Sin Killer Page 29

  “Marriage is not always a smooth path, Kit,” Tasmin said—she now felt quite confident of her power over young Kit, and inasmuch as he had become putty in her hands, she felt a devilish need to twist him just a bit.

  “Not always a smooth path at all,” she repeated. “I confess that my husband and I had a tiny quarrel this morning—what you might call a spat.”

  “I know,” Kit said—the comment popped out before he could think.

  “Pardon me—how can you have known about our quarrel?” she asked.

  “Jimmy told us,” Kit said, startled by his own volubility—his tongue, like a skittish horse, now threatened to run away with him.

  “Well, goodness me,” Tasmin said, watching Kit with surprise. Her devilish mood had not passed— she wanted to discommode this polite young fellow in some minor way—perhaps snatch his ridiculous rag of a cap, or even ruffle his hair.

  “You mean my husband came to see you, in a howling blizzard, just to tell you about our quarrel?” she asked.

  “Yep,” Kit said. “Jimmy Snow can find his way around better than most. Mainly he came because he didn’t want you to get all worried.”

  Having delivered the longest speech he had ever made to a female, Kit felt rather proud of himself.

  “He said he knocked you out of the tent,” he added, having just remembered that detail.

  “Yes, I have a fine lump on my head and scraped my knee besides,” Tasmin said. “Since he seems to have been so forthcoming, did he happen to mention what the quarrel was about?”

  “Didn’t like your chatter,” Kit said nervously. “Hit you to keep you quiet.”

  “And yet, you see, I’m not really quiet, am I, Kit?” Tasmin said, favoring him with a brilliant smile.

  “I am not quiet and I doubt I ever shall be,” she went on. “You’ve heard my father roaring and my sister Bess, who’s taken rather a fancy to you, complaining. We Berrybenders just happen to be a noisy lot— forthright in our appetites too. It wouldn’t surprise me at all if my sister Bess attempted to become familiar with you soon.”

  “Familiar?” Kit said dubiously; he had no idea what sort of behavior Tasmin was predicting.

  Kit’s solemnity was so comical that Tasmin felt an irresistible urge to tease him. Just as they entered the stockade, with several trappers watching, she suddenly linked her arm in Kit’s and strode boldly toward the post. Kit was too stunned to protest. Eulalie Bonneville, who had been sharpening his skinning knife on a whirling grindstone, stopped his sharpening and just let the grindstone whirl. Tom Fitzpatrick was so surprised he dropped his pipe. Hugh Glass, who had been bent over, trimming a corn on his toe, forgot about his toe.

  Kit didn’t dare withdraw his arm; but his gaze became unseeing as he contemplated the disgrace that had overtaken him—walking arm in arm with Jim Snow’s wife, with everybody watching.

  Happy with the consternation she had wrought in the breast of this too solemn young man, Tasmin released his arm just as Kit, still unseeing, tripped over a wagon tongue—it was half hidden in the snow—and fell absolutely flat on his face.

  No comedian could have achieved a cleaner pratfall. The sight was so funny that Tasmin could not hold in a hearty peal of laughter—various trappers whooped and chortled too. Bess Berrybender, chatting with Father Geoffrin about the exciting levels of depravity in the dark Gothic fictions of Ann Radcliffe, saw Kit fall and felt very vexed with her sister. Here again Tasmin was misbehaving, teasing a nice young man she had no business teasing, the result being this sudden ignominy. Bess immediately rushed to Kit’s side—ignominy, after all, sometimes led to opportunity—retrieved his shop boy cap, and tried to help him staunch the flow of crimson that was pouring copiously from his smashed nose.

  “Bend over, bend over—no need to bleed on yourself, Mr. Carson,” Bess said. “We’ll just apply a bit of this handy snow and have the bleeding stopped in no time.”

  “It’s broke, I guess,” Kit said, wiggling his nose and bending over as instructed—soon a considerable patch of snow was stained with his blood.

  “My God, Kit,” Joe Walker allowed, “I’ve kilt buffalo that didn’t have that much blood in them.”

  “I’m so sorry, Kit,” Tasmin put in. “I thought for sure you saw that wagon tongue.”

  “You are so wicked, Tasmin,” Bess said hotly. “That’s what our bad Tasmin does, in the main, Kit— she causes people to smash.”

  “What nonsense, anyone can trip on a wagon tongue,” Tasmin replied coolly, before going in to see about her porridge bath.

  10

  “I’d call that a bad dream, all right.”

  JLM Snow tramped east, through the fading, thinning storm, very uneasy in his mind. He strode past herds of buffalo and elk but shot nothing, although it would soon be dark and he was hungry. He intended to walk on through the night until he felt calm again in spirit. He felt he had been right to slap Tasmin for her cursing—it was the other blow that troubled him. The Sin Killer had failed to heal sin in himself, in this case the sin of anger. Preacher Cockerell had strode through life angry, whipping, roaring, condemning—Preacher Cockerell believed his angers were righteous but Jim wasn’t so sure, though he himself could always summon a just anger against the wild old native medicine men, with their snakes and bats and poisons.

  But hitting Tasmin to stop her chatter was not the act of a holy man who was battling some great sin. There was no great sin in Tasmin—a mild shaking, to persuade her just to keep quiet, would have been enough. But he had made a fist and used it, and now could not get the memory of her shocked face out of his thoughts. It was, of course, true that Tasmin found it difficult to be meekly obedient—she was not at all like his Ute wives, who said little and obeyed him without question. The difference perplexed him. Some adjustment to a new mate was normal, but he and Tasmin had now been together for several months and she didn’t seem to be changing. Worse yet, she was always trying to get him to change, to let her cut his hair a certain way, to be more sociable, unbend a little with her family. Nor was she a match for his Ute wives, Sun Girl and Little Onion, when it came to getting the chores done efficiently. Tasmin skinned game sloppily at best; she could barely get a fire going, and was no good at working hides. When it came to the daily practicalities of wifehood she failed every test; and her chatter and frequent defiance had to be put in the scales against her. In the nighttime, though, things were different. In the darkness, amid their robes, Tasmin pleased him far more than the two Ute girls, neither of whom were enthusiastic wives in the nighttime sense. Sometimes, in the deep night, Jim would come half awake to realize that Tasmin was beneath him, the two of them in the midst of an embrace whose beginnings were lost in sleep and whose long rapture carried them back into sleep again. Jim was not sure about such powerful and frequent lustings. Preacher Cockerell would have said that such strong lusts were sinful, even though sanctioned by the bonds of matrimony. It was all perplexing, and Jim did not enjoy perplexity. In the main he had lived alone because he liked things simple, but from the moment he had first seen Tasmin, naked in the Missouri’s waters, nothing had been simple at all. His mind had become clouded, his actions confused; if only Tasmin would recognize her place and improve in her duties, the confusion in his breast might subside.

  Lately, though, confusion had only been increasing. That morning it had reached an intolerable intensity; he had struck his wife and left, and yet, with him still were the very feelings that had caused him to strike out. Such tension was not what he wanted; there must be change, and yet where Tasmin was concerned he had no idea how it could be effected.

  Just as the morning star appeared, Jim suddenly tired. He felt he must have walked nearly forty miles; he stopped, built a small fire near a frozen creek, curled up beside it, and slept. He had not slept long, though, when a throb in his ear brought him awake. Someone was coming, on horseback; the throb he had registered was the hoofbeats of a loping horse. It was puzzling. He was far from any camp. Why would
the horse be loping?

  Then the horse—it was Joe Walker’s short-legged mare—became visible, with Pomp Charbonneau on its back. The mare’s breath steamed white in the frozen air.

  “You are a walker, Jimmy,” Pomp said, sliding off the mare. “I knew I’d never catch you on foot, so I borrowed Joe’s best mare.”

  Jim Snow would not have been prepared to welcome any of the other trappers—they were too garrulous and quarrelsome for his taste. But he was always glad to see Pomp; he was able and he knew when to keep quiet. Besides, Pomp had been reared in the old country, where there must be other women like Tasmin. Though not a womanizer himself, perhaps Pomp would have some advice on how to live with an old country wife.

  “Why’d you want to catch me?” Jim asked. “I’m just on my way to the boat.”

  “That’s why—Pa’s on the boat,” Pomp reminded him. “At least I hope he is.”

  “Oh, I expect he’s there—he was guarding the Hairy Horn when we left,” Jim assured him. “His wife was with him and we left them plenty of vittles. Why be worried?”

  “Bad dreams,” Pomp said. “Bad dreams for two nights. I dreamt of the Partezon.”

  “I’d call that a bad dream, all right,” Jim said. The Partezon was the leader of the most aggressive band of the Brulé Sioux. His only pleasure was war, and his dislike of whites was well known. There had been talk of him on the boat, but the Hidatsa scouts all claimed that he was far out on the prairies, in the midst of many buffalo. Why would Pomp be dreaming of him, just now? It was deep winter—the tribes seldom raided then.

  “I wouldn’t expect him to show up now,” Jim said— and yet he knew that dreams were not to be carelessly disregarded. Preacher Cockerell had dreamed of the lightning bolt, and not three weeks later it killed him.

  “A raid may not be likely, but when I heard you were headed for the boat I thought I’d just come with you,” Pomp said. “Sometimes people do what you don’t expect them to.”

  “Particularly if they’re Sioux Indians—that’s right,” Jim agreed.

  11

  “Shut up, you wretched little catamite!”

  TASMIN’S hope that the evidence of Jim Snow’s violence toward her would go unnoticed at the dinner table was soon dashed—no one, it seemed, could talk of anything else, the exception being her father, who habitually took not the slightest notice of any wounds except his own. Indeed, when Mary, with her usual malice, pointed out that Tasmin had a puffy lip and a lump on her temple, Lord B. merely chuckled.

  “Well and good,” he said. “High time some fine fellow got the best of Tasmin. Might knock some of the willfulness out of her—a very sensible thing to do.”

  “No one got the best of me, Father—I merely slipped on some ice and fell into a ravine,” Tasmin replied haughtily.

  “Liar—black liar!” Buffum cried. “Your husband beat you—all the trappers are quite unanimous on that point.”

  “Dear Buffum, your grammar continues to erode,” Bobbety said. “’Quite unanimous’ is, of course, redundant. A judgment is either unanimous or it isn’t.”

  “Hear, hear, good point,” Father Geoffrin cried. He and Bobbety had drawn even closer—they frequently applauded each other’s modest flashes of wit.

  Tasmin regarded them coolly.

  “Very likely both of you, and Bess too, will fall into a ravine someday,” she replied. “Let us hope it is a deep one. In fact, I’ll go further—let us hope the earth swallows you up, so those of us at table will no longer have to listen to your idiotic chirpings.”

  “Oh, don’t say it, Lady Tasmin,” Vicky Kennet pleaded. She had long had a morbid fear of earthquakes, and could not bear the thought of the earth swallowing people up.

  Father Geoffrin had long since exhausted his early fascination with Lady Tasmin Berrybender. He now saw her as the very embodiment of English arrogance and lasciviousness.

  “What would a fellow such as our Mr. Snow know to do with such a one as Lady Tasmin except beat her?” he asked in his whispery voice—though he directed his remarks to Bobbety, Tasmin overheard.

  She studied the priest silently for a moment, hoping her malevolent stare would wither him, a hope that was disappointed. Aided by Bobbety’s flattery, Father Geoff had convinced himself that his own rhetorical powers were equal to those of an Aquinas or an Augustine.

  “Your Mr. Snow,” he went on, “accomplished though he undoubtedly is in the ways of the wilderness, has never read a book, seen a picture—if we except George Catlin’s poor daubings—listened to an opera, heard a fine symphony, worshiped in a great cathedral, or visited a dress shop. If I may be permitted a little mot, his fists are his paintbrushes—as we can all see, he has sketched a rather vivid bruise on Lady Tasmin’s temple. To which I say, tut, tut … it’s what she gets for marrying an unlettered American.”

  “Shut up, you wretched little catamite!” Tasmin yelled. “If you insult my husband again, I’ll come around there and smother you in your own filthy vestments.”

  Father Geoff merely gave one of his whinnying laughs, but Lord Berrybender came abruptly awake at the mention of the word “catamite,” the practices it suggested bringing to mind certain brutish experiences he had suffered while away at school.

  “What? Catamite? Surely he’s not that, Tasmin!” Lord Berrybender said—the brutish experiences had occurred long ago, but had by no means been forgotten.

  “Of course he’s that, Father,” Tasmin insisted sternly. “Surely you must have noticed that this little French whelp has enticed our Bobbety into the ranks of sodomites.”

  “Not Bobbety … not possible!” Lord B. bleated. “Not my son and heir!”

  “Now, Papa, pay her no mind,” Bobbety said. “Father Geoffrin has merely been introducing me to subtleties of Jesuitical doctrine—things it can’t hurt to know.”

  Bobbety smirked at Tasmin and then leaned over to whisper some piece of naughtiness into the smiling priest’s ear, a bit of defiance, or dalliance, whose consequences were immediate and terrible.

  Lord Berrybender, enraged that, under his very nose, his son might have been subjected to the same foul practices that he himself so much abhorred, grabbed up the long fork that Cook had been using to turn the goose and, leaning across the table, thrust it like an épée, his intention being to jab the fork right into Father Geoffrin’s jugular vein. Instead, because of Bobbety’s ill-timed whisper, the tines struck him— not the priest—full in the right eye. It was no gentle thrust, either—when Lord Berrybender withdrew the fork, Bobbety’s eye came with it. Venetia Kennet screamed and fainted, as did Buffum. Father Geoffrin, fearing that Lord Berrybender might thrust again, slid out of his chair and fled. Piet Van Wely turned very pale and George Catlin looked ’round for Cook, who was always reliable in emergencies.

  “Egad … ’scuse me … what’s this now?” Lord B. asked, rather unclear in his mind as to what he had just done. Bobbety emitted a single piercing shriek; before it had ceased echoing, Drum Stewart had rushed over and covered his empty eye socket with a napkin.

  Tasmin herself felt the room swirl for a moment, but she didn’t faint.

  “Be damned, what have I done?” Lord Berrybender cried. His son, one-eyed now, sat sobbing.

  “You’ve made Bobbety a cyclops, Papa,” Mary said coolly—“only his one eye is not quite in the middle of his head, as it should be in a proper cyclops.”

  “Loss of an eye is only an inconvenience—many men have borne it,” Drum Stewart said, resolving, privately, to take his meals with the mountain men from then on, their tempers being somewhat more reliable than that of the Berrybenders. All the same, he liked the way Tasmin had threatened to smother the priest.

  The mountain men, alerted by the shrieking, watched the proceedings from a respectful distance. No strangers to sudden mutilations themselves, they were nonetheless rather shaken by what Lord Berrybender had just done.

  “Somebody needs to shoot that old fool,” Tom Fitzpatrick observed.


  “Good thought,” Eulalie Bonneville agreed. “If he’s left loose he’s likely to do for us all before he’s through.”

  “They’re worse than the Blackfeet, them English,” Joe Walker commented.

  “Blitzschnell! Blitzschnell!” Prince Talleyrand croaked, startling the trappers.

  “I’ve always been against forks,” Jim Bridger remarked.

  “Seeing a thing like that makes me wish I’d stayed dead,” Hugh Glass observed. “The thought of getting an eye poked out gives me the shivers.”

  “I wonder if we could procure some smelling salts?” Drum Stewart asked. “Venetia Kennet’s unconscious and so is Lady Bess.”

  Tasmin went to the kitchen and secured Cook, who came and surveyed Bobbety’s injury as calmly as if she were making soup. Towels, soft rags, and warm water were soon supplied in abundance, though no smelling salts could be located.

  “Mademoiselle took it,” Tasmin said. “I believe she intended on doing a lot of fainting, up in Canada.”

  Bobbety was whimpering quietly. “I need Geoff, where’s Geoff?” he kept asking.

  “Hiding like the coward he is, I’ve no doubt,” Tasmin said.

  She soaked a rag in vinegar and managed to get Vicky Kennet awake, but vinegar had no effect on Buffum, or on Eliza, the plate breaker, who had managed to faint while no one was looking.

  All through the crisis, as she dealt as best she could with the situation, Tasmin felt Drummond Stewart’s hot eyes upon her, a fact which annoyed her considerably. The man had the look of a rank seducer—she was hardly in the mood for such attentions.

  Cook made an excellent bandage for Bobbety’s empty socket; soon he was led away, still calling plaintively for his Geoff.

  To Tasmin’s great annoyance her father, after pounding the table a few times, began to sob.

  “Buggery, nether parts, buggery—there’s a curse upon our blood, I’m afraid!” he cried. “Between Constance and Gladwyn I believe I miss Gladwyn the most—impossible to find a valet with his qualifications in these parts.”