The Berrybender Narratives

by Larry McMurtry

  “I thought I might court that pretty cook a little bit more,” he told them, “Absence makes the heart grow fonder, they say.”

  Kit Carson felt that the sentiment was very dubious.

  “It don’t make my wife’s grow fonder,” Kit said. He knew Josefina would soon be throwing things, once he got home—mad because he had been away so long.

  Jim was glad to see them all, though he was surprised that George had risked himself in the Comanche country.

  “I had a military escort, you see,” George said. “And after that I had Greasy Lake.”

  Jim supposed that the arrival of so many old friends would throw the camp into an uproar of welcome—but he soon saw that there had been trouble. All the soldiers had their rifles at the ready. Before they were even in camp Tasmin came running out, panic in her face.

  “Hello, George—I’ll hug you in a minute,” she said, going straight to Jim.

  “Little Onion has been taken, and Petey,” she told him. “They’ve been gone since yesterday. None of us saw or heard a thing. Can you please go find them?”

  “I doubt it was Comanches—you’d have heard plenty if it had been,” Tom Fitzpatrick remarked.

  “Please go find them,” Tasmin repeated, her eyes on her husband.

  George Catlin was shocked by how the years had roughened Tasmin—roughened all the women. Beauty was still there, but they were no longer peaches-and-cream English girls, fresh off a boat.

  While Jim and the others were debating what to do, Tasmin gave George a kiss and a long hug.

  “George, I’m frightened—really frightened,” she said. “We lost Monty to cholera and now one of my twins is missing—it’s very hard.”

  “I’m sure,” he said. “But who’s that little girl I see with the wild curls—she must be yours?”

  “Yes, that’s Petal—make what you can of her,” Tasmin said, before rushing back to Jim.

  “Tom thinks it’s slavers—there’s some big camp south of here where they trade captives,” Jim told her. “That old Draga, that once had Buffum, is there.”

  “Slavers steal people to sell,” Jim pointed out. “They might be alive.”

  It was almost night, and the only clue to the direction was the little bear that Corporal Dominguin had found south of the camp.

  “Will you and Willy go with me for a day?” Jim asked Kit. He knew the two of them were anxious to get home to their wives—and home was north, not south.

  “We’ll go with you—you got that bad arm,” Kit told him.

  Willy Bent saw the trouble as confirmation of what he had been telling his brother all along: that Texas was too raw and dangerous for a trading post to work. If the Indians didn’t steal the goods, the slavers would steal the help.

  None of the Berrybenders could stop thinking about Petey and Little Onion. Petal was disturbed by the continued absence of her twin.

  “I need Petey to come back now!” she said several times.

  Cook broke down in tears as she was serving the buffalo roast—the little boy had been her favorite of all the children.

  George Catlin attempted to amuse the children by drawing whimsical sketches.

  “Here’s a fairy and here’s an elf,” he said.

  Petal studied the drawing critically. “That’s a fairy but that’s not an elf,” she said, pointing at her cousin. “That’s an elf.”

  “Why, I didn’t realize you had an elf,” George said. “I’ll just change this fellow into a leprechaun.”

  Tasmin and Jim were far too tense to sleep. They both found the night endless, the tension wracking. Jim knew it was unlikely that Petey was alive— slavers couldn’t sell a child that young. Little Onion was resourceful—she might escape. But a tiny boy had no value to slavers, or Indians either.

  Tasmin trembled with rage and fear. “I’d like to tear whoever took them apart with my teeth,” she said. “If there’s a bad storm I fear Petey won’t survive.”

  The three men left at dawn. Willy Bent, the best tracker of the three, soon found the tracks of five horses, all of them unshod.

  “I make it four men—the fifth horse is probably a packhorse,” Willy said.

  Ten miles on they found the two bodies. Petey’s small corpse was filled with cactus thorns. Blood had frozen on Little Onion’s eyes.

  “My God,” Kit said, looking at Petey.

  Willy’s stomach flipped—he vomited.

  The horse tracks continued southwest. “They’re not in a hurry—we might catch them,” Willy told Jim.

  “No, I’ll catch them, in time,” Jim said. “We have to take these two back. Tasmin will want to clean them up and bury them proper.”

  “I don’t know that I’d take ’em back,” Willy said, still shaken by the violence of his revulsion.

  “She’ll want to clean them up,” Jim repeated. He felt hatred rising in him, but he was determined to try and contain it until the hour of his vengeance came. He also felt guilt. He had not really much known his little boy; he had never found a tone that allowed him to give proper credit to Little Onion’s virtues—after all, she had died trying to protect Petey.

  George Catlin had never witnessed such grief as racked the Berrybender family that wintry afternoon. The Berrybender sisters—Tasmin, Buffum, Mary, Kate—took turns with Father Geoffrin’s one pair of tweezers, easing the fine cactus thorns out of Petey’s small body. Tasmin worked as if turned to stone; the others wept and wailed. Petal raced around in wild despair. “Petey got too many stickers!” she cried. “He’s got too many stickers!” She crawled up in Father Geoffrin’s lap and cried herself to sleep. Cook fainted—Tom Fitzpatrick helped her up when she came to.

  Vicky, holding Talley, was pinched and silent, but the old lord wept and blubbered.

  “Dastardly of them to kill our Onion—such a fine lassie,” he said, more than once.

  “I suppose it’s no matter that they killed your grandson,” Vicky told him. “After all, you can get plenty more of those.”

  “Bad of me, scarcely knew the boy,” Lord Berry-bender admitted.

  Tasmin remained stoical as they cleaned Petey and wrapped him in a little shroud, but a river of grief swept through her when she set about cleaning Little Onion’s broken head. She couldn’t manage it—couldn’t see for crying.

  “You’ve lost your best wife, Jimmy,” she cried. “She was your best wife!”

  The two were put in one grave, Petey in Little Onion’s arms.

  Tasmin ran sobbing out of camp. Jim let her go, but Father Geoff and George Catlin, fearing that she might go too far and be taken herself, followed her.

  “What can anyone say?” Geoff asked. “Our two purest souls have been taken from us.”

  Tasmin came back, passively.

  Petal kept insisting that Petey had just got too many stickers.

  Vicky, without her cello, could only sing a little Handel.

  Tasmin held Jim’s arm while Vicky sang. His look was the old flinty look she had first seen the day she met him. He wasn’t yelling out incomprehensible words, but he had become the Sin Killer—he was going to avenge the terrible thing that had been done to Petey and Little Onion. She herself could expect no comfort from him—not then.

  As soon as the service was over Jim went to Lord Berrybender.

  “I need to borrow one of your new rifles—and a fair bunch of ammunition,” he said.

  “Why, of course, Jimmy—take what you need. I hope you slaughter the devils,” Lord Berrybender said.

  “I need that spyglass too,” Jim said. “I need to see them before they see me.”

  When Kit and Willy realized that Jim meant to go after the killers alone, they tried to remonstrate with him.

  “There could be twenty slavers around that camp, for all you know,” Kit told him.

  “I hope there are,” Jim replied. “It’d be good to kill twenty slavers.”

  “Jimmy, are you sure about this?” Willy asked. “What about your arm?”

&nb
sp; “By the time I’m ready to strike, my arm will be healed,” Jim told them. He was loading a pack-horse—Cook was wrapping up meat.

  When the horse was ready Jim went over to Corporal Dominguin and asked a question.

  “Didn’t you keep Major Leon’s sword, when we buried him?”

  “Sí,” the corporal said. “I’d like to borrow it,” Jim requested.

  The corporal went to his kit, took out the sword, and handed it to Jim.

  Kit and Willy were uncertain about letting Jim Snow go off alone. Both of them felt it was wrong not to support a colleague on such a quest—and yet clearly Jim didn’t mean to take them.

  “You’ve both got wives,” he reminded them. “I’ve no doubt you’ve already been gone too long to suit them.”

  “I guess I won’t be told when I can take off and how long I can stay gone,” Kit said, in Tasmin’s hearing.

  “What a rooster you’ve become, Kit,” she protested.

  “He’s a rooster but his hen can whip him up one side and down the other—and he knows it,” Willy told her.

  A little grumpy because Jim wouldn’t have them, the two finally left.

  Jim’s next task was to seek an understanding with Tom Fitzpatrick.

  “I want you to take ’em through to the settlements on the Brazos,” Jim told him.

  “That’s where I’ll come, when I’m done.” “I’ll do it,” Tom assured him.

  Tasmin felt shaky—hot with fury one moment, despairing the next. She would have liked the comfort of her husband’s affection, but knew he couldn’t give it once the Sin Killer began to rise in him. He only wanted to be off, alone, free to be the killer that he was.

  “You stop him!” Petal said to her mother, when she saw that Jim was leaving; but then Elf wandered by with a corncob doll that she coveted and she forgot Jim and went to chase him down. Elf was a match for her, though. He climbed up a wagon wheel and tried to push Petal down when she followed.

  “I don’t know how to say it, Jimmy—but when you turn into the Sin Killer I feel as though I don’t exist—we all feel that way,” Tasmin told him.

  Jim had no answer to make to that. He tucked the sword carefully into his pack.

  “I promise I’ll come and find you, if I live,” Jim said. He knew Tasmin was racked with grief—and what could you say to grief that would be any help? Putting a son in the ground was the hardest thing anyone was likely to be called to do.

  Impulsively Tasmin kissed him—she jumped toward him as if released by a spring. It was a quick kiss—it surprised both of them.

  “We’re out of boys, Jimmy,” she said. “We made good boys, too.”

  She had seldom felt so divided, at one moment wanting him to go and kill, the next wishing he would just give it up and lead them on to safety.

  Jim felt no confusion. He meant to kill all the men who had hurt Petey and Little Onion. He made sure his gear was secure, said good-bye to the family, and left.

  Tasmin felt fearful, deeply fearful. Would she ever see her husband again?

  Petal had had no ambivalence—Jim kissed her, but then he rode away. It was dark and she couldn’t see him.

  “Jim went—you go get him!” she demanded of her mother. Then she burst into tears.

  49

  “It’s a long way to a madhouse, Tassie.”

  I SUPPOSE GEOFF’S annoyed with me, now that I’ve taken up with you again,” Tasmin told George Catlin.

  “Why should that annoy a priest?” George asked. “Because he likes to be my only comfort and counselor, and he has been for two years,” she said. “He’s sulking right now.”

  “Two friends are better than one—he should look at it that way,” George told her.

  “That isn’t the way men are—no wonder you’re a bachelor,” Tasmin remarked. “If you were more determined on exclusive privileges, you’d do better with women.”

  “I was madly in love with you for months, and what did it get me?” George asked. “You remember how jealous I was of Jim.”

  “I suppose you were, but you merely irritated me, in those days,” Tasmin remembered. “I wanted a wilder man and I got one—and what it meant and mostly still means is that I’m alone. It’s my friends who see me through—you and Geoff.”

  She gave the painter’s hand a squeeze.

  Yet the next evening the combined efforts of painter and priest could not keep Tasmin from despair. Images of her dead sons rose to haunt her.

  “If only memory were an organ like an appendix,” she said. “I’d dig it out, or cut it out. I don’t think I can bear my memories. If we were home I’d ask to be put in a madhouse.”

  “It’s a long way to a madhouse, Tassie,” Buffum reminded her. Quietly, Buffum saw to Petal; she gathered firewood, with Petal and Elf trailing after her. Tasmin, who had thought little of her younger sister for much of her life, now came to admire her. As long as High Shoulders wasn’t mentioned, Buffum held up. She took over many of the chores that Little Onion had done. Whenever she would allow it, Corporal Dominguin helped her.

  “I believe I see something beginning,” Father Geoff commented. “I believe our good corporal is falling in love with your lovely sister.”

  Tasmin was of the same mind. When High Shoulders died, Buffum despaired. She talked of taking the veil. Yet now she was seldom apart from the shy, polite Corporal Dominguin. Perhaps something was beginning.

  “Renewal is normal—that’s an old wisdom,” Father Geoff said.

  Tasmin made no retort. She didn’t expect renewal for herself, although she had felt it more than once, when Jimmy returned from some scout. The men she sat with, George and Geoff, were both of them dry seeds—yet they stayed by her and they accepted her despair. When she was at her worst they didn’t try to talk. They merely sat with her.

  “I’ll make it up to you two, someday—I swear I will,” she said.

  Tom Fitzpatrick made little progress with Cook, who still seemed set against him, and yet he kept the company on the move. They had reached what he claimed was a fork of the Brazos River, a narrow stream whose water was reddish. There were, he claimed, American settlements not far away.

  In the camp, children quarreled and men and women courted. Vicky had even begun to stay with Lord Berrybender again.

  “I never supposed she’d relent,” Father Geoff admitted.

  Tasmin shrugged. “It’s hard to keep refusing a husband,” she said. “They wear you down.”

  The wind was keening so that she could hardly think. Petal was asleep with Elf, and Buffum was watching them. Tasmin went over and sat a bit with Mary, as Piet snored by the flickering campfire.

  “Do you remember when we first walked beside the Missouri, the night you threw that turtle into the boat?” Tasmin asked.

  “Of course. Bobbety tried to put a frog down my dress and I was vexed. Why?”

  “Buffum was declaiming about there being no schools in the American West. Do you remember?”

  “Yes—it was rather silly of her. Papa would never have wasted money on a school, for the likes of us.”

  “My own view is that the Americans would do far better to forget schools and just build madhouses,” Tasmin said. “I could use a madhouse right now, if you want to know, and I’m sure I’m hardly the only woman who can say that.”

  “But you’re not the mad one, Tassie—I was always the mad one,” Mary reminded her.

  “It’s been necessary for you to be the normal one, so the rest of us can pursue our vagaries,” Mary went on.

  “I’ve lost two children—you’re about to bear one,” Tasmin told her. “I’ve a husband who’s a killer first and last. I’ve seen one lover shot dead. You have a nice man who adores you. You can’t claim to be the mad one anymore.

  “If there’s a madwoman in the family just now, it’s me,” Tasmin assured her. “And yet for the lack of a madhouse I have to go on,” she continued.

  Mary didn’t answer.

  For the rest of the night Tas
min stared into the fire.

  50

  In a reddish or dun landscape . . .

  JIM TRAVELED SOUTHWEST at a pace so slow that the little mare was puzzled—she kept jingling the bit impatiently. But Jim meant to be as careful and deliberate as possible. Some days he hid himself and his horses and merely watched the trail. Several times he saw Indians, some moving south, some returning north, but the Indians did not see him. One of his worries was that he was too white. In a reddish or dun landscape his color might betray him. He began to rub himself with dirt every day, to make himself brown. He was not fearful, but he meant to take care not to be seen until he was ready. Big camps were rarely static—people were always leaving or arriving. He didn’t want someone to spot him and give the alarm. He had an excellent spyglass, borrowed from Lord Berrybender. Several times a day he used it to scan the country. He moved through rocky places, where his tracks would be less likely to be seen. He had sufficient jerky; he made no fires. His intention was to become a phantom.

  When Jim did find the slavers’ camp, in a long shallow valley, he first studied it at night. There were more than a dozen campfires. Just to the west was a bluff, at least two hundred feet high and, he first thought, almost sheer. The bluff was pocked with caves but he was not sure he could reach any of them. He circled the bluff at night, hoping to find a crevasse where he could shelter the mare and the packhorse. One morning just at dawn he saw a flash of white, high up. The flash of white was a mountain sheep—it seemed to be walking on air. The sheep, a big ram, disappeared into one of the caves.

  That night Jim hid the horses and attempted to investigate on foot. What he discovered was an extremely narrow ledge around the face of the bluff, invisible from below. Jim thought the mare, which was exceptionally sure-footed, might negotiate the ledge, but it would be too risky for the packhorse. The bluff sported little vegetation but there were forested hills to the west, only a few miles away.

  As Jim predicted, people came and went from the slavers’ camp, but none seemed to go in the direction of the scrubby hills. Jim found a copse on the back of one hill where he thought the horses would be safe. Then, with a rifle, his spyglass, and some meat he slipped into one of the caves. The camp was spread out below him: he could study his enemies at leisure, with no risk of discovery. The cave he was in could not be seen from below.