Sin Killer

by Larry McMurtry

  “What were those obscure gestures supposed to mean?” she asked, anger in her voice. Jim heard the anger—it was always a shock, how quickly women angered.

  “She left the shirt loose on account of the baby,” he said.

  “Baby?” Tasmin asked. She looked again at Nemba, wondering if it could be true—and if it was true, how had the Oto woman known? Was that the reason for her nausea in the mornings—a recent nausea but consistent?

  “A baby?” Tasmin said again, convinced suddenly that it was true. “But what will we do? We have no domicile—not even a cabin.”

  “I guess we won’t need one, for a while,” Jim said. “You’ll be droppin’ it in the warm months, at least.”

  “Drop it? Is that what I’m expected to do?” Tasmin asked.

  All around them, when they were far out on the prairies, the cow buffaloes had been dropping their calves. Was she herself now locked into this old, inexorable cycle, expected merely to squat at some point and squeeze a human infant out of her body? She remembered the wild screams that had accompanied her mother’s regular lyings-in. Teams of nursemaids brought water, toweling, sheets, steaming basins, while the two placid, hammy midwives sat in low chairs at the foot of the bed. Tasmin doubted that she would be able to avail herself of any such help, if indeed Nemba was right and a baby was coming. Would Jim help her? Would anyone?

  In her time on the prairies with Jim Snow she had made some progress toward wilderness skills. She could clean a fish, remove the liver from a buffalo, and the tongue as well. Jim had even made her a bow and fashioned her some arrows. In time she felt she might be a decent archer, though, so far, her only victim had been a skunk, which she shot at as a joke but pinned to the earth.

  All that had been fun, but she doubted that she was yet equipped to be her own midwife. The very thought of such a crisis made Tasmin a bit wistful for the Berrybender resources—at the very least, before her time came, she meant to pluck a servant or two off that boat. Probably Cook, herself the mother of twelve, would be the most practical choice. Of course it would enrage her papa—no English gentleman could happily tolerate the loss of his cook.

  That night they camped on the river, some distance above the village where Nemba lived. Gray chill squeezed out the sunset; Tasmin was glad of her warm new shirt, even if it was baggy. The weeks on the prairie had been a time of deep content, but now she felt restless, tight, unsettled. Other than to reveal it to her, Jim had said nothing about the baby. Did it please him that a small human, conceived in their passion, was even now forming itself inside her? He had made no response at all—he just went about, securing the night’s firewood, which he did every night, whether she was pregnant or not. Memory of the quick way Nemba had talked to him with her hands still annoyed her—it had put her in the mood to quarrel. Better a quarrel than long hours sitting in silence by a little fire, waiting for the stars to shine in their brilliance. Tasmin had never long allowed herself to be squelched by any circumstances, and she didn’t intend to allow such a thing, even if her husband had been quick to slap.

  “Was Nemba your woman?” she asked, abruptly.

  Jim thought he must have misheard. “My what?” he asked.

  “Your woman—wife, even,” Tasmin said, making a blind strike.

  “I’ve heard that many frontiersmen take Indian wives,” she went on. “It seems quite reasonable, since no other wives are likely to be available.” She tried, with no great success, to keep heat out of her voice.

  “Oh no, not Nemba—she’s just good with skins,” Jim said. “I’ve got two Ute wives, though, up near the Green River.”

  They sat close together by the campfire. One of Jim’s hands rested lightly on Tasmin’s knee. Instantly the knee was jerked away. Her blind strike had worked so well that Tasmin was completely stunned. She had thought she might provoke Jim into admitting to a dalliance with Nemba—caught the Sin Killer sinning, as it were. But Nemba at once vanished from the equation, only to be replaced with two wives, and a third who was dead. Tasmin was so shocked that she could not at once find her tongue. The man beside her, a self-confessed polygamist, had married her too, and got her with child, a child she was expected to “drop” somewhere, when the time came.

  “Could you repeat what you just said, Jim?” Tasmin asked, not hotly. She was still stunned—her tone was subdued.

  “I married two Ute women when I was up on the Green River, trapping with Kit Carson and Pomp Charbonneau,” Jim said, pleasantly. “The women kept the camp, while we trapped.”

  “And did Mr. Charbonneau have wives too—they seem to have been so useful,” Tasmin said.

  “Not Pomp,” Jim said. “Plenty of the Ute girls wanted him but Pomp’s finicky. He wouldn’t have them.”

  “How fortunate that you aren’t so finicky, Jim,” Tasmin said.

  “Such an accommodating man you are. I fear I must be rather a disappointment to you, Jim. I have so few skills, compared to your other wives.”

  “You’re learnin’ quick, though,” Jim said with a smile, giving her a pat on the knee.

  At that Tasmin stood up and walked blindly into the night.

  34

  With her feelings so roiled, the fact of darkness was a comfort.

  TASMIN spent a cold night huddled in the Oto corn patch. Several dogs snarled at her, and a few barked, but then they quieted down. She heard Jim calling for her, but she didn’t answer. Her feelings were in riot—one moment she was hot with anger, the next chilled by the thought of her own folly. In Northamptonshire, English custom had somewhat kept her native recklessness in check; but she was in America and there was no American custom. What system of manners could possibly prevail in a place where there were only savages and buffalo? That she had rushed to accept Jim Snow as a husband now seemed absurd; and yet, only weeks ago, accepting him had felt right and felt wonderful. And as she herself had said only moments before the fateful revelation, it was no blemish on Jim’s character that he had taken native wives—on the frontier that was customary. How could he have known that he would someday meet Lady Tasmin Berrybender—or any English woman? He had not tried to hide the fact of his Indian wives, particularly—to him it was a matter of so little importance that he had not thought to mention it—until questioned. And the wives—two surviving—lived far away, in a place unimaginable to Tasmin, where the Utes lived.

  With her feelings so roiled, the fact of darkness was a comfort. Tasmin needed time to think, to recover, if possible, her famous command of logic; but it was not easy to think logically with her emotions running first hot and then cold. They were hardly the small, quiet feelings that might be expected from some country squire’s daughter. One minute her blood—whether Berrybender or de Bury—was up and she wanted to fight the man she had just come to love. The next minute the very forbidding facts of the actual situation cooled her anger and left a dull listlessness in its place.

  The insult that had driven her away from the campfire—Jim’s casual assurance that her progress at practical tasks meant that she might someday hope to equal the performance of his two native wives—had of course not been intended as an insult at all; it had clearly been meant as a compliment, and yet it was a compliment that starkly revealed to Tasmin that the great plains of America, where she had enjoyed several very happy weeks, were no wider than the distance that lay between herself and the young man she had joined herself to. Could the frontiersman from the New World ever really know and appreciate a woman of the Old World? And the child, when it came—which world would it belong to?

  That query and others just as painful and perplexing raced through Tasmin’s mind all night. She did not sleep a wink. Finally the sun came, and nausea with it. When Jim found her she was bent over amid the cornstalks, throwing up.

  35

  Then, out of nowhere, the storm came . . .

  “ACCORDING to your friend Nemba the steamboat passed several days ago, which means that it’s upriver,” Tasmin said. “I am going to it�
��if you have other plans, please pursue them.

  “I’m afraid you married a very obstinate woman,” she added, a fact that Jim Snow, halting and confused, could hardly have been unaware of.

  Jim was purely stumped. He supposed most women were changeable but none he had met so far were nearly as changeable as Tasmin. When she learned from Nemba that she was with child, she was naturally a little startled, but seemed content enough. Then, out of nowhere, the storm came, and was still storming. She had first wanted to be taken to Santa Fe, a possibility now that fall had come; only now she didn’t want to go to Santa Fe with him, or anywhere else with him, it seemed.

  “The boat will be nearly to the Mandans by now, I expect,” he said, confused. Tasmin had stuffed her kit into the sack she had brought it in. She showed every indication of being about to leave.

  Jim had killed a small deer the afternoon before. He had been about to smoke some of the meat when Tasmin declared that she was leaving.

  “What about meat? I can smoke you some,” he said, deeply puzzled.

  “I don’t care to wait, thank you very much,” Tasmin said. “I have my bow and arrow—perhaps I’ll manage to pierce something a little more edible than a skunk.”

  There was a crispness in her tone which startled Jim—he had never heard a woman speak with such crispness. Her words were like shards of ice. He didn’t want Tasmin to go, but he could not think of anything he might say or do that would cause her to change her mind. A fit of some sort had come over her—he decided it was best just to let her go. Once the fit passed she would probably come back.

  Tasmin drew some faint amusement from the fact that she had managed to quell the Sin Killer. The terror of the prairies just looked tired and confused, and all it had taken was a little English ice.

  All Jim could think to offer was a little practical advice.

  “Stay on this side of the river,” he said. “If you do the Sioux might let you be.”

  “Now, now . . . no instructions,” Tasmin said. Then she walked away. Only two days before she could hardly get enough of kissing him—but now there she went.

  When Tasmin had proceeded along the river some fifty yards she turned and looked back, half expecting to see her husband following her. But he wasn’t following her—he was methodically smoking the deer meat. Her intent had been to leave him so broken that he would be incapable of practical actions—but in that she had failed. He might be heartbroken, but it didn’t keep him from curing his jerky. She had no interest in justice—she had meant to break him utterly; that he was capable of merely turning to some mundane task was itself an insult. For a moment she considered turning back, for the sole purpose of goading Jim some more; but she didn’t turn back—her pride wouldn’t allow it. If her husband repented, let him track her.

  A brisk wind, carrying more than a mild suggestion of winter, was in her face. Tasmin, still angry, struck a brisk pace. Twice she passed small groups of Oto women, gathering nuts and acorns from beneath the scattered groves of trees. She thought she might gather a few nuts herself, once she got farther from Jim.

  As she walked her anger subsided. For six weeks or more she had scarcely been out of Jim’s presence for an hour. He had only left her when he hunted, and then not long. Slowly, an old happy lightness infused her spirit, a joy much like that she had felt when she awakened alone that first morning in the pirogue. She felt again the happiness of being solitary—dependent only on herself and answerable to no one. It seemed strange, at that moment, that she had forged a union so intense as to make her forget how much she liked solitude—cherished it, in fact.

  In her haste to be off the steamer she had failed to grab a book—once out on the prairie with Jim it was that oversight that irked her most. The great spectacle of nature was all very well, and Jim Snow’s embraces were also very well; but she missed her books, her Scott, her Byron, Mrs. Ferrier, Southey, even silly Marivaux, whom she picked up at the urging of Mademoiselle Pellenc. Any book would have provided some diversion during the sultry prairie afternoons. The first thing she meant to do, once she got back, was lock herself in her state-room and glut herself with reading. Her body had been sated on the prairies, but her mind had been starved; now she was anxious to get upriver and feed it.

  Just as Tasmin was ripping along, buoyed by the thought of what a fine thing it would be to have a good soak and then shut herself in for an orgy of reading, she saw, not far ahead, a small, black-clad figure sitting on a fallen tree. It was a man, though a small man. Tasmin took up her bow. In such a wilderness all men were to be approached with caution; and yet Tasmin considered that it would be rather too theatrical if she were to stride up like Diana and loose an arrow at him. When she drew nearer she saw that the man wore priest’s robes, and was doing just what Tasmin had been anticipating. He was reading. When he looked up from his book and saw Tasmin he was very startled indeed and immediately stood up to greet her.

  “Queen and huntress, chaste and fair,” the small priest said. He had a narrow face, and a carbuncle on his chin.

  “Bonjour, mademoiselle,” he added, with a quick, frank smile.

  “I hope we can speak English, Father, since you seem to know it so well,” Tasmin said. “What is that book you’re reading?”

  “Oh this, my little duodecimo?” the priest said, with a self-deprecating look. “Why, it’s only Marmontel, the Contes Moraux—it would be Moral Tales if one were to English it. I cannot seem to get enough of him, ma’am—no author is more acute when addressing the challenges we all face in our attempts to lead a moral life.”

  Tasmin smiled. “I like the way you put that, Father,” she said. “Got any more books with you? I’ve been touring the prairies and I confess I’m rather book-starved.”

  “Only a tiny Testament and an even tinier catechism,” he said. “I am Father Geoffrin and you, I assume, are one of the missing Berrybenders.”

  “Yes, I’m Tasmin—eldest of that nearly innumerable brood,” she said.

  “I saw your esteemed father only the day before yesterday,” Father Geoffrin said. “The brood is not quite so innumerable as it was. Your papa, I fear, is rather vexed with you for being so long about your picnicking.”

  Father Geoffrin had the habit of squeezing his own fingers as he talked—his fingers were long and thin, and the nails well kept, a novelty on the frontier, in Tasmin’s view.

  “Oh well, Papa is more or less always vexed,” Tasmin said. “Fourteen children and nineteen servants hardly make for a simple life—but what’s the latest?”

  “The Fräulein is the latest,” Father Geoffrin said. “She disappeared on the morning of my visit—eloped with one of the boatmen. Monsieur Charbonneau considers it a very ill timed elopement, due to the violent state of the tribes.”

  “That means we’ve lost both tutors—unless Master Thaw has recovered,” Tasmin said.

  Father Geoffrin shook his head. “Master Thaw, I’m afraid, remains as silent as the grave, mademoiselle.”

  “I’m no longer mademoiselle—I’m madame now,” Tasmin corrected. Even if she never saw Jim Snow again she meant to insist on her married status.

  Father Geoffrin was plainly startled by this news. He looked Tasmin up and down frankly—more frankly than was to be expected of a man of the cloth.

  “Madame?” he said, lifting his eyebrows.

  “Madame,” Tasmin said firmly. “Would you have any food?”

  “Only a humble corn cake,” the priest said. “I was yesterday among the Omahas, attempting to harvest souls, and they pressed it on me.”

  He extracted the corn cake from a small pouch and handed it to Tasmin—though it looked rather grubby in appearance, she munched it hungrily.

  Father Geoffrin was still pondering the unexpected news that Tasmin was a married woman. He looked intensely thoughtful, as if he were working out an equation of the higher mathematics.

  “Have you met my countryman Monsieur Simon Le Page?” he asked, wrinkling his narrow brow. “
Of course, he isn’t really my countryman—he’s a Québecois.”

  “Never heard of the fellow—what does he do?” Tasmin asked, to be polite.

  “He’s a fur trader,” Father Geoffrin said. “From time to time he manages to ransom white captives. He is said to be making some effort even now, in regard to your sister Elizabeth and Mademoiselle Pellenc.”

  “Look here, Father, I’m feeling rather anxious to get back,” Tasmin said. “Won’t you come with me? I would like to hear more about Fräulein’s exciting elopement—and I’m sure there are other scandals as well.”

  “Oh yes, your brother Seven has disappeared,” the priest said. “Dire forebodings there.”

  “Tell me . . .but let’s walk while we talk,” Tasmin said. “You don’t seem to be very busy here, on the whole. After all, you were just sitting on a tree reading a book of tales, when I came along.”

  “Ah, but Lady Tasmin, they were moral tales . . .moral,” Father Geoffrin insisted.

  “There’s nothing very moral about a tale, that I can see,” Tasmin said. “Not if it’s a good tale.”

  Father Geoffrin looked rather downcast. He slipped the little book into a pocket.

  “A fine, subtle point, madame,” he said. “I’m a Jesuit—we thrive on subtle points. I suppose that’s why I hate the wilderness so. There’s nothing subtle about a tomahawk.”