The Berrybender Narratives

by Larry McMurtry

  She complained, but she didn’t actively set out to make him lustful, though she felt quite sure that she could make him lustful, given a little privacy.

  So here they were, as summer neared its end, in the Valley of the Chickens, west of South Pass, with the big fur-trading rendezvous winding down and with the rather vague intention of heading off to Santa Fe pretty soon, so that her father might shoot yet more buffalo, elk, moose, deer, antelope, and whatever else might cross his path. Her husband was nowhere to be seen, nor was the helpful Kit Carson, and there she stood in a cold stream, wishing very much that Pomp Charbonneau had tried to kiss her at some point, even though, in his eyes, she was the apparently contented wife of his best friend.

  Then the pesky Father Geoffrin, who surprised everyone by his competence as a surgeon, had tried to tell her that life was never as good or as bad as one thought it to be. Tasmin was in no mood to tolerate French equivocation; she felt muddled, so muddled in fact that she failed to note the quiet approach of Mary Berrybender, a girl with unusual powers, capable of sniffing out edible tubers and perhaps also capable of sniffing out nascent loves, such as might be said to exist between Tasmin and Pomp.

  “Now that you’ve saved Pomp, do you mean to have him, Tassie—I mean carnally?” Mary inquired; she had her full share of the Berrybender directness where the appetites were concerned and had sensed the rising feeling between her sister and Pomp long before either of them would have admitted that they felt such feelings.

  So there Mary stood, a half-wild look in her eye, asking Tasmin straight out if she meant to seduce Pomp Charbonneau.

  “Shut up and get back to your Dutchman,” Tasmin warned. ‘And don’t be playing nasty games with him, either.”

  She referred to the fact that Mary had been lashing the pudgy Dutch botanist on his bare bottom with some brambles, an activity the two claimed to thoroughly enjoy.

  “Shame, Tasmin,” Mary said hotly. “You were no older when you were tupping Master Tobias Stiles in the stall of father’s great horse Charlemagne. You did do it, you know!”

  “Of course I did it, and lucky to get the opportunity,” Tasmin replied. “When it comes to forthright tupping, I suspect Master Stiles set a standard your Dutchman would be hard put to match.”

  “Being whipped with nettles is a common practice among educated Hollanders,” Mary reminded her. “I can’t think why you’d mind about it, Tassie.”

  “I’ve just come through an ordeal—Pomp nearly died,” Tasmin said. “I’m not in the mood to discuss our amatory futures, yours or mine. I don’t see my husband and I don’t see Kit Carson, either. Do you know where they might be?”

  “Oh yes, they’re gone on a scout,” Mary informed her. “It’s the Sioux, I believe, that they’re investigating. Santa Fe seems to be a great distance away—Jim doesn’t wish us to blunder into too many Sioux— they’re very irritable at the moment, it seems.”

  Just then another sister came trailing up, the sturdy Kate Berrybender, aged four. Tasmin was thinking that while her face and throat felt very clean, the rest of her felt soiled and smelly. The desire to be clean all over rose in her; there were bushes thick enough to hide her up the river a ways. She could bathe in discreet seclusion, but would need clean clothes once she stepped out.

  “Mary go find Buffum—I believe she’s picking berries. Ask her to have Milly our amorous laundress, get me a clean shift,” Tasmin asked.

  Mary obliging for once, had hardly left to execute this errand when stout little Kate arrived, wearing her usual look of fierce belligerence.

  “Mr. James Snow left a message for you,” Kate informed her, without preamble. “He says he is going on a scout and will not be back for three weeks, if then.”

  “Three weeks? And he didn’t think it worth his while to say good-bye to his own wife?” Tasmin complained.

  “Mr. James Snow does not say good-bye,” Kate informed her, with quite exceptional firmness. “When Mr. James Snow wants to go, he just goes.”

  “So I’ve noticed, you insolent midge,” Tasmin replied. “This is not his first abrupt departure, since taking me as his wife. Inasmuch as you seem to be his emissary, perhaps you wouldn’t mind giving him a message from his wife, next time you see him.”

  “Perhaps—unless it’s an order,” Kate said. “You are not allowed to give orders to Mr. James Snow.”

  “The next time he goes heigh-hoing off, he better leave me Kit—that’s the message,” Tasmin told her. “Little Onion and I could use Kit’s help.”

  Instead of replying, Kate picked up a rock, intending to heave it at her sister—but something in Tasmin’s look caused her to check the impulse. She stood, glared, and finally turned away.

  Tasmin hurried upriver, got squarely behind the bushes, stripped, and took a chill but refreshing bath. She had goose bumps all over by the time Buffum finally trailed down the slope with her clothes.

  2

  Tear his throat out? His Vicky?

  LORD Berrybender was nonplussed: Venetia Kennet, long his darling, his pet, his bedmate, mistress, whore, inamorata—a woman whose languid beauty had always quickened his juices, who even employed delicate skills to arouse him when arousal seemed beyond reach—had just flatly refused him. She had made no effort to be polite about it, either. In fact, she had threatened to tear his throat out if he so much as touched her.

  Tear his throat out? His Vicky? Of course, when he approached her she happened to be sitting by the grave of her lover, Drum Stewart, whose unfortunate death at the hands of the Utes had caused her much grief. But then, Lord B.’s own son Bobbety had perished too. Bobbety had not, perhaps, been very imposing, yet he might have led a mild life of some sort, collecting fossils and looking up Latin names for butterflies or shrubs. But Bobbety was dead, and Drum Stewart was dead, but he himself was not dead, nor was Vicky whose long white body he had enjoyed so often. Wasn’t life for the living? Mustn’t it be lived to the hilt? He was not getting younger—it was no time to allow the juices of love to dry up. It occurred to Lord B. that his hearing was no longer as keen as it had been—perhaps he had misheard his lively friend, whose face seemed suddenly red with anger—but why?

  “What was that you were saying, my lovely dear?” he asked, hoping a compliment would help.

  “I said I’d tear your throat out if you touch me,” Vicky said, in icy tones.

  “But Vicky, think for a minute—let’s not be rash,” Lord Berrybender replied—sweet reason had never been exactly his métier, but he thought he might try it, for once. His experience, after all, was considerable— there had been hundreds of copulations, in several countries; women had been angry with him before, perhaps even violently angry. The Gypsy woman in Portugal, perhaps? The fiery Neapolitan countess who kept a dagger in her undergarments? Would either of them have offered to tear his throat out? Lord B. could not be sure, though he felt quite certain that his good wife, Lady Constance, would never have threatened such a thing. For one thing, though not entirely devoid of temperament, Lady Constance had been singularly inept—she would not have known how to begin to tear a man’s throat out. The most Constance had ever done was whack at him feebly with the fly swat when he awakened her too quickly with copulation in mind. No, the worst that could be said of Lady Constance was that after the fourteenth child she had become sadly less ardent; in many cases, if she had too much laudanum and her usual bottle or two of claret, she even dozed off while they were copulating, leaving him to labor to a lonely conclusion. Sometimes, in fact, Constance had even been known to snore while he was laboring, a rather deflating thing for a husband to have to put up with. Their tupping took at most ten minutes—was it asking too much of a wife that she stay awake for such a modest interval? Lord Berrybender didn’t think so, but Lady Constance was beyond persuasion or complaint . Her snores became habitual, which is one reason he had transferred the bulk of his attentions to the tall cellist with the long white legs and the raspberry teats in the first place. And yet this sa
me Vicky, a mother now, her breasts heavy with milk but her legs still just as long, had threatened to tear his throat out, though as far as he could see, she had nothing to tear it out with, only her cello and its bow. It occurred to him that the bow did bear watching—he himself had accidentally poked one of Bobbety’s eyes out with a turning fork. He was in the American West mainly for the hunting—he could not easily spare an eye.

  Prudently, Lord Berrybender retreated a step, meaning to fend her off with his crutch if she came at him suddenly.

  “Now, now, Vicky—I’ve a tough old throat after all,” he told her. “You’ve not got a pair of scissors in your pocket, now have you? You’ve not got a knife, I hope?”

  By way of answer Vicky bared her strong white teeth and clicked them at him menacingly, ending the performance with a hiss loud enough to give Lord B. a start.

  “I’ve got these teeth,” she said. “It’s only one vein I’d need to nip, and out would pour your lifeblood. Surely Your Lordship has seen a seamstress nipping a thread. A good sharp nip at the jugular and it’s done.”

  Lord Berrybender was shocked, so shocked that for a moment he felt quite faint. His dead son, Bobbety lay buried not twenty feet away, and yet his sweet Vicky, so delicate in her strokings, had threatened to go for his throat.

  It was all so topsy-turvy, this new world he had blundered into; perhaps it was the fault of democracy or some other American sloppiness. Vicky, for all her musical gifts, was merely a servant girl. He now began to see that democracy might indeed be the problem— didn’t the system actually encourage servants to forget their place? Hadn’t his own cook threatened to leave him and take a position with Pierre Boisdeffre? Hadn’t the gunsmith and the carriage maker simply walked away one night, while on a hunt, as if they had every right to please themselves? Of course, the Mediterraneans had come back and Cook in the end had stayed in his service; and yet Cook had threatened, and now here was Vicky exhibiting violent defiance.

  “I know just where that vein throbs, Your Lordship,” Vicky declared, in chillingly level tones. “There you’d be, rutting for all your worth, and not three inches from my teeth that big vein would be throbbing. One nip, I’ve often told myself—one nip and the old brute is dead and I shall never have to be so bored again.”

  “Here now, that’s damnable, calling me boring!” Lord Berrybender complained. “I fancy I give thorough service, most of the time, though lately I know I’ve developed rather a tendency to haste. But damn it Vicky! You’re acting like a regular Charlotte Corday—kill me in my bath, I suppose—that’ll be the next thing!”

  “You’re safe enough in your bath—but you ain’t safe in my bed,” Vicky told him bluntly.

  “I ought to whack you, you insolent bitch,” Lord Berrybender protested. But he didn’t whack her—the look in her eye discouraged him. Women, after all, were quick as cats. What if she sprang at him, got her teeth in his neck? A ripped jugular was bad business, not easily repaired. So, instead of delivering several solid slaps, Lord Berrybender turned and made his way up the hill, traveling as fast as he could on an ill-fitting peg leg, a crutch, and half a foot. The more he thought about the matter, the more convinced he became that his analysis of the problem was correct. These damnable American freedoms—this democracy!—were clearly inimicable to sound English order. Democracy could ruin a good servant faster than gin, in his view. Forgotten her place, Vicky had: made threats, gave him mutinous looks; intolerable behavior, on the whole. He meant to speak to Tasmin about it, perhaps get Tasmin to deliver a stern reprimand. Tasmin would defend her old pater, of that Lord Berrybender felt sure. Only, for now, he thought he might just trouble William Ashley for a bit of his excellent champagne; a little bubbly might settle his nerves, which, at the moment, were far from being in a settled state. Tear out his throat, indeed! A shocking thing to hear. In his father’s day proud wenches such as Vicky had been flogged at the cart’s tail for less—or put in the stocks, where the mob could pelt them with filth. It had been an admirable form of punishment, the stocks. As a boy he had seen plenty of people pelted: low types, criminals, drunken old women. What a pity there were no stocks anymore—Lord B. couldn’t think why they had fallen out of favor. They’d be just the thing to correct a proud wench like Vicky. Then she’d bend her head; then there’d be no talk of tearing out the throats of her superiors. A day or two in the stocks, with the villagers pelting her with rotten eggs and sheep shit, would soon take the sass out of her. Then the silly wench would be happy enough to accommodate him, he supposed—even if, of late, he had developed a tendency to be rather too quick.

  3

  Among the wild, undomesticated company . . .

  AMONG the wild, undomesticated company of the mountain trappers, it was generally considered that rotund Eulalie Bonneville knew the most about women. Bonney as he was called, was no mean gambler, besides. None of the mountain men could recall seeing Bonney actually trapping any beaver, much less skinning them out. The icy ponds and streams where the other trappers waded to set their traps did not tempt him—keeping his feet warm was a first principle with Eulalie Bonneville; yet at the end of the season, through a succession of clever trades and successful card games or dice rolls or random bets, he generally trekked out of the mountains with more furs than anyone—and better furs too; and yet his prowess as a fur trader drew considerably less attention from his comrades than his expertise with women—for it was exactly that expertise that few of the others could claim, their amours for the most part being brief and drunken wallows with river-town whores or compliant Indian women, engagements seldom free of anxiety, since several of their colleagues had had their scalps lifted as a result of lingering too long in the toils of Venus with dusky maidens. And yet Eulalie Bonneville, as broad as he was tall, was said to have at least one wife in every tribe from the Kaw River to the Marias: Minatarees, Otos, Hidatsas, Teton Sioux, Assiniboines, Shoshones, Pawnees, Cheyennes, and Utes. So far only the women of the Piegan Blackfeet were absent from his scattered harem, a fact old Hugh Glass found curious.

  “I’d have thought you’d have taken a Blackfoot wife by now, Bonney” Hugh remarked. Hugh and Joe Walker, the Sublette brothers, and young Jim Bridger were all lounging around camp on this bright morning, the bulk of their trading completed for the summer. The bear cub Abby lay at old Hugh’s feet. From time to time all the men directed their glances at the clump of bushes near the river, behind which Tasmin Berrybender was assumed to be bathing her lovely body. The bushes were one hundred yards away—even if Tasmin had chosen to exhibit herself naked, the trappers would not have seen much, and yet they couldn’t stop looking.

  “I wish I did have a Blackfoot wife,” Bonney replied. “Marrying into a tribe is the best way to get a little trade started, but the Blackfoot won’t have me.”

  “I figured that was why you collected all them wives,” Joe Walker commented. “It was the trade you were after, I expect.”

  “I don’t despise the trade, but I also happen to like a rut, when I can get it,” Bonney admitted.

  “So how many wives are you up to, Bonney?” Jim Bridger asked. He himself lacked even one wife, and could not but be envious of the chubby trader’s progress.

  ’An even dozen, unless some of my Missouri River wives have died,” Eulalie admitted. “I fancy I could handle about twenty wives, if I could keep them spread out well enough.”

  Just then Tasmin and her sister Bess, both fully clothed, stepped out from behind the distant bushes. Tasmin bent for a moment to shake the water out of her wet hair.

  “Now there’s a wife and a half, I’d say,” Hugh Glass remarked. “Too dern much of a wife for that young whelp Jimmy Snow.”

  None of the mountain men spoke. Several of them, in their mind’s eye, had been imagining Tasmin naked; she wasn’t naked, but the trappers were reluctant to let go of the exciting images they had been constructing. All of them considered that it had been Tasmin alone who saved Pomp Charbonneau. She had beaten back death
, a rare thing. She had also scared the pants off William Ashley by cursing him, and Ashley, though a rich man now, had weathered several desperate Indian fights. One and all, the trappers admired Tasmin; many wondered how it had been possible for a shy fellow like Jimmy Snow to get her to marry him. Kit Carson, of course, was head over heels in love with her, and many of the other trappers a little in love too, and yet her close approach made them nervous. Now here she was, walking up the slope, right toward them, stopping from time to time to squeeze more water out of her wet hair, the droplets making tiny rainbows in the sunlight.

  “What do you think, Mr. Twelve Wives Bonneville?” old Hugh asked. “Think you could handle that much of a wife?”

  Bonney as it happened, was deeply smitten with Tasmin, yet he felt a shy uncertainty overwhelm him when she came near or spoke to him. That the mountain men considered him an expert on women did not displease him; but of course, there were women and women. A Minataree girl or a Ute girl might be one thing, Lady Tasmin quite another.

  “She’s married to Jimmy—I don’t think about her,” he replied, a comment that drew skeptical looks from several of the trappers. Abby left Hugh Glass’s side and went scampering down the slope to meet Tasmin.

  “Them grizzlies are growing fast,” Joe Walker observed. “I expect they’ll eat a few of us, one of these days.”

  “Suppose Jimmy Snow got his scalp lifted,” Hugh Glass remarked. “That girl’d be a widow. Would you court her then, Bonney?”

  “I’ve always been cautious of Englishwomen,” Bonney remarked, vaguely. “Besides, I hear the old lord means to make for Santa Fe—myself, I favor the North.”