Page 88 of Sin Killer


  —Chicago Tribune

  “A goofy jaunt through the Wild West.”

  —San Jose Mercury News

  “Without a doubt Larry McMurtry’s most enjoyable book in years. . . . Part soap opera . . . part romance . . . part farce . . . and altogether thoroughly wonderful.”

  —Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

  “Quirky. . . . It’s never less than entertaining and is often fascinating.”

  —Star-Telegram (Fort Worth, TX)

  “[A] bright, boisterous parade of a novel. . . . Energetic and big-hearted.”

  —The Seattle Times

  “Sin Killer promises a variety of excitement to come. . . . You’ll want to be along for the journey.”

  —The Orlando Sentinel (FL)

  “Sin Killer is a comedy, though it can be downright grim—a balance that no other writer of westerns has quite matched.”

  —Los Angeles Times

  “[A] hilarious good time. . . . Wonderfully funny and smart.”

  —The Times-Picayune (New Orleans, LA)

  “Sin Killer is full of captivating characters as fun to love as they are to hate. . . . Loaded with incident and steeped in ribald humor.”

  —The Columbus Dispatch

  “Another ambitious, larger-than-life-adventure . . . comic, witty, and bloody.”

  —Edmonton Journal

  “This is McMurtry at his best.”

  —Houston Chronicle

  MORE PRAISE FOR

  PULITZER PRIZE–WINNING AUTHOR

  LARRY McMURTRY

  “A poet, a resonant scene-setter and a master of voice.”

  —The New York Times Book Review

  “What an imagination he has! When it comes to spinning a good yarn, few writers can do it better than McMurtry.”

  —Houston Post

  “Larry McMurtry has the power to clutch the heart and also to exhilarate.”

  —The New Yorker

  BY LARRY McMURTRY

  Folly and Glory

  By Sorrow’s River

  The Wandering Hill

  Sin Killer

  Sacajawea’s Nickname: Essays on the American West

  Paradise

  Boone’s Lick

  Roads

  Still Wild: A Collection of Western Stories

  Walter Benjamin at the Dairy Queen

  Duane’s Depressed

  Crazy Horse

  Comanche Moon

  Dead Man’s Walk

  The Late Child

  Streets of Laredo

  The Evening Star

  Buffalo Girls

  Some Can Whistle

  Anything for Billy

  Film Flam: Essays on Hollywood

  Texasville

  Lonesome Dove

  The Desert Rose

  Cadillac Jack

  Somebody’s Darling

  Terms of Endearment

  All My Friends Are Going to Be Strangers

  Moving On

  The Last Picture Show

  In a Narrow Grave: Essays on Texas

  Leaving Cheyenne

  Horseman, Pass By

  BY LARRY McMURTRY AND DIANA OSSANA

  Pretty Boy Floyd

  Zeke and Ned

  LARRY McMURTRY

  FOLLY AND GLORY

  THE BERRYBENDER NARRATIVES, BOOK 4

  POCKET BOOKS, a division of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

  1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020

  www.SimonandSchuster.com

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places

  and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or

  are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or

  locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2004 by Larry McMurtry

  Originally published in hardcover in 2004

  by Simon & Schuster, Inc.

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce

  this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever.

  For information address Simon & Schuster, Inc.,

  1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020

  ISBN: 0-7434-5144-9

  ISBN-13: 978-0-743-45144-4

  eISBN-13: 978-1-451-60769-7

  First Pocket Books paperback edition March 2005

  9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  POCKET and colophon are registered trademarks of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

  Cover painting by Alfred Jacob Miller, The Lost Greenhorn,

  courtesy of the Warner Collection of Gulf States Paper

  Corporation, Tuscaloosa, Alabama

  Manufactured in the United States of America

  For information regarding special discounts for bulk

  purchases, please contact Simon & Schuster Special Sales

  at 1-800-456-6798 or [email protected]

  THE BERRYBENDER NARRATIVES are dedicated to the secondhand booksellers of the Western world, who have done so much, over a fifty-year stretch, to help me to an education.

  BOOK 4

  AT the end of By Sorrow’s River, Book 3 of The Berrybender Narratives, Pomp Charbonneau is killed by a vengeful Mexican captain. The Berry-benders are removed to Santa Fe and put under luxurious house arrest. Jim Snow, the Sin Killer, was guiding a wagon train east when the arrest occurred.

  CONTENTS

  Characters

  1. IN THE NURSERY

  2. DARK AND DIFFICULT DAYS

  3. A WIFE’S IMPATIENCE

  4. THE TIME OF GRIEF

  5. A LONG WAIT FOR GUNS

  6. NIGHT AND THE RIVER

  7. PETAL’S PROGRAM

  8. THE EAR TAKER’S MISTAKE

  9. THE TORTURE MAN

  10. AMBOISE FORGIVES

  11. DOÑA MARGARETA’S AMUSEMENTS

  12. THE GOVERNOR’S SHOCK

  13. AGILE BEHAVIOR IN A BUGGY

  14. A PEPPERY DISH

  15. DOÑA ELEANORA’S DILEMMA

  16. A GOVERNOR’S CONFESSION

  17. PETAL DECLINES TO SHARE

  18. JIM COMES TO VISIT

  19. A LOCKED DOOR ANGERS PETAL

  20. A TRIP TO NEW ORLEANS

  21. THE BROWN GIANT

  22. JULIETTA AND THE BLACKSMITH

  23. LITTLE ONION’S DEJECTION

  24. KIT’S SURPRISE

  25. THE BERRYBENDERS EXPELLED

  26. MAJOR LEON FALLS IN LOVE

  27. THE OLD WOMAN WITH THE GOOSE

  28. OLD BILL WILLIAMS

  29. A GREAT STORM

  30. MOPSY IS GONE

  31. JULIETTA’S MISTAKE

  32. HIGH SHOULDERS WANTS TO HURRY

  33. A VERY SMALL BAND

  34. TASMIN TRIES TO EXPLAIN LOVE

  35. MAJOR LEON’S SORROW

  36. A PLAGUE IS ON THE RIVER

  37. FATHER GEOFFRIN SLAPPED

  38. VICKY FORGETS HER CELLO

  39. THE SIN KILLER IN DOUBT

  40. THE LIKENESS MAKER’S RETURN

  41. OLD NA-A-ME IS BITTER

  42. WILLY AND KIT SEEK A RIVER

  43. THE YELLOW BUFFALO

  44. WILD TURKEYS

  45. LITTLE ONION’S GRIEF

  46. PETEY FOLLOWS THE QUAIL

  47. CLUB AND ROPE

  48. A GREAT REUNION SOURED

  49. TASMIN’S DESPAIR

  50. JIM FINDS A CAVE

  51. TASMIN AND GEORGE

  52. DRAGA HEARS THE SIN KILLER

  53. JIM REFLECTS ON A SCRIPTURE

  54. MALGRES OFFERS A WARNING

  55. TAY-HA FORGETS HIS CLUB

  56. THE SIN KILLER COMES

  57. THE HARDEST DAYS

  58. THE BERRYBENDERS ATTEND A BALL

  59. JIM AND ROSA

  60. IN THE ALAMO

  61. TASMIN IS UNPATRIOTIC

  62. VICKY MOURNS HER HUSBAND

  63. TASMIN AND ROSA

  64. TASMIN’S REGRET

  65. SOME DEPART FOR ENGLAND
br />
  66. TENSIONS IN SAINT LOUIS

  67. ON A GREEN HILL

  68. A DAUGHTER OF PRIVILEGE

  CHARACTERS

  BERRYBENDER PARTY

  Tasmin

  Jim Snow (The Sin Killer)

  Bess (Buffum)

  High Shoulders

  Mary

  Piet Van Wely

  Kate

  Monty, child

  Talley, child

  Lord Berrybender

  Vicky Berrybender

  Little Onion

  Petal, child

  Petey, child

  Randy, child

  Elf, child

  Juppy, half brother

  Father Geoffrin

  George Catlin

  Cook

  Eliza

  Amboise d’Avigdor

  Signor Claricia

  Mopsy, puppy

  MEXICANS

  Governor

  Doña Margareta, the Governor’s wife

  Julietta Olivaries

  Doña Eleanora, Julietta’s aunt

  Tomas, footman

  Joaquin, blacksmith

  Major Leon

  Corporal Juan Dominguin

  Rosa

  Emilio

  MOUNTAIN MEN AND TRADERS

  Kit Carson

  Josefina Carson, Kit’s wife

  Tom Fitzpatrick (The Broken Hand)

  Old Bill Williams

  Charles Bent

  Willy Bent

  Lonesome Dick

  INDIANS

  The Ear Taker

  Cibecue,Apache

  Ojo,Apache

  Erzmin, Apache

  Flat Nose, Comanche

  Na-a-me, Kiowa

  Greasy Lake, prophet

  Oriabe

  SLAVERS

  Malgres

  Ramon

  Draga

  Blue Foot

  Tay-ha

  Bent Finger

  Snaggle

  Chino

  TEXANS

  Stephen F. Austin

  Jim Bowie

  Davy Crockett

  William Travis

  Sam Houston

  MISCELLANEOUS

  William Clark

  Harriet Clark

  Toussaint Charbonneau

  Joe Compton

  Elliott Edgechurch

  Inspector Bailey

  I can only regret being myself.

  I suppose all regret comes to

  that....

  I. COMPTON-BURNETT,

  Darkness and Day

  FOLLY AND GLORY

  1

  . . . Petal was prepared for ruthless attack . . .

  PETEY, the sensitive twin, aged one year and a half, began to sneeze and couldn’t stop, giving Petal her chance: she at once seized a stuffed blue rooster the two had been fighting over and slipped behind her mother, waiting to see what her twin would do when he stopped sneezing and discovered the theft.

  Petey did finally stop sneezing, discovered that his rooster was gone, and looked at his mother in stunned dismay. Petal’s crimes never failed to shock him.

  “The girl is smarter than the boy—quicker-fingered too,” Mary Berrybender observed.

  Tasmin looked around the nursery, a large, airy room in the spacious adobe house on the Plaza in Santa Fe—the house in which the Berrybenders were spending a lengthy but largely comfortable house arrest. Besides her Monty and Vicky’s Talley, there were four new arrivals—her twins; Vicky’s new boy, Randall; and Buffum’s charming Elf (short for Elphinstone). There were five boys in all, Petal the only girl, and yet Petal casually had her way with the nursery, snatching toys left unattended and hiding them until they could be put to her own use. Some challenges she met with defiance, others with guile. Now that she had the much-coveted blue rooster, she meant to keep it. Tasmin could feel her daughter’s soft breath on her neck—Petal was peeping through her mother’s hair, waiting to see if Petey was going to make a fight of it. Petey seldom rose to much belligerence but if he should, Petal was prepared for ruthless attack.

  “She’s not merely smarter than her twin, she’s smarter than all five of these little males put together,” Tasmin remarked.

  The toy rooster had been a gift from the Governor’s wife, Doña Margareta, a bored young woman who spent as much time as possible with the Berry-benders. Margareta had been raised in a great ducal household in the City of Mexico—she found provincial society all but intolerable and was often at tea at the Berrybenders’, the only company available that she considered worthy of her. It had sometimes occurred to Tasmin that the reason they were still detained in Santa Fe was because Doña Margareta didn’t want to lose their entertaining company.

  “Give your brother his rooster. It’s his, not yours,” Tasmin ordered. She did not turn to look at Petal.

  Petal didn’t answer—in the face of such an absurd claim, silence was surely called for.

  “I fear you are raising up a very defiant brat,” Mary said.

  “Give your brother his rooster,” Tasmin repeated, in slightly sterner tones.

  “I lost it,” Petal said. “It’s a bird. It flew away.”

  “What bosh,” Kate Berrybender said. “Stuffed roosters don’t fly, as she well knows, the little thief.”

  At the sound of Kate’s voice Petal instantly hid the rooster under her mother’s skirts. Kate Berry-bender could rarely be bluffed. She often gave Petal vigorous shakings, and was not averse to pulling her hair.

  “The rooster left the room,” Petal amended.

  No one cared to credit this remark, so Petal tried again.

  “Mopsy ate it up,” she declared. Mopsy was a tiny short-haired mongrel the family had adopted. All the little boys adored Mopsy, but Petal dealt sternly with the dog, occasionally even hoisting Mopsy up by his tail, an effort that was likely to leave Petal red in the face.

  Tasmin turned quickly and grabbed her daughter, who had reclaimed the rooster and was about to slip away with it.

  “It’s my rooster!” she claimed boldly, when her mother looked her in the eye.

  “What I’d say is that you have the devil in you— I wonder who could have put it there?” Tasmin inquired.

  “You!” Petal cried—from the amused look in her mother’s eye she judged she was going to get to keep the rooster.

  “You!” she repeated, more loudly.

  No one in the room bothered to disagree. Vicky and Buffum, mothers of mere boys, both smiled. Queen bee of the nursery, Petal swept all before her. Little Onion was particularly susceptible to Petal’s manipulations, though often aghast at her daring.

  “Wasn’t it you, Tasmin, who once said that only small children are sincere?” Vicky remembered.

  “I did say that, but this child has taught me better,” Tasmin admitted.

  Petal, confident now that none of the older boys—or her twin brother either—were going to challenge her possession of the stuffed rooster, strolled casually toward the five small males.

  “I got the rooster. I like him because he’s blue,” she said. “He’ll always be my rooster.”

  Petal liked to rub it in.

  2

  Above all, she didn’t want to think . . .

  IN THE DARK MONTHS following Pomp Charbonneau’s death, Tasmin had wished she could be a bear or some other burrowing animal, capable of hibernation, of a cessation of thought. Above all, she didn’t want to think, because when she did think, it was only of Pomp, and every memory brought pain. When the wagon rolled into Santa Fe with the five dead men in it, the Governor of Nuevo México was the person most horrified. The last thing he would have wanted was to harm any of the English party—he had only meant to keep them under lucrative house arrest for several months before allowing them to go home. Captain Reyes’s job had been to escort them over the pass. No one should have been chained, much less executed. How was the Governor to know that Captain Reyes was vengeance-crazed, insane? At once profuse apologies were offered. The best house o
n the Plaza was made over to them. Servants were provided, every consideration shown. The fugitives, High Shoulders and Tom Fitzpatrick, were allowed to return without penalty. It had all been a mistake, a dreadful, tragic mistake. A very high official was sent off to make apologies to the Bents— after all, had the Bents not been most considerate of the Governor and his suite when they came to Bent’s Fort for the weddings?

  Once settled into their handsome house, the Berrybenders were frequently invited to the Palace. Doña Margareta loved music—Vicky was often asked to play her cello, and she did play. Lord Berrybender was even provided with a guard when he went out shooting. The Indians were not to be trusted. The Governor wanted no more English dead.

  All this had meant nothing to Tasmin, in her sad hibernation. She rarely left her room. From a large window she could see the cold sky, the mountains draped with snow. She stared for hours, as the children in her belly grew. The only visitors she welcomed were Kit and Geoff, the former because he had been there when Pomp was arrested; he had observed the mad Captain Reyes. With Kit she could go over the tragedy, try to understand it. She wanted Kit to talk her out of the notion that somehow Pomp Charbonneau had wanted to die. He had not fled; he had not fought; the firing squad had fired and missed him and still he had not moved. Tasmin feared it had something to do with her. Why had Pomp just stood there passively, as the mad captain advanced with his musket leveled? Why had she herself not attacked the captain? She could not stop her mind from reenacting the scene. Pomp had shown no fright—when she rushed out and spoke to him for the last time he seemed at ease, content. But why? It was a mystery that she feared would always haunt her. Talking to Kit, a true friend of Pomp’s and her true friend, helped a little.

  Kit had been as shocked as anyone when he heard that the silly little captain with the plume in his hat had shot and killed Pomp Charbonneau. Of course, the captain had been mad. He shot his own officer—then he shot himself. It was madness, and madness could seldom be predicted. Pomp had no reason to expect execution. The arrest was a formality that had long been expected; Pomp’s mistake had been a failure to recognize how crazed the little captain really was.

  “I’m sure Pomp thought it was a bluff, otherwise he would have fought,” Kit assured Tasmin. “Reyes was just a captain. He had no business ordering up firing squads.”

  “I should have seized a gun,” Tasmin said. “I should have but I didn’t, and now it’s too late.”