The Berrybender Narratives

by Larry McMurtry

  Jim meant to kill all the slavers, but he had not planned his assault in much detail. Battle was too unpredictable—it was best just to do what had to be done when blood was up and the fighting fierce. One thing he did do was sharpen the sword he had borrowed from Corporal Dominguin. He had never fought with a sword, or even owned one, but he thought the weapon might be useful if he found himself in the middle of the slavers’ camp. In close quarters, during a fight, many men got flustered and fired their guns foolishly, as Signor Claricia had been prone to do. A sword sharp enough to sever a limb or split a head would be a decided advantage when the time came to strike.

  In the afternoon Jim got out his tattered copy of the Book and fumbled through it. There were two verses that he felt sure were in the Book, but he couldn’t find them. One was “Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord.” The other—he only half remembered it—was “Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.”

  Jim wanted badly to find those verses, but his copy of the Book had so many pages missing that in the end he had to give up. The first seemed to mean that he should let the Lord manage what vengeance need be—but he wasn’t going to heed that verse.

  It was when he remembered Petey and Little Onion that he thought of the second verse. They had been the meek, as he understood the word, but they hadn’t inherited the earth. Instead they had had painful deaths. He had been raised to believe that every word in the Book was true but he couldn’t make that belief jibe with what had just happened— much less with what was about to happen.

  Jim decided it would be best just not to think about the Book until he got back to the company and could talk about his confusion with someone who was educated. He was about to go into battle, and he didn’t plan to hold back. Confusion of the mind was not something he could entertain—not then. The Sin Killer was going to fall upon the heathen, screaming out the Word. His sword and his gun would then accomplish what needed to be done.

  54

  At once everyone fell silent.

  MALGRES SUDDENLY HAD A THOUGHT—a notion about the Sin Killer.

  Ramon, still frightened, had bought some liquor from Draga, who kept some in her brush house. He was now in a stupor, not quite asleep but too drunk to be talkative.

  Malgres gave him a shake. “What?” Ramon asked, apprehensively.

  Malgres pointed to the men who were camped with old Snaggle, the most ancient person in the camp.

  “Weren’t those men arguing about killing a girl?” he asked. “The one with the club did it—he hit the girl too hard, and she died. I think they killed a little boy too.”

  “So what? Nobody wants to drag a child around!” Ramon said.

  “The girl and the little boy came from that big party of whites—the one the Sin Killer was with when he hit Obregon,” Malgres went on.

  “I want to go to sleep—I hate talking about the Sin Killer,” Ramon told him.

  “I think that girl they killed was the Sin Killer’s wife,” Malgres concluded. “The boy must have been his son. He has come for vengeance.”

  “I thought he had a white wife,” Ramon said. “Yes, and an Indian wife too. I tell you, he’s come for his vengeance. That’s why we heard that cry.”

  “Then let him kill them—I don’t like them anyway,” Ramon remarked.

  Malgres, convinced that the Sin Killer was near, and convinced, also, that he had come to kill the four slavers, at once went over to warn the men. Maybe they would want to try and outrun him.

  But the men proved to be rude fellows—they were playing dice and resented Malgres’s interruption.

  “Can’t you see we’re gambling?” Blue Foot asked.

  “Yes, I can see that,” Malgres said. “In my opinion you ought to get on your horses and go. The Sin Killer has come for you.”

  Tay-ha had begun to develop his own uneasy suspicions on that score. What Malgres said might be true. How could such a sound come from a bare cliff? Probably there was a cave they couldn’t see. He tried to talk Blue Foot and Bent Finger into going with him to see if he could spot the cave, but they weren’t interested.

  “There must be a way up it,” Tay-ha said. “We ought to go have a look.”

  “We’ll just kill the man when we see him. What does he want?” Bent Finger said. He was losing at dice—his mood was sour.

  “I think he wants the men who killed his wife and baby,” Malgres declared.

  Blue Foot took offense at once. “How do you know so much about it?” he asked.

  “I don’t know much about it—I just had an opinion,” Malgres said—he didn’t know why he had troubled to warn this quarrelsome bunch.

  “He knows because you bragged,” old Snaggle said to Blue Foot. “You told everybody you killed a girl and a child.”

  “I doubt they were the Sin Killer’s,” Blue Foot answered, but he was beginning to feel shaky. Why had this Malgres been so rude as to interrupt their game?

  At once everyone fell silent. Then Blue Foot rattled the dice, but didn’t roll them.

  “I think the Sin Killer’s dead,” Tay-ha mentioned. “Some Utes caught him and took his hair. I heard that from somebody.”

  He didn’t know why he had made the remark, because it was the opposite of what he believed, which was that the Sin Killer was in a cave, watching them, probably studying their weaknesses, which were many. Somewhere up there the man was watching, making his plans to kill. It was a bad thought to live with.

  “You spoiled a good game and I was winning,” Blue Foot pointed out.

  “You’re too rude—you deserve to be killed,” Malgres told him. Then, feeling that his advice had been scorned, he went away.

  55

  A white man was standing there . . .

  TAY-HA HAD BEGUN to want to own the Mexican woman, whose name was Rosa. At least once and often twice a day he led her a little way from camp and copulated with her. Rosa didn’t resist but she refused to look at him while he was about his pleasure; as soon as he finished and withdrew she stood up and walked wearily back to camp.

  Rosa belonged to Chino, a small half-breed slaver who was well known to put very high prices on his merchandise. He owned a dozen captives and kept them longer than was normal because he refused to lower his price. Tay-ha offered Chino one hundred dollars for Rosa, an offer that irritated Blue Foot. Not only was the price ridiculously high, but having to take a woman with them would seriously limit their mobility. Chino, however, refused the offer; he sometimes took his own pleasure with Rosa and was not going to let her go unless he got a high price.

  Tay-ha believed he could finally talk Chino down, and if he couldn’t, he might just kill him. The thought of owning Rosa excited him more and more. He led her out and kept her till late afternoon, playing with her breasts, probing. Rosa still refused to look at him, and she left at once when he finished. Tay-ha had laid his club down while enjoying Rosa’s body, and when he turned to pick it up he received a terrible shock. A white man was standing there—the white man had his club and was raising it. The man had covered his body with brown dirt, but it was clear from his hair that he was a white man.

  Tay-ha was too stunned even to cry out. Was it the Sin Killer? Already his club was coming toward his face, thick as a log, and fast.

  Using the well-sharpened Mexican sword, Jim cut Tay-ha’s head off. It was smashed and bloody, as Little Onion’s had been. Jim left it for the coyotes and badgers. But he hoisted Tay-ha’s small body and carried him to the bluff. As soon as it was dark he carried the corpse along the ledge to his cave.

  The next morning, just at dawn, the people in the slavers’ camp heard the cry of the Sin Killer for a second time—they heard the Word, emanating from the face of a cliff.

  Then, from the same spot, a body flew out and fell with a thud on the hard desert floor.

  “I thought so,” old Snaggle said, when he went with the others to inspect the headless body. “It was not like Tay-ha to stay out all night. He had already sent that woman bac
k.”

  Blue Foot suddenly felt seriously worried. Tayha’s head had been cut off—this suggested that the killer had a plan. He had come for vengeance.

  Malgres called for unified action. “He’s just in a cave up there,” he said. “If we all go after him we can kill him.”

  None of the other slavers had the slightest interest in climbing the cliff.

  Draga lumbered over and looked at the headless body. She studied the cliff for a long time. An enemy was around. But her eyes had been smoked to dimness. All she could see was rock.

  “Maybe we should leave?” Blue Foot suggested. Ramon approved of that plan. “If we leave as a group he won’t dare attack us,” he said.

  “He attacked Obregon when we were fourteen against him,” Malgres reminded him. “Then he didn’t even use a gun, just a club. I think he could have killed us all.”

  “Let’s just leave,” Ramon said, almost pleading. Draga had no intention of leaving. “There’ll be Comanches along in a day or two,” she reminded them. “We’ll get the Comanches to hunt him down.”

  “What if no Comanches come?” Blue Foot asked. “What if they’re late?”

  They all strained their eyes looking up at the cliff, but it just looked like an ordinary red butte, very sheer. That a man could be up there didn’t seem possible—and yet Tay-ha’s body had been flung down.

  “Tay-ha wanted to buy my captive,” Chino remembered. “I wonder if there was any money in his pocket.”

  He began to search Tay-ha’s pants, but found nothing. Old Snaggle watched with amusement. He knew where Tay-ha hid his money—he meant to get it for himself when nobody was looking. He had come to admire the Mexican woman—perhaps he would buy her, with Tay-ha’s money. It would be a fine joke on Tay-ha, although one he couldn’t appreciate, due to being dead.

  “What if he kills us all, one by one?” Ramon asked.

  Blue Foot was outraged that one white man could disrupt their business so much. It was true that at present he had no slaves to sell himself, but he and Tay-ha had intended to go to Mexico and catch a few pretty soon. Now he would have to go with Bent Finger and old Snaggle, neither of whom was particularly skilled when it came to catching young Mexican slaves. With Tay-ha he could count on half a dozen captives; with the others he would be lucky to get three.

  Later, drunk, Blue Foot decided it was all Tayha’s fault, for carelessly hitting that Ute girl too hard; and as if that were not vexation enough, his own rope was missing. His rope had been right on his saddle but now it wasn’t there. Annoyed, he accused old Snaggle of stealing it, but the old man just shrugged. Angrily, Blue Foot made a tour of the whole camp, looking for his rope. It took a long time to braid a rawhide rope—its loss put him in such a foul mood that he cuffed two or three of the captive boys. Then he asked Chino if he could use the Mexican woman and Chino refused, a very annoying thing.

  “You let Tay-ha use her often enough—why not me?” Blue Foot asked.

  Chino didn’t bother to reply. Rosa sat with her eyes downcast; she was tired of being summoned by men but she was a captive. If she refused she would just be beaten and then dishonored anyway. Only her thoughts were private; no man could have those. She was glad someone had cut off the head of Tay-ha, the man who dishonored her most often, but Rosa had forgotten how to hope. She was a poor woman—who would bother to rescue her from such a place? And yet when she saw Tay-ha’s headless body she felt a little hope. Someone was up there—the slavers were afraid. She hoped whoever it was would kill all the slavers—then she would never have to accept their stinking bodies again.

  56

  They gambled and drank; they posted no guards . . .

  JIM COULD SCARCELY CREDIT the carelessness of the slavers. One of their own had been killed—decapitated, in fact—and yet they made little change in their habits. They gambled and drank; they posted no guards; they staggered around drunk; they didn’t even heed the warnings of their own dogs. Jim had crept in in the night and stolen the rope without being challenged, though several dogs barked. When a dog barked in an Indian camp all the warriors were on the alert immediately. But the slavers only kept dogs to eat—they just ignored the barking.

  Jim had studied the camp thoroughly and was ready to attack. The rawhide rope had been the last piece of equipment he needed. He meant to drag its owner to death at the end of it, as Petey had been dragged; then he meant to kill the rest of the slavers and attempt to guide the shivering captives to a place where they would be safe.

  Jim had prepared one more demonstration—he wanted to spread a little more terror, enough to cause the drunken men to panic—and when they were panicked, the Sin Killer would come among them.

  In the night he led the little mare up the narrow ledge to his cave. She snorted once or twice, probably because she smelled the ram, but she didn’t falter.

  That night he made sure that his sword was still sharp.

  At dawn he was ready. He mounted the mare and rode her carefully along the ledge—as he did, he let the Word pour out. Below, slavers and captives struggled to come awake. When they did they saw a man riding across the face of the cliff, seemingly upon air. It was only just dawn: the sun was not up. As Jim yelled out the Word, men scrambled for their guns. Chino even fired a shot, though he knew the distance was too great.

  Jim and the mare were off the ledge in two minutes—then he loped a wide circle to the east. He wanted to come at the men when the rising sun was in their faces.

  Malgres, Ramon, and Blue Foot decided to flee, but half drunk and gripped by fear, they made a mess of it. Blue Foot’s horse was notably skittish— it had to be approached calmly and patiently, but Blue Foot was too frightened to be calm—he rushed at the horse and the horse bolted. The panic communicated itself to Malgres’s horse, and then Ramon’s. The three men found to their shock that they were afoot at the worst of all times. Ramon fumbled with his gun. Malgres, looking around for a horse he might steal, drew his thin knife and began to stumble toward Draga’s hut. But then, to his horror, the Sin Killer came racing directly out of the face of the rising sun.

  “A long knife beats a short knife every time,” Jim said, as he cut Malgres down.

  Ramon dropped his gun. The Sin Killer came racing past him, after Blue Foot. For a second Ramon felt hope—perhaps the man only wanted Blue Foot.

  Jim killed Ramon with a backhand slash as he rode by. The mare closed with Blue Foot in only a second. Jim dropped the rope over the man and jerked it tight around his legs. Blue Foot’s face hit the stony ground so hard his teeth cracked. Before he could try to free his legs Jim turned and raced directly at the slavers’ camp, crying the Word as he came. Blue Foot bounced in the air, hitting rocks, hitting cactus; then he was dragged through a campfire: ashes filled his eyes, coals burned his hands. Jim poured the Word out in full cry, louder than he ever had. He dragged Blue Foot through every campfire as he slashed at the stumbling men. He cut Chino down where he stood. The Word had never poured out of him so strongly—it excited the little mare. Here was her chance to run, and she did run, bursting through Draga’s brush house as if the sticks were twigs. The old woman just managed to crawl out of the way. Too late, the slavers tried to flee—Jim cut them down as they ran. One managed to mount and run but the mare overtook the slaver’s horse as a greyhound might overtake a coyote. The fleeing slaver’s horse threw him. Jim killed him as he struggled to his feet. What was left of Blue Foot still bounced at the end of his own rope. The Sin Killer was still crying out the Word; he turned back toward the camp, racing down on Draga, who faced him bitterly. No one could stop this man—he had cut through her slavers as if they were merely vegetation, and now he was charging at her. Draga felt a poisonous bitterness: a hard life hers had been, and now this sudden end.

  The Sin Killer split her head; he could not stop. He had brought vengeance to the heathen and there were several more, huddled together in terror, screaming. The Sin Killer raised his bloody sword, still crying the Word. He could
think of nothing but killing and was about to urge the mare into a last charge into the midst of the heathen, when the Mexican woman sprang in front of him. She grabbed his bridle, fought him for the little mare’s head.

  “Señor, no mas!” she said. “No mas!”

  The Sin Killer found it hard to stop; he wanted to keep killing until there was no one left to kill. But the Mexican woman was stubborn; she hung on to the bridle.

  “No mas, señor—they are only captives,” she cried, clinging to the frothing, sweaty mare who wanted to run some more. The wild sounds excited her.

  The woman would not let go—he would have to kill her to free himself—and he didn’t want to kill her, though he had raised a dripping sword. The Word ceased to pour out of him; he began to stop being the Sin Killer. One of the huddled little boys in the group before him looked like Monty. He saw a terrified girl the age of Little Onion. He remembered his children, his dead children, his dead wife. What the woman said was true. The group he had been about to charge were captives, not slavers. Only this stubborn Mexican woman had kept him from cutting them all down. He began to shake, as he realized what he had almost done. The struggle to stop himself from killing was the hardest he had ever fought. The captives still looked terrified. The sword he carried still dripped with Draga’s blood. Jim dismounted, shaking, and broke the bloody sword over his knee. Toward the captives he felt a sudden shame.

  “It’s all right—I won’t hurt you,” he stammered. When he snapped the sword he cut his hand on the sharp blade. The brown woman found a little of Draga’s whiskey. She washed the wound and bound it. One or two of the captives began to lose their fear. Jim saw that Blue Foot was dead, filled with thorns as Petey had been—it no longer seemed important. For an hour he felt too weak to walk. The captives were cautiously probing among the corpses of the slavers, taking a knife here, a little money there, a belt, a shirt.