The Berrybender Narratives

by Larry McMurtry

  Jim said not a word. He merely looked at the two men, wondering what they wanted. Why would anyone travel a long distance to meet him? And what did they expect from him now that they had found him?

  “We’re journalists,” Ben announced, with a touch of pride.

  Jim sat on his mare—he did not change expression. He seemed, to Clam, neither surprised nor concerned by Ben’s announcement. He didn’t react at all.

  Ben Hope-Tipping was more than a little disconcerted by Jim Snow’s calm lack of response to his statement of purpose. It occurred to him that the term he had used—“journalist”—might not be current in this wild empty West. After all, he and Clam were pioneers; certainly pioneers insofar as their use of balloons went. The two of them might well be the first journalists the Sin Killer had ever met. There were, after all, few newspapers in the West—only an ugly sheet or two in Cincinnati and hardly even that in Saint Louis. This young man, the famous Sin Killer, feared by the red savages for his violent furies—yet a man who had won the hand of Lady Tasmin Berrybender—a fine subject for journalistic treatment if there ever was one, probably had no clear idea what a journalist was. It might even be that he had never seen a newspaper. His concern, after all, would be survival, not amusement of the sort newspapers were designed to provide.

  “We’re journalists,” he repeated hopefully. “We write for the papers, you see.”

  “You’re the Sin Killer, yes, yes,” Clam said. “We have many questions for you, if you’ll oblige.”

  Jim remained silent—it annoyed him a little that his Sin Killer nickname had become such a staple of Missouri River gossip that even these two foreigners had heard the term.

  But the fact that they had heard it was just a mild irritant—it really meant little to him, nor did it encourage him to linger in their company. It had been a year since he left the lower Missouri—whatever the two fellows had heard was most probably wild lies. The two certainly seemed harmless—they did not appear to be armed—but why they would suppose he’d sit still and let them ask him questions, he could not imagine.

  He looked at them, nodded as a small gesture of courtesy, and simply rode around them, leaving them looking at him with open mouths.

  “Why didn’t he speak—is he mute, the young fool?” Clam asked. Had he traveled all the way from France to have some young American ride around him as if he were a stump?

  Ben Hope-Tipping had been as startled as his colleague by Jim Snow’s blatantly disinterested response. In his shock at being ignored by this legendary fellow—one of the frontiersmen they had most wanted to meet—Ben wondered if they had omitted some ritual or other—the peace sign, perhaps? Trappers and travelers in the West seemed often to speak to one another through hand signs—perhaps that was what the Sin Killer had been expecting. And yet they had been told that he spoke English—what could be the matter with the fellow?

  Jim rode over to Kit and shrugged.

  “These two fellows are even nosier than Tasmin,” he remarked. “She started asking me questions the minute we met, and these skunks are just as bad.”

  “They sure didn’t ask me many questions,” Kit replied, in a pouty tone. ‘All they wanted to know about was the great Sin Killer.”

  “I ain’t the great nothing,” Jim told him. ‘And I can’t make much of a scout if I have to drag these two fools behind me. You and Greasy slow me down enough.”

  “Of course you can go faster than anybody else— you got the best horse,” Kit said, still aggrieved.

  “I think I’ll go south for a few days and have a look around,” Jim said. “You can handle these fellows, I expect.”

  “I don’t want to handle them,” Kit said at once. “I’m glad we got to see the balloon, but it’s busted. Why can’t these fellows just handle themselves?”

  “Suit yourself—I’m leaving,” Jim told him.

  “You would leave, you selfish fool!” Kit burst out— Jim’s habit of doing exactly what he pleased, with no regard for anyone else, infuriated him.

  Jim agreed that seeing the balloon had been interesting, but some birds had knocked it down, and helping the men fix it was not his business. He turned to leave. Probably the balloonists had a wagon and a servant nearby who would soon arrive and help them out. He wanted to be on his way, an intention which continued to infuriate Kit.

  “What am I supposed to do with them?” he asked, a little desperately.

  “Take ’em to Ashley—maybe he’ll adopt them,” Jim suggested. “He likes to blab and puff himself up—I expect he’ll give them some yarns they can write in their papers.”

  “It’s a damn big chore to leave your best friend with,” Kit announced—he hoped the appeal to friendship would make Jim change his mind.

  “They didn’t fly all this way without no kit,” Jim pointed out. “I imagine their slave will show up pretty soon and help you with them.”

  Kit suddenly had a thought. Perhaps the two men were eccentric millionaires, out for a long lark in the West. Perhaps they were as rich as or even richer than Lord Berrybender or the prince of Weid. Maybe if some mild danger arose he could hurry them out of harm’s way and then convince them that he had been the one thing that stood between them and death. It might be that they’d want to make him rich for performing such noble service. It would serve Jim Snow right if he managed to get rich off these strangers. For that matter, it would serve everybody right.

  Kit was so pleased with his new notion that he could not resist trotting after Jim.

  “That’s right, you go away . . . leave these folks to me,” he said. “I bet they make me rich, once I save them.”

  “I hope they will—if you do save them,” Jim said. Then he put the little mare in a lope and hurried off, happy not to have to hear any more rattle from Kit.

  10

  Jim Snow had no sooner ridden off. . .

  JIM SNOW had no sooner ridden off than the two journalists, wearing looks of extreme dismay, came running over to Kit.

  “Where does he go?” the Frenchman in the red pants asked—there was indignation in his tone. “When will he come back, this Sin Killer?”

  “We had rather hoped to speak to him, you see!” the Englishman remarked, as shocked as he was annoyed.

  “It won’t be today,” Kit assured them. “Not unless you can run as fast as that mare can lope.”

  “This is an outrage!” the Frenchman spluttered— he was very red in the face, though not quite as red as his bright pants. “If we were in France I would call him out!”

  Kit found the remark puzzling.

  “Why call him out when he’s already out?” he inquired.

  “My colleague means he would challenge Mr. Snow to a duel,” Ben explained—he had calmed a little.

  Kit Carson usually managed to maintain a solemn, even dignified demeanor, easy to do when traveling with an unsociable person like Jim Snow, who was out of sorts most of the time anyway. On the other hand, when some absolutely ridiculous notion was expressed in his hearing he was sometimes given to bursts of hilarity—these giggle fits, as he called them, often lasted so long that they became something of a trial to those who knew him.

  The notion that a short Frenchman in red pants could be so foolish as to challenge Jim Snow to a duel was just the kind of nonsense that caused Kit’s sense of humor to get the better of him. He burst out laughing, but of course there was no one to tell the joke to except old Greasy Lake, who was over by the river, chanting over the fallen balloon.

  “Why are you laughing, monsieur? In France a duel is a serious matter,” Clam de Paty insisted—he was finding America less and less to his taste, an awkward thing since, at the moment, he was far out in the middle of it.

  Ben Hope-Tipping, annoyed himself by the young fellow’s unseemly response, nonetheless realized that his colleague’s abrupt mention of a challenge to the Sin Killer did, under the circumstances, smack of the ridiculous.

  “Not sure a duel is quite the wisest course in this cas
e, Clam,” he remarked. “It would seem that the Sin Killer is famous precisely because of his facility in battle. After all, you can hardly write the fellow up if you’re dead.”

  The same thought had occurred, though belatedly, to Clam de Paty himself. Fortunately the man who he had threatened to call out was now almost out of sight—there seemed to be little practical danger of a response from that quarter.

  “Pardon, ” he said, in chilly tones, to his more circumspect colleague. � duel is no mere brawl, no massacre, no mere thing of fisticuffs—it is, like everything in France, a civilized engagement, a contest with rules. With a pistol in my hand, monsieur, I assure you I am not to be taken lightly.”

  Ben decided to ignore his friend’s absurdly puffed-up conduct—they were not, after all, out with their seconds in the Bois de Boulogne. Still, he could not but be irritated by the young frontiersman’s giggling, which seemed to cast their whole enterprise in an undignified light. Clam de Paty despite his rather erratic temperament, was a leading, perhaps the leading, force in French journalism—had he not interviewed Prince Metternich himself, and Czar Alexander, and the empress of France, not to mention numerous Bourbons, generals, and acrobats?

  His own credentials, for that matter, were not evidently the poorer. He too had interviewed lords, ministers, Mrs. Jordan, two Rothschilds, a Baring, even the great Wellington himself. It was bad enough to have their fine, expensively made balloon punctured by some wayward American birds—were they now to be reduced to standing around in wet clothes, on the barren American prairies, being laughed at by a young frontiersman and ignored completely by a rather blotchy old Indian? Ben prided himself on his ability to maintain a level temperament—a good, sound Dorset temperament, on the whole, in clear contrast to the frequent oaths and curses his more volatile Gallic companion was apt to burst out with. Just at the moment, though, Ben found that he was becoming rather vexed. After all, the sun was setting, and there was no sign of Amboise d’Avigdor or the wagon, in which were plenty of dry clothes. They seemed to be faced with a long, damp night. Why was this young fool still giggling?

  “Do endeavor to control your hilarity, Mr. Carson,” he said sharply. “I confess I can’t quite figure out what’s so funny.”

  “I just got tickled at the thought of that French fellow in the red pants fighting a duel with Jimmy,” he admitted.

  ’And why is that amusing, monsieur?” Clam asked.

  “Because Jimmy would kill you before you could twitch,” Kit informed him calmly. “Jimmy don’t hold back when life or death’s involved.”

  Jim Snow, already miles to the south, was only visible for a second or two, above the waving grass.

  “Will he come back, do you think, Mr. Carson?” Ben asked—obviously there was no immediate hope of an interview, though it was the interview of all interviews that would have done most to enhance the authenticity of their great Western expedition.

  “Oh sure, Jimmy will show up someday,” Kit told them. “He’s got a wife and baby back with Ashley and the trappers.”

  Just then a cloud passed between them and the sinking sun. Though it had been a warm day Ben felt suddenly chilly. Their not quite fully deflated balloon floated on the river, snagged on a number of stiff branches. The old piebald Indian was still chanting, though not so loudly.

  “I suppose we should rescue our balloon, Clam— possibly it can be patched,” Ben remarked.

  “It’s awkward being wet,” Clam admitted. “Where could that foolish boy be?”

  “He was rather fearful when we left,” Ben recalled. “Seemed rather convinced that those red fellows might do him harm.”

  “What red fellows?” Kit asked, alarmed. He had no idea how far the balloon might have floated before the cranes downed it—with Jim now gone and two obviously helpless strangers on his hands, the thought that there might be bad Indians somewhere near was entirely unwelcome.

  “Oh, quite a bunch of painted fellows stopped us,” Ben informed him. “Upset our young interpreter rather a lot. An old fellow on a white horse seemed to be the leader. What was it Amboise called him, Clam? The Partezon, was it?”

  “That’s right—the Partezon,” Clam agreed. “No paint on him, though the other fellows were painted up rather grotesquely. That’s when we decided to go up in our balloon.”

  “I believe we rather frightened the savages when we went up,” Ben remarked. “They ran off, but the two old fellows didn’t.”

  Kit began to regret that he had burst out so at Jim— if ever the two of them needed to stick together, it was now. But of course, as usual, Jim had left.

  “Best think of our balloon,” Ben insisted. ‘Amboise is sure to turn up soon. If a muskrat were to nibble our balloon, it would only be harder to patch. Once we’ve saved it we can build a roaring fire and get out of these wet clothes.”

  “No fire tonight,” Kit informed them immediately. It was sadly obvious that the two men lacked even the most elementary practical sense.

  “I’ll help you get your balloon off the snags,” he said, “but we can’t be building a fire, not with the Partezon around.”

  “But sir, no Indians are around—we flew over several miles of prairie and it all looked quite empty,” Ben insisted; both he and Clam were horrified at the thought of a night spent in their sopping clothes.

  “How many miles did you come?” Kit asked.

  “Ten, maybe,” Ben said. “What do you think, Clam?”

  Clam de Paty shrugged. Once in the balloon, he had applied himself to the cheese and the cognac—calculations of distance were none of his affair.

  “We flew until the birds came,” he told Kit. As the guardian of French precision he tried to avoid vague statements.

  “No fire tonight,” Kit repeated firmly. “Ten miles ain’t far enough. An Indian can smell smoke ten miles—this Indian particularly.”

  “But we’re very wet, Mr. Carson,” Ben reminded him. ‘And once we wade around saving our balloon, we’ll undoubtedly be even wetter. Surely you can’t expect us to spend the night in damp garments.”

  “I should certainly hope not,” Clam added. “What business is it of the savages if we enjoy our fire, monsieur? Civilized men cannot be expected to sleep in wet clothes.”

  “Take your clothes off and sleep naked, then,” Kit advised. “If you start a fire I’ll be leaving, and the Partezon will probably be coming.”

  “Sleep naked—in this chill?” Ben asked, horrified at the thought. “Couldn’t we make just a small fire, one not apt to roar? What harm could there be in that?”

  “The Partezon will come and burn you in it, that’s what harm,” Kit told them. “He probably didn’t think you could really fly off or he would have burned you already.”

  Without wasting any more time on chatter, he waded into the river and began to disengage the soppy silk of the balloon from the sticks where it had snagged. Darkness was falling and the work was chilling but Kit’s imagination had just served up a warming thought. If he helped save the balloon, maybe the bal-loonists would let him go up in it with them. If he came floating down into Ashley’s big camp in a red balloon it would show all the boys—and Tasmin particularly—what a clever fellow he was. None of the mountain men had ever ridden in a balloon. If he returned to the Berrybenders in a balloon his stock was bound to rise—maybe Tasmin would look at him with new eyes.

  It was not easy extracting such a large, floppy object from the snag-filled river. Greasy Lake had no interest in the rescue, but Ben Hope-Tipping stripped off and came in the water to help. He seemed to appreciate Kit’s efforts, unlike the Frenchman, who maintained an airy indifference.

  By the time they got the balloon safely free of snags and spread it on the grass, a pale moon had risen. Greasy Lake, without a word of good-bye, rode off just as darkness fell.

  “Strange old fellow—where do you suppose he’s going?” Ben asked.

  “He don’t know himself—Greasy just wanders,” Kit said.

  11
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  Mainly the Ear Taker hunted people . . .

  WHEN the Ear Taker was a boy, hunting in the dry canyons, the People called him Takes Bones, because he was always picking up small bones or animal teeth from carcasses in the desert—bones or teeth that he then worked into fishhooks, awls, spear points; but once he reached adulthood some of the People began to call him Who-You-Don’t-See, because of the exceptional stealth of his attacks, most of them aimed at lone travelers, white traders, careless soldiers. Mainly the Ear Taker hunted people—white or Mexican usually— but when he hunted animals his stealth worked just as well. He could even surprise antelope, most cautious of animals. If he saw several antelope grazing together he would anticipate the direction of their grazing and go flatten himself in the grass, well ahead of the grazing animals. Hunting naked at times, he flattened himself until he became as much part of the ground as a lizard or a snake. The antelope would sometimes walk right over him, coming so close that he could strike one with a light spear tipped with poison—the poison old Prickly Pear Woman had taught him to make from the secretions of a toad. Prickly Pear Woman was actually white, but she had been taken prisoner as a small girl and had lived with the People most of her life— some of the People even regarded her as the grandmother of the tribe. She had dug herself a little room beneath the roots of a great prickly pear—she had learned to move among the prickly pear so smoothly that the thorns didn’t stick her, a feat not even the Ear Taker could manage.

  The Ear Taker was short, but it was agreed that he could outwalk anyone in the band. He could walk from moonrise to moonrise, licking dew drops off sage leaves or grass blades if there was no water. Old Prickly Pear Woman had told him of the terrible cruelties the whites had visited on the People long ago—many grandmothers ago. When the whites came into the lands of the People they at once began to order people around—the People, having always been free, didn’t like this and made a revolt, killing many whites. But then many more whites came and made all the People prisoners; to ensure that the People could never rise up again, an old governor commanded that all warriors over a certain age must have one foot chopped off—and the chopping was soon accomplished, leaving the People a tribe of cripples. For a generation all the warriors had to hobble on one foot, a terrible humiliation.