The Berrybender Narratives

by Larry McMurtry

  Little Ten, a stout girl, possessed, to everyone’s surprise, an early flair for mathematics—though Mary pedantically insisted that it was only a flair for addition.

  “A low thing, addition,” Mary insisted. “It’s hardly Newton.”

  Ten began her rapid conquest of Jim Snow by refusing to call him Jimmy—his name, she insisted, was James.

  “Mr. James Snow, are you ready to hear me do my numbers?” Ten asked in a loud tone.

  “Ready as I’ll ever be, I expect,” Jim said, amused by the bold tyke. He was working with Signor Claricia to see whether the buggy Lord Berrybender had smashed could at least be fixed enough to make a workable cart.

  “I shall begin with two plus two,” Ten announced. She doubled and doubled and doubled, usually getting up at least into the thousands before Buffum or Mary or even Tasmin ran and clapped a hand over her mouth. If it was Mary who chose to interfere with Ten and her numbers, a sharp tussle was likely to ensue, there in the yard of the trading post, ignored by the various Indians and trappers who came and went.

  Sometimes when the scuffles became too violent Jim would pick the small girl up and sit her on his shoulder. Ten’s little gray mouse would sometimes perch on her shoulder, watching the proceedings inquisitively.

  Usually Jim delivered his small admirer to Tasmin—on fine days Tasmin and Vicky and Coal all brought their babies out and allowed them to finger tufts of grass or test the textures of dirt.

  “Do you know mathematics, Mr. James Snow?” Ten asked.

  “No, but I know how to give you a better name, little girl,” Jim replied. “If you’re going to call me James, I’ll just call you Kate.”

  “Very well then, Kate I’ll be,” the girl said. Then she grabbed Monty and thrust him high in the air a few times, an exercise his father would never have dared try. Monty burbled with excitement and then spat up on Kate’s gray mouse, which chattered indignantly.

  “Oh drat, now he’s soiled my mouse,” the newly christened Kate complained.

  “It’s unwise to bounce a baby up in the air just after he’s nursed,” Tasmin commented.

  “I shall marry Mr. James Snow as soon as I grow up,” Kate informed the little circle of mothers.

  “But I’m married to him,” Tasmin pointed out. “What about me, you brat?”

  “I shall insist that you relinquish Mr. James Snow and go marry someone else,” Kate told her. Then she went over and squatted near Jim, watching in silence as he worked on the cart.

  “I believe you have a rival, Tasmin,” Vicky said.

  “Yes, and I mustn’t underestimate her,” Tasmin replied. “Little girls seem to be able to get their way with even the most recalcitrant men—even Papa sometimes feeds Kate the best morsels, if there’s a goose to eat.”

  In fact, she was soon amazed at how rapidly Kate Berrybender managed to domesticate her husband, a task Tasmin herself had quite failed to accomplish. He whittled Kate small toys—a rabbit, a chicken—and made her a whistle from a reed, an instrument she insisted on playing loudly, despite Monty’s distress.

  “I do believe you like this little witch better than you like me, Jimmy,” Tasmin said one evening, as they rested under a full moon. Not one hundred yards away, clearly visible in the moonlight, several deer were gamboling.

  “I like Kate plenty, but she ain’t my wife—you’re my wife,” Jim told her. His other wife, Little Onion, sat not far away, crooning a singsong tune to Monty. Kate was wandering around blowing her whistle. Jim didn’t say it, but having the two young children with them made Tasmin considerably easier to be with. She was less apt to tax him with her queries. Her desire had come back, though—sometimes the two would walk well out onto the prairie to couple; otherwise Tasmin, still noisy in her pleasure, would wake the children. Little Onion, absorbed by her duties with Monty, seemed not to care a whit what they did.

  Little Onion, keen of hearing, sometimes did pick up distant sounds of pleasure, but she felt no jealousy. She had Monty to care for, an easier thing than dealing with the lusts of men. Several times, before Jim married her, she had been ambushed and taken in heat by old warriors who smelled bad. The old ones had been excited by her youth. These encounters had been brief but unpleasant. Caring for a plump, jolly baby was more satisfying than what men did with her in the tent or on the grass. She was an obedient wife to Jim Snow and would have lain down with him had he required it, but she was glad she had Monty to deal with, and that Jim had Tasmin.

  “She don’t take her eyes off that baby,” Jim commented, on the night of the full moon. “He’ll be growing up thinking he’s Ute. Do you think he knows you’re his mother, and not Little Onion?”

  “I expect Monty takes the practical view,” Tasmin told him. “I’m where he gets his vittles—that’s enough for now.

  “Besides,” she added, after giving the question some thought, “it’s good that Monty has two mothers that he thoroughly comfortable with.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “This is a dangerous place, that’s why,” Tasmin told him. “Life’s unpredictable—one of us might get

  killed.”

  She took his hand and squeezed it tight. “After all, your mother got killed,” she said, taking a risk. She had never discussed his past with him. Jim didn’t answer.

  “Two mothers are safer, and even three wouldn’t hurt,” Tasmin went on. “You wouldn’t want our Monty to be hidden in a cactus patch, would you?”

  “How’d you know that?” Jim asked, startled that Tasmin knew something he had labored to put out of his mind.

  “Captain Aitken told me, poor soul,” Tasmin replied. “He didn’t tell me much—just that Mr. Drew found you.”

  Jim remained silent. Far away buffalo bulls were roaring in the night.

  “Poor Captain Aitken wasn’t lucky enough to have someone hide him in a cactus patch,” Tasmin said. “I rather miss him.”

  Jim was thinking about the baby, and also about little Kate, who had so determinedly taken up with them. Tasmin was right about the dangers—she had, for once, shown good plain sense. What had happened to George Aitken—who wouldn’t desert his boat—could happen to them. For Monty, and Miss Kennet’s baby, and Coal’s, extra mothers wouldn’t hurt. He lay back and put his hand on Tasmin, happy, almost for the first time, in the thought that he had taken a sensible wife.

  44

  “My cart, bought and paid for…”

  LORD Berrybender, furious rather than thorough, had not destroyed the buggy quite totally, as he had meant to. The cab he had thoroughly smashed, but the wheels had only lost a few spokes and the sturdy axle was undamaged. There was nothing to be done about the bonnet, but Jim and Kit went off and cut some logs, which Signor Claricia shaved and lathed until he had a smooth floor for a fairly commodious cart, a process Lord Berrybender watched in sour temper.

  “That’s not your cart, gentlemen,” he warned. “Not your cart at all.”

  “Don’t be so tiresome, Father,” Tasmin threatened. “It’s the only cart.”

  She did her best to act the diplomat in all proceedings involving Jim and her father; she knew that Jim was not likely to tolerate much guff from her father— her hope was to get them away on their journey south before serious violence could erupt.

  “My cart, bought and paid for in Lincolnshire,” Lord B. repeated. “Besides, even if it was yours, you have nothing to pull it with. There’s only my good team, and I shall need them for the wagon.”

  “We’ll use the mare,” Jim told him.

  “Which mare, sir?” Lord B. asked, surprised. “I know of no mare except my Augusta, and of course you can’t mean her.”

  “That’s the one—only her name’s too long,” Jim told him. “We’ll just call her Gussie. She can pull a light cart like this one well enough, I guess.”

  Lord Berrybender was not disposed to let any man cow him—particularly not an American—but he did recall quite clearly the hard shove Jim had given him; he also remembered t
hat Jim had threatened to cut his heart out. Such a degree of frontier irrationality must be dealt with gingerly, His Lordship felt, well aware that he had had little practice with gingerly dealings. He thought that his best bet might be to appeal to Tasmin, who certainly knew that a fine Thoroughbred mare, eligible to receive any stallion in England, could not be made to pull a cart. Nothing so ill-bred had ever happened to a Berrybender Thoroughbred; he felt sure his daughter would realize that and intercede, so as to spare the elegant Augusta such an indignity.

  “Not right, Tassie … not right at all,” he said, in rather a stammering manner. “Augusta’s a mare of high lineage … Byerly Turk, you know. Not suitable to have her pull a cart.”

  “Gussie’s pulling the cart, Papa,” Tasmin replied firmly. “There’s three of us with infants to consider— no reason we should tramp a thousand miles, toting our infants over mountains and swamps, while you idle along in a wagon, shooting at everything that moves and tupping Millicent rather too frequently. Millicent, by the way, was quite a competent laundress before you corrupted her—now Buffum and Vicky and I have constantly to deal with mildewed garments that have not been properly aired, although there is an abundance of excellent air available, as you can well see. If you would just keep your big nasty, as Mama called it, in your breeches for a day or two, we might yet get our clothes done properly before we set off to trace the wild Yellowstone to its source.”

  Jim and Kit, who had been reinforcing the cart wheels, stopped and listened, as they generally did when Tasmin delivered one of her forceful speeches.

  “How’d she ever learn to talk like that?” Kit wondered. Jim, a good deal awed by his wife’s fluency, just shrugged.

  “Shut your mouth, you impertinent harlot—how dare you be disrespectful of the organ that begat you?” His Lordship protested.

  “Maybe it begat me and maybe it didn’t,” Tasmin warned him, coolly. “I intend to investigate that matter thoroughly, at the appropriate time.”

  “Beside the point, anyway,” Lord Berrybender snipped, in no mood for a discussion of Tasmin’s paternity, particularly not in front of a sizable company. He meant to keep to the point, and the point was his highbred mare.

  “I won’t allow it!” he added. “You and your ill-bred mate are not welcome to disgrace my filly.”

  Jim simply ignored the old man—let him rant and rave. They had given Joe Walker’s mule to the Blackfeet, meaning that the pretty mare would have to be their cart horse.

  Kate Berrybender, Jim’s new champion, at once came to his defense. She marched over and planted her square little person directly in front of Lord B., whom she fixed with a firm, green-eyed glare.

  “Take heed, Papa!” she declaimed. “Speak no ill of Mr. James Snow! Take heed! Do you hear me?”

  “Not deaf, Puffin,” Lord Berrybender said amiably, amused despite himself at the small creature’s temerity.

  “Where have you come out from, anyway?” he continued. “I thought we kept you in the pantry, amid the cabbages, potted meats, ham … some dim lair in the pantry. Why should your good papa need to take heed?”

  “Mr. James Snow is my beloved,” Kate informed him. “If you speak ill of him I will put a curse on you and it will be a bad curse, I assure you.”

  “Too late, Puffin—merely having children is a curse, and a bad curse,” Lord B. remarked. “Ungrateful brats, every one of them, but Tasmin is the worst.”

  That a young child could speak to a parent as Kate had spoken to Lord Berrybender was evidence enough, in Kit Carson’s view, that the English belonged to a different race.

  “How does a curse work, now, Katie?” he asked.

  “It turns you black and you become rot,” Kate replied. “And you smell very bad and no one wants to take supper with you.”

  “There, Papa—be careful how you speak of my husband,” Tasmin said. “Indeed if you’re wise you’ll be careful in general. We’re about to start a dangerous trip—it must be evident that you can ill afford to lose much more of yourself.”

  Jim fetched the pretty mare, Gussie, and put her in harness for the first time in her life. The mare was perfectly docile, even nuzzling Jim Snow from time to time.

  “I ought to shoot her—rather see her dead than watch this!” Lord B. said, flushing a deep red.

  But the company, who had absorbed so many of Lord Berrybender’s threats, paid no heed to this one. Mary Berrybender was chasing Kate, meaning to box her ears for having delivered such a melodramatic performance. Kate, shrieking wildly, proved unexpectedly fleet. Signor Claricia was nailing some rude sideboards onto the cart, so the babies wouldn’t fall out. Venetia Kennet was tuning her cello, Cook was salting down some trout Tom Fitzpatrick had trapped in an ingenious seine, Father Geoffrin was reading Bobbety a particularly heretical passage of Voltaire, and Little Onion worked the skin of a lynx, brought in by an Assiniboine hunter—she had bargained for the skin with Boisdeffre, thinking it would make an excellent warm cap for Monty. Buffum, low in spirits, intoned a catechism, while Toussaint Charbonneau was talking with several Mandans who had wandered in after breakfast. Boisdeffre was in the process of receiving a gloomy report from some trappers who had just crossed from the Snake River, where, they said, the beaver were much diminished. Lord Berrybender felt quite left out. Everyone, after all, was doing something; no one was heeding his grumbles about the horse, or about the trials of paternity, or about his unfortunate son-in-law. Not only did he feel left out, he felt, on the whole, sad. Born to command, at the moment he commanded no one except a laundress. On his own children he made an ever-diminishing impression; on the rabble assembled in this remote trading post in the West he made no impression at all. He wasn’t gone, he still breathed the air, and yet he was, if not entirely forgotten, disregarded—disregarded entirely. His late wife, Lady Constance, would never have disregarded him so. He found he rather missed Lady Constance—fortunately the feeling, though sharp, passed quickly. If Constance happened to disregard him—she had been, it must be said, very idle—a smack or two had been enough to bring her to attention. He thought he might just go seek out the cooperative Milly, who was herself perhaps not so meekly cooperative as she had been at first blush. Lately Milly had shown signs of acquiring airs—mistresses, however lowborn, frequently forgot themselves and took on airs—in Milly’s case it was nothing that a smack or two wouldn’t correct.

  Feeling rather droopy, rather lorn, a man forgotten in his prime—and he felt sure he was in his prime— Lord B. went slowly inside. He turned at the door, but no one seemed to be aware of his departure—not a soul cared that he was leaving. Life seemed to be going on, but mainly in contradiction to his wishes. There stood his fine filly, Augusta, very evidently in harness but not seeming to care much about her degradation. It all seemed rather lowering, distinctly lowering, so much so that he thought he had best hurry on and find Milly—get those skirts up over those ample thighs. Airs or no airs, his Milly would pay him some attention—rarely reluctant to attend him, his Milly—unlike everybody else.

  Mary Berrybender, however, took note of her father’s slow departure.

  “I believe we have made our old papa sad,” she observed. “He is getting quite ancient, you know, Tassie. We must try to be a little more thoughtful of him in the future.”

  “That’s bosh and twaddle,” Tasmin said emphatically. “Let him be thoughtful for a change. He’s never been thoughtful once, that I can recall—not while I’ve been about, anyway. Here’s his fine bouncing grandson, Montague, even now at my breast.”

  “Yes, sucking—always sucking … he’s little more than a bag of milk, I fear,” Mary replied.

  “Shut up, we were talking about Papa,” Tasmin reminded her. “Do you think he’s bothered to look at Monty? He hasn’t, not once.”

  “Mr. James Snow, are you ready to hear my numbers now?” Kate asked, beginning to add immediately, but she had only got to thirty-two plus thirty-two when her sister Mary rushed over and covered her mouth. />
  45

  The prince of Wied and his company had departed in their keelboat…

  “THAT German’s got us beat by a mile, when it comes to getting up and getting off,” Kit Carson reckoned, surveying the chaos of the Berrybender expedition as it attempted to assemble itself in the wagon yard of Pierre Boisdeffre’s trading post.

  “A mile? He’s got us beat about twenty miles, I’d say,” Jim replied. The prince of Wied and his company had departed in their keelboat well before dawn, Toussaint Charbonneau with them. The latter still had hopes of finding Blue Thunder, the third of his charges, whose people ranged not far from where the prince hoped to go. Coal and her baby he left with the Berrybenders; he meant to rejoin the party as soon as Blue Thunder had been accounted for.

  “It’s plain why that prince was so much faster than us,” Jim stated. “There’s no women in his bunch— that’s why.”

  The Berrybender party, whatever it might lack, could not be said to lack women. Tasmin, Buffum, Mary, Vicky Kennet, Cook, Eliza, Millicent, and even the tiny Kate were doing their best to cram their many necessities into one wagon and a cart. None of them were at all satisfied with the packing. Tasmin feared that Cook’s jugged hares might somehow leak onto her precious stash of books. Millicent, meanwhile, was carefully packing the claret, under Lord Berrybender’s exacting supervision.

  “Crack a bottle and I’ll crack your head,” he informed Millicent sternly. “I like you fine, y’know, my dearie—but claret’s claret.”

  Bobbety paced about in a state of high anxiety, the source of that being the wishy-washy behavior of Father Geoffrin, who had, even at that late date, not fully committed himself to the trek up the Yellow-stone—a steamer bound for Saint Louis, after all, lay at hand.

  “Oh please, Geoff—I’ll be so wretched without you,” Bobbety pleaded. “Besides, there’s a great many natural wonders we might investigate: geysers and hot springs and who knows what. Tell him, Piet— you’ve been telling me about them for weeks.”