Sin Killer

by Larry McMurtry

  “These brats have all fouled themselves—I smell it!” she insisted. ‘And soon Buffum will be giving birth to a red brat who will do the same.”

  “Not too soon—she just got pregnant,” Tasmin replied. “You’re Monty’s aunt—you could take a hand in his upbringing, you know. It wouldn’t kill you to wipe a baby’s bottom.”

  Vicky Kennet, the new bride, seldom rode with them during the day—Lord B.’s besottedness had reached such a level that he required Vicky to accompany him on his daily hunts. Revived by the fine high air, His Lordship sometimes felt in the mood for a spot of copulation around lunchtime. He could not bear to be without the services of his bride.

  “Why is the pater so gross?” Mary asked, a question Tasmin made no attempt to answer. She was uncomfortably aware that, if she were allowed to indulge her natural inclinations, they might not be much less gross than her father’s. More than once Tasmin found herself wishing that Pomp would leave Jim Bridger with the company and take her on a scout. She could well have tolerated a spot of copulation around lunchtime herself.

  But no such notion occurred to Pomp, whose main concern, when he was in camp, seemed to be with his ailing father, who had been taken with the jaundice and was in consequence so wobbly on his feet that he too had to be allowed space in the wagon. Coal and Little Onion combined their skills and gathered herbs for yet more concoctions, which, though beneficial, did not cure the elder Charbonneau very quickly. After a long consultation with Pomp it was concluded that old Charbonneau would profit from sitting for a time in a sweat lodge, where the poisons could be sweated out of him. This required a half day’s break in the trekking—Tasmin hoped it might present her with an opportunity to get Pomp to herself for a bit. Old Hugh Glass not only helped build the sweat lodge but, once it was built, casually stripped off and insisted on participating.

  “I’ve a heap too much bile,” he announced. “When I lived with the Rees I was often refreshed by the sweats.” He at once crawled in with old Charbonneau.

  Unhappily for Tasmin they were stopped on an absolutely open plain, with no deep glades that might be suited for romantic interludes, which Pomp, to her fury, showed no sign of wanting anyway. He spent his time happily giving archery lessons to Jim Bridger, who desired to master the bow but, so far, was a long way from doing so.

  The night Tasmin seduced Pomp, Jim had not been mentioned—in fact Jim had never entered her thoughts. The moment was hers and Pomp’s; at the time she had hardly supposed it would be their only such moment, but now she was beginning to wonder. Was Pomp thinking of Jim—his friend, her husband? Was that what kept him away?

  When old Charbonneau and Hugh Glass emerged from the sweat lodge Mary Berrybender watched from the back of the wagon, where she was attending to her Piet.

  “How odd, Tassie,” she remarked. “Mr. Glass is very tall, yet his organ of generation is no longer than Piet’s. You would think it would be longer, since Piet himself is short.”

  “What are you talking about?” Tasmin asked. Her thoughts had been on Pomp—she had merely glanced at the two naked men.

  “You would think a man’s organ of generation would have some relation to his size, and yet it doesn’t seem to,” Mary said.

  “Don’t be so pompous—just call it a prick,” Tasmin advised. “I confess I take very little interest in this subject myself, and I can hardly see why a maiden such as yourself should be concerned with such matters.”

  Piet, still feverish, raised himself on an elbow and looked at the two old men.

  “We Dutch always manage to hold our own,” he muttered.

  Buffum, newly radiant, caught the drift of the discourse and smiled.

  “What are we talking about?” she asked, smiling.

  “The size of pricks, but I don’t want to hear you bragging about your Ute,” Tasmin said. “It’s obvious from your constant blushing that he’s not backward in the services of Venus. But the subject is on the whole a very tedious one.”

  “You’re just jealous,” Mary remarked, with a smirk. “You never expected Buffum and me to do better than you when it comes to lovers—and we have.”

  The fact that there was some truth in what her sister said left Tasmin feeling sullen, and not a little discouraged. Buffum had caught herself a very handsome boy and Mary had forged a companionable bond with her pudgy botanist—and what did she have to put against these conquests? A husband who was frequently gone and a lover who was hesitant, to put it politely. At least in Europe men were willing to do the seducing—had she not spent years fending off unwanted kisses, sudden lecheries and assaults? Yet here in America, women had to do most of the work of love. Jim Snow had soon come round, but only because she pressed him. She had done more than press Pomp and had expected a good deal more return for her effort than had so far been achieved. Now here were her sisters, preening themselves over their lovers, while she spent her days tending babies, driving wagons, and trying to keep her family and its ill-constituted retinue in reasonable marching order. Just when she felt capable of any wildness, there was no one who would even allow her to be wild with them. She was irritated with Jim for leaving and staying gone, angry with Pomp because, she suspected, he was either afraid of her or afraid of what he felt when he was with her. She was even annoyed with her personal whipping boy Kit Carson, who had casually drifted off just when she needed him most.

  “What is it, Tassie?” Mary asked, all alarmed at the look of anger she saw in Tasmin’s face.

  “I wish I was back in Europe, that’s what!” Tasmin said, with sudden vehemence.

  “But Europe’s very far away,” Mary reminded her. “I doubt we shall be returned there even within the year.”

  Tasmin doubted it too—and yet a sudden longing for London streets or green rural dales, with hedgerows and sheep, or mild cattle, was so overpowering that tears started in her eyes. The sight shocked both her sisters, and yet Tasmin couldn’t help it—a need for the familiar seized her. She jumped off the wagon and more or less pitched Monty to Buffum; both baby and aunt were shocked.

  “Here, get some practice, you’ll need it,” she said, and then went stumbling off, walking right past Hugh Glass and Toussaint Charbonneau, both of whom hastened to cover their nakedness. Tasmin, shaken by a homesickness the more powerful for being, in immediate terms, hopeless, just kept walking, heedless, into the empty prairies that lay between her and all that she desired: English order, English privilege, English intelligence , English lanes, even English clouds. The great prairie sky that had thrilled her so the first time she beheld it, on that first ecstatic moment on the banks of the Missouri, now seemed a brutal thing, a sky under which the worst barbarities were enacted—indeed, might yet be enacted on herself, her siblings, and her child unless they were lucky. She wanted to be again in a place where men saw themselves as lovers of women, rather than killers or trappers.

  Tasmin sobbed, dried her eyes, cried more, wet her cheeks, dried her cheeks, all the time walking farther and farther from camp. When no more tears came she slumped suddenly and sat down. It was only then that she noticed that she was completely alone in the seemingly endless world of grass. The camp was not in sight, and for a few minutes she was too tired to care. In the camp were many able trackers—someone would soon find her, though of course it was possible that hostiles might find her first. She remembered that her sister Buffum and their femme de chambre, Mademoiselle Pellenc—now married to a fur trader in Canada—had rushed off into the prairies in an effort to recover Prince Talleyrand, their mother’s old parrot, and had been caught and subjected to painful indignities before being ransomed.

  Perhaps she would be caught too, but if she couldn’t be back in England—a haven thousands of miles distant—she was not immediately sure that she particularly cared. The prairies seemed so empty, so desolate, that merely looking at them increased Tasmin’s deep homesickness; hopeless again, she put her head in her hands, feeling such darkness in her heart that she hardly knew what to d
o.

  Then Pomp was there, his approach, as usual, so quiet that she jumped when she opened her eyes and saw his legs.

  “Now where were you thinking of running off to?” he asked.

  “Why would you care?” she said, so angry that she was ready to bite, if challenged.

  “Because I saw some bear sign yesterday and it wasn’t Abby’s,” he told her. “It’s not safe to be running off when there’s grizzlies around.”

  “Perhaps not—on the other hand, I’m in the kind of mood that makes being eaten by a bear almost a welcome diversion,” she told him, unable to keep bitterness out of her voice.

  “I don’t suppose you’ve ever been in that sort of mood, have you, Pomp?” she asked, fixing him with a direct look.

  “Not me—the first thing my father and mother both warned me about was bears—I give bears all the room they want,” he said, more than a little confused by the antagonism he was getting from Tasmin.

  “It’s very natural that your parents would have warned you about the danger of bears,” she said. “What I wish is that they had taught you a bit more about the dangers of women.”

  Pomp shrugged.

  “Ma died when I was too little to need to know much,” he said. ‘And Pa’s only had Indian wives. He wouldn’t know what to say to a woman like you.”

  “Do you think there’s that much difference between an Indian woman and myself?” Tasmin asked him. “Mightn’t it be that at some level we want many of the same attentions?”

  “Don’t think so,” Pomp said. “Pa’s married to Coal now—I don’t think Coal’s like you.”

  “But she is, for those who have eyes to see,” Tasmin insisted. “I know Coal a little—I like her very much. And I would beg to argue that we’re more alike than you think.”

  Pomp didn’t reply—he was thinking.

  “Well, you both have babies,” he ventured.

  “That’s right—we both have babies, which occurred because we got men to desire us,” Tasmin said. “Coal wanted your father to want her—she persisted. I remember how happy she was when she conceived. She thought the swans were a factor—but desire was the main factor, and in exactly the same brute way, I want you to desire me. I thought you did, Pomp—but now I just don’t know. I love you—I confess it! I love you! What I don’t like is being in thrall to a man who doesn’t want me. It sours one, you know. I have a child to raise. I’d rather not be sour.”

  She reached up, took his hand, and pulled at him, meaning to lay him down as she had before, meaning to kiss him and make him want her. If she was going to have to do everything, then she would do everything! She was prepared to reach up and take him out of his pants, as she had done before, only then it had been in darkness. To grasp a man in daylight was a good deal bolder thing—and yet her hands were at his trousers, when she happened to glance up and noticed that Pomp was completely unaware of what she was about. Pomp was looking up into the sky, a very odd thing to do, in her opinion, when a woman was being as direct as she was being about her eagerness to make love. Even a near virgin, as Pomp was, must accept the fact of his own desire, once his desire was made manifest, a thing Tasmin felt sure she could accomplish.

  Then a shadow fell on them, caused, she supposed, by a small drifting cloud; but the startled look on Pomp’s face caused her to look higher, where, to her astonishment, she saw a balloon floating their way, a balloon, with three men in its basket, making a slow but steady descent toward the prairie.

  “Good Lord!” she exclaimed. “How did a balloon get way out here?”

  “I don’t know, but Kit’s in it,” Pomp said. “I don’t know who those other two gents are—but here comes a wagon too. Maybe there’s a circus traveling round.”

  “That’s nonsense—a circus?” Tasmin questioned. “Who would pay to see it?”

  Despite the shock of seeing a balloon descending near them, Tasmin’s first reaction was anger at Kit Carson. First he had left her without asking permission, just when she had stood in woeful need of him; then he remained absent for weeks; and now here he was, drifting down just in time to spoil her bold seduction attempt on Pomp Charbonneau. No man that she could think of had annoyed her in so many ways in such a short time.

  “Who would have thought Kit would ever get up the nerve to go flying around in a balloon?” Pomp asked.

  “I don’t know, but I can assure you he’ll be wishing he was back up in it before I get through with him!” Tasmin said.

  23

  The tall, thin one looked as if he might be a clerk . . .

  KIT CARSON, confident that he would be looked on as a conquering hero from the mere fact that he was arriving in a balloon, was mortified, when he stepped out of the basket, to be immediately seized by Tasmin Berrybender and given a violent shaking, followed by a tongue-lashing so severe and so unexpected that he could only blush with embarrassment. Tasmin too was red in the face but her color came from anger, and Kit’s from shock.

  “How dare you leave like that!” she said. “You should have spoken to me. How dare you dawdle around ballooning when I sorely needed your help?”

  “I wasn’t ballooning much—just today, mainly,” Kit said, in hasty defense. “Mostly I was helping Jimmy. Then we met these fellows who were looking for your father—and here we are.”

  Tasmin threw the two startled Europeans a hot glance. The tall, thin one looked as if he might be a clerk from Manchester; the fat one, in the red pants, was obviously French. She still held Kit by the arms, so as to give him a sharp shake when she felt like it. She saw that Pomp was watching with amazement, perhaps even repugnance, as she attacked Kit. Anger coursed through her body though she had hoped for pleasure; someone had to suffer for her disappointment, and that someone was Kit.

  “My husband, Jim Snow, is perhaps the most self-sufficient person on the planet,” she lectured her captive, through clenched teeth. “He didn’t need you—I needed you. Don’t you ever desert me like that again.”

  “Won’t,” Kit mumbled, crushed by the failure of his grand return. The day before, he had spotted Jim Bridger scouting alone; Kit quickly hid, and persuaded the two journalists to surprise the party by arriving in their balloon. That it would impress the company he had no doubt, and it did impress the company too— or most of it. When Lord Berrybender first saw the balloon he at once began to shout and wave—so did some of the boys.

  Hearing Tasmin mention Jim Snow caused Ben Hope-Tipping and Clam de Paty to exchange glances. Could this rare English beauty, at present so out of sorts with Kit Carson, actually be married to the dreaded Sin Killer?

  “Excuse me, madam,” Ben said politely, tipping his hat. “Did I hear you say your husband’s name was Jim Snow?”

  Tasmin was cooling a little. An opportunity had been missed—she would have to create another. Now here were these two Europeans, rabbly scribblers of some sort, who had been conveying Kit around the prairies by balloon. Why did they think they were entitled to question her about her husband?

  It seemed to Clam that his colleague, Benjamin, quailed a bit at the chill in the Englishwoman’s look. It was very English of him, of course; Englishmen rarely knew how to address women of spirit, an area of behavior in which they had had far less practice than Frenchmen —most Frenchwomen, after all, were women of spirit, not cold-blooded like your Englishwoman. He thought he had better trot out his best English and correct the situation.

  “Pardon, my lady but is not Monsieur Snow the one they call the Sin Killer?” he asked, making a suave bow.

  “Why should that concern you, monsieur?” Tasmin asked, in her chilliest tone.

  Before the man could answer, Pomp came over and bowed slightly.

  “Bonjour,” he said. “I believe you’re Monsieur de Paty. We met in Stuttgart, I believe. You had come to interview my patron, the prince of Wurttemberg, about some educational reforms he was attempting at the time.”

  Clam de Paty was thunderstruck: he had visited the prince of Wurttemberg
; he had written about those educational reforms—a subject deucedly difficult to make interesting to scandal-hungry Parisians; he had even drawn the prince out a bit about his adventures in the American West. But how could this young fellow, who looked like an Indian and dressed like a frontiersman, possibly know of such a thing?

  “I’m Jean Baptiste Charbonneau,” Pomp said—he reminded the startled journalist that there had been a blizzard on the day of his arrival at the prince’s castle.

  “I helped dig out your carriage,” Pomp remarked.

  “Oui, oui! The snows!” Clam replied.

  Ben Hope-Tipping, too, was very surprised—how amazing that they had landed their balloon on the one spot on the prairies where there was a friendly young fellow who had met Clam before, in Europe. Even more startling was the fact that the young fellow even knew that Clam had been sent to Germany to write about educational reform, a subject his own employers would not likely have sent him two leagues to investigate.

  That same young man seemed to be a friend of the Sin Killer’s beautiful but on the whole rather terrifying wife—and now here came Lord Berrybender himself, in a kind of buggy, with a very handsome woman by his side. It added up to such an excess of good fortune, after the travails of recent weeks, that Ben scarcely even noticed the arrival of Amboise d’Avigdor, who at once jumped down and started gathering in the rapidly deflating balloon.