“Why, the fellow looks like a dunce,” Lord Berrybender said.
’Agreed,” Tom Fitzpatrick remarked. ‘Are you sure this is the slaver, Zeke? He looks like a fool to me.”
Zeke Williams did not appreciate having his information challenged by men of small experience, and he considered that most men younger than himself were men of small experience.
“Did I say he was a professor?” Zeke inquired. “He’s a slaver. He trades in boys and girls, when he can get them.”
“Oh, what we’d call a pimp,” Lord B. remarked. “I suppose it’s the same everywhere . . . old rich men like virgins.”
When the fat man, still smiling, rode up to them on his scabby mule, Tasmin moved closer to her husband, for there was something peculiarly repulsive about the man, something that suggested rot, decay, an unwholesome softness—all the women felt like shuddering, and yet none of them could say quite why they were so repulsed.
“Don’t shoot, let’s all be friends,” Obregon said, in his shrill voice. “You don’t need to point your guns at me, seftores. Let’s all be peaceful together.”
“We took you for soldiers, at first,” Tom Fitzpatrick said.
Obregon wore a filthy straw hat—he removed it and made a small bow to the women, his eyes lazily assessing them even as he practiced this courtesy.
“Oh no, there are no patrols out here today,” Obregon assured them. “They are all out hunting the Ear Taker—he has come back to Santa Fe. You know of him, I suppose.
“I see you do know of him,” he went on, looking directly at Amboise d’Avigdor. “Last week he took an ear from the governor’s nephew—I wouldn’t want to be the Ear Taker, if they catch him.”
Tasmin had picked up Monty—she held him close, her arms wrapped around him. She had never seen a man as disgusting as Obregon. She felt almost queasy, and not from morning sickness, either.
“Do you suppose that’s how eunuchs look, in harems?” Mary asked.
“Hush, he might hear you,” Tasmin warned— though she thought Mary might be right.
“I’m sorry if my caballeros frightened the ladies,” Obregon went on. “We are kindly fellows—we didn’t come to harm anyone.”
“I suppose you’re looking for those thieving Pawnees,” Zeke Williams told him. “You were mighty friendly with ’em when they had me captive.”
Obregon smiled again—he allowed his gaze to drift over the women, especially Tasmin and Vicky. He remembered that the old fellow who spoke had been a prisoner of the Pawnees on one occasion when he had visited.
“No, we are merely going to visit some Cheyenne who are hunting nearby,” Obregon said. “Would you gentlemen have any coffee or tobacco to spare—we are running low ourselves or I wouldn’t ask.”
“Do we look rich to you?” Zeke piped up at him. “We’ve got nothing to spare.”
“Why, I see the English gentleman has an excellent gun,” Obregon said. “Such a gun must be very expensive—all we seek is a little coffee.”
Tom Fitzpatrick found the man irritating.
“Zeke’s right, we’ve nothing to spare,” he said firmly.
“Where’s Skraeling—the man Malgres rides with?” Jim asked.
Obregon smiled again, looking not at Jim but at Tasmin.
“Senor Skraeling, he died,” Obregon informed them. “He was not a healthy man. Malgres rides with me now.”
There was a nervous silence. The men had become as uncomfortable with Obregon as the women. Yet Obregon continued to sit, smiling blandly, as he let his eyes dwell on this woman and that.
“Could I buy this girl?” he asked, pointing at Mary. A small quirt dangled from his wrist—he used it to point.
“Buy her? Certainly not, sir,” Lord Berrybender told him. “She happens to be my daughter, and a very skilled girl she is. Knows a good deal about the sciences. I can’t properly be said to own her, but if I did I’d certainly not sell her to a ruffian like yourself. Doubt her chastity would be worth a fig, if you had her.”
“Is chastity worth a fig, Your Lordship?” Obregon asked. “She is a fierce one, the young miss. She snarls at me like a wildcat.”
Indeed, Mary had bared her teeth at the man.
“I don’t like him, Tassie—I think he is very bad,” Mary whispered, too loudly. Obregon heard.
“Oh, not very bad, young miss,” he said. “I suppose all men are a little bad, sometimes.”
He pursed his lips and looked around at the men nervously waiting across the gully.
“Perhaps you’ll sell me the servant girl, then,” Obregon said, pointing his quirt at Eliza, who blanched in shock.
“I buy people—you have no coffee and no tobacco—surely you can spare a servant girl,” he said. “Top prices paid, as the americanos say.”
Tasmin, who had grasped Jim’s arm, felt him stiffen suddenly—his face became dark with anger and he moved so quickly that no one, later, could remember the exact sequence of his actions. Suddenly the pole was in his hands—a pole that they had sharpened to make a goad for their slow and sleepy ox. The pole was Signor Claricia’s. He used it to jab the ox, when the ox seemed about to stop altogether. He had been holding the pole nervously when Obregon approached. But suddenly the Sin Killer had it; Obregon could do no more than open his mouth in shock when Jim hit him in the face with the pole so hard that he was knocked completely off his mule. The pole broke. Jim threw it aside, caught Obregon by his feet, and dragged him to the gully, across from where the renegades waited. Blood poured from the unconscious man’s broken mouth. None of the renegades moved a muscle. Jim pushed Obregon over the edge—he tumbled a few times and lay flat on his back, at the bottom of the gully.
“It’s a bad sin, selling people!” Jim yelled. “Tell him that when he wakes up.”
Then he came back to the group, such a dark fury in his face that no one, not even Tasmin, dared speak to him as he strode through them. He stood by the horse he had been riding until his face, which had been dark red, became white again.
It took six of the renegades to lift Obregon out of the gully. Once they had him, the youngest of the renegades, a frightened boy rode across the gully and approached the party.
“Seftores, may we take his mule?” he asked. “None of our horses can carry him—he is too large.”
“Take the mule,” Jim yelled. ‘And tell that man I’ll do worse if I see him again.”
“Si, seftor, I’ll tell him,” the boy said. He led the mule back across the gully. Obregon had regained consciousness but could not stand unassisted. His whole front was drenched in his blood. Half the company struggled to lift him onto his mule—as soon as he was settled, the renegades rode away.
Jim still stood by his horse. The men were determined to give him time to cool, but Eliza, who had been more frightened than she had ever been in her life, could not wait to express her gratitude. Trembling and tearful, she stumbled over to Jim.
“Thank you so much, Mr. Snow,” Eliza said. “I didn’t care for those fellows. I fear they would have misused me, had you let me go.”
Jim nodded. “We won’t be letting nobody go,” he assured her.
Monty had lately acquired the habit of thumb sucking. As Tasmin held him he stared at his father, thumb firmly planted in his mouth.
46
A cold, cutting wind . . .
“QUITE a morning,” Father Geoffrin remarked, as he walked along with Tasmin. “It’s given me a new aim in life—quite the most distinct aim I’ve ever been able to formulate.”
“Nothing salacious, I hope,” Tasmin said. “We’ve had enough of that for one day. What’s your new aim?”
“To never make your husband mad, that’s it,” Geoff told her. “I think Senor Obregon is lucky to be alive. We’ve seen a good deal of violence on this trek, but that was different, don’t you agree?”
“Yes, only I wish Jimmy had killed him,” Tasmin said. “Then there’d be no chance that we’d encounter him again. I’d rather face Pawnees or
Utes than meet that man again. He didn’t touch me but his look made me feel that there’d been an obscene exchange.”
“You have the Sin Killer to protect you,” Father Geoff pointed out. “I shouldn’t think you’d need to worry, as long as you behave.”
“Yes, if I behave—a big question,” Tasmin said. “I wish I knew Jimmy better. To this day I don’t really know what he thinks sin is.”
“Slaving is obvious enough,” the priest said. “He was sold himself, didn’t you tell me?”
“Yes, sold by the Osage to a violent preacher, who was struck by lightning and cooked,” she said. “The old preacher, though a great fornicator, convinced Jim that sin had to be punished, and he punishes it very firmly, once he identifies it.”
“I suppose that could make for a nervous married life,” Geoff said, with a twinkle of amusement. “Spontaneous sin might occur.”
“He considers oaths and curses to be quite sinful,” Tasmin mentioned. “I’ve let slip an oath or two and been slapped for it—nothing like what occurred to Seftor Obregon, but they weren’t love taps, either. For that reason I try not to speak impurely.”
“Or act impurely?” the priest asked. “Doesn’t passion thrive on complications?”
“My own passions are direct, but I’m not thriving on them—starving would be more like it,” Tasmin told him.
“You shouldn’t have fallen in love with a chaste man—I suppose I should have warned you,” Geoff said. “Your husband isn’t chaste, though.”
“No, but that ain’t passion, exactly,” Tasmin said, brooding. “I was much in love with Jimmy once. I wonder where it went.”
A cold, cutting wind was blowing—the days had been growing steadily chillier and the night bitter cold. The two babies were snug in their pouches, with their rabbit-skin caps on. Jim, calm and free of his rage now, strolled along with Pomp. Both were of the opinion that it would likely snow that day. They themselves were indifferent to weather—all the mountain men were, except old Zeke, who claimed that cold made his joints ache.
Jim and Pomp were chatting amiably—it annoyed Tasmin greatly, left her feeling discontent. The two men were old companions—so where did she fit? In better circumstances she would have pressed Pomp Charbonneau harder, thrown herself at the marble of his reserve, tried to smash through it with an irresistible force of feeling—the same force that had kept Pomp alive when he lay badly wounded in the Valley of the Chickens. Alone with him she would have yelled and screamed, kicked, bitten, become a wild thing until he opened up to her. But on this chilly prairie, with a tired company plodding along under a slate gray sky, with many watchful gossips in her own family noting her every mood, she didn’t dare produce a sufficient fit. All she could do was plod on herself, feeling sour—waiting for her chance.
47
He was slurping up> the muddy water. . .
THE white man had managed to crawl into a mud puddle in the middle of a shallow lake. He was slurping up the muddy water, cupping his hands, getting almost as much mud as water. Greasy Lake recognized the white man—he was one of those who had been sailing along in a balloon, high above the Platte. Now he was covered with mud. Even a hog who had just wallowed would not be much muddier than this white man. To Greasy Lake it all seemed rather peculiar. Probably the white man had been starving when he crawled into the mud puddle—obviously he did not know that a clear, bubbling spring was about a mile distant. The spring had several cottonwoods growing beside it—the trees would have alerted any experienced prairie traveler that there was water nearby. But perhaps the man in the mud puddle had poor vision; perhaps he couldn’t see the trees.
Greasy Lake, astride the Partezon’s fine white horse, had come loping quickly across the plains. He had news of the English from some Pawnees in whose camp he spent a night. There had been a fight, a great triumph, to hear the Pawnees tell it—four whites had been killed—Greasy Lake was shown the scalps of three of them. As he was only a visitor, Greasy Lake remained noncommittal. He politely refrained from asking whether the Pawnees had lost any men in the battle—later the boy Rattle admitted that they had lost three.
In the Pawnees’ opinion the whites were headed for the big trading post that was being built on the Arkansas—so that was where Greasy Lake decided to go. There was always the likelihood of finding interesting goods around a new trading post. The whites were always inventing useful things. Though Greasy Lake had no money he could sometimes get the whites to exchange goods for prophecies. Usually he just made simple prophecies, informing them of the location of a nice buffalo herd he had happened to pass. This kind of information might even earn him a new gun, if the whites were in a generous mood.
The sight of the lost balloonist, drinking muddy water from a puddle when there was a fine spring in plain sight, reminded Greasy Lake that there was really no predicting the eccentricities of whites, and no exaggerating their ineptitude. For one thing they kept producing watches and clocks, instruments that were supposed to measure time and break it into units, when common sense should have told them that the notion that time could be cut up, like a buffalo shank or a fish, was simply absurd. Time lay all one, open and eternal, infinite like the sky. Of course, there were seasons, the moon waxed and waned, the geese flew south or north, and yet all the while time remained unaffected and unchanged.
The white man in the muddy seep seemed to have no weapon except a sword of some kind—clearly he would probably starve unless Greasy Lake rescued him, and if he did rescue him the whites would probably give him a nice reward when he arrived at the trading post. Once the white man washed the mud off himself the two of them could easily ride double on the Partezon’s big white horse.
“You might walk down to that spring and wash the mud off yourself,” Greasy Lake advised, when Clam de Paty came slogging out of the mud. “Then I can give you a ride to the big new trading post, down there on the Arkansas.”
Clam didn’t know what to make of this invitation. He could see no spring. Did the old fool think he would have crawled through the mud if there had been a spring in sight?
“The spring is right over there, by those trees,” Greasy Lake said, pointing.
Clam looked toward where the old man pointed. Just vaguely he detected a blur of green, against the dun prairie. Could the old fellow be right? Was there a nice spring where he could get clean? Clam had been lost for five days, and was very hungry. His only food had been a few wild onions. If there was indeed a spring, perhaps there would be a frog in it. In France he had been very fond of frog legs, rolled in flour and served with lots of garlic. The very thought of tender, garlicky frog legs made his mouth water. If he only managed to live to get back to France he intended to eat many frog legs—hundreds of frogs’ legs, even.
“Where is the tall man who was with you when you flew in your basket?” Greasy Lake wondered.
“My friend is dead—the Pawnees killed him,” Clam told him.
Then he suddenly saw the trees the old man had been talking about—the old fellow had been right. It was merely the fact that he got headaches when he tried to look across long bright spaces that had caused him to miss the trees.
Clam’s clothes were matted with mud, pounds and pounds of it. Delighted by the thought of being able to jump into a deep pool and wash off the mud, he began to hurry toward the trees—he kept pace with Greasy Lake on his white horse for the short distance to the water, and when he got there he dove straight in, not bothering to remove his clothes—the spring had a yellowish look but Clam was far too eager for a wash to be deterred by that.
No sooner had he plunged into the water than he rose and staggered out, vomiting, choking, holding his nose: the water he had plunged into was densely sulfuric—it was as if he had jumped into a cauldron of rotten eggs.
Almost fainting from the unexpected stench, Clam managed to stumble back to dry land, still muddy and now yellowish as well. With every breath he choked and retched.
Greasy Lake, in no hurry, c
ame to where the white man stood, choking and gasping. There were some people who enjoyed these stinking springs, but Greasy Lake was not one of them. Some shamans thought the sulfur pools were healthy, but Greasy Lake considered that nonsense. Bad smells did not make one healthy.
“That’s the stinking water—the good water is a little farther,” Greasy Lake told Clam.
Clam heard the flutter of wings and saw a flock of ducks rising from a pond only a little distance away. Miserable as he was, he felt afraid to hope.
’Are you sure that’s clean water, no sulfur, monsieur?” he asked.
“Didn’t you see those ducks?” Greasy Lake asked. “Ducks won’t land on the stinking water.”
A half hour later Clam de Paty had washed himself clean in a pool of clear, icy water. Overhead the ducks circled and squawked, annoyed that he had taken their pond.
48
When he wasn’t moaning . . .
“LET’S just kill him,” Ramon suggested to Malgres. “No need to waste a bullet. You can just cut his throat.”
Malgres had no fondness for Obregon—no one had any fondness for Obregon—yet he hesitated to adopt Ramon’s suggestion. The slavers were stranded, camped by an adequate water hole but unable to agree whether to go on or back. Obregon’s moaning was beginning to annoy everyone—he still spat up blood, with now and then a tooth that worked loose. The worst problem was his jaw, which was badly broken. It jutted out at an angle to his chin, and wiggled when he moved or spat.
“Your bad eye points one way and your broken jaw points another,” Ramon told Obregon, who lay by a small bush. He was using his saddlebags for a pillow; his money was in those saddlebags.
When he wasn’t moaning, Obregon wept at the cruelty of fate. He had never been able to stand pain. Slight scratches that most men ignored he brooded over for hours, coating the small wounds with balms and lotions bought in Santa Fe. Now his jaw was broken, his mouth smashed, some of his teeth knocked out—all this accomplished in an instant because he had been foolish enough to goad the Sin Killer. He had mainly been jesting about the servant girl. His mind had dwelt momentarily on the possibility of stealing one or two of the Englishwomen—while he was calculating how best to do it, he had made his mistake. He knew he should have kept Malgres with him—at least Malgres might have slowed the Sin Killer down, absorbed his charge. In fact, he should have kept all the men with him. Better yet, he should have avoided the English party altogether; that is what Malgres— afraid of the mountain men’s guns—had wanted to do. But even Malgres could not have imagined that the Sin Killer would run out and break Obregon’s head with a pole. All the renegades had been shocked to see their leader knocked completely off his horse in this unexpected way; and yet, all of Obregon’s long experience on the prairies should have taught him always to be ready for the unexpected. Buffalo stampedes were not the expected thing, and yet he had seen three in his lifetime.