Sin Killer

by Larry McMurtry

  “What can anyone say?” Geoff asked. “Our two purest souls have been taken from us.”

  Tasmin came back, passively.

  Petal kept insisting that Petey had just got too many stickers.

  Vicky, without her cello, could only sing a little Handel.

  Tasmin held Jim’s arm while Vicky sang. His look was the old flinty look she had first seen the day she met him. He wasn’t yelling out incomprehensible words, but he had become the Sin Killer—he was going to avenge the terrible thing that had been done to Petey and Little Onion. She herself could expect no comfort from him—not then.

  As soon as the service was over Jim went to Lord Berrybender.

  “I need to borrow one of your new rifles—and a fair bunch of ammunition,” he said.

  “Why, of course, Jimmy—take what you need. I hope you slaughter the devils,” Lord Berrybender said.

  “I need that spyglass too,” Jim said. “I need to see them before they see me.”

  When Kit and Willy realized that Jim meant to go after the killers alone, they tried to remonstrate with him.

  “There could be twenty slavers around that camp, for all you know,” Kit told him.

  “I hope there are,” Jim replied. “It’d be good to kill twenty slavers.”

  “Jimmy, are you sure about this?” Willy asked. “What about your arm?”

  “By the time I’m ready to strike, my arm will be healed,” Jim told them. He was loading a pack-horse—Cook was wrapping up meat.

  When the horse was ready Jim went over to Corporal Dominguin and asked a question.

  “Didn’t you keep Major Leon’s sword, when we buried him?”

  “Sí,” the corporal said. “I’d like to borrow it,” Jim requested.

  The corporal went to his kit, took out the sword, and handed it to Jim.

  Kit and Willy were uncertain about letting Jim Snow go off alone. Both of them felt it was wrong not to support a colleague on such a quest—and yet clearly Jim didn’t mean to take them.

  “You’ve both got wives,” he reminded them. “I’ve no doubt you’ve already been gone too long to suit them.”

  “I guess I won’t be told when I can take off and how long I can stay gone,” Kit said, in Tasmin’s hearing.

  “What a rooster you’ve become, Kit,” she protested.

  “He’s a rooster but his hen can whip him up one side and down the other—and he knows it,” Willy told her.

  A little grumpy because Jim wouldn’t have them, the two finally left.

  Jim’s next task was to seek an understanding with Tom Fitzpatrick.

  “I want you to take ’em through to the settlements on the Brazos,” Jim told him.

  “That’s where I’ll come, when I’m done.” “I’ll do it,” Tom assured him.

  Tasmin felt shaky—hot with fury one moment, despairing the next. She would have liked the comfort of her husband’s affection, but knew he couldn’t give it once the Sin Killer began to rise in him. He only wanted to be off, alone, free to be the killer that he was.

  “You stop him!” Petal said to her mother, when she saw that Jim was leaving; but then Elf wandered by with a corncob doll that she coveted and she forgot Jim and went to chase him down. Elf was a match for her, though. He climbed up a wagon wheel and tried to push Petal down when she followed.

  “I don’t know how to say it, Jimmy—but when you turn into the Sin Killer I feel as though I don’t exist—we all feel that way,” Tasmin told him.

  Jim had no answer to make to that. He tucked the sword carefully into his pack.

  “I promise I’ll come and find you, if I live,” Jim said. He knew Tasmin was racked with grief—and what could you say to grief that would be any help? Putting a son in the ground was the hardest thing anyone was likely to be called to do.

  Impulsively Tasmin kissed him—she jumped toward him as if released by a spring. It was a quick kiss—it surprised both of them.

  “We’re out of boys, Jimmy,” she said. “We made good boys, too.”

  She had seldom felt so divided, at one moment wanting him to go and kill, the next wishing he would just give it up and lead them on to safety.

  Jim felt no confusion. He meant to kill all the men who had hurt Petey and Little Onion. He made sure his gear was secure, said good-bye to the family, and left.

  Tasmin felt fearful, deeply fearful. Would she ever see her husband again?

  Petal had had no ambivalence—Jim kissed her, but then he rode away. It was dark and she couldn’t see him.

  “Jim went—you go get him!” she demanded of her mother. Then she burst into tears.

  49

  “It’s a long way to a madhouse, Tassie.”

  I SUPPOSE GEOFF’S annoyed with me, now that I’ve taken up with you again,” Tasmin told George Catlin.

  “Why should that annoy a priest?” George asked. “Because he likes to be my only comfort and counselor, and he has been for two years,” she said. “He’s sulking right now.”

  “Two friends are better than one—he should look at it that way,” George told her.

  “That isn’t the way men are—no wonder you’re a bachelor,” Tasmin remarked. “If you were more determined on exclusive privileges, you’d do better with women.”

  “I was madly in love with you for months, and what did it get me?” George asked. “You remember how jealous I was of Jim.”

  “I suppose you were, but you merely irritated me, in those days,” Tasmin remembered. “I wanted a wilder man and I got one—and what it meant and mostly still means is that I’m alone. It’s my friends who see me through—you and Geoff.”

  She gave the painter’s hand a squeeze.

  Yet the next evening the combined efforts of painter and priest could not keep Tasmin from despair. Images of her dead sons rose to haunt her.

  “If only memory were an organ like an appendix,” she said. “I’d dig it out, or cut it out. I don’t think I can bear my memories. If we were home I’d ask to be put in a madhouse.”

  “It’s a long way to a madhouse, Tassie,” Buffum reminded her. Quietly, Buffum saw to Petal; she gathered firewood, with Petal and Elf trailing after her. Tasmin, who had thought little of her younger sister for much of her life, now came to admire her. As long as High Shoulders wasn’t mentioned, Buffum held up. She took over many of the chores that Little Onion had done. Whenever she would allow it, Corporal Dominguin helped her.

  “I believe I see something beginning,” Father Geoff commented. “I believe our good corporal is falling in love with your lovely sister.”

  Tasmin was of the same mind. When High Shoulders died, Buffum despaired. She talked of taking the veil. Yet now she was seldom apart from the shy, polite Corporal Dominguin. Perhaps something was beginning.

  “Renewal is normal—that’s an old wisdom,” Father Geoff said.

  Tasmin made no retort. She didn’t expect renewal for herself, although she had felt it more than once, when Jimmy returned from some scout. The men she sat with, George and Geoff, were both of them dry seeds—yet they stayed by her and they accepted her despair. When she was at her worst they didn’t try to talk. They merely sat with her.

  “I’ll make it up to you two, someday—I swear I will,” she said.

  Tom Fitzpatrick made little progress with Cook, who still seemed set against him, and yet he kept the company on the move. They had reached what he claimed was a fork of the Brazos River, a narrow stream whose water was reddish. There were, he claimed, American settlements not far away.

  In the camp, children quarreled and men and women courted. Vicky had even begun to stay with Lord Berrybender again.

  “I never supposed she’d relent,” Father Geoff admitted.

  Tasmin shrugged. “It’s hard to keep refusing a husband,” she said. “They wear you down.”

  The wind was keening so that she could hardly think. Petal was asleep with Elf, and Buffum was watching them. Tasmin went over and sat a bit with Mary, as Piet sno
red by the flickering campfire.

  “Do you remember when we first walked beside the Missouri, the night you threw that turtle into the boat?” Tasmin asked.

  “Of course. Bobbety tried to put a frog down my dress and I was vexed. Why?”

  “Buffum was declaiming about there being no schools in the American West. Do you remember?”

  “Yes—it was rather silly of her. Papa would never have wasted money on a school, for the likes of us.”

  “My own view is that the Americans would do far better to forget schools and just build madhouses,” Tasmin said. “I could use a madhouse right now, if you want to know, and I’m sure I’m hardly the only woman who can say that.”

  “But you’re not the mad one, Tassie—I was always the mad one,” Mary reminded her.

  “It’s been necessary for you to be the normal one, so the rest of us can pursue our vagaries,” Mary went on.

  “I’ve lost two children—you’re about to bear one,” Tasmin told her. “I’ve a husband who’s a killer first and last. I’ve seen one lover shot dead. You have a nice man who adores you. You can’t claim to be the mad one anymore.

  “If there’s a madwoman in the family just now, it’s me,” Tasmin assured her. “And yet for the lack of a madhouse I have to go on,” she continued.

  Mary didn’t answer.

  For the rest of the night Tasmin stared into the fire.

  50

  In a reddish or dun landscape . . .

  JIM TRAVELED SOUTHWEST at a pace so slow that the little mare was puzzled—she kept jingling the bit impatiently. But Jim meant to be as careful and deliberate as possible. Some days he hid himself and his horses and merely watched the trail. Several times he saw Indians, some moving south, some returning north, but the Indians did not see him. One of his worries was that he was too white. In a reddish or dun landscape his color might betray him. He began to rub himself with dirt every day, to make himself brown. He was not fearful, but he meant to take care not to be seen until he was ready. Big camps were rarely static—people were always leaving or arriving. He didn’t want someone to spot him and give the alarm. He had an excellent spyglass, borrowed from Lord Berrybender. Several times a day he used it to scan the country. He moved through rocky places, where his tracks would be less likely to be seen. He had sufficient jerky; he made no fires. His intention was to become a phantom.

  When Jim did find the slavers’ camp, in a long shallow valley, he first studied it at night. There were more than a dozen campfires. Just to the west was a bluff, at least two hundred feet high and, he first thought, almost sheer. The bluff was pocked with caves but he was not sure he could reach any of them. He circled the bluff at night, hoping to find a crevasse where he could shelter the mare and the packhorse. One morning just at dawn he saw a flash of white, high up. The flash of white was a mountain sheep—it seemed to be walking on air. The sheep, a big ram, disappeared into one of the caves.

  That night Jim hid the horses and attempted to investigate on foot. What he discovered was an extremely narrow ledge around the face of the bluff, invisible from below. Jim thought the mare, which was exceptionally sure-footed, might negotiate the ledge, but it would be too risky for the packhorse. The bluff sported little vegetation but there were forested hills to the west, only a few miles away.

  As Jim predicted, people came and went from the slavers’ camp, but none seemed to go in the direction of the scrubby hills. Jim found a copse on the back of one hill where he thought the horses would be safe. Then, with a rifle, his spyglass, and some meat he slipped into one of the caves. The camp was spread out below him: he could study his enemies at leisure, with no risk of discovery. The cave he was in could not be seen from below.

  It took only a little study to convince Jim that, at the moment, the slavers outnumbered their captives. The only captives he could see were six bedraggled white children, two women who appeared to be Mexican, one white woman, and three Indian girls about the age of Little Onion. All the captives wore hopeless expressions: they were in hell and didn’t expect to get out. In the course of an afternoon the white woman was raped four times.

  While the fourth rape was occurring, Draga appeared, from a house made of sticks and brush— she took no notice of the rape but knocked one of the children down with a stick because the child had been slow in fetching her tobacco.

  Jim counted fifteen slavers, camped in groups of three or four some distance from Draga’s brush house. After studying each group for a while Jim felt confident that he could identify the four men who killed Petey and Little Onion—the main evidence was that one of them carried a heavy club— Little Onion had been killed with a club.

  Most of the slavers looked as tired and half starved as the captives. The main food in the camp seemed to be dog—skinny dog at that, though on one occasion a hunter brought in a wild pig. There was a creek nearby—it wasn’t running but there were pools of water in it, here and there. From one such pool, well away from the camp, Jim watered his horses every day.

  After three days of careful watching, Jim noticed that activity in the camp suddenly increased. Two men, each leading a packhorse, rode in from the north. One of the men was Malgres, the quick killer with the thin knife whom he had first seen with the trader John Skraeling, near the Mandan villages years before. The other man had been with Obregon, the slaver Jim had pounded so hard as they were marching into New Mexico. The pack-horses carried some rusty-looking muskets and a variety of small trade items. The two presented themselves to Draga, clearly the mistress of the camp. The old woman sat on a heap of hides, smoking a long-stemmed pipe. Malgres and his friend were allowed to make camp.

  The next day, though, Draga was quick to take note. A party of seventeen Comanches rode in from Mexico, leading ten captives, mostly half-grown children, though one grown woman was with the group. The captives were immediately inspected by the slavers, but they weren’t abused, not until the Comanches got their price, which required a whole day of haggling.

  The Comanches were more watchful than the slavers—Jim kept well back in his cave and did not use the spyglass for fear that a glint of sunlight off the glass might give him away. That night he moved his horses farther away.

  By the next day several of the Mexican captives had been acquired by various slavers. The white woman was gone—one of the Comanches had traded for her. Malgres’s stock of muskets was reduced but he and his friend still had ample trade goods—they idled around the camp, evidently waiting for more arrivals from Mexico.

  The four men Jim had marked as his killers did not seem to like Malgres. They kept to themselves. The slaver with the club was much taken with one of the Mexican women, a shapely brown woman who had not yet lost her dignity of bearing. Twice in one day Jim saw him take the woman out of camp in order to copulate with her. The woman submitted passively, her face turned away.

  Another small group of Indians appeared from Mexico—this group had only five captives, all children. Jim heard Draga’s voice, raised in complaint. In this instance no deal was struck. The Indians rode on with their captives.

  Jim supposed Draga must feel that she already had more children than she had customers for— and yet only a day later more children arrived and Draga took them. Jim watched the exchange, which involved a little silver and a great deal of tobacco. Many of the children were boys, just old enough to do field work, the use they would be put to once sold, Jim supposed.

  The day the new party of Mexicans rode away Jim concluded that he had seen enough. It was almost time for the Sin Killer to begin his righteous work.

  51

  He had come rather to fear his wife.

  I FEAR OUR TASMIN is falling off,” George Catlin said to Mary. “I can hardly get her to hold a conversation, and neither can Geoff.”

  “We all fear for her,” Mary told him. She too was alarmed by her sister’s sunken cheeks and vacant eyes. Tasmin seldom walked now—she sat in the wagon all day, staring. Petal, by the application of h
er fierce will, could sometimes get her mother’s attention for a few moments now and then, but most of them saw their efforts ignored.

  “Can’t think what’s wrong with Tassie,” Lord Berrybender said, nervously, to Vicky and Buffum.

  “It’s how one feels when a child dies,” Vicky told him. “I felt that way when Randy died, but you didn’t notice.”

  “Busy, I suppose,” Lord B. said. He had come rather to fear his wife. She had not lately flown into violent rages, and yet he knew she was capable of them. He was much troubled by the lack of drink. When drunk one could overlook the danger of one’s wife. Sober, it was a fear that preyed on the mind.

  George and Geoff and Mary gathered around at night and considered what they might do. They had all, in different ways, come to rely on Tasmin’s strength. And yet now she wasn’t strong—sometimes she stumbled when she tried to walk, and she never made spirited remarks. She didn’t complain and she didn’t cry—yet she seemed scarcely there.

  “There’s no helping anyone that deep in grief,” Piet Van Wely told them. “We must go on attending to ourselves. Tasmin will finally recover.”

  Unable to bear Tasmin’s silent despair, George began to sketch Petal in her various moods. Petal had been spending more time with Buffum and Elf.

  “I like to be with my aunts because they speak more,” Petal said. She herself spoke, and she was tired of asking her mother questions and getting no answers.

  “I feel that somehow I left myself behind, George,” Tasmin finally told him. “There’s a promise I want you to make, in case I die.”

  “Anything . . . of course,” he agreed. “My sons lie in separate graves—I can’t bear it,” Tasmin told him. “If Jim is killed I want you to hire Kit or someone and get them and bury them together in a nice graveyard.”

  “I doubt Jim will be killed,” George said. Tasmin looked at him. “If the history of this sad expedition proves anything it’s that it’s very easy to be killed,” she told him. “Drummond Stewart was an able man, yet he was killed. Pomp was also able, yet he too was killed. Jim is the ablest of them all, but it doesn’t mean he can’t be killed.”