Sin Killer

by Larry McMurtry

  “I’m sleepy, or I could beat you,” the first boy said. His name was Climbs Up.

  Pomp sat down and immediately won three games, merely by keeping his eye on the place the mouse had been. In fact, the mouse was sleepy too—or bored. The mouse ignored the cups and stayed in the same place. The cup shuffler, whose name was Weedy Boy, soon grew irritated at the lethargic mouse whose idleness had cost him victory. He picked the mouse up by the tail and flung it off into the snow.

  “You put a spell on our mouse, so you could win three times,” Weedy Boy said to Pomp.

  Pomp just smiled. He liked the three gangly Minataree boys and sometimes took them hunting when they were camped nearby. Some of the Minataree braves considered Pomp a Shoshone—his mother’s tribe—and were rude to him accordingly, but the three boys accepted him and badgered him to let them shoot his gun, a fine rifle Drum Stewart bought him while they were in Saint Louis. The Minataree band owned only a few guns, and they were just old muskets, in bad repair.

  “There are too many Assiniboines around here,” Weedy Boy commented. “They have been stealing our horses.”

  “We want to go to war with them, but we don’t have very good guns,” Climbs Up complained.

  There were several bands of Assiniboines north of the post, most of them far better equipped than the Minatarees—a war was unlikely to turn out well for this little band. Pomp was careful not to say as much to the three boys, who would have regarded his apprehension as an insult.

  “The old woman will be up pretty soon,” Weedy Boy said, referring to Pomp’s aunt. “She never sleeps very long.”

  Two of the boys retired to a lodge, but Weedy merely took a blanket and curled up by the fire.

  Pomp seldom slept much, either. Some nights he merely rested, neither fully awake nor sound asleep. The pure silence of the winter night, broken only by the sighing of the wind over the snowfields, was a restful thing in itself. In summer the nights were never silent: insects buzzed, night birds called, and the buffalo bulls, in their rut, set up a roaring that could be heard for many miles.

  Weedy Boy had been right about Otter Woman. Long before dawn she crept out of her lodge and shuffled up to the fire. It irritated her that Sacagawea’s boy had shown up again, smelling of white man’s soap, an unpleasant thing to smell so early in the morning. He looked like his mother, her sister, and that annoyed Otter Woman too. Though she and Sacagawea had been married to the same man, they had never been close. Sacagawea was not a bad person, but she was cunning and could always get her way with men, a skill Otter Woman did not possess. Though Sacagawea had had only one husband, this smelly boy’s father, and Otter Woman had had several, it still annoyed her that Sacagawea had always been able to get her way.

  “If you are going to come around here and burn up our firewood you should at least bring me a new blanket,” Otter Woman said. “There were too many mice last summer—some of them nibbled holes in my blanket.”

  “I’ll buy you one, Aunty,” Pomp said. “If you want to come to the trading post you can take any blanket you want.”

  “Too far,” Otter Woman said. In the cold weather her knees didn’t seem to want to bend. Let this boy of her sister’s choose a nice blanket and bring it to her. As long as it was warm and had blue in it, it would do very well. She had a fine buffalo robe, which she had tanned and worked herself, but it was too heavy to sleep under, except on the coldest nights. A nice blue blanket would be a comfort on days when the wind blew sleet or fine snow through the camp.

  Pomp knew his aunt didn’t particularly like seeing him—his father claimed she had never liked seeing much of anyone; she was often rude to guests and, besides that, was slipshod about her chores. Now her face was as wrinkled as a dried apple and she rarely had two words to say, unless they were words of complaint. Also, she was greedy—the last words she spoke to Pomp, as he got up to leave, were to hurry up and bring her the new blanket he had promised. Minataree braves were in and out of the post—any one of them would have been glad to bring her the blanket if Pomp asked them to, but that wouldn’t do, either. Otter Woman didn’t trust the Minatarees, even though she lived with them. She felt her nephew should hurry up and make the delivery, although she still resented the fact that his mother had been so clever about getting her way with men.

  “Bring it today, and don’t lose it, either,” she warned.

  “Why would I lose a blanket?” Pomp asked, a little taken aback by his aunt’s stridency.

  “Your father was a big gambler, he was always losing everything,” Otter Woman said. “It’s going to be cold tonight and I’m tired of this old blanket the mice have nibbled.”

  Pomp was almost back to the stockade when the very thing Weedy Boy predicted happened right before his eyes. From just inside the stockade, war cries suddenly rent the morning silence. A musket went off, and there was the snarling of dogs, the neighing of a frightened horse, another gunshot, and loud sounds of battle. Pomp raced in, expecting to see a party of besieged mountain men under attack, but in fact not a mountain man was to be seen—only the painter George Catlin, cowering under his easel, his paints spilled everywhere, as six or seven Minataree braves chopped and stabbed at as many Assiniboines. One man, an Assiniboine, had already fallen; a stout Mi-nataree was just taking his scalp. One horse, a bay, had taken an arrow in the neck, its split vein spewing blood over the nearest combatants, as if they stood under a fountain. As Pomp watched, an Assiniboine boy no older than twelve picked up the fallen warrior’s musket and shot a Minataree right in the stomach, blowing the man backward. The man screamed so loudly that combat froze, allowing Pomp to rush in and drag George Catlin out of the fray.

  The man whose portrait he had been working on, a vividly painted Piegan, stood calmly over by the posts of the stockade, evidently not much interested in the sudden conflict between Assiniboine and Minataree.

  “Thank God you came, Pomp, I thought I was lost,” George Catlin said in a shaky voice. “Hadn’t we better get inside, before they start up again?”

  “I don’t know what it was about, but I think it’s over—for now, anyway,” Pomp said. Indeed, the two bands had stepped back from each other, though they still brandished hatchets and knives. The wounded horse continued to bleed, and the skinny dogs to snarl. Two men lay dead, but the urge to fight seemed to have left the warriors as rapidly as it had come. Both groups retreated warily. An Assiniboine went to the wounded horse, jerked the arrow out, and stuffed a rag into the wound. The dead warriors were picked up; no more threats were made. A retreat took place, by silent and mutual consent.

  The Piegan who was waiting to have his portrait painted suddenly voiced a raucous curse.

  “Better get your paints, Mr. Catlin,” Pomp said. “It’s safe now, but that customer of yours doesn’t look like a patient man.”

  “None of them are patient—they all rush me,” George Catlin said, before picking up his scattered paints and motioning the Piegan to stand in front of his easel again.

  5

  “Boys, do you see an angel over there?”

  HUGH Glass got so drunk that he began to have visions of heaven—he looked up and saw an angel making sweet music over by the English table. She was tall and fair, this angel, with long auburn hair hanging down her back; the sweet music came from a big instrument, rather like a swollen fiddle. Hugh Glass watched, entranced; it was warm in heaven, and there was plenty of grog, as there should be.

  Drum Stewart had persuaded Vicky Kennet to bring out her cello and favor them with a little Haydn, a development which vexed Lord Berrybender considerably. He was impatient for bed, and perhaps a spot of copulation just beforehand; but he held his tongue for once, mainly because he was still convinced that the Scotsman had a few bottles of claret tucked away somewhere; he didn’t want to offend the man until the question was firmly settled.

  “Boys, do you see an angel over there?” Hugh asked the company, some of whom were nearly as drunk as himself.

  “
What would an angel be doing up here on the Yellowstone, in the dead of winter?” Eulalie Bonneville wondered.

  “Why, playing the harp, I guess—ain’t that a sort of harp she’s got?” Hugh inquired.

  “That’s no angel, that’s an Englishwoman,” Tom Fitzpatrick informed him. “I expect she’s the old lord’s whore.”

  Hugh looked at the Englishwoman again, his head lolling slightly to one side. Now it seemed to him that he saw two female angels—one slid out of the other and then slid back in again, as his vision wavered.

  “No, it’s an angel—maybe two,” Hugh declared. “The reason you can’t see ’em is because none of you have been dead. I’m the only man here that’s been dead.”

  This claim made Jim Bridger indignant.

  “Dern, Hugh—you come bustin’ in here and tried to strangle me because you claimed me and Tom left you for dead when you was alive all the while.”

  “Jim’s right, Hugh—which was it?” Tom Fitzpatrick said, with a smile—he was well aware that Hugh Glass was far too drunk to make good sense. He was so drunk he was even seeing double. He himself, while on a carouse near the Tongue River, had once shot at a careless elk and missed entirely because he had shot at the double and not the real animal.

  “You were right, boys! Here I’ve been hot after you for months when at the time you left me I was dead,” Hugh declared, more humbly. “I was floating up to heaven, only an angel with feathers like a prairie chicken came and lowered me back to earth.”

  Jim Bridger and Kit Carson—the only trappers who weren’t drunk—looked at each other in amazement. Why would Hugh make up such a wild lie? After all his hot accusations about being deserted, now he was trying to claim he had been dead after all.

  “No, you’re off, Hugh—angels don’t have wings like prairie chickens,” Joe Walker said. “Prairie chickens can hardly fly at all—angels have wings like them big white swans.”

  “Who’s seen one, you or me, Joe?” Hugh said, his temper flaring.

  “I agree with Joe,” Bill Sublette said. “There’s plenty of books with pictures of angels in them, and they all have them big white wings, like swans.”

  “Yes, and the damn fools that drew the pictures had probably never been killed by a grizzly bear, like I was,” Hugh protested.

  “You’re a mouthy old fool, Hugh,” Jim Bridger said—he was getting hotter at the thought of the injustice of the old man’s claim.

  “Don’t bait me now, Jimmy,” Hugh said threateningly. “It ain’t easy to remember being dead. I’d forgotten it until I seen that angel over at the English table, playing that big fiddle.”

  “If you were dead why didn’t you stay dead, like most people do?” Milt Sublette said, a little spooked. If old Hugh had been dead, then maybe they were all talking to a ghost.

  “Heaven didn’t want me, I guess—nor the other place either—so that prairie chicken angel just lowered me back down, and that’s when I started my crawl,” Hugh said. He sensed a rather uneasy skepticism among his listeners, one of whom, little Mary Berrybender, had just joined the crowd.

  “Oh, Mr. Glass, that’s transubstantiation you’re referring to,” Mary said. “Few among us have been granted such an interesting experience.”

  Mary’s long word stopped the conversation dead.

  “Young miss, could you say that again?” Eulalie requested. “I reckon that’s the longest word any of us has ever heard spoke.”

  “Transubstantiation,” Mary repeated. “The soul departs the body, but decides to return. Only the very holy experience it.”

  “That leaves Hugh out, then,” the Broken Hand said. “I doubt he’s got a holy bone in his dern old body.”

  “Point of order, Mary—point of order!” Bobbety cried out. “Many Hindus experience transubstantiation on a regular basis.”

  Both Sublettes looked pale, took their guns, and prepared to leave.

  “If you’re a ghost, then, Hugh, I believe I’d rather sleep outside,” Bill Sublette declared.

  “Now, Bill, there’s no need to worry—I’ve settled back into myself now,” Hugh assured him—though in a slurred voice. He saw that everyone was looking at him strangely. The room seemed to be rocking slightly. The English angel had put away her big fiddle and was leaving the company, with the old one-legged lord stumping along behind her on his crutches. Hugh was hoping to see the auburn-haired angel fly up toward the ceiling, where the parrot was—instead, after a moment, his head hit the table.

  “Hugh didn’t see no angel—the liquor got him,” Tom concluded. “In my own opinion, a man that’s dead stays dead.”

  “Exceptions do exist, Mr. Fitzpatrick,” Mary said politely. “There’s Lazarus, for one—gospel of John, chapter eleven, verse seventeen.”

  All the trappers had been staring at Hugh Glass— now they turned and began staring at Mary, whose face wore an unearthly but—in Kit Carson’s opinion—very unholy expression.

  “Things are sure changing around this trading post,” Kit Carson said, in bemusement, when Mary had gone back to the English table.

  None of the trappers disagreed.

  6

  … a hand went immediately and accurately under her gown…

  “DAMN it, a most unsatisfactory copulation,” Lord Berrybender complained. “Came off before I even got inside. We mustn’t let this get to be a habit, Vicky.”

  Venetia Kennet kept silent. What was there to say? Lord Berrybender’s effusions, though copious, were mostly now premature, one inconvenience of which was that the sheets were permanently sticky, a fact the laundress, Millicent, could hardly fail to notice.

  “Do try your bow, just a bit,” Lord B. requested. “Accustomed to far lengthier pleasures, as you know. Don’t relish these goddamn foreshortenings.”

  Vicky tried her bow—tried and tried; she could have managed a concerto in less time. In this instance, though, flaccidity prevailed. Much tickling of His Lordship’s balls only produced a slight lumpiness—nothing that was likely to result in penetration.

  “Effect of that whiskey, I’m sure,” Lord B. said. “Never spunked in such a hurry when I was well primed with good red claret. I’ll just sleep a bit now, I suppose—expect we can go at it well enough first thing in the morning.”

  Finding no water in the basin—it would never have stood empty had Mademoiselle Pellenc still been in charge of the rooms—Vicky pulled on a flannel robe and stepped into the corridor, meaning to refill the basin from little Mary’s room, which was just next door. But she had scarcely put her foot out the door when lips found hers, lips with a stiff red beard below them—and a hand went immediately and accurately under her gown, while another squeezed a breast.

  “Chilly here, Miss Kennet—my room’s not far,” Drum Steward whispered, his hand still squeezing and probing.

  “I imagine old Albany takes a bit of pumping these days, as drunk as he gets,” the Scot suggested.

  “Oh yes, pump pump, that’s all I do, sir,” Vicky Kennet agreed.

  7

  Jim’s slap came quick as a snake’s strike…

  GOD damn this weather—now I’m stuck!” Tasmin said, without thinking. Jim’s slap came quick as a snake’s strike, before she could even close her lips; one of them split slightly, a dribble of blood ran down her chin, but Tasmin was too stunned even to dab at it. She had just been leaving for the post when the wind rose to a howl and snow began to swirl around their tent, blotting out the river and, indeed, the world. The trading post, only a mile away, might have been a hundred—in such a whiteout she could never find her way to it. This was vexing; Cook had been going to make her a kind of porridge bath, thought to be beneficial to women in her condition. Angry at having to miss her porridge bath, she had let slip a casual curse and been slapped for it.

  And yet, only the moment before, they had been happy; they had been singing, in fact. Jim had a fine tenor voice. Tasmin was teaching him “Barbara Allen” and one or two other old ballads. Song one minute and then
the slap, harder even than the first one she had received, for transgressing his powerful but, to Tasmin, mysterious religious beliefs.

  Tasmin sat stock-still, her eyes wide, staring. Through the flap of the tent she could see only white—the snow enclosed them like a cocoon. The night before, when they were amid their robes, being a wife, wanted, seemed a fine thing; but in the howling blizzard, being a wife slapped was a very different article. Jim Snow watched her with the flinty eyes of the Sin Killer—Tasmin had the sense that if she misspoke he would at once strike her again. With many men— even some stronger than herself—her fighting nature might have caused her to fling herself into battle—but not with Jim Snow, the stranger with whom she was mated. If she deliberately provoked him she could not guess where it would end. She sat, staring, leaking a tear or two of embarrassment and shock, struggling to regain her composure.

  “You ain’t to cuss—you’ve been told,” Jim said, gently wiping the blood off Tasmin’s lip with a finger.

  Tasmin, still struggling with her emotions, didn’t speak. She didn’t yet dare. Her bosom heaved; she held back tears—were it not for the blizzard she would have immediately run out of the tent, but now she feared to. If she ran into the whiteness, would her husband find her? Would anyone?

  After a bit she calmed and reached into her bag for a tiny mirror. Her lower lip was puffy, but the bleeding had stopped.

  “You ain’t to cuss—you was told,” Jim said again.

  “I’m a mere human being, Jim,” Tasmin said unsteadily. “Like most humans, when I’m frustrated I sometimes slip and utter words I shouldn’t say. Your friends the trappers curse constantly and rather colorfully. I myself was brought up in a family that cursed a great deal—it’s only natural that, now and then, a bad word escapes me.”

  “There’s vanity in you too,” Jim said, ignoring her comment about the trappers.