Sin Killer

by Larry McMurtry

  When Blue Thunder decided to leave the steamer and enjoy a nice walk home in the crisp winter weather, he took a sack of the white man’s excellent axes, and a pouch full of good snares. To the expert snare maker the big boat had been a treasure house, with strings and ribbons and small ropes and other cordage available for the taking. Blue Thunder took plenty, and in fact spent the last week of his stay with the whites making a good assortment of snares. He meant to take his old grandfather’s advice and live off small game and tender birds. He didn’t really expect to have to defend himself on his walk—the great bears would be sleeping in their dens, and if he should run into some warrior who was in a mood to fight, he had his sack full of axes.

  Walking away from the noisy boat into the quiet of the snowy country brought Blue Thunder immediate relief. Putting up with the loud Hairy Horn, and the even louder company of whites, had severely taxed his patience. Very likely Sharbo, the old interpreter whose care he was supposed to be in, would try to catch up with him and attempt to persuade him to come back, but Blue Thunder left at night, so as to get a good jump on the old man. Since Sharbo would probably look for him to go west, he angled north into Canada. Almost at once a blizzard blew in, a good thing from Blue Thunder’s point of view. In such weather Sharbo wouldn’t pursue him far. In a day the blizzard blew out and the sun shone once more on the plains.

  Blue Thunder meant to take his time and have a nice, leisurely trip back to the land of the Piegans. One thing he had agreed with Big White, the Mandan, about, was that going back to one’s people after a long absence was a very uncertain thing. Younger leaders would have had time to emerge, chiefs and proud warriors who would not be especially happy to see him return. He had left three wives at home, but any number of things could have happened to reduce that number in the years that he had been gone. He might have a child or two whom he had never seen—but, on the other hand, he might return to discover that he had neither new sons nor old wives. None of his wives had possessed much patience—they might have divorced him by now and taken other husbands. Or they might have died, been killed in raids, been captured. He would have to wait to find out all that until he got back to his old band.

  In any case it was good to be once more in the spacious, beautiful northland, where the air was cold, and free of all the taints that air took on in the white man’s cities, or on their boats. At his first camp he immediately snared two hares—enough for a meal. He saw a porcupine ambling by in the snow but he was not in the mood for oily porcupine meat, so he let the creature go.

  In four weeks, moving slowly, enjoying his privacy, Blue Thunder arrived at the edge of his home country. Far away—perhaps fifty miles farther—he could see the faint outlines of some humpy mountains; much of his life had been lived in sight of those humpy little hills. Now he saw them most plainly at dusk, when the light was not so bright on the thin snow—the hills became reddish, then purple, as the light faded.

  That night, although there was plenty of game around—the snow was crisscrossed with tracks— Blue Thunder made a fire but didn’t kill or cook anything. He thought he might do better to begin a fast. When he left the boat Blue Thunder assumed that he would go find his old band and resume the life he had once led—a life of raiding and hunting, of trying to advise his people about where to camp, or see that they gave themselves good opportunities for hunting.

  Now, though, that the hills of his boyhood and maturity were in sight, he felt uncertain. Usually a fast helped at such times of inner confusion. It cleared the head and the body and put a man in the mood to do some sharp thinking. But, on this occasion, fasting only made Blue Thunder feel more confused and uncertain. He had a feeling that going home might turn out badly. It made no sense that he should feel so pessimistic, and yet he did. Once he had been an effective and respected chief, which was why the president in Washington had asked him to come for a visit. But when he had agreed to accept the president’s invitation he had no idea that he was setting out on a journey that would cover so much of the world. Sharbo had explained to him that Washington was far, far away, but everyone knew that Sharbo exaggerated. Discovering that, this time, Sharbo hadn’t exaggerated came as a bad shock. Even after descending the one great river and ascending another for many days Washington had still been far away.

  Now Blue Thunder was discovering what he should have been smart enough to figure out to begin with: that leaving one’s destined country was not a wise thing to do. But he had gone—and now coming back was hard. Even if his people welcomed him and encouraged him to sit once more with the councils of the tribe, there was something even deeper that would need to be put right, if it could be.

  People, of course, were restless—they were always coming and going—his whole band moved according to the needs of the hunt. But the land itself—the country itself—the land, the hills, the streams, the grasses—didn’t go anywhere. It was always there, faithful to its children as long as they respected the earth, the animals, the seasons.

  Intolerant of criticism, disdainful of most human opinion, Blue Thunder nonetheless felt that in this instance he had committed a disloyalty, not to his people, but to his place itself. He had been given certain responsibilities in relation to his place; he had been meant to live and die in uninterrupted contact with his own part of the earth, the prairies that surrounded those stumpy hills.

  Many chiefs, of course, had been to see the president—Blue Thunder had foolishly let Sharbo persuade him that it was his duty to go also. He hadn’t liked the whites, or their boats, or their cities, but what he had learned about them was sobering. For one thing, they were a huge tribe, as numerous as ants or lice, and, besides that, they possessed magic so strong that it was uncomfortable to be around.

  One afternoon he and the Hairy Horn and Big White had been taken to a huge tent, where they had seen magic so powerful that it stunned all three of them. There was a man who swallowed fire. The same man could stick a great sword down his throat and yet not be cut. There were bears in the tent who danced to drums and whistles, and people who swung high in the air like birds, always catching themselves on short swinging branches. Most frightening of all, however, was a great beast out of time— it was called an elephant—a small brown man rode on its head and controlled it. The great beast had a nose many feet long that it could curl up if it wanted to lift its small rider down. Also, the beast had white tusks of great length. When the Hairy Horn saw it he wanted to leave at once. He thought it likely that the elephant would soon go berserk and trample all the people in the tent. Sharbo chuckled at their fears—he assured them that the great beast was really tame, and also very old—older than any living man.

  Later, when the three chiefs were on their way back down the Ohio River, they had spent much time discussing the elephant. The Hairy Horn maintained that far to the west, in the hills sacred to the Sioux people, there were drawings on rocks which showed just such a beast. He had not seen them himself, but the medicine men knew they were there. His own brother, the Partezon, had seen the drawings, but of course the Partezon had not gone to Washington and so had not seen the living elephant. When the likeness maker Catlin heard about the drawings he became very excited and wanted to go there at once. Sharbo had had to point out to him that the Partezon was very hard on white people caught in the Sioux country, and even harder on anyone, white or Indian, caught in the Holy Hills. The likeness maker, being foolish in such matters, might have gone anyway had it not been for the approaching cold.

  Now that he was almost home, Blue Thunder felt that all the knowledge he had gained on his journey— knowledge that some whites could swallow fire, others fly like birds—sat heavily on him. If he had stayed in his native country he would not have known of such things, or of the elephant, the beast from out of time itself. In his own country, in his lifetime, he would not even have had to deal with many whites— only a few trappers, probably, or, now and then, a daring traveler. His sons would have to deal with whites, but he himself would
have been dead before whites came too close to the Piegans’ range.

  Until he went to Washington and saw the whites in their great ant heaps, he had supposed that they were merely a scattered tribe—any notion that they could ever mount a serious threat to the power of the Blackfeet would have seemed silly.

  But now, nearing the end of his journey, Blue Thunder was forced to admit that all his calculations about the whites had been wrong. The whites were much stronger than he or anyone in his tribe had supposed; they were coming west much more quickly and in much greater numbers than anyone would have imagined possible, even three summers ago. What Blue Thunder now knew was that the power of the Blackfeet was as nothing to the power of these whites, men who could make boats that moved without being rowed. They could make guns that could kill buffalo at distances no arrow could travel; they could even tame the elephant, greatest of beasts.

  The nearer Blue Thunder came to the valleys of home, the more heavily these thoughts oppressed him. What he knew was that the time of his people, the proud Blackfeet, was nearing its end. He didn’t intend, though, to tell this to the people of his band— not even to the elders. This weight, this boulder of knowledge, was something best carried alone. There was no point in disturbing the old ones, whose lives would end before they had to witness too much change.

  In three days more, traveling slowly, Blue Thunder saw the smoke of campfires ahead, with the stumpy mountains now not far away. Very likely the camp smoke was from the campfires of his own band. A little river, a clear, skinny stream, ran through this particular valley; his band often camped beside it.

  Blue Thunder had no intention of making a big show when he arrived home. Human beings always came and went—it was rude to to mark their reappearances with undue celebration. Blue Thunder intended just to walk in, greet an old friend or two, pay his respects to the elders, and go visit his wives, if he still had wives. When a man came back from a long journey it was better just to slip in quietly and not interrupt the important routines of tribal life.

  Having decided on this simple plan, Blue Thunder felt a little better—he could see several lodges ahead, and some frames where women were working skins. Life was going on for these Piegans as it always had, with no thought being given to steamboats or elephants or men who swallowed fire.

  It had been a long and complicated journey that he had made, but Blue Thunder gradually began to feel a little better. He had returned to where he belonged and could soon, he hoped, realign himself with the country he had deserted. He was west of the Yellowstone, a long way west, and with a little luck could enjoy some good years before the whites became a problem for his people.

  As he walked toward the village he made no attempt to conceal himself—he expected that, at any moment, some of the young warriors would spot him and come racing out with lances ready, to determine if he was friend or foe. Indeed, he was a little surprised that the young braves had not yet spotted him—such carelessness on their part was a little imprudent.

  But then he did see a horseman coming—but it was not a young warrior. The man coming toward him was old, wore a dirty cap of some kind, and rode an old, spavined, piebald horse, so ancient that it could barely stumble through the grass. To his horror Blue Thunder realized that the man coming toward him was his cousin Greasy Lake—the one person in the whole of the Western plains that he would have walked many miles out of his way to avoid. But there he was, Greasy Lake, appearing, as usual, just at the moment when he was least wanted. He was singing cheerfully, too, quite indifferent to the fact that the horse he rode was too old even to trot, or that the man he was coming to see had no desire to see him: for Greasy Lake had always been a man indestructible in his happiness, a man who wandered through massacres eating plums, serene and untouched, as better men were being hacked to death all around him. Some considered him a shaman or a prophet, others knew him merely to be a fool.

  Why me? Why is he here? Almost home and he has to show up, Blue Thunder thought, well aware that the moment Greasy Lake was in earshot he would begin to mooch.

  “You don’t have a spare coat in your camp, do you?” Greasy asked. He had not seen Blue Thunder in seven or eight years. It had been chilly the night before, but here came his cousin, who had been to see the president, who might have given him a coat or two. Blue Thunder carried a good-sized sack over his shoulder; perhaps the sack had a coat or two in it, one that his cousin could easily spare.

  “I don’t have a coat, and if I did I’d give it to your horse, not you,” Blue Thunder told him. “A horse that skinny needs a coat worse than you do—you should be ashamed of yourself for riding a horse that skinny.”

  “Oh, he’ll fatten up in the spring,” Greasy Lake replied. “In fact there’s plenty of good grass under the snow but my horse is too lazy to dig for it.”

  Greasy Lake remembered that Blue Thunder was always quick to change the subject when it came time to be generous with his family. He was carrying a sizable sack—if the sack contained no coat perhaps it at least contained some good knives or a few green beads.

  “What’s in that sack?” he asked. Sometimes just asking point-blank was the best way to make a stingy person part with a gift or two.

  “Axes,” Blue Thunder said, continuing his slow advance on the village.

  This was disappointing news from Greasy Lake’s point of view. On the other hand an axe was better than nothing. He might find a woman willing to slip into the bushes with him if he gave her a good axe.

  “I hope you’ll give me one, then,” he said. “All I have now is a wobbly hatchet with a loose handle. The head of my hatchet might fly off at any time.”

  “I’ll give you an axe, all right,” Blue Thunder told him, testily. “I’ll split you wide open with one if you don’t leave me alone.”

  In the end, though, he let Greasy Lake choose an axe—giving the old fool what he wanted was sometimes the best way to get rid of him. Naturally Greasy Lake took a long time making his choice—taking too long to choose was another of his irritating habits.

  “These are white men’s axes, they’re all exactly the same,” Blue Thunder told him, as Greasy Lake gave each axe a close going-over.

  “No two things are ever quite the same,” Greasy assured him. Like his horse he was piebald in color. Part of him was almost white, part brown, and part bronze.

  Blue Thunder was hoping someone from the village would spot them and hurry out to rescue him, but no one did. The day of his homecoming seemed to be passing pointlessly, as his cousin examined six identical axes. In the village some women were stretching a buffalo hide over a frame. He thought he saw one of his wives in the distance, but she went strolling off to the river without once looking his way.

  “This one is much the best, I’ll take it, thank you,” Greasy Lake said. The old horse’s legs sagged when Greasy mounted, carrying his new axe.

  “Do you live with these Piegans now?” Blue Thunder asked, wondering how long he would be expected to put up with the man.

  “Oh no, I don’t live anywhere, my horse and I prefer just to travel around,” Greasy Lake told him. “When it warms up a little I am going down to the Green River—some trappers are having a powwow there, later in the summer. There’ll be some rich traders there, I expect. If I’m lucky one of them might give me a good coat.”

  “That horse doesn’t want to travel,” Blue Thunder pointed out. “That horse would prefer to die.”

  Greasy Lake merely chuckled. The suggestion that his horse was played out just amused him. In any case Blue Thunder had never been a very good judge of horseflesh. The fact that his horse had a few ribs showing didn’t mean anything.

  “Didn’t that horse have a funny name?” Blue Thunder asked. It seemed to him Greasy Lake had ridden the same poor old horse all his life.

  “His name is Galahad,” Greasy Lake said. “It’s hard to say until you get the hang of it.”

  “That’s a terrible name,” Blue Thunder complained. “Why give a horse
a name that’s so hard to say?”

  “Oh, I didn’t name him, that Englishman named Thompson named him—he had that little trading post up on the Kootenai, remember? I think you and some boys burned that trading post down.”

  “We did burn it down—but just because a white man gave a horse a bad name doesn’t mean the animal has to have a bad name forever. You could have changed it.”

  Greasy Lake decided it was time to be going. He had a new axe, which might enable him to seduce a girl, an activity that would certainly be more enjoyable than talking to Blue Thunder—the man had never been easy to talk to. What was the point of arguing with somebody just because they didn’t like your horse’s name? In fact, Greasy Lake had little occasion ever to use the horse’s name—the horse could be given all the directions he needed without the name ever being uttered.

  “Do you know if any of my wives are alive?” Blue Thunder asked.

  “I don’t know a thing about your wives,” Greasy Lake confessed. “I haven’t been here long enough to get the gossip.”

  Then he whacked the old horse with the axe handle and went trotting off toward the camp.

  Blue Thunder watched the odd pair go. Being whacked with an axe handle seemed to have put a little life in the skinny old horse. He trotted for perhaps fifty yards and then slowed to a walk, his legs sagging with every step. For a time Greasy Lake and his horse traveled at such a slow pace that it didn’t seem as if they were moving at all—but eventually they reached the camp and disappeared.

  Blue Thunder himself felt very tired—throughout his life, just talking to his cousin Greasy Lake had the effect of making him tired. His band’s camp was right in front of him—a ten-minute walk would put him there—and yet a thing occurred which had often occurred when Blue Thunder talked to Greasy Lake: he lost track of the point of whatever he had been doing. His home village was right there, and yet, for a time, Blue Thunder could not remember why he had thought there was any point in going to it.