The Berrybender Narratives

by Larry McMurtry

  “Of course—same’s true of London,” Ben remarked. ‘All the same, I hope it’s this hunter who meets them, and not ourselves.”

  He peered down, happy to see that the plain below them seemed to be absent of bears.

  “I’ve heard that the prince of Weid is not a particularly interesting fellow,” Ben went on. “Thorough in his way, I suppose, but hardly notorious. We’d do better to find the Scotsman Drummond Stewart, or some rich fur trader like William Ashley, or, of course, the Berrybenders, my own countrymen. Rather hard to say where they might be.

  “Lady Tasmin Berrybender is said to be a very great beauty,” he went on. ‘And they have a rather prominent cellist with them, a Miss Venetia Kennet.”

  “May be, may be,” Clam agreed. “But we must find these people before we can write them up. So far we are not finding anybody except these noisy red fellows—that is why you must keep the lookout.”

  “Of course I will look, as best I can,” Ben assured his friend. “Shouldn’t have indulged in that cognac, though.”

  “What’s wrong with the cognac? I chose it myself,” Clam said—he found that he had constantly to defend French taste against the rather slighting ways of the English.

  “No insult intended, my man,” Ben said at once. “It’s just that when I drink and look down I become rather queasy. The stomach threatens to flop, at such moments.”

  Clam de Paty made no reply; he wore, as was often the case, a slightly aggrieved look.

  “Things really are so distant in America,” Ben continued. “I fear we still have hundreds of miles to go before we can expect to find these intrepid explorers you propose to write up.”

  “We should have questioned that old savage at more length,” Clam suggested. ‘Asked him about the more popular tortures. People always like to read about tortures, wouldn’t you agree?”

  “I agree that people love reading about tortures,” Ben allowed, “but I’m not sure it would have been wise to raise the subject of tortures with him—he might have been all too willing to give a practical demonstration. They did some rather shocking things to your Jesuits, I believe.”

  “Look, les oiseaux!” Clam said, suddenly pointing to a flock of very large birds, flapping toward them from the north.

  “Why, so they are,” Ben said. “What a pity our ornithological books are all in the wagon. What would you say they are, Clam? Herons, perhaps.”

  “Well, they have long, sharp beaks,” Clam began, and then stopped. The birds were closer now, they were very large birds, and they were coming straight toward the balloon.

  “Could they be cranes? They’re said to be quite large, I believe,” Ben said.

  “Shoot them, they are going to hit the balloon,” Clam said, in sudden panic. “Go down, go down!”

  “The gun, I fear, is in the wagon,” Ben reminded him, a second before these very large birds, unwilling to vary their course, plunged into the balloon and even into the basket. Great wings beat all around them. Two of the birds, striking the basket, evidently broke their necks and fell to earth. Some hit the balloon and managed a recovery, while two were actually stuck to the balloon, their beaks having penetrated the silk fabric.

  “Let us descend at once, monsieur,” Clam insisted.

  “Oh, we’re descending all right,” Ben assured him—the two birds stuck to the balloon managed to free themselves and flew on, followed by an audible hiss of escaping air.

  “Damnable creatures, why wouldn’t they turn!” Clam yelled, his face red with fury.

  “Doubt they expected to run into a balloon on their trip,” Ben suggested.

  “No, don’t talk, steer!” Clam demanded. The balloon was deflating rapidly—already its shape had ceased to be spherical. Fortunately they were over the Platte River, broad and shallow at this point.

  “We’re going to land either with a thump or a splash,” Ben declared. “I think on the whole I prefer the splash.”

  Fortunately, as the balloon descended, the unfortunate collision with the cranes, if that was what they had been, was balanced by a very helpful gust or two of wind, which allowed them to descend directly into the brown river. The splash, when it came, was a rather considerable one.

  “There’s something worth writing up, wouldn’t you agree, Clam?” Ben Hope-Tipping asked, as the two of them waded out of the cold, shallow water. “Pioneering balloonists felled by whooping cranes—if that indeed is what they were. We’ll be the envy of every ornithologist in the world, and not a few reporters.”

  ’Also, my friend, I saved the cheese,” Clam de Paty informed him. He held it high, in triumph, as they struggled toward the shore.

  8

  “If I had a wife as pretty as Tasmin . . .”

  “IF I had a wife as pretty as Tasmin, I wouldn’t be traveling as much as you do,” Kit remarked to Jim.

  They were stopped near the North Platte, considering whether they should go south for several days, to determine an easy route across to the south branch of the river. Greasy Lake ambled along, a mile or two back.

  “You’ve never had a wife,” Jim pointed out. “If you ever get one, then you can decide how much traveling you want to do.”

  “I almost married my little Josie last time I was in Santa Fe,” Kit said, in his own defense. The girl he referred to, Josefina Jaramillo, was short but cheerful—she had let it be known, on more than one occasion, that she wouldn’t object to a bit of courting from Kit.

  “Isn’t she the one you said was bossy?” Jim asked.

  “She was a little bossy sometimes,” Kit admitted.

  “Do you think Tasmin’s bossy?” Jim asked.

  Kit felt trapped. He didn’t want to speak ill of Tasmin, which would mean conceding a point to Jim Snow. The one thing all the trappers agreed on was that Tasmin Berrybender was the bossiest female any of them had ever encountered. When they had nothing better to discuss, the trappers often amused themselves by talking about how much Tasmin needed to be taken down a peg—all agreed that Jim Snow was not the man to accomplish this. Tasmin’s bossiness had worked out well for Pomp Charbonneau, since she had flatly refused to allow him to die.

  Still, Kit didn’t want to come right out and admit to Jim what everybody knew: that his wife was bossy.

  “She’s sharp-spoken, Tasmin,” Kit finally allowed.

  “No, she’s bossy,” Jim said. “I’ve got used to it, but you needn’t be complaining about my traveling.

  “If you was married to Tasmin she’d have scared you all the way back to Missouri by now,” Jim added.

  ’Are we going down to the South Platte, or not?” Kit inquired.

  “I ‘spect we better,” Jim said. “We’ve got a passel of people to guide. It wouldn’t hurt to know if there’s a big bunch of Indians between here and there.”

  “It’s pretty dern hard to get to Santa Fe, whichever direction you start from,” Kit admitted.

  “We’ve got three babies and a passel of females,” Jim reminded him. “I hope we can get ’em across before it gets too cold.”

  He didn’t want to discuss it with Kit, but in fact marriage and fatherhood had made travel not quite the free frolic it had once been.

  Kit could dance around the question of Tasmin’s bossiness all he wanted to, but the fact was that Jim missed his son, Monty, more than he missed his wife. A little time off from Tasmin was only a sensible relief. He and Monty were not yet quite confident of one another, but they were slowly forming a sly attachment. With Tasmin he could only be pleasant and hope for the best.

  Jim did feel that a certain amount of scouting was advisable—getting the Berrybenders, or most of them, across to Santa Fe would not be a cakewalk. None of the plains Indians were likely to be friendly—and water was no sure thing along part of the route. If all the mountain men chose to accompany them, they could probably bluff most of the Indians, but it was not likely that the mountain men would stay together on such a long trek. The West held too many temptations, in the way of
valleys never before explored. The mountain men were notably independent. They might start off in a group and then peel off, one by one.

  Jim plunged into the Platte and let the little mare pick her way carefully through the shoals. Kit’s mule managed to step in a hole—he stumbled, panicked, threw his rider, and splashed on across the river. Once on the south bank he shook himself thoroughly, showering Jim with cold spray—even so, he was a good deal luckier than Kit, who floundered out, soaked, in a worse temper than he had been in to begin with.

  “I’m wet as a rat,” he complained; it was very annoying to be stuck with such a worthless mule.

  They heard a shout and saw Greasy Lake trotting along the bank at what, for him, was a great rate—he was pointing at the sky. When Jim and Kit first looked up all they saw was a flock of cranes far to the north—for a moment, due to the intensity of the white sunlight, the balloon had been invisible. They could just see the faces of the two white men in the basket, high above.

  “Greasy Lake was right—there’s our flying men,” Kit said.

  Jim was startled by the sight of the balloon, a phenomenon he had only vaguely heard about—he had supposed it to be mainly a product of Greasy Lake’s imagination, but there it was, as real as anything.

  “Now that’s a fine way to travel,” he said. “If we had a few of those we could float right over to Santa Fe.”

  “I wouldn’t know how to steer it,” Kit admitted. “If you couldn’t steer it proper, there’s no telling where you’d end up.”

  In their astonishment at seeing the balloon and its passengers, the two of them had forgotten the flock of cranes. Along the Platte large flocks of birds were a common sight—campers sometimes camped a few miles off the river, in order not to be kept awake by the quackings of geese and ducks. But as the cranes came closer, the men in the basket became more agitated, and not without reason: the balloon was directly in the path of the cranes—in a few moments, despite all the balloonists could do, the cranes, in close formation, began to strike the balloon. One or two fell in with the men and then flapped out, but at least six struck the balloon itself.

  “Uh-oh,” Kit said. “You’d think a dern crane could see a balloon that big.”

  “Two or three’s stuck to it still,” Jim remarked—very soon it became evident that the balloon was losing air.

  High above, the balloonists were trying frantically to keep their balloon—no longer as round as it had been—up in the air.

  Greasy Lake came trotting up, very excited.

  “You were right, Greasy,” Kit admitted. “There’s flying men all right.”

  “They’re trying to hit the river—can’t blame them,” Jim pointed out.

  Fortunately the wind came to the balloonists’ aid, pushing the balloon directly over the water.

  “I hope they can swim,” Kit said, forgetting that he himself had just waded out of the shallow Platte. A moment later he realized that he had spoken foolishly.

  “If they’d come down in the Mississippi they’d need to be good swimmers,” he added, but thanks to the drama overhead, no one was listening.

  Greasy Lake began to wail and chant—he thought it might possibly be gods who were descending into the river. An old Miniconjou, a wandering shaman like himself, had first told him about the balloon and the men who flew beneath it; at first Greasy Lake hadn’t known what to believe. But as the balloon came splashing down into the brown water, he saw that the sky travelers, after all, were men and not gods. They waded out of the river, holding what goods they could carry above their heads, looking every bit as wet as Kit Carson. One of the men, a rotund man in wet red pants, seemed to be cursing in French, a language Greasy Lake often heard when he was in the North. The other man was taller, and dressed all in black, as men were said to dress whose business it was to carry off the dead. It seemed to him that the fact that cranes had hit the balloon was not without significance. Some of the People believed that cranes were the carriers of souls; they were said to carry off old souls and bring new souls to babies, when they arrived. Greasy Lake himself had seen nothing of particular merit in the cranes he had observed, nothing that would suggest that they could be entrusted with such an important task, but what he had just seen—cranes bringing down a flying boat—suggested to him that he might need to rethink his position in regard to cranes. Perhaps the reason the flying boat had collapsed was that the cranes had dumped too many souls in it. In the confusion there was the likelihood that some of these souls would escape into uncertain territory, the vague, troubling spaces between life and death, where these flitting souls would likely do much mischief. It might be that what had occurred high over his head was some big error of the gods—an error that had allowed many souls to escape. No one had ever claimed that the gods didn’t make mistakes. The gods of war, for example, were always getting things mixed up. What occurred in most battles was often the very opposite of what the war chiefs and war parties had expected to happen. Some men died and others lived, all because of errors of the gods.

  9

  . . . though hap>p>y to have saved his fine Parisian cheese . . .

  CLAM DE PATY, though happy to have saved his fine Parisian cheese and also a warming bottle of cognac, nonetheless, once he was safely on dry land, blew up into a frothing rage and filled the air with curses, none of them exactly directed at Ben Hope-Tipping but few of them missing him by a very wide mark, either.

  “You should have descended—it was our only hope!” he insisted.

  “Frankly, old boy an ascent would have been the better strategy,” Ben replied, unmoved by the Frenchman’s frothing. “The ballast was on your side—if you’d only tossed out a bag or two we might have missed them.”

  “Voilà! Who’s these peoples?” Clam asked, having just observed that they had human company: a small, wet man, leading a tall mule; a tall, dry man on a wet bay horse; and an old Indian of some sort, rather blotched in complexion, aboard a horse that seemed about to fall down.

  “Extraordinary, isn’t it?” Ben said. “People do just seem to pop up out of nowhere, here in America.”

  “Of course they come from nowhere—all this is nowhere!” Clam began—and then he suddenly remembered that all their guns were in the wagon, and where was that foolish boy Amboise, whose instructions had been to follow them closely? Of course, they would need dry clothes, and need them promptly—and yet there was no sign of Amboise, who deserved a good cuffing, at least.

  “These fellows seem to be friendly,” Ben said. “The Indian looks to be rather past warrior’s age. Can’t think what’s keeping Amboise—wouldn’t mind a change—fear he’s lagging, as usual—such a pity to have to introduce ourselves in wet clothes—you must speak severely to Amboise, Clam, when the lazy boy shows up.”

  “I’ll ‘severe’ him—I’ll bash him,” Clam assured him. He twisted his mustache a bit, in order to appear civilized, and advanced on the strangers, who stood watching them—they did not seem particularly welcoming, but at least did not seem hostile.

  “Hello, gentlemen!” Hope-Tipping said loudly, as they approached. “Very glad of your company, I’m sure. I’m Benjamin Hope-Tipping and this is my French colleague, Monsieur Clam de Paty We write for the papers, and as you see, we come before you freshly baptized.”

  Jim Snow felt slightly depressed at the thought of having to deal with two more fools or idiots from Europe. The fact that they could fly did not mean that they would be competent to take care of themselves now that they were on the ground.

  Kit, however, was delighted to see the newcomers— weeks of traveling with his unsociable old friend Jim Snow and the erratic old prophet had put him in the mood for more talkative company.

  “Why, howdy, glad to meet you,” Kit said, striding right over to shake hands. “I’m baptized too, but we’ll dry. The fellow on the bay mare is Jim Snow and the Indian is called Greasy Lake—he’s a big prophet. We’ve been guiding the Berrybender party—they ought to be around South Pass somewhe
re by now.”

  “Why, yes—the Berrybenders—we’re very anxious to meet them,” Ben told him. He shook Kit’s hand but was looking past him, at Jim Snow. Clam de Paty did the same.

  “Monsieur, who did you say that was?” Clam asked, nodding at Jim.

  “On the bay mare—that’s Jim Snow,” Kit replied.

  “The Jim Snow—the man they call the Sin Killer?” Ben inquired eagerly.

  “Why, yes—he’s the only Jim Snow there is,” Kit declared, a little annoyed. “Sin Killer’s a nickname some of the boys gave him.”

  The two men were paying Kit no mind at all—both of them were staring at Jim.

  “Clam, we’re made—we’ve found the Sin Killer,” Ben exclaimed.

  Clam de Paty was scarcely less excited.

  “All we need now are dry notebooks,” he said. “Where is that Amboise? I’ll have his ears.”

  Watching the two foreigners approach, squishing loudly in their wet boots, Jim had the feeling it was time to leave. Kit could take these two intruders back to the main party, which should be on the move by now. He himself far preferred to scout alone—Kit had insisted on coming along on this trip because he was badly on the outs with Jim Bridger and Milt Sublette over his neglect of camp chores. Jim Bridger had pummeled Kit soundly in their last fistfight, cracking one of Kit’s teeth, an injury much resented.

  To Jim it seemed only fair that Kit earn his keep by escorting these two men back to the Berrybenders.

  “Oh, I say, Mr. Snow,” Ben began. “So pleased to meet you. I am Benjamin Hope-Tipping and this is my colleague, Monsieur Clam de Paty—we’ve traveled quite a long way in hopes of meeting you.”

  “Out, ” Clam said. “Splashing down just when we did was a miracle. But for the birds we would have flown right over you.”