The Berrybender Narratives

by Larry McMurtry

  “Hold still there,” she said. “No surgeon can work on a moving target.”

  Kit kept as still as possible—Tasmin, after all, was holding his hand, an intimacy that embarrassed him greatly, even though her purpose was purely medical.

  “First drinking mud and then eating horses—not much of a pleasure trip we’re having, is it?” she said. The thorn, when she eased it out, was only a tiny speck of green, yet it was evidently quite poisonous, for Kit’s thumb was hugely swollen.

  “How very ingenious of you, Kit—to get a thorn in your hand in this place where there are no trees or bushes,” Tasmin told him.

  “There’s cactus, though—little mean cactuses about the size of a gold piece,” Kit said. “You’ll know you’re stuck if you step on one. Better watch where you put your feet if we’re going to be hiking. The little green ones are as poisonous as a rattlesnake.”

  “It’s sweet of you to warn me—indeed, you are very sweet in general, Mr. Kit Carson,” Tasmin complimented. “I expect you’ll make a fine mate, if any woman could ever catch you.”

  Kit immediately blushed, the blush spreading even down his neck.

  Tasmin noted this with amusement—here was a young man she could easily work her charms on, to whatever extent she chose to. Young Kit wouldn’t turn his back on her, or let her questions and opinions go unanswered, as her husband had just done. Kit would always be her champion, if Jim and Pomp both failed her.

  But now there was the heat to be faced. Even before she got back to the wagon, where the women stood in a listless, discouraged group, Tasmin felt the sweat begin to trickle down her ribs.

  34

  She carefully guarded the cup>. . .

  ELIZA, you must drink! You must!” Buffum pleaded. “You must or else you’ll die.”

  She carefully guarded the cup, lest Eliza strike out and spill the greenish, frothy, acrid liquid which Jim Snow had carefully drained from the stomach of the second palfrey, killed only this morning.

  “I can’t, miss—I can’t, Miss Bess—I’ll just be dying, perhaps I’ll be seeing poor Milly in heaven,” the choking girl said, her tongue so swollen that she could scarcely speak.

  “Now, Eliza, there is a way to do this,” Bess said, with surprising patience—Tasmin and Cook had given up on the girl, who had taken not a drop of liquid through a long scorching day.

  “Shut your eyes tight and hold your nose firmly,” Bess instructed. “Don’t look and don’t smell, just swallow. It’s very un-Christian to die when you might be saved. It’s the Lord who has sent us this trial, Liza, and we must not allow despair into our souls.”

  “Anno Domini, ” Father Geoff intoned. “Anno Domini.” Though his own stomach had all but rejected this same unpalatable liquid, he thought a few words of Latin might strengthen Buffum’s case.

  “Please, Eliza, just try,” Buffum pleaded. “Tassie and Cook will help.”

  “I’ll try—don’t mind it if I vomit,” Eliza said at last.

  Cook at once clasped both hands over the girl’s eyes and Tasmin firmly pinched her nostrils shut. Buffum tilted the cup and the girl drank five large swallows, all that the cup contained. Eliza spluttered a bit, but did not vomit.

  Tasmin, whose own tongue felt twice as thick as was normal, walked over to where Kit and Jim were standing with Lord Berrybender.

  “Well, we got it down her,” Tasmin said, tired.

  “I’m rather proud of Buffum—she’s revealed unexpected resolve,” Lord Berrybender said.

  “Yes, she has,” Tasmin agreed. “She has a child in her and a handsome mate to set against starvation.”

  They saw Piet and Mary approaching the camp. They had been hunting edibles, but despite Mary’s remarkable nose, the hot prairies had only yielded several handfuls of wild onions.

  “We’ve only got three more horses, Jimmy,” Tasmin pointed out. “How many days does that give us?”

  They were in the middle of a baking, unforgiving plain, so bleak that Tasmin’s own feelings were not much more hopeful than Eliza’s. Her first fear was that her milk might be drying up—Vicky had the same worry. What would they use to feed the little boys?

  “Long enough, I expect, if we’re lucky,” Jim said, pointing to the north. “What does your smeller say, Kit?”

  Tasmin had stopped believing that she would ever see a real cloud again, or feel rain on her skin, but to the north, where Jim had pointed, a dark line of cloud lay on the horizon, with slanting gray lines underneath it; there was even the distant rumble of thunder.

  “I can’t smell it yet but I ‘spect it’s coming this way,” Kit told them.

  “I hope you’re right,” Jim said. “Sometimes these little sprinkles don’t last but a minute. We better set out the pots and buckets—if it does come we need to catch as much of it as we can.”

  Filled with sudden hope, Tasmin ran back to Cook—soon every pot, bucket, or crock that could hold water was lined up, waiting for the approaching shower, which teased them for over an hour as they waited anxiously. Twice the clouds dissolved and bright sun shone, but then the clouds re-formed and darkened, as the whole company stood and watched, riveted by the drama of water on the plain.

  “I hope it don’t skip us,” Kit said. “Sometimes it’ll get close and then skip you.”

  “It won’t skip us—it mustn’t,” Tasmin cajoled. “Maybe Father Geoff could make a prayer.”

  “I’ll make a hundred prayers and even say my rosary, if I can find it,” Father Geoff agreed.

  “Try to do better than Anno Domini,” Tasmin instructed. “That worked for Eliza, but the rain gods probably expect better. They might merely scoff.”

  Not until the rain was close enough that they could all smell it was the group convinced that the shower wouldn’t skip them. The fresh smell of rain as the first drops splattered on the dusty grass was the most delicious smell Tasmin had ever experienced. Even the feverish Eliza’s face lit up. The first drops were gentle, wide-spaced, uneven; but then the rain came faster and steadier and steadier. Tasmin realized that here was an unexpected opportunity to be clean. Their bodies were smeared and smudged, black with dust. Was not this their chance? As the shower thickened Tasmin began to strip off.

  “Go away, men—go away, hurry!” she demanded; the men, startled for a moment, turned their backs and moved away toward the wagon where the babies were, guarded by Little Onion. The women continued their stripping—soon even Cook, with her tremendous rolls of flesh, stood naked under the pelting shower. From the wagon came a wailing from the babies, shocked and then horrified that they were being rained on. Tasmin could see, through the rain, Coal and Little Onion tittering with embarrassment at the sight of the naked white women—even the trembling Eliza recovered her spirit sufficiently to disrobe.

  Taking their cue from the women, Lord Berrybender, Clam de Paty and Father Geoffrin also stripped. Kit, too modest, fearful that the women might see him, merely removed his shirt. Jim Snow and the rest of the mountain men remained fully clothed. Amboise d’Avigdor dithered; he did not feel it quite proper to strip. Piet Van Wely hesitated; he stood indecisively between the men and the women, until Mary Berrybender, naked, young breasts bouncing, rushed over and insisted that he undress.

  As the shower intensified, the rain became cold— the women, burning only moments before, broke out in goose bumps.

  Tasmin reveled in the pelting rain, which had swept over them so miraculously. Only an hour before, they had conspired to force Eliza to drink a revolting liquid from a horse’s belly, and now the pure liquid of the heavens was washing them all clean. She slipped over to the wagon and removed the little boy’s ragged garments. All three were crying lustily, thinking that the world might be ending, but Tasmin ignored their screams—here was a heaven-sent chance to get them clean.

  In no more than ten minutes the shower began to diminish—sunlight broke through the clouds and, in the distance, a rainbow arched over the plain. Mist rose from the wet grass. As the las
t drops splattered down, Tasmin rejoined the women, all of them faced with the same dilemma. They were clean, but their clothes, now a sodden heap, were not. Tasmin enjoyed the last few drifting drops, noticing with amusement that her belly, Vicky’s, and Buffum’s had begun to swell. Fertility had not been lacking in the Valley of the Chickens. Cook would be having to assist at three births, almost at the same time.

  ’All my garments reek,” Buffum complained. “I do so hate to put on reeking garments.”

  Without warning Jim Snow suddenly appeared in their midst, causing Vicky and Buffum to blush, although he took no more notice of their nakedness than he would have had they been so many deer.

  “Grab the pitchers and get busy,” he instructed. “We’ve got to collect this water before it soaks in.”

  Tasmin saw that, indeed, the prairie was covered with hundreds of shining puddles, the rainwater temporarily caught in small declivities. The men were already hard at work, dipping cups into the puddles and emptying them into pitchers and pots. At some the horses drank—Tasmin saw Jim Snow bend down and drink his fill from one of the deeper puddles.

  “Look, girls—drink like Jimmy’s drinking,” Tasmin ordered. “We’re saved, I bet—at least we’re saved for now. Scoop up what you can.”

  Soon the women were doing as the men did, scooping up water in whatever containers they could find. Long into the night they worked, locating puddles by moonlight. Tom Fitzpatrick came back and fell to, but the Sublettes, Hugh Glass, and Pomp were still somewhere in the field. Tasmin had become anxious about Pomp, who had not come back for three nights. In her anxiety she conjured up accidents that could have befallen him: snakebite, twisted ankle, grizzly attack. She didn’t mention her worry to Jim—he would just have reminded her of what she already knew: that Pomp was a competent frontiersman who could well look after himself.

  Tasmin thought the fine shower might be a portent. Perhaps the time of thirst was over, though the fact that the men worked through the night, searching the prairies for overlooked puddles, suggested that they had not yet reached a zone of safety.

  At dawn Jim stopped for a rest, stretching out beside Tasmin.

  “Do you think there’ll be more showers?” she asked. “That one was so pleasant.”

  “Not regular, not this early,” he told her. “We’re only halfway across the Big Dry. We’ve still got to be careful about water.”

  Tasmin put a hand on his arm but otherwise didn’t touch him. In the days of constant thirst every feeling except the desire for cool water had left her, and left the others too, she felt sure. The anxieties and titillations of romance were burned away by all-consuming thirst. Passion had stopped—in recent days she would have bartered anything for a good long drink.

  When she had been over one of the deeper puddles to drink she had seen her own haggard reflection. And yet no sooner had she drunk her fill than old thoughts, old feelings, began to return. If only she could drink her fill often enough she might one day want to be a wife again.

  “Pomp’s been gone three days, and so has Mr. Glass and the Sublettes, and even Buffum’s Ute,” she told him, wondering what he made of these absences.

  “I expect we’ll see them tomorrow, unless they’ve spotted buffalo,” Jim told her. “There used to be a herd that grazed close to the mountains—Arapaho buffalo, we called them, because the Arapaho took most of them.”

  Suddenly, across the wide, dark sky, shooting stars began to flash—only one or two at first, but then a burst, a kind of shower.

  “Goodness, I’ve never seen that before,” Tasmin said, sitting up.

  “They come now and then,” Jim told her. “I seen a terrible bunch of them the night before Preacher Cockerell got struck by lightning. The Indians get spooked if they see all these shooting stars fall at once. They think it means death to the tribe.”

  Tasmin lay back beside him. It had been on the tip of her tongue to ask Jim if he was happy about the new baby that was coming—but she held back. At first she had supposed the child was Pomp’s—but as time went on she became less sure. Pomp was just so distant; if he had made the baby it was because she had forced him to. And what would Jim think, if he knew? Would he attack her violently, in punishment for her undoubted sin? Or would he be indifferent? Jim and Pomp, in their different ways, were very hard to know. Of neither’s feelings at a given time could she be sure.

  “I hope we’re somewhere where there’s plenty of water when this baby comes,” she said. “It would be a hard mothering if it’s still this dry. What if I hadn’t good milk?”

  Jim, though, had nodded off—when he slept his breathing was even, just like Monty’s. It irked her a little, that she was always the one who seemed to be awake—seemed to be pondering questions that had no obvious answers. Then she heard Monty making urgent sounds from the wagon. Monty was hungry— his needs, at least, were definite. With a sigh she got up and went to get her child.

  35

  Clam de Paty only smiled.

  JIM SNOW and Jim Bridger, food having run very low, were debating whether they should kill their next-to-last horse, when Kit Carson’s quick eye saw movement far to the east. For a moment he could scarcely credit his own vision.

  “I see an ox and there’s a man riding on it,” he informed them.

  “I doubt you see no ox,” the ever-skeptical Jim Bridger said.

  “Doubt me if you like, you fool!” Kit told him, hotly. “There’s an ox and a man riding on it, and Pomp and High Shoulders leading the way.”

  Jim Snow kept his own counsel. Usually Kit was right, when it came to faraway sights.

  “If you can see so good, who’s on the ox, then?” Jim Bridger asked. It went against his nature to back down easily.

  Kit took another look.

  ’All I know about the fellow riding the ox is that he’s old,” Kit told them. “He could be Methuselah, for all I know.”

  Tom Fitzpatrick took a long look himself.

  “It ain’t Methuselah, it’s Zeke Williams—why, I thought the Arapaho took Zeke’s hair a year ago. It shows you you can’t believe everything you hear.”

  “I don’t believe anything I hear, particularly not if it comes out of Jim Bridger’s mouth,” Kit said—he was feeling smug about the fact that his vision had been accurate after all.

  There was a mist on the prairie that morning— when Tasmin looked the first thing she saw was the top half of Pomp Charbonneau, seemingly floating on a cloud. At once her spirits rose. There he was, not dead at all. But where had he secured such a noble ox?

  To Jim Snow the reassuring thing was not that old Zeke Williams was still alive, but that the ox he rode seemed to be in good flesh, not gaunt like their own horses. That meant there was abundant water somewhere near—oxen sometimes faltered on the Big Dry. For the first time in two weeks Jim felt optimistic about their chances. The sight of a healthy ox suggested that they might survive.

  “Hello, Zeke—where have you been this last year, and how did you get so gone that we gave you up for dead?” Tom Fitzpatrick asked.

  All of them saw that the old man’s feet were swollen and cut—no wonder he had to ride the ox.

  “Why the goddamn thieving Rappies caught me,” Zeke said—his eyes were bright blue and twinkling.

  “Kept me all this time, hoping to sell me,” he added.

  “Hoping to sell you? Why, who’d pay money for a man your age?” Kit asked. He almost got a fit of giggles at the thought.

  “If I was in the market they could sell Zeke to me,” Tom Fitzpatrick remarked. He gave Kit a severe frown.

  “Zeke came to the Big Horn River with Manuel Lisa a derned long time ago,” he said. “He knows every water hole in the West. I’d buy him just for what he knows.”

  “Got any bacon, boys?” Zeke asked, impatient with the palaver. “I’ve been on the run from the Rappies ten days—I’ve mostly et grasshoppers.”

  Pomp gently eased the old man off the placid ox. Zeke’s beard was long and whit
e; he was so bent that, when he attempted to stand, he almost stepped on it. He was almost naked and badly scratched up, but his eyes were lively, and his look, once he spotted the women, was impish.

  “Why, look at those pretty gals, what a sight!” he said. “The Rappies don’t have that many pretty gals in their whole tribe—and I ought to know. I had to marry up with four of them.”

  “Four wives?” Jim Bridger questioned. “I thought you were a dern prisoner—why’d they give you four wives?”

  “Not enough bucks in the band, that’s why,” Zeke explained. “The Pawnees killed a bunch off—so they had women going to waste. Women get mean as cats when they’re going to waste, and the Rappies know it.”

  “So they put you to stud, did they?” Lord Berry-bender exclaimed. “Clam, you should be taking this down. Put to stud by the Arapaho. It would make rather a good report, I’d say.”

  Clam de Paty only smiled. In the hard days of hunger and thirst he had lost so much weight that his red pants no longer fit. He had ceased to believe in his own survival, or the company’s. He supposed they would either starve to death or be killed in some brutal way, as Benjamin Hope-Tipping had been. Why write anything up? The rain had raised his hopes, but already the day was hot; the horizons shimmered in the distance. Ordinarily he would have written up the old fellow’s story, made a racy item of it; a lust slave amid the native Eves. It was just the kind of thing Parisians liked to read about over their coffee—but Clam was too discouraged to care. He had fought with the Grande Armée, he had been awarded medals, and where had it all brought him? To a scorching plain, rude company, daily aggravation, even danger. Had he been put on earth so rich Parisians could read racy stories with their coffee? His notebook was in his pocket but he didn’t reach for it. Who was Lord Berrybender to tell him what to write?