The Berrybender Narratives

by Larry McMurtry

  The sight of the lost balloonist, drinking muddy water from a puddle when there was a fine spring in plain sight, reminded Greasy Lake that there was really no predicting the eccentricities of whites, and no exaggerating their ineptitude. For one thing they kept producing watches and clocks, instruments that were supposed to measure time and break it into units, when common sense should have told them that the notion that time could be cut up, like a buffalo shank or a fish, was simply absurd. Time lay all one, open and eternal, infinite like the sky. Of course, there were seasons, the moon waxed and waned, the geese flew south or north, and yet all the while time remained unaffected and unchanged.

  The white man in the muddy seep seemed to have no weapon except a sword of some kind—clearly he would probably starve unless Greasy Lake rescued him, and if he did rescue him the whites would probably give him a nice reward when he arrived at the trading post. Once the white man washed the mud off himself the two of them could easily ride double on the Partezon’s big white horse.

  “You might walk down to that spring and wash the mud off yourself,” Greasy Lake advised, when Clam de Paty came slogging out of the mud. “Then I can give you a ride to the big new trading post, down there on the Arkansas.”

  Clam didn’t know what to make of this invitation. He could see no spring. Did the old fool think he would have crawled through the mud if there had been a spring in sight?

  “The spring is right over there, by those trees,” Greasy Lake said, pointing.

  Clam looked toward where the old man pointed. Just vaguely he detected a blur of green, against the dun prairie. Could the old fellow be right? Was there a nice spring where he could get clean? Clam had been lost for five days, and was very hungry. His only food had been a few wild onions. If there was indeed a spring, perhaps there would be a frog in it. In France he had been very fond of frog legs, rolled in flour and served with lots of garlic. The very thought of tender, garlicky frog legs made his mouth water. If he only managed to live to get back to France he intended to eat many frog legs—hundreds of frogs’ legs, even.

  “Where is the tall man who was with you when you flew in your basket?” Greasy Lake wondered.

  “My friend is dead—the Pawnees killed him,” Clam told him.

  Then he suddenly saw the trees the old man had been talking about—the old fellow had been right. It was merely the fact that he got headaches when he tried to look across long bright spaces that had caused him to miss the trees.

  Clam’s clothes were matted with mud, pounds and pounds of it. Delighted by the thought of being able to jump into a deep pool and wash off the mud, he began to hurry toward the trees—he kept pace with Greasy Lake on his white horse for the short distance to the water, and when he got there he dove straight in, not bothering to remove his clothes—the spring had a yellowish look but Clam was far too eager for a wash to be deterred by that.

  No sooner had he plunged into the water than he rose and staggered out, vomiting, choking, holding his nose: the water he had plunged into was densely sulfuric—it was as if he had jumped into a cauldron of rotten eggs.

  Almost fainting from the unexpected stench, Clam managed to stumble back to dry land, still muddy and now yellowish as well. With every breath he choked and retched.

  Greasy Lake, in no hurry, came to where the white man stood, choking and gasping. There were some people who enjoyed these stinking springs, but Greasy Lake was not one of them. Some shamans thought the sulfur pools were healthy, but Greasy Lake considered that nonsense. Bad smells did not make one healthy.

  “That’s the stinking water—the good water is a little farther,” Greasy Lake told Clam.

  Clam heard the flutter of wings and saw a flock of ducks rising from a pond only a little distance away. Miserable as he was, he felt afraid to hope.

  ’Are you sure that’s clean water, no sulfur, monsieur?” he asked.

  “Didn’t you see those ducks?” Greasy Lake asked. “Ducks won’t land on the stinking water.”

  A half hour later Clam de Paty had washed himself clean in a pool of clear, icy water. Overhead the ducks circled and squawked, annoyed that he had taken their pond.

  48

  When he wasn’t moaning . . .

  “LET’S just kill him,” Ramon suggested to Malgres. “No need to waste a bullet. You can just cut his throat.”

  Malgres had no fondness for Obregon—no one had any fondness for Obregon—yet he hesitated to adopt Ramon’s suggestion. The slavers were stranded, camped by an adequate water hole but unable to agree whether to go on or back. Obregon’s moaning was beginning to annoy everyone—he still spat up blood, with now and then a tooth that worked loose. The worst problem was his jaw, which was badly broken. It jutted out at an angle to his chin, and wiggled when he moved or spat.

  “Your bad eye points one way and your broken jaw points another,” Ramon told Obregon, who lay by a small bush. He was using his saddlebags for a pillow; his money was in those saddlebags.

  When he wasn’t moaning, Obregon wept at the cruelty of fate. He had never been able to stand pain. Slight scratches that most men ignored he brooded over for hours, coating the small wounds with balms and lotions bought in Santa Fe. Now his jaw was broken, his mouth smashed, some of his teeth knocked out—all this accomplished in an instant because he had been foolish enough to goad the Sin Killer. He had mainly been jesting about the servant girl. His mind had dwelt momentarily on the possibility of stealing one or two of the Englishwomen—while he was calculating how best to do it, he had made his mistake. He knew he should have kept Malgres with him—at least Malgres might have slowed the Sin Killer down, absorbed his charge. In fact, he should have kept all the men with him. Better yet, he should have avoided the English party altogether; that is what Malgres— afraid of the mountain men’s guns—had wanted to do. But even Malgres could not have imagined that the Sin Killer would run out and break Obregon’s head with a pole. All the renegades had been shocked to see their leader knocked completely off his horse in this unexpected way; and yet, all of Obregon’s long experience on the prairies should have taught him always to be ready for the unexpected. Buffalo stampedes were not the expected thing, and yet he had seen three in his lifetime.

  Now one man, the Sin Killer, had done him more damage in the course of a second than he had experienced in twenty years of slaving. The slightest movement of his jutting jaw caused him terrible pain—and the pain would go on for months. No one in the group knew how to reset a jaw, and Obregon could not have stood the agony if someone had tried.

  Obregon tried desperately to calm his mind, to think carefully about what to do. He either had to prepare to die, or else steel himself against the pain. He hated the pain, and yet he was afraid of the pain of death as well. A bullet wouldn’t hurt for long—but still it would hurt terribly, a little nugget of iron tearing through his flesh! Both his options were now distressing , and all because a quick-moving white man had hit him with a stick.

  Malgres thought their best bet might be to find the Cheyenne they had been hoping to trade with. The tribes had healers—perhaps one could help Obregon.

  He suggested as much to Ramon, who thought it a waste of time.

  “I’d rather just kill him—why wait?” he said.

  “The Indians like him, that’s why,” Malgres reminded him. “With Obregon alive, we’ll be safe. They won’t attack us while he’s alive. We’re a long way from Santa Fe, and we don’t have much food. If we can keep him alive until we’re safe, then we should do it.”

  “Maybe we can tie up that jaw with a piece of rawhide string,” Ramon suggested. “It’s horrible to look at, the way it wobbles.”

  They got a string but when they tried to bind Obregon’s jaw he screamed so loudly and spewed so much blood on them that they gave the whole thing up as a bad job. All they had accomplished was to make the jaw worse—now it stuck out at an even more startling angle.

  Unable to talk, in terrible pain, Obregon moaned and moaned.
When anyone looked at him he pointed at his head—he wanted them to shoot him, or at least give him a gun so he could shoot himself.

  But the renegades were still debating the wisdom of keeping Obregon alive. The point Malgres kept insisting on was that it was important to have a recognized leader—as John Skraeling had been and as Obregon was—when they went among the tribes.

  “I’ll be the leader,” Ramon said. “I’m smarter than Obregon anyway.”

  “It doesn’t matter how smart you are,” Malgres argued. “The Indians don’t like you, but they do like Obregon.”

  Ramon thought such talk was all nonsense. He thought he knew the business well enough to win the Indians over.

  “Obregon never gave them much—just cheap goods,” Ramon argued. “If we give them more than he did, then they’ll like us.”

  Malgres ceased to argue. Ramon was too stupid to grasp the point, which was that liking didn’t have that much to do with the quality of the trade goods.

  Obregon would not stop moaning. Around midnight, kept awake by this irritating noise, Ramon walked over and caught Obregon by his twisted jaw, causing him to emit a piercing scream, which was reduced to bloody gurgles when Ramon cut his throat.

  In the morning none of the renegades felt energetic enough to dig Obregon a grave, so they stripped him of all his possessions, left him to the coyotes and the carrion birds, and turned back toward Santa Fe.

  49

  Josefina had always been the bold one . . .

  JOSEFINA had always been the bold one in her family. Maria might be haughty but she was not one to take chances when it came to money. She wanted a rich man and she got one in Charles Bent, the most ambitious young trader to have traveled the Santa Fe Trail. Their mother had not wanted Maria to marry an americano but their father, a practical man, saw the benefits of such a union right away. The americanos were coming—why not recognize reality and form a union with the most successful of them?

  Josefina didn’t think of it in those terms—the minute Kit Carson returned and looked at her with his shy eyes, Josefina determined to grab him and get him to marry her. Dona Esmeralda wouldn’t like it and her parents would huff and puff, since Kit was only a penniless guide, but Josefina intended to point out to them that if she and Kit got married at the same time as Maria and Charlie, it would save the expense of a second wedding. However, if her parents didn’t knuckle under, Josefina was fully prepared to run away with Kit—her father would lose his little Josie, the child dearest to his heart, the girl who was always willing to fetch his pipe and fill it for him.

  Kit had followed Jim’s instructions—he walked his horse for two miles down the gully; he heard no gunfire and supposed the encounter with the Mexican soldiers must have passed off peaceably. He traveled on through the day and through the night and was rewarded not long after sunrise with his first glimpse of the big trading post the Bents were building. Kit would never have supposed those two scrappers, Charlie and Willy Bent, with their fancy partner St. Vrain, would have built anything as large as this huge adobe stockade he was approaching.

  No sooner had Kit wandered in awe through the massive gates than Charlie Bent, without so much as a handshake, came over and began to pump him for information.

  “I thought you were traveling with a rich Englishman. Where’s he at?” Charlie wanted to know. He had heard about Lord Berrybender from Captain Clark—the thought of doing business with a man that rich appealed to his acquisitive instincts, but now Kit Carson, a fellow not worth a nickel, had arrived without him.

  “They’re coming—they’ve got an ox, and that ox ain’t speedy,” Kit told him. “I expect they’ll show up in a day or two.”

  Willy Bent walked up with a grin on his face and punched Kit in the shoulder. Willy and Kit liked to tussle and wrestle, but with Charlie Bent around there were few opportunities for sport.

  “Here, Willy—you and Kit get a buggy and a wagon and go bring in that English party. They’ll probably be wanting to replenish their supplies, and we can sure help them out.”

  “But Kit just got here—let him eat at least,” Willy said. “Besides, Kit don’t work for you.”

  “Well,” Kit said, noncommittally He didn’t want to ignite a conflict between the brothers, and it was easy to do.

  While the brothers were facing off, Kit happened to cast his eye toward the parapet and saw two girls—at once he recognized the Jaramillo sisters, the stuck-up Maria and the merry little Josefina, whom he had once been so bold as to kiss.

  “What are those girls doing here?” he asked. “I thought they lived in Santa Fe.”

  “They did, until Charlie decided to marry Maria,” Willy said.

  Charlie flushed—he disliked casual references to his forthcoming nuptials, but before he could gripe at his brother, Ceran St. Vrain strolled over, looking, as usual, breezy and somewhat distracted.

  “Why, Mr. Carson, welcome to our humble post,” he said. “I’m glad to see you’re unscalped.”

  “I am, but the Pawnees tried for it,” Kit informed them.

  “So how was William Ashley’s big rendezvous? Profitable, I hope,” St. Vrain went on.

  Kit was trying to get a better look at Josefina. Here he had just arrived, and Charlie and St. Vrain were already trying to dig out information about business conditions to the north. They wanted him to make a fur report, and do it before he’d even enjoyed a drink of water.

  “You see, we’re thinking of opening a post on the South Platte,” St. Vrain said. “If Billy Ashley survived I guess we could too.”

  “Nope, you’d all be scalped in about three days,” Kit said, annoyed by the persistence of the traders: all they cared about were furs and money.

  Ceran St. Vrain was quick to sense the drift of Kit’s feelings, but his partner Charlie Bent had no interest in anyone’s feelings unless they could be utilized to earn the firm more money.

  “You must be hungry, seftor,” St. Vrain said. “We have plenty—let Willy take you to the kitchen.”

  ’All right, get some grub, I’ll hitch the wagon,” Charlie said. He himself put work first and grub second, and those who worked for him were expected to support the same priorities. Kit Carson was the only person who knew where the English could be found. After all, there were hostiles all over the prairies—it behooved Kit to make haste on behalf of his friends.

  “How’d Charlie get that fair beauty to agree to marry him?” Kit asked Willy, as they were strolling toward the kitchen.

  “You know Charlie—he’s dogged,” Willy reminded him. “When Charlie wants something he don’t turn aside till he gets it.”

  “You’re better looking than he is, why didn’t you marry her?”

  “Not me—I got a fine little Cheyenne wife myself,” Willy said—but then he noticed that Kit had stopped listening—Josefina Jaramillo had come down from the parapet and was boldly waving at Kit.

  Though he had been ravenously hungry when he rode into the fort, he at once forgot his hunger.

  “Excuse me, I see Josie waving—I better go see what she wants,” he said.

  Willy Bent was startled. Josefina was waving, a very bold thing for a properly brought up girl to do. But Kit was already hurrying toward her, careless of the proprieties that had to be observed where the well-to-do Mexican families were concerned. One reason he preferred his wife, Owl Woman, was that in Cheyenne life few formalities need be observed. This sudden turn of events made Willy vaguely uneasy—Kit was supposed to be eating, not courting. Charlie would probably have a fit when he found out.

  Josie’s heart was thumping hard when she saw Kit approaching. She was resolved for a bold strike, one that would horrify her family. It might even horrify Kit. And yet she had long felt that Kit was the man she wanted to marry—if he refused her, she meant to enter a convent and marry no one. Kit had been the first man to notice her, the first to be kind to her, the first to arouse her womanly feelings. Now there he was; Josie felt ready for the gamble of her life
: marriage or the nunnery. She did not intend to wither and grow old amid the many neglected old duennas to be seen in Santa Fe.

  When Kit was twenty yards from Josefina he looked at her: there she was, smiling her merry smile at him. Between one step and the next he became so shy that he got his feet tangled up. He remembered how clumsy he was and began to feel embarrassed. What if he fell flat on his face and busted his nose again, as he had when he was walking with Tasmin Berrybender up on the Yellowstone? Josie was prone to giggles—no doubt she would giggle until she was out of breath if he fell and busted himself.

  But then he was there—he hadn’t tripped after all.

  “I missed you—I thought you’d never come back,” Josie said. “I thought a bear killed you.”

  “It has been a spell, hasn’t it?” Kit said, feeling so shy that he hardly knew where to look.

  “What have you been doing? You look older,” Kit went on. He wished he could make some witty remark, but none were in his head.

  “I been waiting for you to come back so we could get married—I don’t want nobody else to be my husband,” Josie said.

  “Why, that’s fine and dandy,” Kit said automatically—it had not quite registered that he was answering a proposal. But when it soaked in and he did understand what Josie said, he at once turned bright red with shock.