Sin Killer Page 41

  “You garlic fool, you should have kept it sharp,” Pedro said testily; the comradeship they had proclaimed the night they left the company had quickly begun to fray. Almost everything Pedro did—or didn’t do—irritated the sensitive Italian, and that applied in reverse to the testy Spaniard. The slightest contretemps led to heated quarrels. Here, at the very outset of their bold adventure, they were faced with a very formidable problem: a dead deer they couldn’t get the hide off, though they were both starving.

  “This knife was not meant to cut a deer,” Aldo remonstrated—he was bitterly disappointed in the performance of his own knife.

  “I don’t care, go sharpen it on a rock,” Pedro commanded. “This venison is going to waste.”

  Aldo tried, but the famous yellow rocks which gave the river its name proved poor grindstones. The little knife, despite much grinding, did not become sharper. Finally, driven mad with frustration, Aldo began to stab the carcass blindly, aiming at the belly, where the skin seemed a little less tough.

  “Keep stabbing, you made a puncture,” Pedro said. “Tripe is better than nothing.”

  Working in tandem, the two were soon able to pull out many yards of intestines, while the roasts, the steaks, the saddle—all the parts of the deer they had looked forward to eating—remained as inaccessible as ever. Desperately they sliced the gut into sections— even that taxed the potential of the little knife. They ate the gut, along with its greenish contents, while they sat on the ridge where the deer had fallen and contemplated their unenviable situation. They were just by the blue-green river—they could see it winding far, far across the plains.

  “How far do you think it goes, Pedro?” Aldo asked.

  “I don’t know—a thousand miles, ten thousand, what does it matter?” Pedro said, overcome, for the moment, with the fatalism of his race. However far the river went, they would never get there.

  “We will starve before we get to the end of it,” he said, becoming lachrymose. “We will never get to the end of this river.”

  “There are many knives in Boisdeffre’s trading post,” Aldo reminded him. “We could go back and get some.”

  “No, it’s in the wrong direction, and besides, the English are there,” Pedro said, in his gloom.

  “Direction? What difference does direction make, in this country?” Aldo exclaimed. “One direction is as good as another. Boisdeffre doesn’t like the English any better than we do—at least he’ll feed us.”

  Pedro soon grasped the wisdom of that suggestion. Here was a fat deer, well killed with one shot from the Belgian gun, and yet all they could eat of it was the guts.

  So, talking of all the buffalo roasts they would eat once they got back to the post, the two turned north, followed the river, and then crossed and dug their little cave in the bank of the Missouri—from there they could watch the post without being seen.

  Once in sight of the post their rage increased in keeping with their hunger. Why wouldn’t the English leave? Lady Tasmin they saw twice, walking out with her husband and her infant, followed by the young Indian girl. Millicent, the fat laundress, made trips in and out, loading the wagon, which suggested that departure would soon occur. But when?

  “Curs and bitches,” Aldo raged. “This is a free country. The old bastard doesn’t own us. Why can’t we just go in and eat? Think of those beaver tails Boisdeffre cooks.”

  The Spaniard, though, was more cautious.

  “Who knows what the laws are here?” he said. “We took the gun—the old fool might hang us.”

  “No,” Aldo protested. “The gun was Gorska’s. No one said His Lordship could have it. You could tell him Gorska willed it to you.”

  “Me? Why me? Why don’t you say it, then they’ll hang you,” Pedro argued, his suspicion of the treacherous Italian coming to the fore.

  On their fourth day in the hole, with the English party no closer to leaving for their hunt, both men tried to screw up their resolve and march into the trading post—yet they were still lingering when help suddenly appeared from an unexpected quarter. Who should come strolling along the riverbank with a butterfly net and a pouch filled with specimen bottles but the dumpy figure of Piet Van Wely, clay pipe in his mouth. And that was not all: accompanying Piet was Mary Berrybender, carrying what appeared to be a substantial picnic hamper.

  Neither Aldo nor Pedro liked the finical Dutchman, who, for no better reason than that he knew the Latin names of plants, gave himself airs, refused to drink with them, seldom took snuff, and held aloof from all coarse badinage concerning the women on the boat, even though he was known to enjoy the caresses of the spindly Mary.

  Nonetheless there Piet was, a fellow European. Surely he would be sympathetic to their need.

  “If not, we’ll beat them both and take the food and run,” Aldo said with dignity. “Why should he get to feast with that English girl while we starve?”

  “I hope they have sardines. … I could eat a hundred sardines … no, a thousand sardines,” Pedro bragged, his mouth watering at the prospect.

  Hastily they crawled up the bank, knocked the dirt off their clothes as best they could; a week in the wilderness, with no access to a laundress, had left them not exactly dressed for a parade.

  But when they presented themselves in all their soiled dignity to Piet Van Wely and the young Miss Berrybender, their scruffy appearance caused scarcely any comment.

  “Ho, fellows … so you’re back, eh?” Piet said, looking far down the Missouri River.

  “Back … very hungry too … I wonder if the young miss would perhaps spare us a bit of a loaf, or even a sausage?” Aldo asked.

  “Of course I won’t, you grubby beasts,” Mary said. “Not a bite shall you have! Shame on you, you treacherous slaves! Deserting my good papa in his hour of need. You would both be bastinadoed if I had my way.”

  “She’s a witch, let’s cut her throat and take the sardines,” Pedro whispered. Then, to his surprise, Piet Van Wely suddenly dashed off into the prairie grass, waving his butterfly net wildly at anything that moved: butterfly, grasshopper, moth, wasp, bee.

  “Ha, Piet, you sluggard!” Mary yelled, with a sinister smile. “Now that the tiny prince comes, you at last bestir yourself. Hurry now, grab the grasses, the flowers, and any beetles that you see. Perhaps we can beat these rivals yet.”

  Greatly startled, Aldo Claricia looked around.

  “What prince, Miss?” he asked, confused—Mary Berrybender deigned merely to point. Where there had been only the broad brown river, there was now a smudge, beneath which there was a speck that might be a boat.

  “It’s the steamer Yellowstone, more successful than our poor boat,” Mary explained. “It carries, unless I’m mistaken, Prince Maximilian zu Wied-Neuwied, so celebrated for his researches in the dense Brazilian forests. Now he’s caught us, and Piet is very likely undone, for the prince is a most determined explorer and will surely have brought with him many specialists: botanists, lepidopterists, entomologists, a painter, a mineralogist, and Lord knows how many others. Papa will be most vexed: first the lecherous Drummond Stewart quite turned the head of his mistress, Vicky Kennet, and now the little prince of Wied will no doubt usurp us in many sound fields of knowledge, for Piet is but one man and the Germans will likely be many.”

  “If they are so many, why can’t we just shoot them, these Germans?” Pedro Yanez suggested. “The fat beasts, what right have they to crowd us out here, we who have trekked through the snows?”

  “Good for you, señor,” Mary said. “A fine idea indeed, though of course there might be a bit of an outcry in the embassies. But we Berrybenders have never let a few outcries stop us. For that you’ll get your picnic, señor! My good Piet has got to be about his collecting quickly—I doubt he will want to eat.”

  “We’ll eat, he can chase!” Pedro said.

  A moment later, mustache dripping, he was just finishing the first tin of sardines, while the more fastidious Italian, Aldo Claricia, was slicing himself a healthy
hunk of sausage with his ridiculous little pocketknife.

  39

  “… I swing with the net, and the bruin looks up…”

  EXACTLY how his large butterfly net managed to get round the head of a grizzly bear was something Piet Van Wely could never adequately explain, not even to himself.

  “I am in the weeds, I reach out to scoop a big gray moth who is on a weed, I swing with the net, and the bruin looks up and gets his head stuck in the net. So I run!” he said.

  The bear, after pawing at the confusing net for a moment, ran too—after the screaming botanist, who raced with all the speed his short legs could muster right toward the startled picnickers. Mary Berry-bender, who could usually find no wrong with the plump Hollander, found much wrong in this instance: he was leading the loping grizzly right toward them!

  “Fie! Fie! Piet!” she cried. “Can’t you see we’re picnicking? I must insist that you take your great bear elsewhere!”

  “Kill him, Pedro, we’ll be gulped!” Aldo said, but Pedro Yanez, as was his custom when in a state of great fear, grabbed the Belgian rifle and fired both barrels straight into the air.

  “You miss again!” Aldo said, dropping his sausage. Pedro likewise dropped his can of sardines. Then both men joined Piet Van Wely in flight. Somehow the fleeing Spaniard ran into the fleeing Italian, who tripped the fleeing Dutchman—all three went down in a heap, expecting at any moment to feel sharp teeth rend their flesh.

  But the grizzly stopped, attracted, it seemed, by the smell of sardines. He ate up those Pedro had spilled, and then began to lick the can. Then, as the big beast lapped up the delicious oil, a shot rang out, from the direction of the river. A man in a somber black coat, his pant legs muddy from an abrupt leap into the shallows of the river, was hastily reloading his rifle, keeping one eye on the bear. He fired again, reloaded again, fired a third time. The first two shots the bear ignored, but the third provoked a rumble of annoyance, as he nosed among the ruins of the picnic.

  “These big bruins, they are very reluctant to die,” the rifleman said, nodding to the three men, who were just picking themselves up. To Mary Berrybender he made a deeper bow. She had been watching the contest silently.

  Once more the man reloaded, watched the bear closely, stepped within twenty feet of him, and fired a shot directly into his brain.

  The grizzly, a sardine can still in its paw, fell dead.

  “These big boys only agree to die if you shoot them in the head—they are tougher than all the bears of Europe,” the rifleman told them.

  “Correct—that is why they are called Ursus horri-bilis,” Mary agreed. “Very terrible beasts they are, and my good papa will be most vexed that you have killed one while he has not.”

  “Not one, young miss … six now,” the hunter said, permitting himself a small smile. “Perhaps we ought not to mention it to His Lordship, though, or he might want to shoot me! And then where would you all be the next time a grizzly bear spoils your picnic?”

  “Oh, I never lie to Papa, he is far too clever, Herr Dreidoppel,” Mary said. “It is you, isn’t it?”

  The hunter made another small bow. “David Dreidoppel, at your service,” he said, removing a small tape measure from a worn leather case.

  “We heard about you in Saint Louis—they say you are the best taxidermist in Europe,” Mary said. “Are you going to stuff this fine bear?”

  “That is a decision for my prince,” the hunter said. “I certainly am going to measure him, though— if one of these gentlemen will just help me stretch him out.”

  “I don’t like him, he ate my sardines,” Pedro complained, but before any of the others could offer an excuse Mary herself stepped forward and obligingly held the tip of the tape measure right against the dead grizzly’s cold, wet nose.

  “He is long, but not our longest,” Herr Dreidoppel said, as he quickly rolled up his little tape. “Probably we won’t stuff him, but that my prince decides.”

  “And did you once kill an anaconda thirty-four feet long?” Mary asked, excited.

  “What a well-informed young miss you are—thirty-four feet seven and one half inches, that boy was—an anaconda of the Orinoco River,” Herr Dreidoppel said. “How did you learn such a thing?”

  “From the illustrated papers, of course,” Mary told him. “Your beard was not so gray in the pictures they showed.”

  At this the somber hunter laughed aloud, rather to Piet Van Wely’s annoyance—he was beginning to be rather jealous of the way the bearded man was bantering with his Mary, without whose protection his position in the Berrybender ménage would be a very shaky one indeed.

  “It’s wrestling with these big boys, these bruins and those snakes, that made me gray,” the hunter admitted. “Ah—here comes my prince. He too is somewhat gray.”

  At first all any of them could see was a high, round black hat, of European make, making its way as if by magic along the tops of the high prairie grasses. But then, as they watched, a head emerged, wearing the hat, and a man of very modest height, dressed exactly as the hunter was, in a somber coat and muddy pants, appeared. One hand was stuck inside his coat, the other he held behind him.

  He stopped, looked briefly at the dead bear, and bowed to Mary.

  “I am the prince Max,” he said in clipped tones. “I have something for His Lordship, your father, that I think he will very much like to have.”

  “Claret, I hope, Prince,” Mary replied. “It’s claret Papa misses most.”

  “Claret I have,” the prince of Wied said.

  40

  … thick necks, eel eaters, fart bags…

  LORD Albany Berrybender was seldom of a divided mind when it came to women or Germans. Women he mostly liked, if they were not reluctant in the matter of fornication and did not aspire to win at cards.

  Germans he roundly detested: filthy Teutons, he called them, thick necks, eel eaters, fart bags, two-legged pigs. Should a German attempt to interfere with his plans in any way, terms of abuse would be heaped on him, accompanied, if necessary, by violent action. In the courts of the Georges, portly fools themselves, many thick-necked German courtiers had come to England—they were even seen in the best clubs. Lord B. had fought duels with a number of them, wounding three with his dueling pistols. He himself had yet to receive a wound or even a scratch. Once or twice, though, stolid princelings from one or another of the piddling German duchies had gained an advantage over him at the gaming tables, and once a German mare had beaten his fine filly Augusta in a race. The final indignity was that two of his greyhounds had been outrun by the fleet whippets of the Germans.

  These last indignities came fresh to mind as His Lordship stood in Monsieur Boisdeffre’s trading post, looking at the six large bearskins spread on the floor—a sight that astonished even Kit and Tom and Jim, none of whom had expected to see that many bearskins in one place. All had been killed, it seemed, by the cool and accurate marksmanship of the prince’s hunter, Herr Dreidoppel.

  Lord Berrybender’s instinct had been to fly into a great rage and demand to know by what right a German prince had wandered out of the forests of Europe and invaded the rich hunting range which he supposed would be wholly his to plunder. Finding the annoying Scot Drummond Stewart already ensconced in this paradise of game was shock enough; must he now really tolerate German princes too—and one, moreover, whose hunter was clearly a very superior shot?

  And yet, the fact was, this rather dumpy, unimposing prince had just made him a present of a dozen cases of rich red claret, the blessed elixir that he had so long been without. A noble who had had the forethought to bring such an admirable gift all the way from London could not simply be brushed off as a bad fellow, Teuton though he unmistakably was.

  Still, the fact that Herr Dreidoppel had already shot six grizzlies—bears that, by rights, should have been his—put Lord Berrybender’s tact to a severe test. The more he thought about the six lost bears, the more the great vein on his nose throbbed, pulsed, and finally turned
red, as it only did when His Lordship suffered profound agitation. Lord B. rarely felt that he ought to be grateful; the need to balance gratitude with dismay was a very unaccustomed thing. Was he to overlook entirely the six bears that should have been his? He himself had yet to dispatch even one. On the other hand there was the claret, a bottle of which he had already quaffed, filling and refilling one of Boisdeffre’s pewter goblets.

  “Grateful, I must say, Prince,” Lord B. finally managed. “Don’t mind allowing that I was rather starved for the grape—you know your vintages, I see. Lucky you weren’t victim to thieving engagés, as I was.”

  “Oh no, we Germans don’t take such chances on our good boat Yellowstone,” the prince replied, in English that lacked nothing of correctness.

  “The liquor was kept in a special room, and only I had the key,” he went on. “Human nature is everywhere very bad, you know. It is best to remove temptation.”

  “Bad, yes, bad—human nature’s a rotten thing, and particularly rotten if you have to deal with Mediterraneans,” Lord B. said, glaring at Signor Claricia and SeñOr Yanez, whose excuse for their long absence—that they had gone off to relieve themselves out of sight of Milly and had become hopelessly lost—he knew to be an arrant lie.

  Pierre Boisdeffre, Tom Fitzpatrick, Kit, and Jim all walked around the six bearskins, saying little but filled with amazement nonetheless. They looked at the skins, looked at one another, and shrugged. None of them, in all their years on the prairie, had ever heard of one man killing six grizzly bears. And yet the man responsible, an ordinary-looking fellow with an iron gray beard, stood quietly at the counter, leaning on his rifle and drinking a little of Boisdeffre’s grog.

  “That fellow must be the best shot in the world— what do you think, Jimmy?” Kit asked.

  Jim Snow had been rather put out that the arrival of the prince had meant a delay in their departure, but, so far as shooting went, it was hard to disagree with Kit. It was obvious that the quiet fellow at the counter must possess unusual steadiness. Grizzlies had a habit of making even experienced hunters panic. He himself, having been much in bear country, had never killed one, though he had shot at several and had been chased twice for his pains. Once he had had to jump off a high riverbank, in order to escape a charge. A man who could down six grizzlies was no run-of-the-mill hunter.