The Berrybender Narratives

by Larry McMurtry

  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 her 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.”

  “You’re right, of course,” George said. “If I live I’ll get Kit to help me and do this myself,” Tasmin assured him. “I want my boys together, that’s all.

  “You were once jealous of Jim, weren’t you?” she asked, unexpectedly.

  “Of course,” George admitted. “At first it seemed most unlikely that you’d suit one another—it seemed distinctly improbable. And yet I suppose you do so suit one another—and I can never feel that I suit anyone—so far I haven’t, at least.”

  “I can’t bear to think of Jim right now,” she told him. “Perhaps we do suit—though not steadily. But right now I’m not strong enough to bear the uncertainty of having to wonder if he’s alive. I have to put him out of my mind, or lose my mind. There may be months and months of waiting, this time.

  “Just don’t forget about my boys,” she said again. “If I should die, you and Kit have to do that for me. Promise me. Promise me.”

  “Certainly—you have my promise,” George said. “I shall probably charge Geoff with the same mission,” Tasmin told him. “The fact is you could die yourself, George Catlin.”

  “I easily could,” he admitted.

  Tasmin gave him a grateful look.

  “I fear you sell yourself rather short, where women are concerned,” she told him.

  “Oh, I suppose—certainly I’ve had no notable successes,” he said. “Why do you mention it?”

  “Because I believe I might have made do with you, in a pinch,” Tasmin said. “I fancy I might have made do.”

  52

  Draga had learne
d about poison in the faraway time . . .

  DRAGA DIDN’T LIKE TRADING in Mexican captives— she longed to return to the Mandan country, where she had had her best years. Of course, it had been necessary to leave when the smallpox struck down the Mandans and the Rees. No traders came from the north in those grim years—the river no longer supplied her with captives, as it had for so long. In those rich years she had been able to count on a steady stream of white captives: French Canadians, Americans from across the Mississippi, the wives of white traders whose husbands had died from one cause or another.

  Draga considered that she knew better than anyone how to handle captives, particularly women captives. She knew ways to make them submissive that didn’t involve disfiguring beatings or tortures. A few women with strong spirits had to be broken by tortures, which of course excited the spectators and sometimes got out of hand, resulting in the death of the captive. But such losses didn’t occur often. The Bad Eye, when he had been the main prophet of the Mandans, discouraged the burnings and tortures that had been common in earlier times. The Bad Eye, in Draga’s view, had been more merchant than prophet. The Mandans held the choice spot on the Missouri River—in the years when the fur market was high, furs poured in from all directions. The Bad Eye discouraged violence because he didn’t want the trappers to be frightened. He wanted the furs to keep pouring in.

  But the smallpox ended that time. Draga had reluctantly gone south, where the work was harder and the pickings less interesting. Compared to what she had known with the Mandans, the southern Indians seemed dull; and she found the mostly squat brown captives dull too. There was little variety. Most of the Mexican children soon got sold back to Mexico, to provide help in the fields.

  She had heard from many sources that the white immigrants to the east would soon begin to push the Mexicans out. Malgres and even Blue Foot claimed this, and yet none of them brought her any of these abundant whites, as captives. The one white woman she had traded lately had been brought in by an Apache—the woman was sold within a week to a Kiowa chief. She had already been used so heavily that her mind was dislodged. The Kiowa wasn’t going to get much for his money.

  Because of this lack it was irritating to have Blue Foot and Tay-ha show up and brag about the big party of whites they had followed, a party that had several young white women in it. Draga thought from their description that it must be the same family of whites that had gone up the Missouri a few years before. What they had been doing all that time was a mystery to Draga, but she was highly irritated with the men for failing to bring in even one salable captive. It was a poor show, so poor that Draga idly considered poisoning all four of those worthless men. Or three of them, at least. She saw no point in wasting poison on old Snag-gle, who was on his last legs anyway.

  Draga had learned about poison in the faraway time when she had been a girl in California—an old woman in one of the missions taught her a few simple poisons; later, at the Mandans’, she had provided herself with strong chemicals brought down by a French apothecary who sometimes visited. These she kept carefully stoppered and concealed. In her opinion there was no quicker or safer way to get rid of men who had become obnoxious than with poisons. The first man she poisoned was Guillaume, an old trader who had once been her lover— Guillaume had caught Draga in the bushes with a young warrior and had had the temerity to beat her: she poisoned him that very night. He woke up with his belly on fire and was dead before the sunrise.

  Now she thought she might poison Malgres, an envious man whom she had never trusted. Besides, Malgres was an indifferent slaver who never brought in interesting captives. Merely having him in camp filled her with a vague sense of menace. Draga considered Malgres a coward, and yet the fact was cowards sometimes made more effective killers than brave men. She never allowed Malgres to get behind her—he might kill on impulse, in hopes of finding the money and jewels she was supposed to have brought with her from the Mandans. She had hidden the money and the jewels under a black rock—but there were hundreds of black rocks in the desert and only she knew where her treasures were hidden.

  As the sun set Draga rested on her heap of buffalo hides, thinking about whom she might poison in the next few days, when a strange cry, of a sort she had never heard before—a kind of rising ululation—suddenly filled the air. It seemed to come from the big bluff, and yet there was nothing to be seen on the bluff except the last rays of the evening sun, shining on the reddish rock.

  Draga was not easily frightened and yet for a moment the hair stood up on her neck. Everyone in camp was suddenly scrambling for their guns, looking, listening to the strange, indecipherable sounds floating above them. Draga at first doubted that the sounds were human. She had heard that panthers sometimes made strange screaming sounds. Certainly there could be a panther near camp, hoping to kill one of the horses. But she had glimpsed panthers often in her life and had never heard one of them scream.

  As abruptly as they began, the strange cries ended—though the echoes of the last call seemed to curl off some cliffs to the south.

  The cry stopped, the sun slipped under the horizon, winter dusk closed in, and yet no one in the camp of slavers had moved. The men all waited with their guns. The captive children huddled together. The Mexican girls began to pray to the saints.

  Draga forgot about poisoning anyone.

  She walked over to consult with Malgres and Ramon, both of whom looked scared.

  “Was it a panther?” she asked.

  Both men shook their heads. “It was no panther—it was the Sin Killer,” Malgres said. “He’s here somewhere.”

  “Where? I don’t see him,” Draga remarked.

  Of course, she had heard stories about the ferocity of this Sin Killer, but she supposed most of them were lies. It took very little to get people started lying. She knew the Osage claimed that the Sin Killer had eaten the lightning and so could not be killed by ordinary weapons. Others said he was married to one of the English girls from the steamboat. Still others claimed his wives were Ute. The conflicting stories just convinced Draga that he was probably an ordinary frontiersman who had made a few lucky kills, after which a legend grew up about him.

  “He’s no legend,” Malgres insisted. “In a second he destroyed Obregon.”

  “But Obregon was always slow,” Draga reminded them. “He thought too much of himself.”

  “If it’s the Sin Killer I think we should leave,” Ramon proposed. The sound reminded him of how Obregon had moaned and screamed from the pain of his splintered jaw—they had finally killed him, to rid themselves of his cries.

  “Obregon could not stand pain,” Ramon said, distractedly, fingering his own jaw. A broken face must be extremely painful. What if the Sin Killer still had his club?

  Malgres at once disagreed with Ramon about the business of departure—if the Sin Killer was close by, the last thing he intended to do was flee into the desert. The two of them would be easy prey if they tried to do that.

  “Here, we are at least a dozen guns,” Malgres argued. “Surely he wouldn’t attack a dozen well-armed men.”

  “All of us put together couldn’t kill him,” Ramon declared gloomily. “He is quick as a panther when he moves. Remember how he jumped at Obregon?”

  Malgres did remember. He considered himself a fast man, but the Sin Killer might be faster.

  “Can’t you make a bad spell?” Malgres asked Draga.

  Draga thought it might be wiser to make a bad poison and feed it to Malgres and Ramon, for being such worthless cowards. She would just make them coffee one morning, pretending to be helpful. Then she would dribble a few drops of her strongest poison in the murky coffee—after a few swallows Malgres and Ramon would be writhing around like lizards whose backs were broken. Before the coffee cooled they’d be dead.

  But how could she poison the Sin Killer, a creature whose existence she only half believed in? How did one go about poisoning a phantom?

  “Sure, you go bring him here and I’ll poison him
quick,” she said. “I’ll put barbs in his belly for sure.”

  Ramon shook his head vigorously at this suggestion.

  “I don’t want to bring him here—I want him to go somewhere else,” he said, so frightened that his knees were knocking together.

  Disgusted, Draga turned and stumped back to her pile of hides. Ramon looked as if he might die of fright: how worthless could a man be?

  53

  He had been holding in his anger for days . . .

  JIM KNEW THAT HE HAD been lucky to find a perfect hiding place from which to cry out the Word. If he hadn’t seen the white ram crossing the face of the cliff he would never have found the small cave where he hid himself. His hideaway was under an insloping curve of the cliff. It could not be seen from below. He had been holding in his anger for days, ever since he found the bodies of Petey and Little Onion—finally he let it out for a few minutes, listening to his cries echoing off the distant hills.

  Mainly he cried out to relieve the anger and sorrow he felt—but he also wanted to see what effect it had on the slavers.

  All the men in the camp grabbed their weapons, but none of them fled. They heard the Word, but didn’t know what the cries meant, or what was best to do. The old slaving woman, Draga, had seemed bewildered at first, but she finally went and sat back down on her seat of hides. Jim had no worry that she might spot him—few women who had spent their lives in Indian lodges could see well in old age—years of having smoke in their eyes had dimmed their sight.

  The men Jim meant to kill first, the four who had taken Petey and Little Onion, jumped up and grabbed their weapons, but they slowly calmed down and resumed playing dice. They were not worried enough to run—there seemed to be plenty of liquor in the camp, so probably most of the slavers were drunk, or half drunk.