The Berrybender Narratives

by Larry McMurtry

  Buffum suddenly burst into deep, gulping sobs— the sight of the mutilated girl brought back hard memories of her own brief but painful captivity by the Mandans. She remembered the terrible cold at night, with herself and Mademoiselle Pellenc huddling under a bit of deerskin they had snatched from the dogs. Then the men had been at her; the terrible witch woman, Draga, had beaten them with hot sticks. Now there lay Milly and Tim: the former she had often abused, the latter was a lover who, though not especially gifted, had done his best. Both were now so gashed about that they might indeed, as Mary suggested, have been cadavers there to be examined by an anatomy class.

  Tasmin put her arms around her sobbing sister. The two corpses already had a waxy look, as if figures in a wax museum had been crudely disassembled. Their remains had already become unhuman. Once there was no life in the flesh, only an absence of life, a sort of unhumanity what was there to say?

  “I don’t know why they refer to dead bodies as mortal remains—of Lord this or that, of Jack and Jill for that matter,” Tasmin told them. “We’re only mortals while we’re alive. Once we aren’t alive, what does remain—these scraps of flesh, these bloody bones— hardly seems worth fussing over.”

  “Oh, don’t be icy, Tasmin,” Buffum sobbed. “Don’t.”

  “Sorry,” Tasmin said. “I very much regret that those Pawnee boys chose to attack us, the result being that neither Tim nor Milly, nor Mr. Hope-Tipping nor good Seftor Yanez, will ever be among us again. But they’re gone—and their husks don’t interest me.

  “We’ll all leave husks someday, somewhere,” she added. “Let’s just bury them and go along.”

  “I suppose they always remove the genitals of the male,” Mary remarked.

  “Not always—in some cases there is no time for such embellishments,” Tasmin told her.

  Buffum, still sobbing, still distraught, stumbled off to find High Shoulders, but Cook—an expert with shrouds—soon arrived, accompanied by Tom Fitzpatrick, who had just missed the battle, though he claimed to have had intimations of it.

  “I seen some birds fly up, and some antelope start running,” he said. “If you’ve been in as many Indian fights as I have, things like that get you wondering.”

  Tasmin left the corpses to Cook and wandered back to the wagon where the children were. Her mind was on the anxious minutes when she had stood behind the wagon, gripping her axe. What would she have done if the battle had gone the other way—or if the Pawnees had passed up Tim and Milly and come straight for the wagon? Suppose Pomp had been killed? Suppose Jim and Kit had been out of earshot, and her father too slow to mount a defense? Could she and the women have somehow fought off these racing warriors with their flashing lances and deadly hatchets? Would old Charbonneau have been able to sway the attackers? Should she and the women have done better to fight, or to submit? After all, Buffum had survived her capture. What if the Pawnees had simply filled them all full of arrows, as they had Mr. Hope-Tipping?

  Tasmin stopped for a moment—her legs suddenly became jelly at the thought of what might have happened. She sank to her knees, feeling a throb of relief deeper than any she had ever felt before: the relief of one who had been within a minute of death and yet had been left alive. The plain around her had never seemed more vast and merciless, the sky above never so filled with light and brilliance. And yet, in this place of light, the darkness of death was not more than a minute away. Her survival had not been due either to the craft of men or to the bounty of the gods: it had been absolute luck. Tim and Milly dragging their fuel sacks around, had blundered right into the path of the warriors—without the brake their deaths provided, the Pawnees would have been at the wagon in only a minute more. Even Pomp and High Shoulders, though they had been quick, might not have been quick enough. The memory of an old book of Greek fables she had had as a child came to her. In it was a picture of Zeus and Poseidon looking down on earthlings through a hole in the clouds, pointing their fingers in an arbitrary way at this mortal or that, far below.

  So it might have been that day, Tasmin felt. Seftor Yanez and Signor Claricia had been sitting next to one another. Ben Hope-Tipping had been no more than an arm’s length from Clam de Paty yet now the Frenchman and the Italian were alive, the Englishman and the Spaniard quite dead.

  She had survived, and so had her child, her sisters, father, husband, lover, and most of the company—and yet the deadly combat had been the work of only seven restless boys. Were not there thousands of Indians somewhere on the plain? What if twenty came, next time, rather than seven? Suppose a hundred came?

  In time strength returned to Tasmin’s legs; she walked on to the wagon, where her hungry child was waiting. The burials were accomplished without ceremony, Father Geoff merely mumbling a few Requiescat

  in paces. No one wanted to linger in this spot where death had caught them. Jim Bridger and the Sublette brothers, returning from a fruitless search for beaver, got back just as the company pulled away from the four mounds of earth on the long prairie.

  “Was it the Partezon?” Jim Bridger asked.

  “Of course not, you fool!” Kit responded angrily. He and Jim Bridger were currently not on good terms.

  “I ain’t a fool, I just asked a question,” Jim replied, doing his best not to inflame the volatile Kit.

  “It was just some Pawnee boys, out practicing raiding,” Pomp told him.

  “That dern big mule nearly got me killed,” Kit said, attempting to produce a friendlier tone. He didn’t really like being cross with Jim Bridger, his old pard, but for some reason he often did feel distinctly cross with him.

  Jim Bridger spat a goodly chew of tobacco juice onto the prairie.

  “If them Pawnee sprouts killed four of us just practicing, I don’t think I want to make their acquaintance once they get practiced up.”

  ’Amen to that,” Billy Sublette remarked.

  31

  In a while she might be more welcoming.

  WHEN Jim put his hand on her, Tasmin angrily knocked it away. It startled him—she sometimes refused him when she was very sleepy, but now she lay beside him wide awake. Jim could see her staring upward. Of course, if she had been violently angry with him, as she sometimes was, he would have known it and kept his hands to himself. But she did not seem angry, merely stiff and distant—indeed, more stiff and more distant than he had ever known her to be.

  Of course, Tasmin was changeable. In a while she might be more welcoming. He let her be for a bit, but when he advanced his hand, Tasmin, who had been waiting for just such a move, knocked it away with even more emphasis.

  “Stop it,” she said. “Can’t you tell when I don’t wish to be pawed?”

  “Not till I try,” Jim replied.

  “It would be a good thing for you to learn—when to leave well enough alone,” Tasmin told him.

  Jim was silent. He had hoped to make love, not argue. Tasmin had shown plenty of courage during the fight that day from what he had seen. She had grabbed an axe, and been ready to use it. But the big fight was over. Why did she think she wanted to fight him?

  “I guess it’s good night, then,” he said.

  But Tasmin clutched his arm. To his surprise her hands were shaking, and there were tears on her cheeks. She clutched him hard, crying silently, her body shaking, but not with passion.

  “I’m scared . . . I’m scared . . . that’s why I don’t want you, can’t you tell?” she said.

  Jim relaxed a bit and held her until her shaking stopped. He felt that for once he did understand her mood. In sudden battle there was no time for fear—it was act or die. But afterward, once the issue was settled, strong men sometimes took the shakes, just as Tasmin had. No doubt it was the recollection of how close death had been. He himself had once had an Osage arrow part his hair: a fraction of an inch had been the difference between living and dying. He had paid no attention to the arrow at the time, though he chased and finally killed the Osage who shot it. But the next day watering a horse, he recollected th
at something had zipped right across his scalp, even drawing a few drops of blood. He sat at the water hole a long time, not shaking, but thinking. Once he left the water he forgot about the arrow. Prairie life involved so many close calls that experienced men learned not to dwell on them—surviving them was enough.

  “You might get your pa to loan you a gun or two,” he suggested. “Indians won’t pay much attention to a bunch of women with axes and knives.”

  “I suppose not,” Tasmin admitted.

  “What if you and Kit had been farther away?” she asked, sitting up. “What if Pomp had gone off with the trappers, as he meant to do? What if High Shoulders had been hunting?”

  “Try not to be thinking about it,” Jim said—only to receive a sharp dig from Tasmin’s elbow.

  “Jimmy, I am thinking about it!” she said, pounding him twice on his chest with her fist. “I have to think about it. If you can’t be persuaded to stay close, then I need to know what to do if some restless Indians show up again.”

  “I’ll be staying close,” Jim assured her. It wasn’t a chore he looked forward to—he was fond of roaming far ahead, out of range of the squabbles and arguments of the company. But the Pawnee boys, once they got home, would be sure to mention the big party of whites traveling through their country. In the party were several women who might be captured and sold, and also some fine horses. The Pawnee elders might decide they were a tempting target.

  “Just tell me what to do if they come and you’re not close,” Tasmin plead. “Do I fight, or do I submit?”

  Jim did not answer immediately. All the whites along the line of the frontier had to ask themselves that question. Buffum had survived a few weeks of captivity not too damaged, but she had been held at the great trading entrepot of the Mandans, where captives were traded regularly and seen as a valuable source of profit. Women taken into the deep plains by the Osage, the Comanche, or other roving tribes, seldom fared as well—it depended on the speed and the intentions of the captors. Husbands searched for years and never found their lost wives, or fathers their lost daughters. Unless ransomed quickly, captive women became wives—even if rescued, these were seldom able to return successfully to their families or their communities.

  “I’ll be staying close, for now,” Jim promised. “If they took you women they’d probably kill the little boys—raiders won’t usually be bothered with children on the teat.”

  “In that case I’ll fight,” Tasmin assured him. “I’ll not stand by and watch our babies butchered like Tim and Milly”

  They were silent for a time, but it was not a restful or comfortable silence. Jim felt resentful. Here he was trapped in a situation that had no particular purpose.

  “Your pa’s drug you all out here and put you in danger,” he reminded her. “For what? Just so he can shoot a lot of critters?”

  “I agree completely,” Tasmin said. “He’s endangered several blameless womenfolk, and for no good reason.”

  “He should have taken you all back on the boat with Ashley,” Jim said. “He’s shot plenty of buffalo already.”

  “Not enough to suit him,” Tasmin said. “Papa plans to shoot for at least another year.”

  Jim knew that. He had heard the old lord talk of crossing the plains of Texas, an intrusion that was sure to rile the Comanches, who were usually riled anyway.

  Tasmin lay back in a dark, confused mood. But little by little, lying comfortably in her husband’s arms, her mood slowly lifted. Some of the relief she had felt that afternoon on the prairie surged through her again. After all, she wasn’t dead, her son was healthy, and she was married.

  “Most questions have two sides, I suppose,” she said. “If my foolish, selfish father hadn’t brought us to America I’d be safe enough, but I wouldn’t have met you.”

  Jim didn’t answer—of course she was right.

  “You are glad we met, aren’t you, Jimmy?” she asked, in a warmer, breathier tone.

  “I’m glad,” Jim said.

  “Jimmy, you’re the Sin Killer,” she said, reaching up to tug gently at his beard. “You used to be terribly hard on sin—as, sinner that I am, I remember to my sorrow. But lately you don’t seem so hard. You’ve not slapped me for a while.”

  “You ain’t cussed for a while, either.”

  “Not in your hearing,” she told him. “But I’m not always in your hearing, and when I’m not, I could be cussing fervently for all you know.”

  “If you do you’re a fool to tell me,” Jim said.

  “I notice you didn’t kill those Pawnee boys, though I expected you to,” Tasmin reminded him. ‘After all, they killed four of us. Isn’t murder a sin?”

  ’� big sin,” Jim agreed, though he wished she’d shut up.

  “Then why didn’t you kill them all?”

  “They were young boys,” he said. “If we’d killed them all, it would have brought the whole tribe down on our heads—and then they’d kill us all.”

  Tasmin began to caress his bare stomach. Some need to gamble, to dare, had almost made her ask what his position was on adultery—she was tempted but she held her tongue.

  When Jim put his hand on her again, Tasmin didn’t knock it away. He was cautious, perhaps expecting a rebuke, which didn’t come. This time Tasmin opened her legs and accepted him, though quietly, almost passively, with less than her usual ardor. It was affection she had been seeking, not passion, but husbands had their needs. She pulled his beard a time or two, so as not to forget who she was with—when her blood rose a little the thought of Pomp kept slipping into her mind. When Jim was finished Tasmin locked her legs around him and held him in for as long as she could.

  “It’s a funny thing, Jimmy,” she whispered, with another tiny tug of his beard. “You aggravate me so that there are times when I don’t much want you to come in—but then once you’re there I don’t want you to come out. Is that not perversity for you, my sweet?”

  But Jim had dozed. He didn’t hear her, which, once she slipped out from under him, Tasmin decided was just as well. Why risk making the silly creature vain?

  32

  . . . traveling south on a plain burnt brown . . .

  A WEEK later, traveling south on a plain burnt brown, under a cloudless, white hot sky, Tasmin and her siblings and all the Europeans were introduced to a new sensation: thirst. The company had but one small water barrel, which Jim and Pomp were quick to fill brimful whenever they came to a water hole or crossed a flowing stream. But a day came when they passed no flowing streams—the route became much drier than it had been when Jim crossed it only a few weeks earlier.

  Never in their lives had Tasmin or any of the Berrybenders been more than a few minutes from abundant sources of cool water. Not only had there been plenty of water to drink, there had been water to bathe in as often as they liked, water for Cook’s great stews, and water for all the laundering of clothes that days of sweaty travel made necessary.

  Then one morning, with the plain stretching before them, vast, baking, treeless, waterless, brown, almost sandy, Jim and Pomp called them to the wagon and explained to them that the water they had left would have to be severely rationed.

  Pomp held up a tin cup.

  ’� cup a day it will have to be, until we can find a spring or a running creek,” he told the startled company.

  “That’s all?” Tasmin said. “Even if we can moderate our drinking, what are we to wash with?”

  Pomp and Kit looked embarrassed, but Jim Snow was matter-of-fact.

  “The washing’s over until we get to a wetter place,” he informed them, wondering why he had to mention such a self-evident truth.

  Clam de Paty who had been subdued and morose since the death of Ben Hope-Tipping, suddenly colored and began to shout.

  “But this is an outrage!” he said loudly. “Of course we must make our toilettes—don’t you agree, Lord Berrybender?”

  To his shock Lord B. did not support his protest.

  “It’s deuced inconvenient
, I admit,” Lord Berrybender said. “I enjoy a washup as much as the next man. But it’s clear that we’ve come to a rather dry place— drier than Castile, and Castile is dry enough.”

  “But Jimmy, surely . . . can’t we change directions, head for a river or something? Or perhaps the snowy mountains?” Tasmin asked.

  “Wouldn’t help,” Jim said. “Wasn’t much snow in the high passes last winter—that’s why these little creeks ain’t running.”

  “But I’ll just send Amboise off with a bucket,” Clam proposed. “He’s a good servant. He’ll find us a stream.”

  “No, he’ll just get lost and starve,” Jim told him, thinking that it would be hard to exceed the stupidity of Europeans. He turned and walked off with Kit and Jim Bridger. Pomp understood Europeans—let him explain. He had merely said they had to be careful of water, a commonplace of prairie travel. The company would just have to travel dirty for a while, as the trappers had always traveled.

  “When in Rome, do as the Romans do,” Pomp told the group. “I’m sure you’ve heard that old saying.”

  “When I’m in Rome / do as the French do—I do,” Clam said. “I hardly think I wish to alter my habits to accommodate a bunch of garlicky Italians.”

  Signor Claricia, insulted, at once flung himself at Clam de Paty who, surprised, tripped and fell over backward, Signor Claricia on top of him. They rolled over and over in the dust until Pomp, with the help of Amboise d’Avigdor, stepped in and separated them. Both men were covered with dust from head to heels, a circumstance so untimely, in view of the no-wash order, that Pomp had to hide a smile.

  “Jimmy didn’t mean to say we’d starve,” Pomp told them. “There’s water here and there, and we’ll locate it. But certain habits will have to be given up until we strike a river.”