“Excuse me,” Tasmin said, not impressed by all this flutter, “can anyone tell me why this good-looking young man has only one ear?”
“Yes, it’s quite awkward for him—only one remains, madam,” Ben told her. “I’m Ben Hope-Tipping, by the way. If you happen to be a reader of the papers you may have chanced on one or two of my trifling reports.”
“Stick to the point,” Tasmin told him bluntly. “What about this boy’s ear?”
“Quite a nuisance, I fear,” Ben said. “It seems there’s an Indian whose hobby is to slip up on sleepers and neatly remove an ear. Mr. Carson knows of him. About a week ago he took our young servant’s— rather mars his appearance, I admit.”
Pomp and Clam had strolled over to the deflating balloon, talking quietly in French. Since the whole company was about to engulf them, Tasmin released her grip on Kit Carson’s arm, only to have her own arm seized, a moment later, by Father Geoffrin, who seemed to be wildly excited by the presence of his rotund countryman in the ridiculous red trousers.
“Tasmin, don’t you know who that is?” the Jesuit gasped.
“No idea, except he looks a fool in those trousers,” she replied.
“But it’s Clam de Paty the most famous journalist in Europe,” Father Geoff blurted. “He knows all the actresses—intimately, in some cases—at least that’s the rumor.”
“So what?” Tasmin said. “Shall we all be required to curtsy to some common little French seducer?”
Father Geoff didn’t answer—in a moment he rushed over, interrupted Pomp, and began to babble in French, assuring the journalist Clam de Paty that he had long been an admirer of his theater reviews. Geoff even went so far as to say that he had often rushed out at dawn and seized the papers the minute they became available, in order to be the first to read Monsieur Clam de Paty’s review of this or that performance. Clam de Paty evidently not at all surprised to find that his wit was appreciated, even in the wilderness, received Geoff’s compliments with a complacency that was not far from rudeness.
Disgusted as Tasmin was at Father Geoffrin’s bowing and scraping, she was, a moment later, even more disgusted when her father drove up, to be set upon at once with more bowings and scrapings, cooing and complimenting. Instead of brushing this riffraff aside, as Tasmin assumed he would, Lord Berrybender immediately began discoursing on his own exploits as a hunter in America. The journalists were at once at him with questions. When the former Vicky Kennet, now Lady Berrybender, descended from the buggy she was greeted no less effusively.
“Gad, gentlemen, we hardly expected the papers to pursue us even into these wild parts,” Lord Berry-bender said; he seemed pleased as punch by these attentions, as he attempted to combine the hauteur of the noble lord, the bluntness of the great hunter, and the graciousness of the squire receiving at his seat.
“Smart of you to come in a balloon—often wished I had one myself,” he said. “We’ve had some fine adventures, I assure you—hope you’re getting it all down.”
The mountain men wandered up, were introduced, gaped at the balloon—they displayed little interest in the two scribblers. Hugh Glass and Tom Fitzpatrick, both of whom knew of the Ear Taker, examined Amboise’s head at some length.
“I guess I’ll try sleeping with my head in a bucket, if that rascal’s around,” Hugh Glass declared.
Mary arrived, and Buffum, and High Shoulders; then Cook, Eliza, Millicent, Tim, Piet, Jim Bridger, all curious to see the gentlemen who had dropped from the sky—they had all seen the balloon, when it was soaring, and had been amazed.
“It’s chilly up there—some dern cranes knocked us down once,” Kit told the awed assembly, neglecting to mention that he had merely been an earthbound observer of that catastrophe.
Tasmin, who, only minutes before, had been sobbing hot tears because she missed Europe so much, discovered, now that Europe had come to her, that she quite despised it. There was Pomp, who might have made love to her that very morning, and Father Geoffrin, who had at least declared his interest in making love to her, both of them babbling in French about politics and actresses with a little French popinjay while her father was expanding about his own adventures to a tall lanky fellow who might have been an undertaker.
Ben Hope-Tipping and Clam de Paty though of course making themselves agreeable to everyone— especially to young Monsieur Charbonneau, whose patron was a prince—did not forget what they had heard when they first landed, which was that Lady Tasmin Berrybender was married to the famous Sin Killer, the one man in all the West whom they most wanted to interview. Forward-looking German princes and great peers of the realm were all very well, but after all, what their readers really wanted was blood, the hotter, redder, and more copious the better: murders, gallows, scalpings, tortures, gory battles—that is what the people who bought the papers really wanted to read about.
So it was not long before Clam de Paty politely slipped away from Pomp and Father Geoffrin and the rest—he angled over to Tasmin, who stood alone, staring darkly into space.
“Excuse me, madame—one must be polite to one’s readers,” he began—suavely, he hoped. “But we have not journeyed to America merely to meet old admirers—it’s fresh information we seek. Do I understand correctly that you really are married to this Monsieur Snow, this Sin Killer?”
“I hardly care to discuss my domestic situation with strangers—particularly French strangers,” Tasmin replied. “I am married to Monsieur Snow, but I fail to see how that concerns you.”
“But it is of the greatest concern to me, madame!” Clam said, coloring a bit at the undisguised insolence in the woman’s tone, a tone that suggested quite clearly that he—a citizen, a critic, a wit, a lover of actresses and more actresses—was of no more interest to her than a beetle, a bug, a worm!
“We had the great good fortune to meet your husband,” he informed her, “but unfortunately he was in a hurry to be gone. We had no chance to talk to him— it means a grave disappointment for our readers, I assure you.”
“Why would Jimmy want to talk to you anyway, monsieur?” Tasmin inquired. “He ain’t French, and he ain’t nice to strangers.”
“But our readers, madame! Our readers!” Clam insisted. “They know of your famous Sin Killer. They know, but not enough. We will disappoint all of Europe if we come home with no news of the Sin Killer. In Europe he is more famous than Hawkeye, or Natty Bumpo, or any of the characters of Mr. Cooper. It is said he was struck by lightning and feels it is his mission to wipe out sin. They say he can shoot a bow like an Indian, or the rifle like Hawkeye. So please, Madame Snow—when do you expect him to return?”
“Why, I’ve no idea,” Tasmin said, amused that this puffed-up little French person considered himself indispensable to the readers of all Europe.
“But, madame—you are his wife! Surely you expect he will come back,” Clam insisted.
“Oh, I don’t know about that,” Tasmin told him. ‘As a Frenchman and a man of the world, you must know that sometimes husbands do stray for rather long stretches.
“I would not be surprised to discover that you have even done so yourself,” she went on, looking Clam directly in the eye.
Clam de Paty colored. Damn the impertinent woman! In fact he did have a modest little wife at home in Paris, whom he had not visited for quite some time. After all, why visit a wife when Paris was so full of actresses?
Nonetheless, although the tables had been more or less turned, Clam was determined to press on with his original inquiry.
’Ah, madame, but you are very beautiful,” Clam said, trying to summon his old gallantry. “Surely no husband would want to stay away from you for very long.”
’All I can say is that if my husband does show up, you would do well to change your trousers,” she said.
“My trousers—why?” Clam asked, startled.
“My husband hates red,” she informed him—why not toy with this absurd little man a bit?
“It’s the color of blood, you know,”
she went on. “He even denies me my red petticoats. In fact I’m rather surprised he spared you when you met on the prairie. He might have whacked your head off in an instant, on account of those red trousers. Fair warning, monsieur!”
At that she turned and walked away. Of course, Jimmy had no prejudice against red, but she saw no reason not to scare a pompous Frenchman, if she could.
Of a sudden, despite her fever for Pomp, she missed her plain Jim. And the more she listened to the Europeans babble, the more she missed him—it was time her American came back to her arms.
24
He had been as far north as the prairies went. . .
JIM SNOW was angry with himself for having idly wandered so far from his wife and child. All his life, from the time he had been able to support himself as a hunter, his habit had been to wander the prairies frequently, for no other reason than to look and explore. He had been as far north as the prairies went, and as far south as the deserts of New Mexico. Sometimes he merely drifted with the game. Never before had he felt the need to get back to a particular person. Sometimes he came to the aid of travelers who were lost—those had mainly been just the accidents of travel. The urgency he now felt as he urged Joe Walker’s gallant little mare to her limits was of a different order. Maelgwyn Evans’s report of the smallpox plague frightened Jim as nothing else ever had. On this scout he had drifted nearly four hundred miles from his wife— or wives—and son. That was not an unusual distance at all, as mountain-man rambles went; but fear of the plague had abruptly changed his way of thinking. In a normal sense he had left his family well protected. Kit was very likely back by then—he would help Tasmin with the chores, and so would Little Onion. Pomp or Jim Bridger or Tom Fitzpatrick would be quick to sniff out Indian trouble, if any offered.
But even Pomp couldn’t sniff out the plague. A sick Indian, fleeing contagion and not realizing he had brought it with him, could have run into the company. Maelgwyn said it was a quick-acting plague—if they were unlucky enough to contract the pox, then his wife and child might be already dead.
Often Jim had found Tasmin exasperating, gabby, rude, exhausting—but that didn’t mean he wanted to lose her. No doubt she found much to dislike in his own behavior, much to criticize in his limitations. After all, he could barely puzzle out a few verses in the Holy Book. He knew nothing of all the things Tasmin talked about with Pomp or Father Geoffrin. He had long realized—and he had said it—that Pomp would make a more likely husband for Tasmin than himself. He was not polished, as Pomp was. He liked silence—Tasmin liked chatter. She was full of questions he couldn’t answer; she constantly and boldly criticized his behavior, which a good wife was not supposed to do. She was so bad about this and so loose in her language that he had struck her several times—once or twice she had gone so far as to hit him back. Yet now, at the thought that Tasmin might be dead, Jim was deeply fearful, abashed, ashamed of his idle wanderings. He found himself wishing he could run into the travelers with the balloon—soaring above the country would be a lot quicker than pounding over it. Smooth gaited and enduring as the little mare was, she could not cover four hundred miles overnight. She was not his mare—Jim didn’t want to ruin her. He camped where there was good grass and he tried not to work the mare too hard, and yet, all the time, he was anxious in a way he had not been before.
Near the end of the sixth day he had been about to make camp when he thought he saw the flicker of campfires, far ahead; who could it be but the Berrybenders and the mountain men? He had seen no game for three days—where there was so little game, there were unlikely to be Indians.
Jim let the mare have an hour to roll, rest, and graze, and then rode on toward the distant fires, glimpsed now and then when he topped a ridge. Once close, he slowed—it could, after all, be Utes, or even Pawnees. But then he saw a white tent, which Lord Berrybender must have purchased from William Ashley—it was the tent Pomp had been put in while Tasmin nursed him. So he had found the company— he heard a baby cry briefly—it wasn’t Monty. The fact that everything seemed normal was an immense relief. Probably there would be a sentry, either Pomp or Tom Fitzpatrick most likely, they being the most reliable sentinels. Kit Carson was rarely allowed to stand sentry because in the darkness his imagination ran away with him. Twice he had roused the camp, mistaking a bush for an Indian.
Jim dismounted and led the mare the last half mile. There was only faint moonlight. He didn’t want to blunder into camp and wake everybody up. He looked up but could see no sentries. It annoyed him to think the company had become so negligent that they hadn’t posted a guard. Any passing band of Indians could sneak in and steal the horses. But before his annoyance could build, he saw a slight movement and Pomp spoke.
“Well, Jimmy, you’re back,” Pomp said. “Tasmin will be glad.”
’Any sickness here?” Jim asked at once.
“The Dutchman got snakebit and your boy collected some wasp stings—that’s it, except for Pa, who’s been poorly,” Pomp reported.
Looking around camp, Jim saw another, smaller tent, which he didn’t recognize—but the wagon of the balloonists stood nearby.
“I guess the balloon fellows made it,” he said.
“Yes, but not before the Ear Taker took an ear from that servant of theirs.”
Jim didn’t reply. One missing ear was nothing compared to a smallpox plague.
“Did they mention the pox?” he asked. “Maelgwyn Evans lost three wives to it—and the river Indians are mostly dead, he claims.”
“What river Indians?” Pomp asked. The Englishman had mentioned something about pox amid the Choctaws, but the Choctaws were far to the south.
“Maelgwyn says it’s wiped out the Mandans and the Rees,” Jim told him. “That’s why I hurried back. I thought it might be here.”
“No,” Pomp said, “just wasp stings and snakebite.”
The anxiety Jim had been living with for a week began to leave him—of course, he should have known that Pomp would take care of things—Pomp had always been a trustworthy man.
“There’s been a good deal of marrying and mating, though,” Pomp informed him. “Old Lord Berrybender married Vicky, and Buffum’s pretty taken with that tall Ute boy High Shoulders. I don’t know how much progress Tom Fitzpatrick is making with Cook, but he’s still trying.
“The balloonists haven’t married anybody yet but they’re going to be mighty happy that you’re back. All they can talk about is the famous Sin Killer—they’re anxious to write up your adventures for their papers.”
“I think I’ll check on Tasmin,” Jim said. “Being married to her is about the only adventure I’ve ever had.”
He slipped his gear off the tired little mare and hurried down into camp.
25
She felt rumpled and sweaty . . .
EXCEPT in wet weather, Tasmin had developed a large dislike of tents. The cold, drafty one Jim insisted they winter in on the Yellowstone she had never liked. On the trek, while sleeping outdoors or, at worst, under a wagon, she had begun to like looking up at the stars. When she went to bed angry or discontent— irked at some obstinacy of Jim’s, or else burdened with a fretful child—the unvarying brilliance of the stars had come to have a soothing influence on her.
At night she mainly just rolled up with Monty in a blanket, near a campfire laid well away from the mountain men, so she would not be kept awake by their carousing. When the mountain men slept, Tasmin could not figure—their singing and yarning seemed to go on all night.
She was sleeping deeply when the man eased down beside her and put a hand on her bare arm. The shock of male flesh on her flesh brought her eyes open in alarm. Her first thought was rape—old Hugh Glass had not desisted from his lecherous looks. Her second thought was Pomp—perhaps he had relented in his standoffishness—but by smell more than sight, in a moment she knew it was her husband. “Oh Jimmy,” she said, and a hard kiss followed, a hungry kiss of the sort her Jimmy liked to give. Monty, his fever not quite gone, gave a f
retful whimper. It caused his father to draw back.
“Is he sick?” Jim asked.
“Not very—not now,” Tasmin whispered. “But twelve wasp stings are plenty for a little fellow, I reckon.”
“You’re not sick, are you?” he asked. Fear of the pox had not quite left him.
’As a matter of fact, I am—sick of you being gone!” she said, with heat. “You mustn’t leave me so. Nothing terrible has happened, but aggravations just seem to pile up when you leave—especially if you rob me of Kit. People have been marrying and mating at a furious pace, and now these two wretched scribblers are here with their balloon.”
“I met them—I suppose they’re harmless,” he told her.
“Of course, they’re not dangerous as the Utes are dangerous,” Tasmin admitted. “But their incessant curiosity about you is just one more aggravation I’m saddled with.”
Jim had only wanted to know that she was well. Once convinced of that, he took her face in his hands and kissed her again. Tasmin felt annoyed. As usual, he didn’t want her to talk. From the force of the kiss she saw that all the fine feelings she had hoped to develop in her delicate love affair with Pomp were going to be swept aside, in the middle of the night, by a husband eager to at once resume conjugal exercise—never mind how late it was, no matter how long he had been away.
“Let’s go somewhere, so we won’t wake everybody up,” he whispered.
’All right,” Tasmin said, half excited but still half annoyed. She felt rumpled and sweaty; Jim had not even had the forethought to arrive in the daylight, when she might have troubled to present a more pleasing appearance. Yet he wanted her now, despite sweat, despite rumpledness.
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