The Berrybender Narratives

by Larry McMurtry

  So, when a large brownish beast rather like an elk scampered within easy range, Bobbety, myopic from birth, shot it—only to realize, from a whinny the dying beast gave, that it hadn’t, after all, been an elk or a deer, but only a horse. Not until confronted with his father’s shocked face did Bobbety realize that he had killed Royal Andrew, the finest horse in his father’s famous stud. There before them the great horse lay, dead as any of the forty buffalo that had fallen that day.

  Lord Berrybender turned ash white—he attempted speech.

  “My horse—my best horse,” he said—of all the losses suffered by the Berrybenders since their arrival on the Missouri River, none struck home like this one.

  Lord Berrybender stared at Bobbety, but had not the strength even to curse. He wavered, he wobbled, then he dropped the glass of brandy in his hand and slowly sank down across the still-warm rump of Royal Andrew, in a dead faint.

  “Smelling salts, smelling salts,” Signor Claricia demanded, snapping his fingers at Tim—the stable boy, fervently hoping that Lord B. was as dead as his horse, sauntered over toward the campfire, where Milly, the laundress, was attempting to cook a kind of hash which Lord Berrybender favored and which Cook had taught her to make, only Cook had not had to make it over an open fire with a strong wind blowing.

  “The old boy’s fainted—got any smelling salts, Milly?” he asked. Now that he was out of the chilly stables his own spirits had improved so much that he was not above attempting familiarities with the buxom Millicent. Seeing her bent over the campfire, he sidled up and rubbed himself briefly against her ample backside, only to receive a stinging slap for his efforts.

  “None of that now—I ain’t your whore, Tim,” Milly said. “Just stir the hash like a good boy while I see to His Lordship.”

  “Oughtn’t to be so high and mighty with me, Mill,” Tim said. “Wasn’t it I that carried water for you, and helped you all these years?”

  Milly ignored that plaintive cry and hurried over to the dejected little group standing around the dead horse and the fallen lord.

  “It did look rather like an elk,” Bobbety insisted, to Signor Claricia. The carriage maker had been kicked or nipped several times by the dead Thoroughbred— his passing caused Signor Claricia no grief at all.

  To everyone’s surprise the forthright Milly bent over Lord Berrybender and administered a number of vigorous slaps, first to one cheek and then the other.

  “Gets the blood moving, a smart slap or two,” Milly said, continuing with the smart slapping until His Lordship began to stir. His cheeks were soon red, rather than white. With a little heaving and tugging Milly and Señor Yanez soon had him on his feet.

  “There now, sir, you’re fine—I’d best get back to the hash,” Milly said. Tim, sulking from his rejection, attempted to make a grab for her as she went by, but Milly shrugged him off without breaking stride.

  “Come now, no languishing, men—you’ve got a good deal of work to do,” Lord Berrybender said, once he had picked up his brandy cup.

  None of the company knew what Lord Berrybender meant. The day was over, the bold big sun just sinking, in flaming glory, into the green plains to the west. Earlier Signor Claricia had gone ’round and taken the tongues from a number of fallen buffalo—Lord B., tired of kidneys, now preferred to breakfast mainly on tongue. The guns were cleaned—Señor Yanez had promptly seen to that. What work could His Lordship possibly mean?

  “What do you mean, Papa—it’s rather near the dinner hour,” Bobbety inquired.

  “No dinner for you, you myopic whelp!” Lord B. thundered, suddenly livid with anger at the thought that his own son had put an end to the life of Royal Andrew, the finest prize in his stud.

  “No dinner for any of you, not till my fine boy is buried,” Lord Berrybender decreed. “Get the spades, Tim—and the picks.”

  “Bury a horse?” Bobbety asked, very surprised. “Why would one bury a horse?”

  “Of course you’ll bury him—all of you get to work—you’ll not have a bite until you finish. You don’t suppose I’d leave Royal Andrew just lying out, do you? He must be buried honorably and promptly— so get to it.”

  “But, Father, it will soon be dark,” Bobbety pointed out. “Couldn’t we bury him in the morning? I’m sure we’d all be fresher.”

  “Didn’t ask your opinion and don’t give a damn how fresh you are,” Lord Berrybender declared. “Bury my horse—bury him now.”

  “Good-bye, I leave now,” Señor Yanez said in decisive tones.

  Lord B. had been just about to hurry off and enjoy a good plate of Milly’s hash when the small Spaniard made his announcement.

  “I leave too,” Signor Claricia said, no less firmly.

  “My work is with carriages,” he added. “I don’t want to cut out buffalo tongues no more, or bury horses.”

  “Oh damn, now you’re both acting like Cook,” Lord B. said. “You think you can just leave me at your whim, I suppose. You’ll mutiny when the task displeases you. Hardly reflects credit on your countries, I might say! Come back here! You’re my servants— knuckle under now and do as you’re told. Otherwise you won’t get a cent.”

  “What good is cents if you’re dead?” Signor Claricia asked, but he made the comment to Señor Yanez, as the two of them were strolling off toward the wagon, to secure their kit. Without addressing a word to Milly they took their blankets, a fowling piece, and old Gorska’s fine Belgian gun and strolled away into the deepening dusk.

  “Fools!” Tim said. “They won’t get far—where is there to go?”

  “I’m afraid I can’t answer precisely,” Bobbety said. “I don’t know where there might be to go—but I rather believe Señor and Signor are going anyway. There has indeed been a small mutiny, and Papa has failed to quell it.”

  When they strolled over to get shovels, Lord B. was tucking heartily into Millicent’s hash. He viewed the departure of the gunsmith and the carriage maker as a very temporary thing.

  “Too excitable, these Mediterraneans,” he declared. “Likely to flare up at the slightest provocation. Of course, they’re both gifted craftsmen—I suppose one has to expect a bit of temperament, now and then, else one has to make do with indifferent guns and rickety carriages—never able to tolerate either, myself. Must have my guns cared for properly, and my carriages too. Those two will soon be back, I assure you—got their backs up merely because I asked them to dig a bit of a hole for fine old Andrew … a direct descendant of the Byerly Turk, finest bloodline in England, though I suppose the Godolphin Arab may have had his points.”

  Bobbety and Tim took advantage of Lord Berrybender’s indignation at the gunsmith and the carriage maker to gulp down as much hash as possible, lest they had to dig all night, but their worries were unfounded. After another brandy or two Lord B. began to fumble with Milly. Thus the night ended as most nights ended, with Milly and Lord B. tussling in the tent, making, to Bobbety’s taste, much too much racket with their rough copulation.

  The prudent Tim took a blanket and rolled himself up in it, near the carcass of Royal Andrew. The fact that Lord Berrybender had found temporary distraction with Millicent did not mean that Royal Andrew would be forgotten. Tim’s prudence proved wise— several wolves had to be discouraged during the night, and Lord Berrybender was out at dawn, ready to direct burial operations. These, in Bobbety’s view, proved laborious in the extreme. Fortunately for all of them the energetic Milly was as handy with a spade as she was with a skillet or a laundry basket.

  She and Tim dug all morning, while the old lord sat around, shooting at anything that came in sight. Bob-bety attempted to throw out a spade or two of dirt, an effort that caused large blisters to form on both his hands. To Lord Berrybender’s intense annoyance there was no sign of either the Spanish gunsmith or the Italian carriage maker. It was becoming apparent that their mutiny had not been a bluff.

  “Can’t think where those fellows can have got to,” Lord B. complained. “Expected them back by now. Don�
��t like work, that’s their problem.”

  “I’m afraid I don’t like it either, Papa,” Bobbety declared.

  A final embarrassment awaited Royal Andrew. The hole, once dug, was ten feet from his noble carcass, around which a good many flies had begun to buzz. When Tim, Milly, and Bobbety attempted to drag the carcass over to the hole, they found that they couldn’t budge it.

  “Timmy, you dolt, why didn’t you put the hole closer to the horse?” Milly inquired: inexpert work always infuriated her.

  “Don’t know,” Tim admitted—he had just started digging at Lord B.’s insistence. It had not occurred to him that a dead horse would be so hard to move.

  Bobbety thought the hole looked rather comfortable. The strain of such close relations with the servants had set his nerves on edge. Were it not for the finality of the matter, he would not have minded resting in the hole himself.

  “What, not buried yet? My great steed will begin to rot pretty soon,” Lord Berrybender announced. He had stumped over in a state of considerable annoyance: one of his rifles was misfiring, and there was no Señor Yanez to fix it.

  Millicent was of the opinion that there were few problems that could not be solved if a smart laundress addressed herself to them with a clear head. Royal Andrew was not the only horse in the company. It was only necessary to hitch one of the geldings to the carcass and Royal Andrew could at once be plopped into his grave. This was done with dispatch, after which all the dirt that had been shoveled out had to be shoveled back in, an effort that still left something wanting, in Lord Berrybender’s view. The prairie ’round the grave looked very level, very bare, a fact which troubled him considerably.

  “He ought to have a stone—never find this place again unless there’s a marker of some sort,” he complained.

  “Why would you want to find it again, Papa? There’s nothing here,” Bobbety observed.

  “I’m rather attached to my horses, always have been,” Lord B. admitted, his eyes not entirely dry. “I might want to stop and pay my respects to Royal Andrew someday—take a moment out of the hunt, you know?

  “Loved my horse,” he added, as the tears began to course down. “Hate to leave him in this lonely place—so unlike England, you know.”

  His tears flowed swiftly, and yet more swiftly, until Lord Berrybender was racked with sobs; he began to pull at his hair and rip at his clothes. Bobbety watched it all, appalled: his own father was going berserk, right before his eyes, and all because of a horse that had too much resembled an elk. Lord Berrybender’s despair seemed very nearly Shakespearean, though the latter was an author with whom Bobbety was not deeply familiar. He and Father Geoffrin were of the opinion that the light and graceful Moliére or even the somewhat heavier Racine was an author with considerably more wit than the bard of Avon.

  Bobbety’s concern did not lessen. Lord Berrybender had begun to cry to the heavens, cursing his fate—in his frenzy it might not be long before he began to curse his children, starting, very probably, with the child who had shot his favorite horse.

  Fortunately Milly, who had been carrying a bucket of water up from the Yellowstone River, heard the commotion and came striding over.

  “Here now, silly boy, stop that!” Milly said to Lord B. “Come along now with your Milly—we’ll just slip into the tent and see what we can find to do.”

  “I believe I’ll just go in search of a suitable stone now, Father,” Bobbety said, strolling quietly off. More rough copulations he did not care to hear.

  24

  … they could not afford to strike out wildly…

  SEÑOR Yanez and Signor Claricia, having abruptly decided to cast their lot together in the New World, decided it was time to dispense with the strict formality which each had felt compelled to maintain while with the English.

  The two men, once out of the Berrybender camp, made haste over to the Yellowstone River and hurried south along its banks for a few miles, enough to discourage the old lord if he should miss his prized Belgian rifle and attempt to chase them down. One thing they knew with certainty was that they could not afford to strike out wildly, into the empty land. As long as they kept close to the riverbank and followed it upstream, they had a chance of running into some of the trappers who had set out in that direction.

  “Now that we are not with those English we don’t have to be so stiff,” Señor Yanez said.

  “You may call me Aldo,” Signor Claricia replied. “With all that riffraff on the boat it was better to be formal.”

  “Yes—that Pole, the German woman, the Dane—I didn’t like any of them,” Señor Yanez replied. “You may call me Pedro.”

  “Pedro, okay,” Aldo said. “That’s not so different from Aldo. We might get our selves mixed up.” He meant it as a joke, but the solemn Pedro Yanez didn’t laugh.

  “I have always been Pedro, and Pedro I will always be,” he declared firmly, looking sternly at the Italian, in the event that he had objections.

  Aldo Claricia had none. Pedro, Aldo, Aldo, Pedro—at least they were both Europeans, and from the south. Though night had come and it was very dark, he felt that the two of them ought not to stop until they were well out of range of His Lordship’s wrath.

  “Do you want to walk awhile?” he asked Pedro. “It might be better to get farther away before we stop.”

  Hardly had he said it before a terrible roar was sounded, directly in front of them. A huge dark shape suddenly loomed up so close that they could have touched it—but it was a moonless night and neither of them could see the beast that roared. Terrified, both fired their guns, though Aldo Claricia had only a fowling piece, a weapon hardly likely to save them from this leviathan of the prairies—Pedro Yanez thought he saw a flash of great teeth. Though both wanted to flee, they stood as if paralyzed—what if they fled right into the maw of the beast? Though wide awake, they thought themselves to be in the sort of dream where flight offers the only hope—and yet their limbs refused to move.

  “Pedro, why don’t you reload your gun?” Aldo requested.

  “Be still, don’t blab your mouth,” Pedro said. “We may have killed it.”

  Pedro didn’t believe that they had killed the great beast, though. In shock, expecting death, he had fired both barrels of his gun straight up into the air. Unless the creature with the great roar was a bird, it had survived unharmed.

  The prairie had become totally silent. Aldo could hear Pedro breathing, and Pedro, likewise, Aldo.

  “Are we alive?” Aldo asked. He was so frightened that it seemed to him that death might have stolen over them imperceptibly, as he had always hoped it would, when it came.

  Pedro Yanez was annoyed by the question. Only Italians could be so slipshod as to doubt their own existence. The important question was not whether they were alive, but where the great beast had gone who made the roar—it was, he felt sure, one of the great grizzly bears: even the mountain men feared them. But the two of them were in unknown land— it wouldn’t do to draw hasty conclusions. In Spain there were plenty of bears—the Gypsies had them— but they were small bears, nothing like the size of the beast that had made the roar. On the other hand it wouldn’t do to guess wrong: what was it, if not a grizzly?

  “What if it was something worse than a grizzly bear?” he asked.

  “Don’t be silly—nothing could be worse than a grizzly bear,” Aldo assured him.

  “Well, el tigre could be worse, or elephants,” Pedro replied.

  “Not elephants—there are no elephants here,” Aldo assured him. “How do you know?”

  “Because Lord Berrybender never spoke of them. He didn’t bring a gun for elephants.”

  Pedro made no comment—his silence suggested that he was unconvinced.

  “The mountain men didn’t mention elephants,” Pedro said, less confidently. It seemed to him that the great shape that had risen in front of him had been as large as an elephant—but did elephants roar? He didn’t know.

  The two of them had been standing stock-
still since the great fearsome beast had roared at them.

  “Where do you want to go?” Aldo asked. After all, the great beast hadn’t killed them. Maybe they should move on.

  “I think we should stay here till daylight,” Pedro said. “If we move we might disturb it again.”

  “I mean tomorrow,” Aldo said. “Where do you want to go when the sun comes up?”

  “Let’s go to Santa Fe,” Pedro said. The name just popped out. Many people on the boat had spoken of Santa Fe—there would be plenty of Spanish there.

  “I don’t know about Santa Fe—think of another place,” Aldo asked.

  “Well, we could go to California—lots of Spaniards there too.”

  That was just what Aldo Claricia didn’t want to hear. Though he had thrown in his lot with a Spaniard and was prepared to travel with him on equal terms, he was not at all eager to go to a place filled with Spaniards—after all, a race of thieves, in his considered view. He would have been far happier to travel to a place where there was an abundance of Italians— only where would that be, in the New World? What if he were the only Italian in all of the West? It was a sobering thought.

  “Let’s just sleep here and decide in the morning,” he said. “Maybe then we can see the beast that made that roar.”

  “I don’t want to see it,” Pedro said. “I just want it to go away.”

  They sat down back to back, feeling that it was important to keep watch in both directions, though it was now so dark that neither could see a foot in any direction. Both vowed to remain alert through the perilous night.

  “Vigilance, amigo—vigilance! It is our only hope,” Pedro said. Then he fell sound asleep—Aldo Claricia soon slept too, just as soundly.

  Bright sunlight woke them up.

  “I only nodded for a moment,” Pedro claimed, chagrined. “I’m glad you were able to stay alert.”