—Chicago Tribune
“A goofy jaunt through the Wild West.”
—San Jose Mercury News
“Without a doubt Larry McMurtry’s most enjoyable book in years. . . . Part soap opera . . . part romance . . . part farce . . . and altogether thoroughly wonderful.”
—Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
“Quirky. . . . It’s never less than entertaining and is often fascinating.”
—Star-Telegram (Fort Worth, TX)
“[A] bright, boisterous parade of a novel. . . . Energetic and big-hearted.”
—The Seattle Times
“Sin Killer promises a variety of excitement to come. . . . You’ll want to be along for the journey.”
—The Orlando Sentinel (FL)
“Sin Killer is a comedy, though it can be downright grim—a balance that no other writer of westerns has quite matched.”
—Los Angeles Times
“[A] hilarious good time. . . . Wonderfully funny and smart.”
—The Times-Picayune (New Orleans, LA)
“Sin Killer is full of captivating characters as fun to love as they are to hate. . . . Loaded with incident and steeped in ribald humor.”
—The Columbus Dispatch
“Another ambitious, larger-than-life-adventure . . . comic, witty, and bloody.”
—Edmonton Journal
“This is McMurtry at his best.”
—Houston Chronicle
MORE PRAISE FOR
PULITZER PRIZE–WINNING AUTHOR
LARRY McMURTRY
“A poet, a resonant scene-setter and a master of voice.”
—The New York Times Book Review
“What an imagination he has! When it comes to spinning a good yarn, few writers can do it better than McMurtry.”
—Houston Post
“Larry McMurtry has the power to clutch the heart and also to exhilarate.”
—The New Yorker
BY LARRY McMURTRY
Folly and Glory
By Sorrow’s River
The Wandering Hill
Sin Killer
Sacajawea’s Nickname: Essays on the American West
Paradise
Boone’s Lick
Roads
Still Wild: A Collection of Western Stories
Walter Benjamin at the Dairy Queen
Duane’s Depressed
Crazy Horse
Comanche Moon
Dead Man’s Walk
The Late Child
Streets of Laredo
The Evening Star
Buffalo Girls
Some Can Whistle
Anything for Billy
Film Flam: Essays on Hollywood
Texasville
Lonesome Dove
The Desert Rose
Cadillac Jack
Somebody’s Darling
Terms of Endearment
All My Friends Are Going to Be Strangers
Moving On
The Last Picture Show
In a Narrow Grave: Essays on Texas
Leaving Cheyenne
Horseman, Pass By
BY LARRY McMURTRY AND DIANA OSSANA
Pretty Boy Floyd
Zeke and Ned
LARRY McMURTRY
FOLLY AND GLORY
THE BERRYBENDER NARRATIVES, BOOK 4
POCKET BOOKS, a division of Simon & Schuster, Inc.
1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020
www.SimonandSchuster.com
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places
and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or
are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or
locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2004 by Larry McMurtry
Originally published in hardcover in 2004
by Simon & Schuster, Inc.
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce
this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever.
For information address Simon & Schuster, Inc.,
1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020
ISBN: 0-7434-5144-9
ISBN-13: 978-0-743-45144-4
eISBN-13: 978-1-451-60769-7
First Pocket Books paperback edition March 2005
9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
POCKET and colophon are registered trademarks of Simon & Schuster, Inc.
Cover painting by Alfred Jacob Miller, The Lost Greenhorn,
courtesy of the Warner Collection of Gulf States Paper
Corporation, Tuscaloosa, Alabama
Manufactured in the United States of America
For information regarding special discounts for bulk
purchases, please contact Simon & Schuster Special Sales
at 1-800-456-6798 or [email protected].
THE BERRYBENDER NARRATIVES are dedicated to the secondhand booksellers of the Western world, who have done so much, over a fifty-year stretch, to help me to an education.
BOOK 4
AT the end of By Sorrow’s River, Book 3 of The Berrybender Narratives, Pomp Charbonneau is killed by a vengeful Mexican captain. The Berry-benders are removed to Santa Fe and put under luxurious house arrest. Jim Snow, the Sin Killer, was guiding a wagon train east when the arrest occurred.
CONTENTS
Characters
1. IN THE NURSERY
2. DARK AND DIFFICULT DAYS
3. A WIFE’S IMPATIENCE
4. THE TIME OF GRIEF
5. A LONG WAIT FOR GUNS
6. NIGHT AND THE RIVER
7. PETAL’S PROGRAM
8. THE EAR TAKER’S MISTAKE
9. THE TORTURE MAN
10. AMBOISE FORGIVES
11. DOÑA MARGARETA’S AMUSEMENTS
12. THE GOVERNOR’S SHOCK
13. AGILE BEHAVIOR IN A BUGGY
14. A PEPPERY DISH
15. DOÑA ELEANORA’S DILEMMA
16. A GOVERNOR’S CONFESSION
17. PETAL DECLINES TO SHARE
18. JIM COMES TO VISIT
19. A LOCKED DOOR ANGERS PETAL
20. A TRIP TO NEW ORLEANS
21. THE BROWN GIANT
22. JULIETTA AND THE BLACKSMITH
23. LITTLE ONION’S DEJECTION
24. KIT’S SURPRISE
25. THE BERRYBENDERS EXPELLED
26. MAJOR LEON FALLS IN LOVE
27. THE OLD WOMAN WITH THE GOOSE
28. OLD BILL WILLIAMS
29. A GREAT STORM
30. MOPSY IS GONE
31. JULIETTA’S MISTAKE
32. HIGH SHOULDERS WANTS TO HURRY
33. A VERY SMALL BAND
34. TASMIN TRIES TO EXPLAIN LOVE
35. MAJOR LEON’S SORROW
36. A PLAGUE IS ON THE RIVER
37. FATHER GEOFFRIN SLAPPED
38. VICKY FORGETS HER CELLO
39. THE SIN KILLER IN DOUBT
40. THE LIKENESS MAKER’S RETURN
41. OLD NA-A-ME IS BITTER
42. WILLY AND KIT SEEK A RIVER
43. THE YELLOW BUFFALO
44. WILD TURKEYS
45. LITTLE ONION’S GRIEF
46. PETEY FOLLOWS THE QUAIL
47. CLUB AND ROPE
48. A GREAT REUNION SOURED
49. TASMIN’S DESPAIR
50. JIM FINDS A CAVE
51. TASMIN AND GEORGE
52. DRAGA HEARS THE SIN KILLER
53. JIM REFLECTS ON A SCRIPTURE
54. MALGRES OFFERS A WARNING
55. TAY-HA FORGETS HIS CLUB
56. THE SIN KILLER COMES
57. THE HARDEST DAYS
58. THE BERRYBENDERS ATTEND A BALL
59. JIM AND ROSA
60. IN THE ALAMO
61. TASMIN IS UNPATRIOTIC
62. VICKY MOURNS HER HUSBAND
63. TASMIN AND ROSA
64. TASMIN’S REGRET
65. SOME DEPART FOR ENGLAND<
br />
66. TENSIONS IN SAINT LOUIS
67. ON A GREEN HILL
68. A DAUGHTER OF PRIVILEGE
CHARACTERS
BERRYBENDER PARTY
Tasmin
Jim Snow (The Sin Killer)
Bess (Buffum)
High Shoulders
Mary
Piet Van Wely
Kate
Monty, child
Talley, child
Lord Berrybender
Vicky Berrybender
Little Onion
Petal, child
Petey, child
Randy, child
Elf, child
Juppy, half brother
Father Geoffrin
George Catlin
Cook
Eliza
Amboise d’Avigdor
Signor Claricia
Mopsy, puppy
MEXICANS
Governor
Doña Margareta, the Governor’s wife
Julietta Olivaries
Doña Eleanora, Julietta’s aunt
Tomas, footman
Joaquin, blacksmith
Major Leon
Corporal Juan Dominguin
Rosa
Emilio
MOUNTAIN MEN AND TRADERS
Kit Carson
Josefina Carson, Kit’s wife
Tom Fitzpatrick (The Broken Hand)
Old Bill Williams
Charles Bent
Willy Bent
Lonesome Dick
INDIANS
The Ear Taker
Cibecue,Apache
Ojo,Apache
Erzmin, Apache
Flat Nose, Comanche
Na-a-me, Kiowa
Greasy Lake, prophet
Oriabe
SLAVERS
Malgres
Ramon
Draga
Blue Foot
Tay-ha
Bent Finger
Snaggle
Chino
TEXANS
Stephen F. Austin
Jim Bowie
Davy Crockett
William Travis
Sam Houston
MISCELLANEOUS
William Clark
Harriet Clark
Toussaint Charbonneau
Joe Compton
Elliott Edgechurch
Inspector Bailey
I can only regret being myself.
I suppose all regret comes to
that....
I. COMPTON-BURNETT,
Darkness and Day
FOLLY AND GLORY
1
. . . Petal was prepared for ruthless attack . . .
PETEY, the sensitive twin, aged one year and a half, began to sneeze and couldn’t stop, giving Petal her chance: she at once seized a stuffed blue rooster the two had been fighting over and slipped behind her mother, waiting to see what her twin would do when he stopped sneezing and discovered the theft.
Petey did finally stop sneezing, discovered that his rooster was gone, and looked at his mother in stunned dismay. Petal’s crimes never failed to shock him.
“The girl is smarter than the boy—quicker-fingered too,” Mary Berrybender observed.
Tasmin looked around the nursery, a large, airy room in the spacious adobe house on the Plaza in Santa Fe—the house in which the Berrybenders were spending a lengthy but largely comfortable house arrest. Besides her Monty and Vicky’s Talley, there were four new arrivals—her twins; Vicky’s new boy, Randall; and Buffum’s charming Elf (short for Elphinstone). There were five boys in all, Petal the only girl, and yet Petal casually had her way with the nursery, snatching toys left unattended and hiding them until they could be put to her own use. Some challenges she met with defiance, others with guile. Now that she had the much-coveted blue rooster, she meant to keep it. Tasmin could feel her daughter’s soft breath on her neck—Petal was peeping through her mother’s hair, waiting to see if Petey was going to make a fight of it. Petey seldom rose to much belligerence but if he should, Petal was prepared for ruthless attack.
“She’s not merely smarter than her twin, she’s smarter than all five of these little males put together,” Tasmin remarked.
The toy rooster had been a gift from the Governor’s wife, Doña Margareta, a bored young woman who spent as much time as possible with the Berry-benders. Margareta had been raised in a great ducal household in the City of Mexico—she found provincial society all but intolerable and was often at tea at the Berrybenders’, the only company available that she considered worthy of her. It had sometimes occurred to Tasmin that the reason they were still detained in Santa Fe was because Doña Margareta didn’t want to lose their entertaining company.
“Give your brother his rooster. It’s his, not yours,” Tasmin ordered. She did not turn to look at Petal.
Petal didn’t answer—in the face of such an absurd claim, silence was surely called for.
“I fear you are raising up a very defiant brat,” Mary said.
“Give your brother his rooster,” Tasmin repeated, in slightly sterner tones.
“I lost it,” Petal said. “It’s a bird. It flew away.”
“What bosh,” Kate Berrybender said. “Stuffed roosters don’t fly, as she well knows, the little thief.”
At the sound of Kate’s voice Petal instantly hid the rooster under her mother’s skirts. Kate Berry-bender could rarely be bluffed. She often gave Petal vigorous shakings, and was not averse to pulling her hair.
“The rooster left the room,” Petal amended.
No one cared to credit this remark, so Petal tried again.
“Mopsy ate it up,” she declared. Mopsy was a tiny short-haired mongrel the family had adopted. All the little boys adored Mopsy, but Petal dealt sternly with the dog, occasionally even hoisting Mopsy up by his tail, an effort that was likely to leave Petal red in the face.
Tasmin turned quickly and grabbed her daughter, who had reclaimed the rooster and was about to slip away with it.
“It’s my rooster!” she claimed boldly, when her mother looked her in the eye.
“What I’d say is that you have the devil in you— I wonder who could have put it there?” Tasmin inquired.
“You!” Petal cried—from the amused look in her mother’s eye she judged she was going to get to keep the rooster.
“You!” she repeated, more loudly.
No one in the room bothered to disagree. Vicky and Buffum, mothers of mere boys, both smiled. Queen bee of the nursery, Petal swept all before her. Little Onion was particularly susceptible to Petal’s manipulations, though often aghast at her daring.
“Wasn’t it you, Tasmin, who once said that only small children are sincere?” Vicky remembered.
“I did say that, but this child has taught me better,” Tasmin admitted.
Petal, confident now that none of the older boys—or her twin brother either—were going to challenge her possession of the stuffed rooster, strolled casually toward the five small males.
“I got the rooster. I like him because he’s blue,” she said. “He’ll always be my rooster.”
Petal liked to rub it in.
2
Above all, she didn’t want to think . . .
IN THE DARK MONTHS following Pomp Charbonneau’s death, Tasmin had wished she could be a bear or some other burrowing animal, capable of hibernation, of a cessation of thought. Above all, she didn’t want to think, because when she did think, it was only of Pomp, and every memory brought pain. When the wagon rolled into Santa Fe with the five dead men in it, the Governor of Nuevo México was the person most horrified. The last thing he would have wanted was to harm any of the English party—he had only meant to keep them under lucrative house arrest for several months before allowing them to go home. Captain Reyes’s job had been to escort them over the pass. No one should have been chained, much less executed. How was the Governor to know that Captain Reyes was vengeance-crazed, insane? At once profuse apologies were offered. The best house o
n the Plaza was made over to them. Servants were provided, every consideration shown. The fugitives, High Shoulders and Tom Fitzpatrick, were allowed to return without penalty. It had all been a mistake, a dreadful, tragic mistake. A very high official was sent off to make apologies to the Bents— after all, had the Bents not been most considerate of the Governor and his suite when they came to Bent’s Fort for the weddings?
Once settled into their handsome house, the Berrybenders were frequently invited to the Palace. Doña Margareta loved music—Vicky was often asked to play her cello, and she did play. Lord Berrybender was even provided with a guard when he went out shooting. The Indians were not to be trusted. The Governor wanted no more English dead.
All this had meant nothing to Tasmin, in her sad hibernation. She rarely left her room. From a large window she could see the cold sky, the mountains draped with snow. She stared for hours, as the children in her belly grew. The only visitors she welcomed were Kit and Geoff, the former because he had been there when Pomp was arrested; he had observed the mad Captain Reyes. With Kit she could go over the tragedy, try to understand it. She wanted Kit to talk her out of the notion that somehow Pomp Charbonneau had wanted to die. He had not fled; he had not fought; the firing squad had fired and missed him and still he had not moved. Tasmin feared it had something to do with her. Why had Pomp just stood there passively, as the mad captain advanced with his musket leveled? Why had she herself not attacked the captain? She could not stop her mind from reenacting the scene. Pomp had shown no fright—when she rushed out and spoke to him for the last time he seemed at ease, content. But why? It was a mystery that she feared would always haunt her. Talking to Kit, a true friend of Pomp’s and her true friend, helped a little.
Kit had been as shocked as anyone when he heard that the silly little captain with the plume in his hat had shot and killed Pomp Charbonneau. Of course, the captain had been mad. He shot his own officer—then he shot himself. It was madness, and madness could seldom be predicted. Pomp had no reason to expect execution. The arrest was a formality that had long been expected; Pomp’s mistake had been a failure to recognize how crazed the little captain really was.
“I’m sure Pomp thought it was a bluff, otherwise he would have fought,” Kit assured Tasmin. “Reyes was just a captain. He had no business ordering up firing squads.”
“I should have seized a gun,” Tasmin said. “I should have but I didn’t, and now it’s too late.”
Sin Killer Page 88