hill that was over by the Little Sioux get clean across the country to the Yellowstone?”

  “It is easy for a hill to move,” Greasy Lake explained. “All it takes is for the devils inside it to summon up a big wind. A hill is only so much dust— even in a bad storm, dust is always moving. In the land of winds it is easy to blow a small hill from one place to another. The spirits just take the dust from the hill on the Little Sioux and whirl it over this way. The hill dissolves and then forms again—who knows how far the dust will have gone?”

  Greasy Lake stopped his lecture—Sharbo was not really listening to him. Travel was an odd thing, he reflected. The plains were a very large place. It was possible to climb a high hill and see many miles, from one mountain range to another, and the plains would seem to be perfectly empty, so empty that it should have been easy to travel great distances across them and see no one. But the truth was different—indeed it was seldom possible to travel even for a few days without running into other human beings, people like old Sharbo, whom he had not particularly wanted to meet. The plains that seemed so empty were actually crawling with people. Being alone on the prairies had never been easy, but now it had become impossible. Even the Wandering Hill was harder and harder to avoid—and that, in Greasy Lake’s opinion, was a development that didn’t bode well.

  56

  … talk of supernatural evil put Kit Carson off his feed…

  HERE we are in the middle of a virgin wilderness, and yet some things never seem to change,” Tasmin remarked, watching Little Onion rock Monty to sleep in her arms.

  That day Jim had shown them several spurting geysers, after which all the women had a good bath in the deliciously warm, bubbly pools nearby.

  “What things?” Jim asked. Watched by the ever-present Kate, he was just finishing the wrappings on a new bow—his old one had been broken by the stampeding buffalo.

  “Your friend Kate won’t go away—that’s one thing that doesn’t change,” Tasmin replied. “It might just be, Kate, that now and again my husband and I might welcome a moment or two of privacy.”

  “I’m just working on this bow—I don’t guess it hurts if she watches,” Jim replied. “She might have to wrap one herself, sometime.”

  “That’s highly unlikely, I’d say,” Tasmin objected.

  She considered Little Onion, who sat not far away with Monty. Had it not been for Little Onion’s cleverness in devising an excellent travois from the wreckage of the wagon, all three babies would have had to be carried all the way across the valley of the Yellowstone. Thanks to the travois, the infants traveled in some comfort. Little Onion looked lovingly at the baby—her devotion to Monty was profound. And yet Tasmin thought she saw a sadness in the young woman’s face.

  “Get, brat!” Tasmin said to Kate, with such force that for once Kate obeyed—she was soon to be seen sitting on the knee of the Broken Hand, another of her favorites among the mountain men.

  “Your other wife looks sad, Jimmy,” Tasmin said. “I like our Little Onion very much and I don’t wish her to be sad—I suppose it’s because I get so much of you and she gets so little. Close to nothing, in fact. Glad as I am that it’s me who gets the most, I do feel rather troubled for our Little Onion.”

  Jim continued his wrapping for a moment, and then looked up at Tasmin.

  “She thinks I’m giving her back,” he said to Tasmin, in low tones.

  “But back where?”

  “To her band,” Jim said. “We’ll probably meet them soon. Her people will think I’m returning her because she’s barren.”

  “But you’re not taking her back!” Tasmin declared. “She’s a very fine girl, and our son’s most loyal friend. She shan’t be delivered up for some old man to abuse.”

  Jim said no more—he concentrated on his work. But Tasmin’s agitation would not subside.

  “She’s no older than Mary, I wouldn’t suppose,” she said. “She has plenty of time to have babies—in fact no one’s tried to give her one. How can she have them if no one mates with her?”

  Jim said nothing. He regretted giving in to the pleadings of his deceased wife, Sun Girl, who was insistent that he marry her sister; and if he hadn’t, Little Onion would undoubtedly have been sold to the violent old man who wanted her. Now he had come to like Little Onion himself. She was unfailingly helpful, quick to take the initiative when it came to any of the camp chores. And yet Tasmin was the wife of his heart—he was not sure how best to proceed with Little Onion. It was just one of the puzzling dilemmas that were apt to arise when a man ceased to travel alone, as Jim ha
d for long preferred to do. He had had no way of predicting that he would ever meet a woman like Tasmin—yet it had happened: they mated, they had a child, and now he could not foresee a time when he could again travel alone. His great trip on Joe Walker’s little mare, from the Knife River to the Green, might have been a last clean fling. Then, there had only been himself, the horse, the prairies, the snowfields, the winter sky. Life seemed simple again for a few weeks, although the forces that would destroy simplicity forever had already been set in motion.

  Now, as they neared the place of the rendezvous with Drum Stewart and the other trappers, Jim was far from sure what to do next. He and Kit and Tom had had to hunt hard, just keeping the Berrybender expedition supplied with meat. They had done no trapping, had no furs to trade; they would have to rely on credit if they were to supply themselves for the winter ahead. They had three guns but not much powder; they had his bow, one cart, three horses, and a passel of people who had a tendency to quarrel with one another. At least Charbonneau was back—if they did run into Indians he could talk to them, in speech or in sign.

  For some reason Charbonneau had brought with him old Greasy Lake, a wanderer of the plains whose origins now no one knew: most tribespeople shied away from the old man, either because they thought he brought bad luck or possibly just because his rambling prophecies were extremely boring to listen to. His horse was so old it could barely walk. No sooner had he and Charbonneau arrived than the old man began to talk about the Wandering Hill, a cone of earth that seemed now to be in one place, now another—Pomp Charbonneau knew the legend and had even spotted what he thought was the hill when they were hard by the Missouri; and Tom Fitzpatrick, usually skeptical, had been startled in the extreme to hear that the hill had moved once again.

  “They say Jedediah Smith saw the Wandering Hill the day before the Kiowas killed him,” Tom remarked.

  Any talk of supernatural evil put Kit Carson off his feed at once. News that the deadly hill might be nearby stirred Kit to such an extent that he borrowed one of the wagon horses and hurried on down to the rendezvous, meaning to return with a few borrowed horses so that the party could make better time.

  Tasmin soon saw that Jim did not want to talk about Little Onion. He never liked to talk about matters emotional—they were things not easily fixed. Jim’s habit was to ignore such difficulties, to do nothing and hope that a solution would somehow turn up. It was this passivity in regard to awkward human situations that annoyed her most about him. One thing she could never be was passive. Jim Snow liked to slip by human problems, whereas she preferred to fling herself at them.

  Unable to bear the melancholy look on Little Onion’s face, Tasmin went over and hugged the girl and joined in humming, for a time, the little song that Onion was crooning to Monty. When Monty slept, and had been laid on the soft grass, Tasmin took Little Onion in her arms. She had never done such a thing before—Jim was startled to see it, and so was Little Onion, who kept quite still, like a captured fawn.

  “We are not taking you back,” Tasmin said.

  She had learned a little sign; now she made the sign for sister. It seemed to Tasmin that she could feel this young woman’s loneliness; it was there in the resistance of her body, and, of course, she had good reason to be fearful. Already she knew the hard ways of men—and they were in dangerous country. The future could always darken, and not only for their Little Onion. Tasmin wished she could explain to the girl that she was a loyal friend who would not desert her; yet she felt that she lacked the language to get the message across. Little Onion smiled, but in her eyes there was still a sadness.

  That night, after an embrace, Tasmin couldn’t sleep—she felt agitated rather than soothed. The mountain nights were already chill, so she took a blanket and walked down to a little grassy meadow where deer had been grazing at sunset. She felt she had failed to assuage Little Onion; now what she needed to do was take a sounding of her own emotions. How would she feel, for example, if Jim gave Little Onion a child and secured her place, as it were? Hadn’t her own father produced thirty bastards? What if Little Onion produced a half brother or sister for Monty? Tasmin found that she could not predict what her feelings might be, should such occur. She knew that she herself would like more children— though perhaps no more children just now, when comforts were so scarce. In the security and order of their great manse in Northamptonshire, with Cook and Nanny Craigie in attendance, of course she would desire more children. But they were not at the moment in Northamptonshire. They were in wild, mountainous country, where great snow-tipped peaks seemed to stretch south forever. Her first delivery had been hard enough, but then she had at least been well sheltered during her lying-in. Now she was in a place where there were not even trading posts. What if she got pregnant again, which was not unlikely, due to Jim Snow’s recent enthusiasm for their rutting? Where would they be when the child came—Santa Fe? Or in any town at all?

  Moonlight shone on the great snowy peaks beyond the meadows. This wilderness of high mountains and green valleys was extraordinary—and yet, to Tasmin’s eye, there was just too much of it. How much longer must they go tramping through it? Were there never to be clean sheets, frequent baths, and well-laid tables again? She remembered clearly the moment of exaltation she had felt that first morning on the Missouri; the feeling had carried her far without regret, and yet how much farther must it carry her? It was not so much England she missed as simply the minimal comforts of civilization: something as simple as a bed, a wash pitcher, or a new novel by Mr. Scott.

  The little rill beyond the meadow where she went to bathe was so small that Tasmin could almost straddle it. The water was like moving ice—she dropped her shift and squatted in it, dipping her hands and splashing the chill water over her dusty, sweaty face and body. The air, with its mountain chill, soon had her covered with goose bumps—and yet the cold and the sense of being clean were delicious. Even in her most tomboyish years she had always liked to come home and get clean, an ideal that now, as wife, mother, and wilderness traveler, was often impossible to attain. Dust, sweat, blood, babies’ drool, breast milk, the rich oozy seed of the male, and trail dust would likely be hers for some time to come. Only now and again, when she happened on a mineral pool or an icy stream, could she enjoy the fine feeling that came with having clean skin, fresh cheeks, puckered nipples, dripping legs.

  When Tasmin stood up and reached for her shift she suddenly saw the great bear, standing only a few feet away, in the meadow through which she meant to pass as she walked back to camp. Too late she remembered that Jim had told her bears were likely to be on the prowl at night, particularly in places where there were many deer.

  Now there a bear was—a large, dark shape, its coat shining silver in the moonlight. For a moment Tasmin froze, afraid to move; she held her dusty shift in front of her, longing to have her able husband by her side; but her husband, sated by their embrace, was sleeping soundly some distance away. She was alone with a grizzly bear, the most feared animal in the West.

  Yet the bear was not attacking—it had not advanced even a foot. It merely watched her. Kit had told her that the great bears were very curious. Probably this one had never seen a young English lady at her ablutions before. The bear looked at Tasmin, Tasmin looked at the bear. She thought of yelling— and yet, once the first shock passed, she didn’t feel like yelling—it might only provoke this great bruin, who could be on her long before anyone from the camp could arrive.

  “Shoo, bear,” she said in a tiny voice. “Shoo, now … shoo. Do go about your business elsewhere. I have a young child. I have to be going soon.”

  The bear merely watched.

  “I suppose that wasn’t a very respectful speech,” Tasmin added.

  Then she waited—and the bear waited too.

  Tasmin had hoped to slip back into camp naked— she hated to have to slip the dirty shift over her clean body—in the morning she meant to huddle in their blankets while Little Onion washed a few clothes. But what should
she do now that there was a bear? Would the bear care whether she was clothed or naked? Jim had told her that Indian women had to take serious precautions when their menses were flowing, lest bears be drawn to the blood. Tasmin had no immediate worry on that score—at the moment her menses weren’t flowing.

  Several minutes passed, with neither Tasmin nor the bruin advancing at all, though once the bear did turn its head. Little by little, Tasmin became less frightened. Somehow, perhaps wrongly, she had come to believe that her bruin meant her no harm. She might, to the bear, be no more than a novelty, her bathing a spectacle of a new sort, interesting enough to briefly interrupt whatever hunt had been in progress.

  “All right, Sir Bruin, if you are a sir,” Tasmin said. “My baby will be crying for me soon. I fear I must end our charming interview.”

  Yet she hesitated to move, hoping the bear would move first.

  It didn’t, so gathering all her courage, Tasmin walked straight across the meadow, passing, as she did, within ten feet of the bear, a proximity the bear found too startling to be borne. With a snuff it turned tail, splashed across the creek where she had just bathed, and was gone.

  In the morning, once news of the encounter spread, almost the whole camp company tramped down to the meadow to examine the bear’s footprints, two of which were clearly visible in the mud by the little creek.