The Berrybender Narratives

by Larry McMurtry

  “If I let you live don’t ever talk rude to me again,” Jim told him. He put his foot on the man’s throat and exerted just enough pressure to make him gasp. “You’re just a walking bag of sin and I will kill you if I see you again.”

  He picked up Bill Williams’s rifle and went to his horse.

  “That’s my rifle—I need it,” Bill Williams managed to gasp.

  “It was your rifle but you lost it through bad manners,” Jim told him. “Santa Fe’s just down the hill. You’ll find plenty of rifles there.”

  “Down the hill fifty miles, you mean,” the man said, sitting up. “A bear could get me before I make it to town.”

  “I hope one does,” Jim told him. “If my brother-in-law’s dead you won’t have nothing to fear from bears because I’ll come back and finish you myself.”

  “You’re a sneaking rascal if I ever met one,” Bill Williams told him. “Next time I meet you it’ll be a different story.”

  Jim had been about to mount but he turned back, unsheathed his knife, and stood over the fallen man.

  “The next time can be now,” he told him. “Get up and get out your knife or else leave off your threats.”

  Bill Williams considered his assailant, trying to calculate whether he could make a lunge for Jim’s legs and bring him down.

  Jim waited, just out of reach of such a move. “You stole my rifle like a common thief—I guess you would fight, goddamn you!” Bill Williams shouted.

  The blasphemous phrase was too much for Jim—he felt the Word coming out, as it had not come since the day he yelled it at the four Osage warriors who were chasing him and Tasmin along the Missouri shore. He stood over Bill Williams and poured it out, a wild, unintelligible babble, shocking the mountain man so much that he began to scoot backward, alarmed. Jim still held his knife as the Word poured out.

  Then he stopped, his chest heaving. “Don’t be cussing at me,” he warned. “If you do I’ll break your old scrawny neck.”

  Bill Williams, watching the knife, thought his hour had come. He had seen a terrible change— the mild young man had become the Sin Killer indeed. Bill Williams didn’t say another word. Over the years he had fought and won many fights. When he let his violence out he was a powerful foe. But his violence, which had frightened many and flattened more, did not worry this boy—a boy who had thrown coals in his face and then flattened him with a hot stick. Bill Williams did not want to see what he might do if he used the knife.

  Jim Snow put the knife away, got his horse, and rode slowly up the hill.

  29

  Jim found him, barely conscious . . .

  HIGH SHOULDERS, though not mortally wounded, had lost a great deal of blood—the bullet had passed through above his hip. Jim found him, barely conscious, in some thick underbrush well up the slope. Bill Williams had not been exaggerating about the bears, either. There was grizzly sign everywhere.

  High Shoulders now knew a little English. “My wife?” he asked. “Where my wife?” “Headed south but traveling slow,” Jim indicated. “We need to get this bleeding stopped— then we’ll soon catch up with the folks.”

  The next day, though, a sandstorm struck, more severe than any Jim had experienced. They tore up a shirt and made dust masks, but the masks were little help. The upper sky was an ugly brown and the stinging, swirling sand thicker at ground level than any Jim had tried to travel in. High Shoulders, still weak, rode the mare, which Jim led. When the reins were fully extended he could only just see the horse’s head. Once he dropped a rein and thought he had lost the horse—but for the fact that he stepped on the dropped rein he might have lost the horse. Even the most violent sandstorms usually blew themselves out in a few hours, but this one didn’t; it lasted a day and a night, and when it did stop the air was so full of unsettled dust that it scarred the nasal passages.

  Jim had never been lost, in any weather; he trusted his sense of direction as absolutely as he trusted his pulse. But for a few hours at the height of the storm, Jim wondered if, after all, he was lost. He couldn’t see the horizon or the sky and only vaguely sensed the movement of the sun. The feeling was unsettling—High Shoulders, in a kind of sick daze, could be little help. When the storm struck they were due west of Santa Fe. At first the wind came out of the east, but then shifted north and later south. It was in his face. Finally it became so intense that he thought best to stop. He helped High Shoulders down, tied a rag around the mare’s eyes, and waited, sheltered by a little bank of rocks. Tired, he sat and let the sand cover his lap. At one point, sensing movement, he saw a rattlesnake slither across his lap. Jim didn’t move—in a moment the snake slithered away.

  The wait proved beneficial to High Shoulders. His strength began to return. But he could not stop asking about his wife—he wanted to know when he could be back with her, a question Jim couldn’t answer until the dust cleared. The young Ute’s anxiety about his English wife was so intense that it was almost irritating. The plain, often woebegone girl had blossomed into a confident, appealing woman since joining her fate to High Shoulders’. Sitting in the sand, waiting for the air to clear, Jim wondered why some human linkages were so tight and others so loose. Mary Berry-bender and Piet Van Wely were never apart for more than an hour, and yet her father, Lord Berry-bender, seldom addressed a word to his wife, Vicky; he took no interest at all in the two healthy boys Vicky had borne him.

  He himself liked being with Tasmin and the little ones, but he was not driven by any need to hurry back to her. High Shoulders and Piet seemed to draw energy from their mates, but that was not the case with Tasmin and himself. Their conflicts were too frequent; they left Jim feeling worn out. What had changed in their situation was the children, all of whom looked at him with sad eyes when he prepared to leave.

  Finally the dust did settle out of the air. They discovered that they were not far from the Rio Grande. High Shoulders even thought he could see the dust of the Berrybender party far ahead— perhaps fifty miles off. Jim was skeptical—many travelers used the Camino Real. High Shoulders wanted to travel all night, to catch up with his wife, but Jim preached caution. The country was broken and he didn’t know it. In unfamiliar country it was best to go slow. More than once they came across signs of Indians: the remains of campfires, human scat, tracks here and there. Once Jim thought he saw a small man watching them from behind a ridge of rocks—he couldn’t be sure, but he knew there was nothing to be gained by taking unusual risks. The Berrybenders were somewhere ahead. They would catch them in a day, two days, three.

  “Better to be safe than sorry,” Jim said.

  High Shoulders did not agree.

  30

  . . . there was no sign of Mopsy.

  TASMIN WOKE TO WAILINGS, grief, six children awash in tears, with several whites also on the brink.

  “Oh no!” she cried, when informed that there was no sign of Mopsy.

  Even Major Leon had a weakness for the little mongrel. He dispatched his soldiers to search for clues—the soldiers rode in a wide circle but failed to find even a trace of the small dog.

  “Let me go, I can find him,” Monty pleaded. All six children tumbled out of their wagon, determined to locate their pet.

  “But I need him, where is he?” Petal inquired. Mopsy had been helplessly friendly. If he had an enemy it was only Cook, who found him too much underfoot when she was trying to make a meal under windy or gritty conditions. But even Cook was seen to weep.

  “What could have got him?” Petal questioned, when the search was abandoned and the trek continued.

  “An eagle, perhaps—he was quite small,” Mary suggested.

  “Or a wolf or a bobcat,” Piet added. “But I’m small and Petey is small and Elf,” Petal pointed out. “What if an eagle got me?”

  “It would soon spit you out—you’d be a difficult mouthful,” Tasmin said.

  “I think the eagle might get Elf next,” Petal concluded. “He’s the smallest.”

  Despite this reassuring thought Petal
kept her eyes on the skies—she fled under her blankets with mouselike speed if a big bird showed itself.

  The country they had to cross grew increasingly bleak, harsher, in Tasmin’s opinion, even than the plains. She had begun to feel fearful for her children—anxiety, like a low fever, was never quite absent. She looked around her often, hoping to see Jim. Major Leon liked Tasmin—seeing that she was worried, he did his best to reassure her.

  “For now we have the Rio Grande,” he reminded her. “Water won’t be a problem until after we come to the Pass of the North.”

  “And after that?” “After that we will have to be careful,” the Major said.

  Tasmin felt a deepening anger at her father, who was grumbling and pettish because he was not allowed to hunt with his new guns. One of the things she liked about Major Leon was that he stood firm against Lord Berrybender’s complaints.

  “Your guns will be returned to you when you board the boat,” Major Leon insisted.

  “Board the boat—what nonsense,” Lord Berry-bender grumped. “What can I hunt from a boat?”

  “For that matter, what could you hunt in this desert?” the Major asked.

  When Tasmin needed to communicate with her father she did it through Juppy, who continued to drive the buggy.

  “I suppose you can tolerate him because you’ve only had to put up with him for a month,” she said. “We’ve had four years of this, and look where we are. In a desert. The sandstorm gave all the children nosebleeds and sore eyes. And I doubt that’s the worst we’ll have to put up with.”

  “You can’t hurry life—just got to wait it out,” Juppy remarked. “What are you going to do with Jim? Take him home?”

  “Oh, don’t ask me—I don’t know,” Tasmin said. “I think about it all the time, but I have no answer. He’s used to all this space. I fear he’d feel rather cooped up, on our little island.”

  Juppy looked over Tasmin’s head. He thought he saw a man, a very short man, half hidden behind some dry bushes. But when he looked again he saw only the bushes. Had he seen a man? None of the soldiers betrayed any anxiety. The peculiar thing about the country they were in was that there was so much light that it somehow made it harder to see things. A yucca might look like a man, or a man like a yucca. What at first seemed to be a deer might only be a bush. When he tried to peer into the far distance his eyes soon began to water, causing the horizons to blur. Only things that were close—the horses, the oxen, the soldiers—could be seen clearly. The strange hard light had a blinding effect. The greater the distances ahead, the less precisely it seemed one could see.

  Juppy had become a great favorite with the children—sometimes all six swarmed over him at once, like so many little raccoons. During their noon break, while he was playing with them, Major Leon came trotting over.

  “We have company,” he said. “Who? Where?” Tasmin asked. “You won’t see them, but they’re here,” the Major told them. “They may not be hostile but it’s best to take no chances. Just stay close to the wagons.”

  “I thought I saw a small man,” Juppy confessed. “I haven’t seen them but I feel them—they’re here,” the Major said.

  31

  Why must she look at him so scornfully?

  THE LARGE MULE DEER burst out of the brush so suddenly that the thoroughbred bolted and Julietta was nearly thrown. The fleeing deer almost ran into Joaquin’s horse, which threw him high. Joaquin came down in a jumble of rocks. He was a very bad rider—he had been thrown several times since leaving Santa Fe, but he was sturdy. The falls didn’t hurt him, although Julietta’s contempt, which she made no attempt to conceal, did hurt him. Why must she look at him so scornfully? He had helped steal the two horses, as she had asked. He could never go back to Santa Fe—he had lost his livelihood for her sake. Never again would he stir his forge in the morning. He knew nothing of horses, and the sorrel he had been assigned was nervous, shying even at rabbits. Joaquin didn’t know how to rein the horse properly; he was thrown and thrown again, and with each embarrassing debacle, Julietta grew more and more distant, more icy. At night she sat on the other side of the campfire, wrapped in a cloak. Her look was so haughty that Joaquin didn’t even try to approach her. He sat by himself, dumb, cold, miserable, unable to fix his mind on the future. They had a little jerky and a sack of hard corn—it was not much to eat, but Julietta seemed indifferent. All day she said not a word.

  After the scare with the mule deer Julietta walked the thoroughbred around a bit, to calm him. The sorrel had calmed down too; he was standing patiently not far from where Joaquin was thrown. Joaquin did not appear—Julietta began to wonder what could be wrong with the lout. Even if the fall had knocked the wind out of him it was time for him to get up. She was convinced that the Berrybenders were not far ahead. She wanted to catch them; she did not want to spend another cold night in the desert with Joaquin. The sooner she was rid of his company the better.

  Still, Joaquin did not appear—could the fool have been knocked out? She called his name but he didn’t answer. Annoyed, she dismounted and walked to the rocks where he had been thrown. And there he was, his eyes open, flat on his back. He made no move to get up.

  “Joaquin! Get up! Let’s go!” Julietta demanded. Still, Joaquin did not get up. He stared at Julietta helplessly, looking up into the sky. He had gashed his head on one of the rocks and his cheek was bloody, but the gash in his head was not the problem. The problem was that he couldn’t move. He felt no pain—he was glad Julietta had come. He wanted to do as she requested, but he couldn’t. He could see his legs but he couldn’t move them.

  He could not even raise his head—he lay as he was, staring, numb, helpless.

  Julietta suddenly realized the truth: Joaquin was paralyzed. He stared straight up into the empty sky. Julietta felt a moment of panic. Joaquin was not much help but he was somebody. She did not want to be entirely alone in this vast desert.

  “Joaquin!” she called again, sharply—perhaps the sharpness of her voice would break the spell, enable Joaquin to stand up. But her sharp tone changed nothing. Joaquin was helpless, rigid. What had happened was not correctable. Without another look she turned and went back to her horse. Both horses seemed nervous again—Julietta had to will herself to be patient and gentle as she approached them. She might need both of them— she could not afford to spook them. She forced herself to move slowly, to talk soothingly. She did not want to be left afoot.

  While she was talking soothingly to the horses Julietta noticed a curious thing. The mule deer that had frightened the horses had not run very far. It had stopped nearby. It seemed to be staggering. Then it fell. Julietta suddenly noticed two arrows sticking out of the mule deer’s side. Panic hit her like a blow. There were Indians near—she had to flee. But when she jumped to mount, the thor-oughbred shied and she missed the stirrup. Before she could catch the swinging stirrup, a swarm of small men began to clutch at her. She struck one of them in the face with her quirt, but the blow had no effect. The frightened horses fled, leaving Julietta captive of the swarm of men, who soon bore her down, the faces above her hard as hatchets.

  For a long time, as the sun shone in his face and arched toward its setting, Joaquin lay in the rocks and listened to Julietta scream: terrible screams and high at first, but then less high as she weakened. In time Julietta screamed herself out and could only produce rough, grunting, gutteral moans. She had fallen silent altogether when one of the Apaches found him and pulled him out of the rocks. It soon became apparent to the men that this new captive could neither move nor feel. The entertainment was over, the boy useless. They merely cut his throat.

  32

  He too was still warm . . .

  WHEN JIM AND HIGH SHOULDERS found Julietta Oli-varies her body was still warm—the arrow that killed her fired into her chest at close range only minutes before. A great pool of blood had gushed from the blacksmith’s cut throat. He too was still warm, though dead. High Shoulders, fearful that the Indians might do to Buffum as t
hey had done to Julietta, could not be restrained. He rushed recklessly into the desert, brandishing Bill Williams’s rifle and yelling his Ute war cries. And yet all his rushing and yelling produced nothing. Neither he nor Jim, who had ridden to the top of a nearby ridge, saw anything except a few wheeling hawks.

  “I doubt there was many of them,” Jim told High Shoulders, when the latter gave up and came back. The Indians had not taken time to butcher the large mule deer, suggesting that they had seen Jim and High Shoulders coming and probably feared attack by men with guns.

  They scratched out shallow graves for Julietta and the blacksmith, butchered the mule deer themselves, and pressed on south beside the river.

  Jim was not especially worried about the Berry-benders. Five or six Indians were not likely to attack a well-armed body of soldiers. The girl and the blacksmith had been unlucky. He regretted that his skills as a tracker were so modest—his tracking was better than his birdcalls, but not by much.

  Just before dusk Jim came upon the remains of the horses Julietta and the blacksmith had been riding. These had been thoroughly and carefully butchered, which suggested that there was a band somewhere near. Jim thought it best to hide, once night fell. He made no fire, hobbled his horse, kept his hand on his rifle. He remained alert but did not try to bore holes in the darkness, watching. Staring hard into darkness only made one see things that were not there. He dozed, but went un-challenged. What awakened him was a strange sound: bugle calls. An incompetent bugler was attempting to play reveille. Ahead Jim saw a bend of the Rio Grande and a troop of soldiers—perhaps about twenty. He also saw the Berrybenders. Cook was bustling around over a big pot of porridge. Jim was hungry; he felt like riding in and having a big bowl. But he felt he couldn’t afford to be rash. If he rode in, would he be arrested? Or would the Mexicans welcome an extra gun? Then he saw High Shoulders, who had rushed ahead—he was moving about freely, unchained. That was enough. He loped on into camp—it was time to have himself some grub.