Sin Killer

by Larry McMurtry

  The closer the two men got to the canyon where the white buffalo was supposed to be, the more convinced Greasy Lake became that the old woman had been telling them lies. Old people left to die sometimes sought final amusements, such as sending prophets off on wild-goose chases.

  Still, seeing the great canyon would be worth it, even if no white buffalo appeared. Great canyons were important places in themselves—it was from the floor of these canyons that the People had emerged from the earth on the back of the Great Turtle that had brought them into the light.

  The first shock came when the two of them ran into a small band of Kickapoos who informed them that they themselves, not the Comanches, had found the white buffalo when it was just a calf. Naturally they were overjoyed to see the white buffalo, a great gift from the spirits. They soon caught it and tamed it. They band was very small—only two of their women could still bear children, and yet once the white buffalo came, three other women immediately got with child, and the older men made several successful hunts. It seemed the band might be saved.

  But then a bad thing happened, a thing that caused the whole band to lose much of its optimism. The white buffalo grew into a yearling, and when it did, not only did it not stay white, but it turned yellow, the unluckiest color of all. The whiteness of the buffalo calf had only been a temporary miracle, one that allowed the little band to increase by a few promising babies. They assumed the yellow buffalo was still changing and would soon become a normal brown buffalo.

  But the yellow buffalo did not become normal and brown. It remained yellow. The little band had no prophet, no wise man. They had once had a prophet but he developed a disease of the bowels and quickly wasted away.

  The yellow buffalo, as tame as a dog, stayed with the band. Some argued for killing it but others insisted that would be a mistake. Occasionally the yellow buffalo ran off with some wild buffalo for a few days, but it always came back.

  George Catlin and Greasy Lake happened on the yellow buffalo before they met the Kickapoos who were its keepers. George considered it a fine curiosity, a freak of coloration that sometimes occurred in this or that species. He knew it was something that would interest his rival, Mr. Audubon, who was preparing a book on the quadrupeds of America. George felt happy to have stolen a march on his rival—he did several sketches and would have liked to continue to do them had Greasy Lake not become so upset. It was not easy to make out exactly why the prophet was so disturbed—he seemed to see the yellow buffalo as somehow connected to doom.

  At first George thought he was merely predicting their doom, but then it emerged that the doom he had in mind was considerably more general.

  The minute he saw the yellow buffalo Greasy Lake began to tremble—the oldest stories, the ones he himself was supposed to guard, all insisted that the coming of a yellow beast meant that the Ending was near. Seeing the buffalo was thus a cruel disappointment. Out of a white beast might have grown new hope; but from a yellow beast they could expect only decay and sickness, a trailing off, a diminishment into ever smaller and more hopeless bands, such as the little band of Kickapoos they soon met.

  Seeing the yellow buffalo made Greasy Lake realize that the old Partezon had been right: the time of the People was coming to an end. Soon the women of the tribes would become barren, the warriors would lose their strength of arm, the old men would begin to forget the stories; then the game would gain mastery over the hunters, the ducks and geese would learn to elude snares, and even rabbits would disappear. Soon, in a few more generations, there would be no People at all; the circle would be broken, the stories would end.

  George Catlin was prepared to admit that the yellow buffalo was ugly—but then, normal brown buffalo were not beautiful, and not smart, either. In the north the tribes would sometimes get them running so mindlessly that they would pour off cliffs, killing and crippling themselves in a mass of bellowing froth as the Indians waded in, hacking and stabbing until the last beast was dead, by which time the hackers would be covered with blood.

  This buffalo, though a rather disgusting color, was at least a novelty. George could not understand why Greasy Lake was taking on so.

  “I can’t make out what’s upset you so,” George confessed. “I know you were counting on finding a white buffalo but I’m afraid that ugly fellow is as close as we’re going to come. It’s just a yellow animal with a rather peculiar coloration—it’s not the end of the world.”

  Greasy Lake knew that his friend George meant well. George was kind, if not terribly bright.

  He failed to understand that for the People the arrival of the yellow buffalo meant exactly that: the End of the world.

  44

  . . . a flock of wild turkeys, bursting from their roost . . .

  IT WAS A FLOCK OF WILD TURKEYS, bursting from their roost, that caused the mare to stumble. Jim had been easing down a steep shaley ridge, his eye on two buffalo grazing in the flats about a mile away. He was being careful because the wind was acting as if it might shift. The company was almost out of meat, and here was meat, and Jim wanted to make sure of it. The capricious wind was not helping. He didn’t see the turkeys and neither did the mare, who shied violently when the gobblers rose above them, their big wings almost brushing Jim’s head.

  The mare stumbled and went to her knees—Jim, trying to protect his rifle, attempted to jump clear but didn’t quite make it. He hit with his left arm twisted under him—he suspected the arm was broken but didn’t mean to allow the injury to distract him from what he had come to do, which was make meat. The buffalo were still placidly grazing. Jim dropped them both; butchering them with only one useful hand proved awkward in the extreme, but he took enough to feed the company—once his arm was set and splinted he could return for the rest of the meat. He felt sure that Father Geoff could set the arm—he could be back for the rest of the meat before the wolves and coyotes did too much damage.

  The accident had occurred not much past dawn, which was why the turkeys were still on their roost. It was a chill, sleety day. Jim pushed the mare—he wanted to get his arm set and return to the two carcasses as soon as possible.

  He had been pushing the company eastward as fast as he could—he still hoped to strike an immigrant train and perhaps join forces. But he was in unknown country—the first necessity was to keep the company fed. None of them had managed to put the recent deaths behind them—they were too low-spirited to travel as briskly as Jim would have liked them to. Indian sign was everywhere; Jim considered it almost a miracle that they hadn’t been harassed.

  Jim thought every day of Monty, so young and so innocent. Bad as the cholera had been, Jim knew that worse could happen. If they got through the Comanche country with no more losses they could consider themselves lucky.

  It irked him that he had broken his arm because of turkeys, but then it was often the absurd and unexpected that led to injury.

  When he returned to camp, Tasmin took the injury harder than anyone. A belief in Jim’s invulner-ability was one of the convictions that kept her going. By the time he reached camp with the buffalo meat he seemed feverish to her. Piet and Father Geoffrin quickly set the arm and made an excellent splint. Tasmin sat with the twins. She knew rationally that a broken arm was not a serious injury, but she still couldn’t help worrying.

  “It was just some gobble birds scared his horse,” Petal reminded her, giving her mother a friendly pat on the knee.

  Tasmin had just recovered a measure of calm when she saw Jim saddling the mare. She rushed over and felt his forehead. He still felt feverish.

  “Now where are you going?” she asked. “Back to get the rest of that buffalo meat,” Jim told her. “We can’t afford to lose it—we’ll soon be starving, if we do.”

  Tasmin knew he was right, and yet she had become increasingly anxious whenever Jim was out of camp for very long.

  “I just worry so,” she admitted. “I wish there was someone else who could go.”

  “There ain’t,” he said, speaking
tolerantly. He himself was anxious now, on his hunts. The country was too dangerous—too much bad could happen, and quickly. Shy Petey worried Jim a lot. It wouldn’t take much, by way of an illness, to carry Petey off. And yet he had to go: there was no one else capable of bringing in the meat. Corporal Dominguin seemed competent but he and the other Mexicans needed to stand guard.

  “It’s not that far—the meat,” he told Tasmin.

  “I’ll be back quick, if I can keep from breaking my other arm.”

  He meant it as a joke, but a shadow of worry crossed her countenance. After what had happened on the Rio Grande nothing seemed like a joke anymore.

  “Jimmy, you’re feverish,” she told him.

  Jim knew it was true. He had always been prone to fevers. When they were high he sometimes hallucinated, even dreamed that he was back with Preacher Cockerell. He knew he was a little fever-ish—and yet the fact that he might sicken made the recovery of the meat even more vital. He was taking a packhorse. He meant to bring back enough meat to keep them all fed if he was ill for a day or two.

  Tasmin suddenly flung herself into his arms. She hated feeling so cowardly but since the deaths she couldn’t help it. She felt scared for her children most of the time.

  “This is an endless nightmare now,” she told Jim. “We’re nowhere—there’s no safety. The Indians could come anytime. A blizzard could come. Just hurry—please hurry—we’ve a better chance when you’re here.”

  “The sooner I leave, the sooner I’ll get back,” Jim told her. He could find no adequate words of reassurance. Everything Tasmin had just said was true. And yet they had to have the meat. All he could do was promise to be as quick as possible.

  When he left, Tasmin sat down by Father Geoff. The priest put his arm around her.

  “He’s always come back,” Father Geoff reminded her. “He wants to fill our larder—nothing wrong with that. I wish you wouldn’t worry so much. It’s making you thin.”

  “Shut up, Geoff. Just shut up,” Tasmin said.

  45

  . . . everyone noticed that she was subdued.

  I WAS NEVER Monty’s only mother,” Tasmin reminded Mary. “He always had two. When I was too weak from my labor even to lift him, Little Onion held him to my breast. She helped him take his first milk, and she closed his eyes when he died. Not a day in his short life but that she loved him.”

  They had been discussing Little Onion’s changed demeanor. Though still as efficient as ever, quickly attending to the necessary chores, she was no longer cheerful. Her liveliness had brightened camp life on many a lowering day— now everyone noticed that she was subdued. Even Lord Berrybender noticed. Cook was very troubled. Since the death of Eliza, Cook had begun to feel old. There were mornings when she felt herself failing; always, from the moment of waking, Cook had been resolutely on the move; yet now she wasn’t. There were mornings when she could hardly force herself to throw off her blankets. Little Onion had always taken a keen interest in cooking—little by little Cook was teaching the girl her skills. It was a relief to think that there would be someone competent to feed the company if she herself fell by, as she put it. Yet now Little Onion ate little and had lost interest in the preparation of food, though she still kept an eye out for edibles as they traveled.

  “I suppose you’re right, Tassie—it’s mother’s grief she’s feeling.”

  “There’s more besides,” Tasmin said, looking at Little Onion, who sat with the four children but did not seem to be really attending them. Now she looked after them neutrally. Even Petal, with all her wiles, could seldom get Little Onion to smile.

  “They all like her but Monty loved her,” Tasmin pointed out. “He rarely knew quite what to make of me, but with our Onion it was pure love. No wonder she misses him.”

  “I’ve conceived,” Mary said, quietly.

  Tasmin supposed she had misheard. She looked at her sister in surprise.

  “You heard me correctly—I’ve conceived,” Mary said. “Piet and I have at last mastered sexual intercourse.”

  “I see,” Tasmin remarked. “That always seems to mean babies, if a Berrybender female is involved.”

  “Piet is pleased,” Mary said. “I expect him to be an ideal father.”

  “I expect so too,” Tasmin told her. “Piet likes to do it from the rear, as quadrupeds do,” Mary confided. “It’s his belief that the seed has easier access to the womb if that approach is adopted.”

  Tasmin snorted. “The seed seems to find our eggs with very little difficulty,” she said. “Personally I like to face my customers. I feel like a bitch often enough without going on all fours to mate.”

  “I’m hoping Little Onion will help me as she helped you,” Mary said. “I’m rather unconfident when it comes to babies.”

  “The confidence may arrive with the child,” Tasmin told her. “Hard to be maternal in advance.”

  Petal, getting nowhere in her play with Little Onion, noticed her mother and aunt in conversation and hurried over to inject herself into the situation. Kate Berrybender, who was helping Cook scour some pans, glared at Petal as she passed. Petal generally kept clear of Kate, her youngest aunt.

  “Mary is going to have a baby,” Tasmin told her daughter, without preamble. “A fresh victim for you to torment.”

  Petal’s hair was a cascade of black curls, defiant of the hairbrush.

  “No, there’s enough babies now,” Petal assured them.

  Tasmin wondered if she and Jim had seen the end of baby making. They had been closer since Monty’s death, but it was a sad closeness, lacking in conjugal heat. She remembered her aunt Clarissa, who had somehow kept on reproducing after six deaths in the nursery. Tasmin didn’t consider herself much like Aunt Clarissa. She got up suddenly, leaving Petal to bicker with Mary, and went over to Little Onion, who looked at her gratefully, though the look came from sad eyes. Tasmin sat down beside her, two mothers of a lost boy. No words needed be said; none were. Petey came and sat in his mother’s lap. Petal ran back and tried to shove her way into the same lap, but Tasmin held Petey tight. Petal let be. Something seemed to be amiss with the adults. She accepted Little Onion’s lap and began to hum a song Vicky had taught her.

  Little Onion liked it that Tasmin had come to sit by her. She knew that Tasmin was her friend. They were both, after all, wives of the same man—good wives too, in Little Onion’s opinion. They didn’t quarrel—and even she and her sister Sun Girl had quarreled.

  She meant to do her best for Tasmin and the other children, and yet the ache of the loss of Monty was a pain not easily endured. Of course, many children died. In the tribe many infants died even as they were born. They were not alive long enough for many people to cherish them, as she had cherished Monty. Such an ache as she felt could only heal slowly—it was there like a sore tooth that throbbed if one bit on a nut too hard. In the case of Monty, the nut was memory. She could not stop remembering him as he had been at his happiest, playing with the simple toys she made him, from corncobs, sticks, scraps of leather.

  It made it hard to go on with this journey that seemed without purpose, into country that was farless pleasing than the country of her own people. It was perplexing to her, that whites must be always moving. In her own country she felt confident—she understood the country and could always find sufficient food to eat: roots, berries, nuts. When she was in her country she understood she did not much fear hunger. If her husband was wounded she felt she could find the bark or the herbs that would cure him.

  But how could one be sure of anything, in country one has not been able to study? It took thorough knowledge of a place before its secrets could be understood—and yet survival depended on knowing the secrets of the land.

  Little Onion felt she might confide these worries to Tasmin at some point; she had already confided a few of them to Buffum. But it wouldn’t stop the men. Even in her own tribe the men sometimes insisted on foolish trips.

  When the twins wandered off to play with Talley and Elf, Ta
smin gave Little Onion’s hand a squeeze and told her Mary’s news. Little Onion opened her mouth in surprise. Mary was the only one of the whites who was skilled at finding edibles. She and Little Onion often foraged together. One reason Little Onion was so protective of Tasmin was because Tasmin knew so little about feeding herself; and Buffum and Vicky were just as unskilled. None of them could even find a rat’s nest, in a place where rats were plentiful. Mary knew that rats were easy to catch and good to eat, but the other women were horrified by the notion. Little Onion could not imagine why most of the whites had been trained so poorly. Mary could find berries or tubers or wild onions but even she knew little about the plants that could be used as medicines. Piet, though, was very interested in medicinal plants and as knowledgeable about them as Little Onion. Buffum and Vicky could not muster the interest, a mystery to Little Onion, who could not understand why they would not want to be able to cure themselves or their children if they got sick.

  Little Onion meant to do all she could to protect her friend Tasmin and the others, but often, at night, she worried. The Mexican boys were not good sentinels. When Jim was out of camp hunting, Little Onion felt obliged to be especially alert. She could do nothing against enemies like the cholera but she did know how to watch for attackers like the Pawnee boys. She was always urging the company to stay closer together when they traveled—it was the fact that they were so spread out when the Pawnees attacked that enabled the raiders to kill four of them. With High Shoulders dead and Jim often out hunting, the group needed to stay compact and ready.