The Berrybender Narratives

by Larry McMurtry

  “We found Big White—he was already dead,” Step Toe said. “He killed a Ponca—broke open his head with that big club of his. The Ponca is over there.

  “There is not much game near the springs,” he added. “We have been living on roots.”

  Jim saw that in fact the little band was starving. He at once gave them what was left of his buffalo meat and the old women immediately set to cooking it. Two of the old women and one of the old men were almost blind—they were the smoke starers, people whose vision had been weakened by too many years spent in small, smoky lodges. The parrot still paraded on the corpse of Big White—it occurred to Jim that the chief might have played with the old bird while both were on the boat.

  The dead Ponca’s head had indeed been broken open—there was ice on the clotted brain matter. Jim made a thorough search but did not find the old chief’s famous war club.

  Except for the fact of two corpses, there was little sign of struggle. Jim noticed the tracks of four horses—that was all.

  “Was Big White shot?” Jim asked, after studying the horse tracks to no purpose. The Mandans were gulping down the half-raw buffalo meat. They all looked exhausted, and one old woman, blood on her chin, was already snoring loudly.

  Step Toe held up a finger, jabbing with it three or four times.

  “Somebody stuck him with a little knife,” Step Toe said. “The wound was no wider than my finger—it went between his ribs and bit him bad.”

  “You didn’t see the horsemen?”

  “We saw no one,” Step Toe said. “When we found Big White his spirit had gone, but he was still warm. At first we feared that someone might come and try to kill us too, but they didn’t. I guess we were too worthless to bother with. Big White was a heavy man—it was all we could do to get him on that scaffold.”

  “Have you heard of a man called Malgres—a dark man from the south?” Jim asked.

  Step Toe shook his head, but another of the old men, old Rabbit Skin, who had been half nodding, came awake at the mention of Malgres.

  “I saw him once with some Poncas,” Rabbit Skin said. “Some Poncas and the Twisted Hair.”

  “That’s right—he works for the Twisted Hair,” Jim said.

  “A Frenchman was there when I saw them,” the old man said. Being full had made him feel sleepy. He could barely remember the dark man, Malgres—he had been butchering a horse at the time, he seemed to recall.

  “Malgres has a little thin knife,” Jim indicated. “They say he’s quick as a snake, when he strikes.”

  “I wonder if Big White really killed a grizzly bear with that club?” Step Toe said. “He was a great man, but he was always bragging. I knew him years ago, when I was younger.”

  48

  Among excitable people, calm was the first requirement . . .

  JOHN Skraeling, known among the tribes as the Twisted Hair, from his habit of twisting his long gray mane into a knot so it wouldn’t blow in his face on windy days, or spoil his aim if he was hunting, was annoyed when Draga told him that the steamboat had left the Mandan encampments three days earlier. All the river tribes were talking about the great Thunder Boat, with the rich English family on it. Skraeling had meant to be in the Mandan villages two weeks earlier—he, Guillaume, Malgres, and the two Poncas, one of whom was now dead—but the trouble between the Osage and the Pawnees had slowed them down. In any case, traveling with Guillaume—Willy, to the English—was never fast. Guillaume refused to be rushed; he was seldom willing to leave camp before noon. Malgres wanted to kill him because of his sluggish habits, but Skraeling forbade it.

  “Don’t you be cutting on Guillaume,” he said. “We need someone who can talk to the Sioux. I can’t, and you can’t either.”

  “I don’t want to talk to these filthy Indians,” Malgres said—he himself was said to be part Apache. Malgres was small, quick, hotheaded, and deadly. Skraeling tried to avoid long conversations with him; he had been looking for a safe way to be done with Malgres, but hadn’t found one yet.

  Georges Guillaume, the man Malgres wanted to kill, had been in the north country forty years, as hunter, trapper, trader, guide, slaver, spy. He spoke more native dialects than any man in the north, far more than Toussaint Charbonneau, Captain Clark’s interpreter. Skraeling knew that Malgres’s Santa Fe bravado would not help them much if they ran into forty or fifty Teton Sioux on a day when the Sioux were in a warring mood—as they usually were.

  “The Bad Eye made me give two white women back,” Draga said. “We had three but one attacked me and the warriors killed her. There are many women on that boat. It has only been gone three days. Some of the women would bring a good price.”

  “I’m more interested in that keelboat full of wine the men are talking about,” Skraeling said. “That much wine would keep a fellow warm all winter. It’s gonna get bad cold pretty soon.”

  John Skraeling hated the cold. Son of a Norwegian sailor and a Creole mother, he had been born to the humid warmth of Galveston. He himself had been a captive, taken by the Comanches when young; Comanche was the only native language he spoke. When he grew up the tribe let him go—very soon, with more and more settlers crowding into the Comancheria, Skraeling became a ransom specialist, buying back young captives for the frontier families or small settlements from which they had been snatched. He was paid for his work, but not much; it soon occurred to him that he could make a good deal more money if he snatched the children and rescued them. Generally the return would be made quickly—else the children might die, from the mere shock of captivity itself. Keep them three weeks and their families might consider them hopelessly tainted by contact with the Comanches; this was particularly true if the children were female. Comanche women became wives very young.

  John Skraeling soon tired of the uncertainties that went with the trade in captives. He struck the old Spanish trail to Santa Fe and became a trader in everything but captives: pelts, silver, weapons, blankets, even spices. Six times he crossed from Saint Louis to Nuevo Mexico. He had been in Kansas when he heard about the great steamboat with the rich English family and its keelboat full of fine wine. With Malgres, Guillaume, and the Poncas, he had decided to follow it, mainly out of curiosity. A steamer on the shallow Missouri might encounter a lot of setbacks—there might be much to scavenge, if things went wrong.

  But they had arrived late, and now the boat was north of them, with the bitter cold at hand.

  “We could catch it,” Draga said. “Take me with you if you go. I’ll see that you’re warm.”

  Georges Guillaume sat comfortably by the fire, carefully scraping the rich yellow marrow out of a buffalo leg bone. He lifted an eyebrow at Draga’s remark. Long ago, before she had begun to smell old, Draga had been his woman. What was the old slut suggesting? That she would build Skraeling’s fires—or find him young women; or was she offering to be his woman herself? John Skraeling showed little interest in women anyway—why would he want a harsh, toothless old witch?

  “Thank you,” Skraeling said politely. “I’ll let you know what I decide.”

  He had no intention of taking Draga with him, but he didn’t want to offend her, either. Draga had the ear of the Bad Eye, a fact no trader could afford to ignore. In any case, as he had tried to explain to Malgres, courtesy and good manners did not go unnoticed in the Mandan encampments—modesty got one more than bluster or rage. Among excitable people, calm was the first requirement—the unfortunate encounter with Big White showed that clearly enough. Big White had actually been on the English boat—Skraeling had merely been waiting for Guillaume to catch up so Guillaume could ask the old man about the treasures on the steamer. But then one of the Poncas had foolishly insulted the old Mandan, an act of aggressive folly that immediately cost him his life. Then Malgres, whom Big White hardly noticed, struck with his knife before Skraeling could stop him, and the one man who could have given them valuable information about the treasure boat slumped down in the snow and died.

  “Draga wants you to ca
tch her some more white girls so she can beat them,” Guillaume said to Skraeling. “She hates these white girls that the young men want.”

  Draga ignored him—she might lack the beauty of her youth, but she was not too old to please men. Almost every day, if she went to the shore to gather firewood, some young warrior would follow and seek to couple with her. Some she allowed, some she rejected. She knew, of course, that Skraeling didn’t want her for himself. He was not a young man—in fact, he looked sick. Draga meant to watch him, observe where he squatted, see if there was blood in his excrement. Skraeling’s cheeks were sunk in, and there was a rasp in his breath. Skraeling no longer wanted women, but he did still want money.

  When he left the lodge to go visit the Bad Eye, Guillaume cracked another buffalo bone—he could not get enough of the rich marrow. Outside, the wind was howling—Guillaume was happy to be in a warm lodge, even if the old witch, Draga, was staring at him with hatred in her eyes.

  “The Bad Eye made a terrible prophecy,” Draga informed him.

  “I don’t want to hear it—I don’t like bad news,” Guillaume said. “I need a new wife, Draga—nobody skinny. Can’t you find me a young woman with some flesh on her bones?”

  “Why should I find you wives?” Draga asked. Then she left the lodge—she wanted to hear what Skraeling said to the Bad Eye.

  Guillaume threw a big piece of driftwood on the fire. His lodge was a good solid lodge of well-packed earth, warm even on the coldest days, though perhaps a little smoky. If Skraeling decided to chase the English boat, then let him do it with Malgres and the Ponca. Guillaume meant to stay in his warm lodge and eat buffalo marrow until the warm weather came. When Draga came back she found him sound asleep and snoring.

  49

  The sky to the north was bluish, like a gun barrel . . .

  TASMIN woke to the snorting and snuffling of buffalo—many thousands of them crowded both banks of the river and covered the plains to the west as far as the eye could see. Those nearest the river had icicles hanging from their chins, and more icicles dangling from their shaggy sides, where melting snow had frozen hard. It was so cold that Tasmin’s breath soon frosted up her windowpane.

  To her annoyance Bobbety and Mary came bursting in, admitting air so frigid that to breathe it was like drawing fire into her lungs.

  “My thermometer is quite smashed—the mercury kept sinking until the glass broke,” Bobbety said. “That means it is very cold indeed.”

  “I believe I could have deduced that without a lecture from you, Bobbety,” Tasmin said.

  “The Piegan is rather annoyed because he can’t paint himself today—his paints are frozen, and so are Holger Sten’s, but Mr. Catlin had the forethought to trust his to Cook, who kept them in a warm place,” Mary informed them.

  “Even so he is not painting these numerous buffalo—his fingers are too cold,” Bobbety said.

  For some days now Tasmin had been feeling the kind of restless frustration that she had felt on the day of the big hailstorm. Once again, just as she had resolved to go ashore and search for her husband, an unignorable impediment had been thrown up. Then it had been hail, now it was this terrible cold. The sky to the north was bluish, like a gun barrel; it offered no suggestion of warmth. Tasmin felt herself to be a hardy, healthy woman, but she was not so foolish as to suppose she could survive such cold. Besides, she was with child, her abdomen just showing its first slight curve. The Oto woman had been right to make her shirt loose. Vexed as she was at having to deal once again with the inanities of her family, frustrated as she was at not being with Jim, she knew there was nothing much she could do about it. Only that morning Captain Aitken, himself much disturbed by the sudden, brutal end to the fallish weather, had put it to Tasmin bluntly.

  “You’d not last a night on shore,” he said. “The Indians can stand it. Oh, sometimes they lose a toe or two. But they don’t die. You’d die, Miss Tasmin.”

  “Captain, you must stop thinking of me as a Miss,” Tasmin reminded him. “Cook can’t seem to remember that fact, either. The one who remembers is Papa, and that’s because he’s lost a great fat dowry.”

  “Sorry,” the captain said. He had a great deal more on his mind than forms of address. They were still more than one hundred miles, as the river flowed, from the snug trading post on the Yellowstone that was their destination, and yet the river wouldn’t flow, if the cold didn’t moderate. The edges of the river were crinkled with thick ice—it had happened in only one night.

  Charbonneau came up to the bridge as the captain was talking with Tasmin.

  “The Mandans said it was going to get bad cold,” he said.

  “I’m going to start running all night,” George Aitken said. “I’ll send some engagés in front of us, in a pirogue—they can feel out the snags and sandbars.”

  “But really, gentlemen, we can get out and walk, if we have to, can’t we?” Tasmin asked.

  “We can, but I don’t know how many of us would make it—depends on the blizzards,” Charbonneau said.

  “We stayed a day too long at the Mandans’,” the captain said. “Fixing that paddle was the devil of a bother. Little delays tell against you, when the season’s failing.”

  “I’m sure my Jim is out there somewhere,” Tasmin said, a little anxiously. “I hope he’s not met with an accident. He’s not likely to freeze, is he?”

  Captain Aitken almost slipped and called Tasmin “miss” again—she looked so young and blooming. It was rather a mystery what sort of marriage she was intending to have with Jimmy Snow—a skilled young guide, certainly, but hardly the man to provide this smart young Englishwoman with a comfortable home life.

  “Oh, Jimmy can handle weather,” the captain said. “I’d be happy to see him myself, to tell you the truth. If the weather stays this cold we may ice in—Jimmy could be a big help if we have to tramp it.”

  Later, in her cabin, Tasmin locked herself in and withdrew into memory, as she had many times. She did her best to recall everything that had happened in her time with Jim. No book now interested her—she could think of nothing but her husband. She wanted intensely for him to come to her and remain her husband, and yet she could not decide, from a review of his behavior, whether such an appearance was at all likely. He had mentioned casually, in the midst of her pique, that he only expected to see his Ute wives every two or three years—what if he were intending to be similarly lax in regard to conjugal life with her? The thought of waiting years, months, even weeks to see him was intolerable! Didn’t he miss her? It was a matter she had no way of judging.

  In her life as a much-courted English beauty, Tasmin had rarely been prone to self-criticism. Guilt was an unknown emotion. She had taken Master Stiles away from her mother without a moment’s qualm.

  Now, in her chilly stateroom, surrounded by the vast plains—bare except for the milling buffalo—Tasmin, long accustomed to blaming others for everything that went even slightly wrong, now turned her considerable skill at blaming herself. Why had she allowed the revelation of these distant Indian wives to upset her so? Why had she been so foolish as to leave a man who had been, on the whole, rather considerate of her, and who pleased her deeply? The obvious explanation was that she herself was an excessively spoiled piece of work. Her feelings of abandonment and loneliness were her own fault—Jim, after all, hadn’t left her.

  In her turmoil of spirit Tasmin struck out ruthlessly when any member of her family made the slightest demand. The pale, passive Buffum—already nunlike—she avoided. Bobbety she ignored, Mary she smacked; and she had nothing to do with her father, who in any case remained closeted with Vicky Kennet most of the time, nursing his stumps. George Catlin she froze out; the other specialists she rarely saw. The one person she took into her confidence, regarding her pregnancy, was Cook—no gossip, and gynecologically experienced as well—and Coal, Charbonneau’s wife, made rounder and much jollier by the fact that she too was with child. The tundra swans had blessed her, Coal believed.

>   Coal and Tasmin had no language in common: what they had was a common state, the old, old state that came only to women. On sunny days Tasmin often went down and sat with Coal, comforted by her cheerfulness and impressed by her industry. Coal had insisted that her husband bring her rabbit skins—she had already made a warm pouch for her child, and assured Tasmin—in sign—that she would make her one too. Old Charbonneau was rather put out at being required to scour the plains for rabbits, but he did his duty and Coal worked the skins until they were supple and soft. Sometimes Tasmin helped a little, accepting Coal’s instructions. Then she conceived the notion of making Jim a cap. Monsieur Charbonneau was required to secure two beaver skins from some Indians. Tasmin racked her brain over the question of head size. When her Jim did come she wanted his cap to be right, neither too small or too large. The final product looked rather Russian to her, but Tasmin was proud of it anyway and slept with it under her pillow at night. Somehow just having a fine cap waiting made her feel a little more hopeful that someday soon her Jimmy, her Raven Brave, would come back to his wife.

  50

  Insults, slights, teasings, rudeness she had borne in studied silence . . .

  VENETIA Kennet, five years now in service to the Berrybenders, had not once lowered herself to ask a favor of Lady Tasmin. Insults, slights, teasings, rudeness she had borne in studied silence, a haughty dignity her only refuge. Now and then she might lash out at Bess, slap Mary, curse one or another of the Ten; of course, she had always felt quite free to abuse the tutors, the femme de chambre, the kitchen help, the valet, and lesser riffraff on the boat. But Tasmin she let be—it was most unfair, of course, that Tasmin had been born noble and herself of common stock; but there it was, and Venetia felt that the best response she could make to this unanswerable injustice was to ask Tasmin for nothing—not even the loan of a book. This policy she had held to rigidly for the whole five years. On rare occasions, when Tasmin unbent and offered to loan her a book, Venetia Kennet had nobly, serenely, icily refused, and would have refused to the very portals of eternity had the family only remained in England, where life proceeded according to long-established rules.