“Now that is a rare novelty for you,” Lord Berrybender remarked. � whole firing squad—and they missed.”
For Captain Reyes what had just happened seemed a last humiliation, the crowning ignominy of his many wasted years. His handpicked firing squad had failed to kill or even seriously wound Jean Baptiste Charbonneau, who still looked at him without alarm. Worse, he himself, in a moment of terrible disdain, had impulsively killed a fine young officer, a soldier whose promise was not unlike what his own had once been. This, the captain knew, meant the end. He would be court-martialed and very likely executed; and he deserved to be. At a supreme moment of crisis he had allowed his personal feelings to override the necessary discipline of a soldier. He had, in every way, disgraced himself.
But if he must die, Jean Baptiste Charbonneau, the favorite of Captain William Clark, would die too. He snatched a musket from a young cavalryman’s hand and walked toward Pomp.
“Kill him, one of you! Your captain’s mad!” Tasmin cried. “He may kill us all! Mutiny while you can.”
The shivering boys did not understand her. They were too cold to act, too puzzled.
Captain Reyes advanced toward Pomp until he stood at point-blank range. Only then did he raise his musket. For a moment he allowed his gaze to meet that of the young man he was about to kill. The young man’s eyes were unfrightened, undisturbed. Once he looked into his intended victim’s eye, the captain, to his great surprise, could not turn away, for in the young man’s eyes he seemed to see understanding—even sympathy— neither of which Captain Reyes had ever been offered in his life. It was as if the condemned man, the favorite, saw it all: the early glory, then the bitter failure on the plains, the stalled career, the dull cadets, the dust. He saw it all; he understood.
Then, while Captain Reyes was considering the possibility that he had misjudged this quiet, sympathetic young man, a gun went off. Pomp Charbonneau fell, as Lieutenant Molino had fallen. The understanding eyes went blank. Captain Reyes turned, to see what fool had fired, and realized, to his shock, that the drifting smoke came from his own musket. He had fired.
Tasmin Berrybender screamed—a scream long and terrible, echoing off the distant mountains. Her scream caused a nervous black gelding to rear up and throw its rider. Tasmin broke free of Father Geoffrin and ran to Pomp; her sleeve brushed that of the stunned Captain Reyes as she ran.
After a moment Captain Reyes walked over to the nearest soldier and handed him the musket.
“Corporal, I require your pistol,” he said. The corporal fumbled for a moment, then drew the pistol and handed it over. Captain Reyes at once put the gun under his chin and pulled the trigger. He fell under the corporal’s horse, his blood soon reddening the thin snow.
With Vicky Kennet’s help, Lord Berrybender limped over to where Tasmin knelt by Pomp.
“Why, it’s like the bard,” Lord Berrybender said, looking around him. “Dead men everywhere you look. Exeunt omnes, or pretty nearly.”
Tasmin removed her cloak and spread it over her dearest love.
“Is he gone, our Pomp?” Lord Berrybender asked Father Geoffrin.
“He’s gone, Your Lordship,” the priest said. “Gone as gone.”
The women came slowly round: Buffum, Vicky, Mary Cook, Eliza, Little Onion—she still held both the little boys.
“Oh no, not him . . . not Pomp,” Eliza cried. “He was ever so kind to us girls . . . dear Milly and me, I mean.”
“Not a fighter, though, Tassie . . . not like your Sin Killer,” Lord Berrybender said, putting his hand on his daughter’s shoulder. “Jimmy would have scattered these poor shivering Spanish boys like quail, if he had been here.”
“He wasn’t like Jimmy, no,” Tasmin answered, sad, beaten, yet not really surprised. “I expect Pomp might have been a saint, if he hadn’t met me.”
The ground being judged too hard for grave digging, the five bodies were put in the cart where the prisoners had ridden. Tasmin insisted on riding in it too, with Pomp. Monty clutched Little Onion tightly— he was afraid of his mother when she looked so. The snow had stopped falling. Cold sunlight sparkled on thornbush and sage. Ahead, hidden in cloud, lay the rising road to Santa Fe.
PRAISE FOR LARRY McMURTRY’S
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLING
BERRYBENDER NARRATIVES
BY SORROW’S RIVER
“An exciting, humorous, but often heartbreaking story that unfolds across magnificent, dangerous, and often deadly landscapes.”
—Booklist
“If you went looking for the literary sources of the Berrybender Narratives you’d find them not only in the western potboilers of an earlier era but in the yarning that one imagines took place at a rendezvous of trappers and mountain men. . . . McMurtry doesn’t do much hemming and hawing. He simply plunges right in and wades right through and climbs up the opposite bank.”
—The New York Times Book Review
THE WANDERING HILL
“Another bull’s-eye from the master.”
—Daily News (New York)
“McMurtry may well be the most reliable American novelist of his generation.”
—The International Herald-Tribune
“A page-turner.”
—The Orlando Sentinel (FL)
“A wonderful pageant. . . . Compelling and memorable characters. . . . An engrossing, exciting, and sometimes heart-rending saga of the American West that shows McMurtry at his best.”
—Booklist (starred review)
SIN KILLER
“Exquisite descriptions. . . . Simply irresistible storytelling, rich and satisfying.”
—The New York Times Book Review
“A sprawling parody of the frontier encounter. . . . Sin Killer is a zany, episodic ride. With gusto and nonstop ingenuity, McMurtry moves his cast of characters and caricatures steadily upstream.”
—The Washington Post
“An adventure-filled, lighthearted farce.”
—People
“A story as big as the West itself. . . . If Sin Killer is the standard, the other three [Berrybender Narratives] can’t get here fast enough. . . . Lewis and Clark, meet Monty Python.”
—Chicago Tribune
“A goofy jaunt through the Wild West.”
—San Jose Mercury News
“Without a doubt Larry McMurtry’s most enjoyable book in years. . . . Part soap opera . . . part romance . . . part farce . . . and altogether thoroughly wonderful.”
—Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
“Quirky. . . . It’s never less than entertaining and is often fascinating.”
—Star-Telegram (Fort Worth, TX)
“[A] bright, boisterous parade of a novel. . . . Energetic and big-hearted.”
—The Seattle Times
“Sin Killer promises a variety of excitement to come. . . . You’ll want to be along for the journey.”
—The Orlando Sentinel (FL)
“Sin Killer is a comedy, though it can be downright grim—a balance that no other writer of westerns has quite matched.”
—Los Angeles Times
“[A] hilarious good time. . . . Wonderfully funny and smart.”
—The Times-Picayune (New Orleans, LA)
“Sin Killer is full of captivating characters as fun to love as they are to hate. . . . Loaded with incident and steeped in ribald humor.”
—The Columbus Dispatch
“Another ambitious, larger-than-life-adventure . . . comic, witty, and bloody.”
—Edmonton Journal
“This is McMurtry at his best.”
—Houston Chronicle
MORE PRAISE FOR
PULITZER PRIZE–WINNING AUTHOR
LARRY McMURTRY
“A poet, a resonant scene-setter and a master of voice.”
—The New York Times Book Review
“What an imagination he has! When it comes to spinning a good yarn, few writers can do it better than McMurtry.”
—Houston Post
&
nbsp; “Larry McMurtry has the power to clutch the heart and also to exhilarate.”
—The New Yorker
BY LARRY McMURTRY
Folly and Glory
By Sorrow’s River
The Wandering Hill
Sin Killer
Sacajawea’s Nickname: Essays on the American West
Paradise
Boone’s Lick
Roads
Still Wild: A Collection of Western Stories
Walter Benjamin at the Dairy Queen
Duane’s Depressed
Crazy Horse
Comanche Moon
Dead Man’s Walk
The Late Child
Streets of Laredo
The Evening Star
Buffalo Girls
Some Can Whistle
Anything for Billy
Film Flam: Essays on Hollywood
Texasville
Lonesome Dove
The Desert Rose
Cadillac Jack
Somebody’s Darling
Terms of Endearment
All My Friends Are Going to Be Strangers
Moving On
The Last Picture Show
In a Narrow Grave: Essays on Texas
Leaving Cheyenne
Horseman, Pass By
BY LARRY McMURTRY AND DIANA OSSANA
Pretty Boy Floyd
Zeke and Ned
LARRY McMURTRY
FOLLY AND GLORY
THE BERRYBENDER NARRATIVES, BOOK 4
POCKET BOOKS, a division of Simon & Schuster, Inc.
1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020
www.SimonandSchuster.com
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places
and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or
are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or
locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2004 by Larry McMurtry
Originally published in hardcover in 2004
by Simon & Schuster, Inc.
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce
this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever.
For information address Simon & Schuster, Inc.,
1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020
ISBN: 0-7434-5144-9
ISBN-13: 978-0-743-45144-4
eISBN-13: 978-1-451-60769-7
First Pocket Books paperback edition March 2005
9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
POCKET and colophon are registered trademarks of Simon & Schuster, Inc.
Cover painting by Alfred Jacob Miller, The Lost Greenhorn,
courtesy of the Warner Collection of Gulf States Paper
Corporation, Tuscaloosa, Alabama
Manufactured in the United States of America
For information regarding special discounts for bulk
purchases, please contact Simon & Schuster Special Sales
at 1-800-456-6798 or [email protected].
THE BERRYBENDER NARRATIVES are dedicated to the secondhand booksellers of the Western world, who have done so much, over a fifty-year stretch, to help me to an education.
BOOK 4
AT the end of By Sorrow’s River, Book 3 of The Berrybender Narratives, Pomp Charbonneau is killed by a vengeful Mexican captain. The Berry-benders are removed to Santa Fe and put under luxurious house arrest. Jim Snow, the Sin Killer, was guiding a wagon train east when the arrest occurred.
CONTENTS
Characters
1. IN THE NURSERY
2. DARK AND DIFFICULT DAYS
3. A WIFE’S IMPATIENCE
4. THE TIME OF GRIEF
5. A LONG WAIT FOR GUNS
6. NIGHT AND THE RIVER
7. PETAL’S PROGRAM
8. THE EAR TAKER’S MISTAKE
9. THE TORTURE MAN
10. AMBOISE FORGIVES
11. DOÑA MARGARETA’S AMUSEMENTS
12. THE GOVERNOR’S SHOCK
13. AGILE BEHAVIOR IN A BUGGY
14. A PEPPERY DISH
15. DOÑA ELEANORA’S DILEMMA
16. A GOVERNOR’S CONFESSION
17. PETAL DECLINES TO SHARE
18. JIM COMES TO VISIT
19. A LOCKED DOOR ANGERS PETAL
20. A TRIP TO NEW ORLEANS
21. THE BROWN GIANT
22. JULIETTA AND THE BLACKSMITH
23. LITTLE ONION’S DEJECTION
24. KIT’S SURPRISE
25. THE BERRYBENDERS EXPELLED
26. MAJOR LEON FALLS IN LOVE
27. THE OLD WOMAN WITH THE GOOSE
28. OLD BILL WILLIAMS
29. A GREAT STORM
30. MOPSY IS GONE
31. JULIETTA’S MISTAKE
32. HIGH SHOULDERS WANTS TO HURRY
33. A VERY SMALL BAND
34. TASMIN TRIES TO EXPLAIN LOVE
35. MAJOR LEON’S SORROW
36. A PLAGUE IS ON THE RIVER
37. FATHER GEOFFRIN SLAPPED
38. VICKY FORGETS HER CELLO
39. THE SIN KILLER IN DOUBT
40. THE LIKENESS MAKER’S RETURN
41. OLD NA-A-ME IS BITTER
42. WILLY AND KIT SEEK A RIVER
43. THE YELLOW BUFFALO
44. WILD TURKEYS
45. LITTLE ONION’S GRIEF
46. PETEY FOLLOWS THE QUAIL
47. CLUB AND ROPE
48. A GREAT REUNION SOURED
49. TASMIN’S DESPAIR
50. JIM FINDS A CAVE
51. TASMIN AND GEORGE
52. DRAGA HEARS THE SIN KILLER
53. JIM REFLECTS ON A SCRIPTURE
54. MALGRES OFFERS A WARNING
55. TAY-HA FORGETS HIS CLUB
56. THE SIN KILLER COMES
57. THE HARDEST DAYS
58. THE BERRYBENDERS ATTEND A BALL
59. JIM AND ROSA
60. IN THE ALAMO
61. TASMIN IS UNPATRIOTIC
62. VICKY MOURNS HER HUSBAND
63. TASMIN AND ROSA
64. TASMIN’S REGRET
65. SOME DEPART FOR ENGLAND
66. TENSIONS IN SAINT LOUIS
67. ON A GREEN HILL
68. A DAUGHTER OF PRIVILEGE
CHARACTERS
BERRYBENDER PARTY
Tasmin
Jim Snow (The Sin Killer)
Bess (Buffum)
High Shoulders
Mary
Piet Van Wely
Kate
Monty, child
Talley, child
Lord Berrybender
Vicky Berrybender
Little Onion
Petal, child
Petey, child
Randy, child
Elf, child
Juppy, half brother
Father Geoffrin
George Catlin
Cook
Eliza
Amboise d’Avigdor
Signor Claricia
Mopsy, puppy
MEXICANS
Governor
Doña Margareta, the Governor’s wife
Julietta Olivaries
Doña Eleanora, Julietta’s aunt
Tomas, footman
Joaquin, blacksmith
Major Leon
Corporal Juan Dominguin
Rosa
Emilio
MOUNTAIN MEN AND TRADERS
Kit Carson
Josefina Carson, Kit’s wife
Tom Fitzpatrick (The Broken Hand)
Old Bill Williams
Charles Bent
Willy Bent
Lonesome Dick
INDIANS
The Ear Taker
Cibecue,Apache
Ojo,Apache
Erzmin, Apache
Flat Nose, Comanche
Na-a-me, Kiowa
Greasy Lake, prophet
Oriabe
SLAVERS
Malgres
Ramon
Draga
Blue Foot
Tay-ha
Bent Finger
Snaggle
Chino
TEXANS
Stephen F. Austin
Jim Bowie
Davy Crockett
William Travis
Sam Houston
MISCELLANEOUS
William Clark
Harriet Clark
Toussaint Charbonneau
Joe Compton
Elliott Edgechurch
Inspector Bailey
I can only regret being myself.
I suppose all regret comes to
that....
I. COMPTON-BURNETT,
Darkness and Day
FOLLY AND GLORY
1
. . . Petal was prepared for ruthless attack . . .
PETEY, the sensitive twin, aged one year and a half, began to sneeze and couldn’t stop, giving Petal her chance: she at once seized a stuffed blue rooster the two had been fighting over and slipped behind her mother, waiting to see what her twin would do when he stopped sneezing and discovered the theft.
Petey did finally stop sneezing, discovered that his rooster was gone, and looked at his mother in stunned dismay. Petal’s crimes never failed to shock him.
“The girl is smarter than the boy—quicker-fingered too,” Mary Berrybender observed.
Tasmin looked around the nursery, a large, airy room in the spacious adobe house on the Plaza in Santa Fe—the house in which the Berrybenders were spending a lengthy but largely comfortable house arrest. Besides her Monty and Vicky’s Talley, there were four new arrivals—her twins; Vicky’s new boy, Randall; and Buffum’s charming Elf (short for Elphinstone). There were five boys in all, Petal the only girl, and yet Petal casually had her way with the nursery, snatching toys left unattended and hiding them until they could be put to her own use. Some challenges she met with defiance, others with guile. Now that she had the much-coveted blue rooster, she meant to keep it. Tasmin could feel her daughter’s soft breath on her neck—Petal was peeping through her mother’s hair, waiting to see if Petey was going to make a fight of it. Petey seldom rose to much belligerence but if he should, Petal was prepared for ruthless attack.
“She’s not merely smarter than her twin, she’s smarter than all five of these little males put together,” Tasmin remarked.
The Berrybender Narratives Page 88
