The Berrybender Narratives

by Larry McMurtry

  Rosa saw that the white man had exhausted himself with his terrible rage. She herself had known rage, but only for a short time. She had raged at her husband for his drunkenness before he died. She raged at her neighbors for letting their goats into her squash. She had raged at God when her two babies died. But she had not raged as this man raged. He had killed every single slaver, and if she had not stopped him he would have killed the captives too—and killed her as well.

  Rosa was cautious with the man. It took time to recover from such terrible anger. Meanwhile she did her own canvass of the destroyed camp. There was a boy named Emilio who was good with horses—she made him go catch the ones who had belonged to the slavers. She set one of the girls to assembling pots, and what food had been in camp.

  All this time Rosa watched the white man. He seemed spent, able only to sit. His hands still shook. But he did notice that Emilio had managed to bring in the horses.

  “Señor, will you help us—we are far from home?” Rosa asked finally.

  Jim had never felt such weariness. He felt almost incapable of movement, yet he knew he had to move. He nodded at the woman. Of course he would help them, once the weariness passed.

  “Señor, we should go,” Rosa told him. “Too many Comanches come here—they are always coming and sometimes they are many.”

  Jim nodded again. He liked the looks of the boy who had captured the horses.

  “That boy’s good with horses,” he told her. “My packhorse is tied just behind that bluff. If he’ll go fetch him we can load up and leave.”

  Emilio started at once but Jim stopped him. “You don’t have to walk—take the mare,” he said.

  The mare had calmed too. She snorted when the boy mounted but Emilio spoke to her sooth-ingly. Soon he returned with the packhorse. Jim would have liked to sleep, but he knew it was not the time. The brown woman was directing the packing, helping the captives assemble supplies. They should be able to make good time—or they should if only he could shrug off his strange weariness.

  “I don’t know your name,” he said to the woman. “I’m Jim.”

  “My name is Rosa,” she said. To her surprise the man stood up and offered to shake her hand. The gesture was so awkward that Rosa smiled—she had not expected to smile again. But she took the man’s hand and shook it. He did not want to turn her hand loose, but finally he did. He acted like a badly wounded man, and yet he had received no wound. Rosa kept an eye on him, as she worked. She saw that he was dazed. There was a little of Draga’s whiskey left. Rosa took the jug to Jim.

  “We have a little whiskey—it might help,” she said.

  “I might turn sinner if I get drunk,” Jim told her. But then he felt silly. He had killed a whole company of men. Surely killing was a worse sin than drunkenness. He took the jug and swallowed two mouthfuls of the burning liquid.

  “That’s like drinking fire,” he said. But he felt a little energy return. A few minutes later he led the group out of the camp.

  57

  He felt a constant need to rest.

  THE NEXT DAYS were the hardest Jim Snow had ever spent on the trail. The country itself was no harsher than other country he had traveled through—the problem was that he had no energy and no drive. He felt a constant need to rest. He knew he needed to move the freed captives off the great Comanche war trail—and he did lead them east; but compared with other treks he had made, it was a fumbling, uncertain process. He could not seem to keep his head about him: he kept going back in memory to the terrible moment when he had been about to slay the innocent captives with his dripping sword.

  After all, he hadn’t done it—Rosa’s stubborn action had brought him out of his killing frenzy just in time. The crisis had passed; yet he couldn’t forget it, couldn’t quite come back to himself.

  “It’s a good thing no Comanches found us today,” he said to Rosa, as they sat by the campfire the first night out.

  “I’ve got no fight in me now,” he added. “We’d be easy pickings.”

  “The Comanches will see all those dead men—they may not want us,” Rosa told him. “You even killed the old witch. She was a cruel woman—you did good to kill her.”

  Jim knew that was true—Draga’s cruelties had been practiced on his own sister-in-law, Buffum, and countless others. Still, he seemed to have no strength and he could not get his mind off the terrible thing that he had almost done.

  Three times in the next days they saw Indians— and yet the Indians didn’t come close. Probably Rosa was right. The Indians had seen the massacred slavers, Draga with her head split, Blue Foot dragged to death. Rapidly news of the massacre of the slavers spread across the southern plains and deserts—in weeks it spread all the way to Canada. The Assiniboines knew the Sin Killer. They called him the Raven Brave and it did not surprise them that he had killed a bunch of miserable slavers. The Raven Brave was a man to be feared.

  Of the captives only the boy Emilio, who was so good with horses, felt at ease with Jim. The two of them talked about the problems of horses. The other captives kept to themselves. They could not forget that this man had been about to kill them. They weren’t sure they could trust him. The young women held back.

  Rosa managed the trek, managed the camps they made, managed the other captives—most of all, she managed Jim. She was efficient. She knew to make well-banked campfires. With Lord Berry-bender’s fine new rifle Jim made a lucky shot on an antelope. Rosa took a horse and packed the animal in. She butchered it, fed the others, dried some of the meat.

  Jim could not hide how disturbed he felt. He did not like to be without Rosa’s company—she steadied him. She rode beside him all day and sat with him at night. There was little talk. Only once or twice did he return to the moment of conflict, when she had jumped forward and stopped the killing.

  “‘Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord’—it says that in the Bible,” Jim told her. “I expect that’s the right way.”

  Rosa didn’t answer. She had never liked priests or followed their debates. What she wanted to tell Jim was that she had never been as glad of anything as she had been when she watched him kill the slavers. She didn’t intend to speak of it to Jim—it was better not to speak of one’s shame—but she had been particularly glad when he had killed Tayha, the man who dishonored her most casually, treating her as no better than an animal, even taking her in her bowels. She could never speak of such shame, or hope to be an honorable woman again, but she did not agree that vengeance should only be the Lord’s. She was alive because Jim had been vengeful. It was true that he lost himself in a blood frenzy and had almost gone too far—but she had stopped it, and it was over. She was not going to regret the deaths of slavers. In fact she had gone and spat on Tay-ha’s corpse, and was happy when she did it.

  She saw, though, that Jim was troubled in himself, and she did what she could to help. She brought him his food, sat with him, administered the trek, settling little quarrels and seeing that Emilio took good care of the horses. She saw it as a miracle that they were alive at all, and Jim, sad-eyed now and awkward, had made the miracle. Rosa meant to devote herself to him, to the extent that he would allow it.

  One night, to her surprise, Jim asked how old she was.

  “Old enough to have buried two babies and a husband,” Rosa said.

  Jim didn’t press her. He had merely wondered. Rosa’s silences were comfortable silences. She seemed to have no need to question him, as Tasmin did. When Tasmin went away after some discussion Jim usually felt relieved; but when Rosa went away, to attend to some chore, he felt anxious, and the anxious feeling only left him when Rosa came and settled herself by the fire. In settling herself she seemed to settle him. In a while he would stop feeling anxious. He found it to be a comfort of a sort he had not had in his life before. The thought that, once they were safe, Rosa might wish to go back to her home was unsettling. He began to wonder whether there might be a way to keep her. And yet he was a married man—he had a wife. Why was he thinking such thin
gs?

  58

  Was this ribbon becoming? Would this petticoat show?

  GOODNESS! A BALL? What are you thinking about, George?” Tasmin asked. Buffum, Vicky, and Mary were all likewise taken aback. A ball, when they had been in the safety of the settlements only a few days?

  “Mr. Austin absolutely insists that you come,” George Catlin informed them. “There is much war stir—Mr. Austin feels that a little entertainment would not be amiss. There will be music—even dancing, perhaps.”

  “All things we once took for granted but have since put behind us,” Tasmin said.

  “Not so behind us—we danced in Santa Fe, Tassie,” Buffum remarked.

  “I didn’t—I mourned—but never mind,” Tasmin said. “I wouldn’t mind consenting if I had a dress. What does Mr. Austin propose that we come to the ball in? We’ve all emerged from barbarism very nearly naked, it seems to me.”

  “Well, you aren’t naked but you are perhaps a little begrimed still,” George allowed. “Mr. Austin is sensitive to the problem of attire. Some nice Texas ladies are being dispatched to the rescue. They may desire to loan you frocks. Also, there’s a kind of haberdashery here in Washington-on-theBrazos. Not up to London standards, of course, but you might be able to obtain some cloth that would do to be sewn.”

  “I guess it’s not a very long step from barbarism to civilization, down here in Texas,” Mary remarked. “I would like to take one hundred baths before considering the matter of adornment.”

  “I suppose that means you’ll be wearing your tiara,” Tasmin said in jest—but at the mere mention of a ball their mutual spirits did rise.

  “I suppose, after all, it’s what we were bred to do—go to balls,” Tasmin remarked.

  “I hear it will be quite thick with heroes,” Father Geoff put in.

  “Oh, Davy Crockett’s here,” Lord Berrybender informed them. “I quite hit it off with him in Washington. The man likes to drink—so do I. He’s quite the hunter, too. A killer of bears, I believe.”

  “And then there’s Mr. Bowie, who’s invented quite a formidable knife,” George told them. “It’s the kind of weapon your husband, Jim, could put to good use.”

  “I shall want to bring Juan—I hope it will be no problem,” Buffum announced. It was now understood that she and Corporal Dominguin were betrothed.

  “Mr. Austin is a man of great sophistication—I’m sure your corporal will be welcome,” George said.

  A hasty trip was made to a tiny general store, where cloth of various kinds was purchased. Cook was soon sewing. When the local matrons showed up with frocks for loan, all were in the end rejected by the very particular Berrybenders.

  “When we go to balls around here we must manage to be queens of them,” Tasmin instructed; but then, as she was trying to pull a brush through her recalcitrant hair, she suddenly put down her brush and burst into tears.

  “But Tassie, what is it?” Kate asked. She found her sister’s tendency to tears something of a trial.

  “It’s too soon—much too soon,” Tasmin sobbed. “Two days ago—forty-eight hours—I hoped for nothing more than to keep my daughter alive. I had buried two sons. And now Mr. Austin gives a ball and I’m expected to care how my hair looks, and to observe that my frock is too tight in the bosom? I can’t do it! I can’t care about these fripperies. I’ve lived where it’s life-or-death too long.”

  dance—it’s a blow for life! Right, Geoff?”

  Mary considered that she herself looked rather elegant, her pregnancy just showing.

  Father Geoffrin, having seen the Berrybender women in all their states, had been permitted access to their boudoir so that he might advise about certain perplexities of fashion. Was this ribbon becoming? Would this petticoat show?

  “Mary’s right,” he said. Tasmin’s frock was too tight in the bosom, but then, she had a splendid bosom.

  “It’s a strike for life!” the priest agreed. “It may feel like disloyalty to the dead, but it isn’t.”

  Buffum was not quite able to resist her own looks, now that she had freshened up a little.

  “I wish Juan had better shoes,” she said.

  At the last minute, as they were all making final adjustments to their wardrobes, Cook, in a panic, announced that there had been an escapee from the nursery: Petal could not be found.

  For a moment Tasmin felt a wild flutter of panic—children were sometimes kidnapped even from the villages by clever Indians. But Petal?

  Fortunately the miscreant was at once plucked from her grandfather’s buggy. She was determined not to miss this exciting ball and negotiated a compromise: she would attend the ball for one hour and then be returned to the nursery. In fact Petal charmed so many of the officers that Cook waited long in an anteroom before the little minx was finally surrendered. Even the austere Mr. Austin was seen to be reciting Petal a rhyme.

  Tasmin danced a dance with Davy Crockett but did not warm to the man—his breath was so heavy with brandy that she felt she might be made drunk.

  The Berrybender women, though feeling themselves much reduced in vivacity by their recent ordeal, nonetheless swept the young men of Texas before them. Piet sat rather forlornly on the sidelines, watching Mary dance dance after dance with the lively young blades.

  Tasmin allowed a few of the young blades too, but then found herself being gracefully led round the floor by James Bowie—his look was melancholy but his dancing expert.

  “My goodness, Mr. Bowie,” she said, “I’d forgotten how pleasant it is to dance with a man who can dance. I wouldn’t be surprised if you were the best dancer in Texas.”

  James Bowie smiled—a happier light came into his face for a moment.

  “My wife would not tolerate inept dancing,” he said.

  “Of course not—is she here?” “She’s dead—cholera—and my two daughters as well.”

  “Then we have tragedy in common,” Tasmin replied. “I lost a son to cholera—he’s buried in New Mexico. Lady Berrybender also lost a son, and my sister Elizabeth a husband.”

  “It’s a wearying thing to see loved ones go so quickly,” he said. “It’s because I couldn’t fight the cholera that I’m here to fight the Mexicans, I guess.”

  “And do you think the Texans will win?” she asked.

  “Oh yes, they’ll win—and it won’t take them long, either,” Bowie said. “If you stay around a few weeks you’ll be guests of the Republic of Texas.”

  “My husband’s behind me somewhere—I intend to wait for him,” Tasmin told him. “We lost a second boy—this one to slavers. My husband’s gone for his revenge.”

  Jim Bowie merely nodded. Though his dancing remained graceful, the melancholic look was back on his face.

  Buffum came hurrying over, in some distress. “Tassie, you must talk to father—Mr. Crockett is trying to persuade him to go fight the Mexicans,” she said.

  “What nonsense! Papa’s a cripple—he’ll just be in the way,” Tasmin declared. “I consider old Crockett a bore, and he’s nowhere near as good a dancer as Mr. Bowie here.”

  “Davy’s feet are too big,” Bowie said, with a smile. “We used to call him Bucketfoot. No fun dancing with Bucketfoot.”

  By the time they reached Lord Berrybender, their persuasion was useless. Lord Berrybender’s blood was up—he was determined to go.

  “Father, that’s ridiculous,” Tasmin said. “You’re too old for the barricades.”

  “Not a bit of it—stirs my blood just to think of a good fight,” Lord B. told her. “Can’t wait to see action, in fact. The blare of bugles, the thud of cannon. Bowie and Crockett and I will go tomorrow—Crockett assures me it will just be a skirmish—be back in a day or two. The place is called San Antonio.”

  Tasmin went at once to Davy Crockett and attempted to persuade him to leave her father, but Davy Crockett showed more interest in her bosom than in her opinions.

  “Oh, we won’t have much of a scrap in San Antonio,” he assured her.

  “Wh
y not?” “The big battle will be farther east,” he assured her. “Sam Houston’s over on the plain of San Jacinto, getting ready. He’ll show General Santa Anna what’s what—no question of that.”

  “Still, it seems foolish to take a crippled man into battle,” Tasmin persisted.

  “Nonsense—it’ll be a tonic for your father,” Crockett said. “He was just telling me about some of his adventures in Spain. Nothing like the smell of gunpowder to get an old warhorse stirred up.”

  “Getting Father stirred up has never been a problem, Mr. Crockett,” Tasmin told him. “I think you would have done better to leave well enough alone.”

  Davy Crockett was taken aback. Young women with fine bosoms seldom talked to him so brashly—and from the look in this one’s eye, worse might be to come. Though it was not his way, he strove to be diplomatic.

  “I assure you there’s no danger, madam—nothing serious is likely to happen at all,” he told her. “The fact is I like your father’s company. If he doesn’t come I’ll have to ride seventy miles with Jim Bowie, which is like riding seventy miles with a mute. Jim’s run out of conversation. With your father along we can get drunk and tell lies and we’ll be there in no time. There’s nobody there but Billy Travis and a hundred or so of his men—hardly enough for Santa Anna to bother with.”

  James Bowie was of the same opinion. “I’ve no great opinion of Billy Travis, which is why I felt Crockett and I ought to lend a hand.”

  “It all seems very casual, I must say,” Tasmin told him. “It seems that Mr. Crockett anticipates a picnic—or better yet, a carouse—rather than war. What if he’s wrong?”

  “You’ve hit it!” Bowie told her. “Davy’s whole life is a picnic or a carouse. He’ll fight well enough, though, if he can find a fight.”

  Later, Tasmin allowed George Catlin a dance, which was not a success.