Sin Killer

by Larry McMurtry

  Lord Berrybender ignored her. He was staring at Venetia Kennet’s shorn head.

  “My God, Vicky, where’s your hair?” he asked. “Did a red Indian scalp you?”

  “No one scalped her—I cut it,” Tasmin told him. “It’s that much less she’ll have to carry on our long walk.”

  “But I liked your hair,” Lord B. said, with a look of distress. “You used to tickle me with it—it was one of our pleasant games.”

  Vicky didn’t answer. The old brute had ruined her, ravished her, gotten her with child, and then abandoned her for a fat laundress. Now, no doubt, he meant to mock her for having cut her hair.

  “Oh, I see—perhaps Tasmin was right to cut it,” the old man said, hobbling over for a closer look. “I never noticed those pert ears—they were always covered up. Surprised you could even hear your own chords.”

  “I heard them quite well, thank you,” Vicky said— she recognized all too well the rather husky tone that had come into His Lordship’s voice. Husky compliments were sure to be followed by fondlings and gropings.

  Milly recognized the lustful tone as well—though she stood only a yard from Lord Berrybender, it seemed he had quite forgotten her. Thanks to a haircut, he was intending to grab the prissy Vicky again. It would be back to the tubs for her.

  “I’ll be going now, Your Lordship—my little one needs me,” Vicky said, turning quickly away.

  “But wait, my girl!” he said. “Just wait till I get my crutch—damn peg leg doesn’t fit right, Mr. Fitzpatrick will have to whittle on it some more.”

  Vicky Kennet didn’t wait, didn’t turn, didn’t slow.

  “What’s wrong with that girl? She might just have waited a moment,” Lord Berrybender said, frowning. “Always liked Vicky—talented in more ways than one.”

  “She no longer wants you, Father—if she ever wanted you,” Tasmin said coolly. “I think that’s plain.”

  “Oh, nonsense—of course she wants me!” Lord B. exclaimed. “Many a fine tussle Vicky and I have had. Why wouldn’t she want me, I’d like to know?”

  “Because you’re a disgusting, selfish, one-legged old brute,” Tasmin told him. “I see you slapped Millicent—and no doubt you’ll slap her again.”

  “Slap any woman I want to, I guess, starting with you, you whore of Satan!” His Lordship thundered. He advanced on Tasmin, hand upraised, but before he could strike, Tasmin grabbed the axe and held it high.

  “Slap me and I’ll cut off your arm, or whatever appendage I can reach!” she warned him. “Like to lose an arm, to balance off the leg?”

  “Grab her, men, she’s daft!” Lord B. said. “Childbirth has addled her!” He looked at Kit and Tom, but neither man moved or spoke.

  Toussaint Charbonneau sauntered slowly over, meaning to inspect the ruins of the buggy.

  “It’s a good thing old Claricia’s gone,” he remarked. “He was mighty fond of that buggy.”

  Just then Jim Snow stepped back into the stockade. He had been checking around a little, thinking it might be just like the Blackfeet to return and launch a sneak attack.

  The old parrot, who sometimes liked to follow Jim around, flapped back too, and settled on the ruins of the buggy.

  “There, sir—a timely arrival, I must say,” Lord Berrybender said. “Do oblige me and take your wife in hand—saucy wench that she is, she seems to have found it necessary to threaten her own father with an axe.”

  “What fool chopped up the buggy?” Jim asked, glaring at Kit Carson.

  “Not me,” Kit said at once.

  “You see how my nose is swollen?” Lord B. asked. “A hornet bit me—put me rather in a temper. I’m afraid I took it out on the buggy—inferior vehicle in any case. Never could get comfortable in it.”

  “Be careful with that axe,” Jim said to Tasmin. It was a tool he knew her to be inexpert with, from having tried to teach her to chop firewood.

  “I am being careful with it—do you see any blood, Jim?” she asked. “It is merely that Father intends to pester Vicky, and I won’t have it. Vicky must not be agitated—it could well affect her milk.”

  Tasmin lowered the axe. Lord Berrybender looked sulky, but he made no move to follow Vicky.

  Tasmin had hoped for a moment that Jim would take her side and pummel her father, but she soon saw that he meant to take no side. He strode over to Kit and Tom and asked them why they had stood by meekly while a perfectly good buggy was being chopped up.

  “It’s his buggy!” Kit pointed out, a little annoyed. In his view Jim Snow was far too hard to please.

  “Most of us will be walking, it looks like,” Jim said. “Let’s try and get an early start.”

  36

  Sticking to them close as a tick …

  JIM could not sleep in the close, stuffy trading post, so Tasmin gathered up their son and a bit of bedding and walked with him about half a mile on the prairies for a night under the stars, which were as brilliant as they had been on her first evening in the West.

  Sticking to them close as a tick was Little Onion. The girl, Tasmin realized, wasn’t following them out of any impulse toward rivalry, or in order to usurp their privacy. She came because she thought it was her duty to stay near the baby, and, of course, to be available in case Jim Snow, her husband, had some chore he needed her to do. For a time Monty fretted and squirmed, alternately wanting the breast and then not wanting it. Weary, Tasmin let Little Onion take him—she walked him and soothed him until he was quiet, though from time to time throughout the short night, Monty woke and wailed briefly again.

  “What’s wrong with him? Indian babies don’t cry like that,” Jim insisted.

  “Oh, Jimmy—of course they do,” Tasmin said. “All babies cry sometimes. Monty’s not used to sleeping out.”

  “He best get used to it—we’ll be sleeping out till the snows come,” Jim said.

  “Do you wish you could just be rid of us—we’re all such nuisances?” Tasmin asked. She knew it was the kind of question Jim didn’t know how to answer, but she asked anyway. It was clear that the presence of two wives and a baby left him anything but happy. She knew she probably should keep quiet at such a time, but keeping quiet was not her way. She had mated with this man—surely it was not wrong to try and understand what he felt.

  “I led you to this place—I guess it’s my job to lead you out,” Jim said. Why would Tasmin keep asking questions that had no good answers?

  “That’s what I feared,” Tasmin said. “We’re just a burden to you, all of us: Monty and I and Little Onion too. You don’t want her any more than you want me.”

  “Less,” Jim admitted. “I just married her because her sister asked me to … and now her sister’s dead.”

  “That’s hardly fair to Little Onion,” Tasmin continued. “She’s a very proper girl, and pretty in her way. She must find it very sad to have been given to a husband who doesn’t want her.”

  “That’s silly thinking,” Jim answered. “They were going to give her to an old man who would have spent half his time beating her. I’ve never hit her once— she’s better off with us.”

  Tasmin liked it that he said “us.”

  “Unlucky me,” she said. “You’ve slapped me twice and punched me once. Did you ever hit her sister … the one who died?”

  Jim could not remember that he had. Sun Girl had been an excellent wife—she rarely spoke and never provoked him.

  “No, she knew how to behave,” he said, being honest. “So does Little Onion, mostly.”

  “I see … and I quite clearly don’t know how to behave,” Tasmin said. “It’s certainly odd that you accepted me as your wife, considering how worthless I must seem.”

  “I had to, so we could rut,” Jim said simply. “Rutting’s a big sin unless you’re married.”

  “Well, at least you’re frank,” Tasmin said. “What about Little Onion—you just have to explain a few things to me. I’ve never been in a bigamous situation before.”

  “What?” he aske
d. “What kind of situation?”

  “Bigamous—one of two wives,” she replied. “When it’s time to rut again will you be rutting with us both—or how will it work?”

  “She’s not much for rutting—too young,” he assured her.

  “Even so, she has a woman’s heart and she’s given it to our son if not to you,” Tasmin pointed out. “If you and I do a great deal of rutting, as I suspect we might, and you do none with Little Onion, it’s likely that she will soon be feeling left out. I know I would, if it were the other way around.”

  “We don’t need to be talking about things like this,” Jim said.

  “You obviously don’t, but I do,” Tasmin said. “You left me alone for a long time when I was feeling very married to you. In your absence my married feeling went away, but now it’s coming back. I feel married to you again. But there sits Little Onion, singing to our son, and she feels married to you too.”

  Jim made no response—he was staring into the dark distance.

  “I suppose I just want to know that you have some kind of married feeling too,” she went on. “That you still want me, in other words.”

  “It’s a far place to aim for, Santa Fe,” he said finally.

  Tasmin sighed.

  “All right, I give up,” she said. “There’s just no answers in you. I suppose it’s just that I ask the wrong questions.”

  Then she got up, went over, sat down by Little Onion, and sang to Monty too.

  37

  The stars sent down a kind of fairy light.

  IN the night, while Jim, Little Onion, and Monty all slept, Tasmin awoke, stood up, and walked away a few steps, to relieve herself. The stars sent down a kind of fairy light. While she was squatting a skunk waddled by, passing Tasmin without alarm. She saw the white blaze of the skunk’s tail move off into the grass.

  For a time she had been too angry to sleep— angry at Jim for his refusal to address her concerns— they were concerns that seemed to be important for her future. But anger was followed by resignation: what was the use of even talking to the man? His intentions were not cruel, particularly, but his way of living had been so different from hers that they had little common experience from which to frame a discussion. The old patterns of English life—a life still being led by her own family—left many avenues for adjustment. Much was allowed, including frank discussion of what was or was not allowed. Conflicts there might be, but breakfast, lunch, tea, dinner followed inevitably. Tasmin could not be sure that her parents, Lord and Lady Berrybender, had ever been especially close, yet they had produced fourteen children while leading lives that were, in the main, separate. They met at table, at cards, to procreate; conditions of life were very orderly. Despite Lord Berrybender’s bluster, extremes of emotion were rarely attained.

  But her mate, Jim Snow, knew nothing at all of social pattern—how could he? Survival seemed to be his principal goal—he was not even interested in making money, as the other mountain men were. On his terms he was successful: he had survived where many another man would have fallen. Only the day before, with her own eyes, she had seen him come within an inch of death from the Blackfoot arrows. More than that, she had seen him, in effect, kill a man—that the man hadn’t died immediately was only due to some fluke of anatomy. Jim admitted that he had been lucky—surprise had made the warrior drop his lance, otherwise Jim might have been the one speared. The conflict, though brief, had involved life and death. Death in battle—a thing several of her noble ancestors faced—had been a likelihood for all of them. Only by the accident of the warrior’s survival had a pitched battle been avoided; the defenders might have been overwhelmed, and she and her sisters taken into captivity or killed, with dire consequences for Monty, Coal’s baby, and Vicky’s.

  Finished, Tasmin sat for a while in the rippling grass. Her anger at Jim subsided. With life or death in the balance, as it had been on many days of Jim’s life, why would she expect him to worry about the kind of concerns she had expressed? Mating with Little Onion would be the last thing on his mind. Tasmin had been drawn to Jim in the first place because of the foppish English suitors she had rejected at home. They were men so positioned as to think only of their pleasure. Jim Snow was not indifferent to pleasure—Tasmin was wife enough to know that—but it was not unnatural that he should think mainly of danger, when there was such a lot of it around. What might happen conjugally if she and Little Onion and Monty were all in a tent together was a problem he had so far not even considered, and if he did focus his mind on it, he might be the one surprised the next time he faced a warrior with a spear.

  Subdued by such considerations, Tasmin went back to where Jim rested on his blanket—Monty had begun to emit a few little mouse squeaks, meaning he was hungry, so Tasmin took him from Little Onion and sat down cross-legged and fed him. Her milk flowed easily, but her thoughts were not so easy. What of the little boy at her breast, a child they had made in reckless pleasure? What did she want him to be—an English gentleman, or a hardy frontiersman? This too was something she would be unlikely to get Jim to talk about. How could he? Excepting her own monstrously selfish father, he had never seen an English gentleman. The frontier had been his only school. He was anxious to read better, in order to comprehend more of the Bible, but how would he react if she suggested that Monty needed to make a beginning with Latin and Greek? What did she think about such an issue herself? She had always been an eager learner, and had resented having to more or less steal Greek lessons from her hapless brother’s tutor. She wanted Latin and Greek, but did she want them for her son, a boy conceived on a blanket spread on the prairie grass, while buffalo roared in the distance and hawks soared high above? What did she want for Monty: the English life with its order and pattern, or the frontier life with its vast beauty and frequent danger? Of course, Monty had only just been born, there was time to consider many possibilities, but it would need to be thought about soon enough, and she was the one who would have to do the thinking. Jim Snow would be busy enough just keeping them alive.

  Tasmin wished for Pomp—she could have talked it all through with him. After all, Pomp knew both worlds. He had admired an Italian princess, dead on the Brenner Pass. He had been to plays and operas, and studied philosophy and science—his tutor, Pomp told her, had been a student of the great Kant himself, of whose profound speculations Tasmin had not the slightest notion. Pomp had been given by the generous Prince Paul of Württemberg, who adopted him, every benefit, everything Europe could offer—except, of course, noble birth; and yet he had come back and submitted himself to the spartan rigors of the American frontier. No one else of Tasmin’s acquaintance had mastered both lives, both ways. Surely her sweet Pomp would give her good advice—so anxious was Tasmin to have it that she felt impatient for the morning, when, if there were no unexpected delays, they would start south, where Pomp and his patron might be found.

  “Where’d you go?” Jim whispered, when Monty had been returned to Little Onion and Tasmin had returned to the blanket where he lay.

  “Just to make water,” she said.

  “Lay back, while it’s still dark,” Jim said, still whispering.

  Puzzled at first, Tasmin then realized that Jim didn’t want Little Onion to hear him, though she would not have understood his words.

  Obediently, since she felt she had taxed her husband enough for one night with her questioning, she lay down beside him and was startled, when, at once, his hand began stroking her, in the place that had recently made her a mother. Months had passed since Jim had caressed her so—Tasmin was startled—the last thing she had expected to receive from her husband that night was such a caress. For a moment she was nervous—almost resentful. How dare the man be so familiar! Nearby, Monty squeaked, and then quieted, as Little Onion walked him. Slowly, under the stroking of Jim’s hand, Tasmin relaxed, forgot Little Onion, forgot the baby. Never passive, she turned and reached her hand inside Jim’s leggings, so as to grasp her husband. And yet she was doubtful: Cook had advised
her not to rush conjugal relations.

  “You’ll need just a bit of healing—a month I’d allow, if I were you,” Cook had advised—the words had been meaningless at the time, when Tasmin had not even been sure she would ever see her husband again. They were not so meaningless now. Jim’s hand worked, Tasmin sighed. Little Onion heard, but didn’t care. She was happy to avoid men, when they were in that mood. The tiny male in her arms now was her dearest love, and he, in his squirmings, gave her plenty to do.

  38

  “You garlic fool, you should have kept it sharp.”

  “IF the English don’t leave today I think we should go back anyway,” Aldo Claricia suggested. “I’m hungry—I need to eat. Boisdeffre would give us food.”

  “Surely they’ll leave today,” Pedro Yanez said. “Lord Berrybender might shoot us, if he sees us.”

  The two of them were holed up in a kind of excavation they had made for themselves, under the west bank of the Missouri River. Their excavation, a tiny cave, was hidden from prying eyes by a thicket of briars and berry bushes. They had been huddled there for four days, expecting, every minute, that the English party would depart. After all, the plains to the south were covered with game—surely Lord Berrybender would not ignore such good hunting.

  Their own plans to follow the swiftly flowing Yellowstone south had stalled after only three days because of the lack of adequate knives. Though, when they left the hunting party, they had made off with the fine Belgian rifle that had belonged to Old Gorska, the Polish hunter, and had plenty of powder and shot, they had been negligent in the matter of knives. When, on the second day out, Pedro had brought down a fat doe, they discovered that they had only one small knife between them—a pocketknife that Aldo used mainly for whittling sticks into toothpicks.

  This pocketknife, though a fine instrument for making toothpicks, proved wholly inadequate when it came to slicking up a fat Western deer.