The Ballad of Dingus Magee

4

So Hoke was content again, almost euphorically so. Because it had been a long and dismal six months, more full of frustration and bitterness than he wanted to remember.

Nor was Hoke thinking merely of that disastrous pretended jailbreak which had cost him both his reward money and his sinecure at Belle’s, since that had only been a beginning. After that there had still been the duplicity of the vest for him to endure, if not to say almost becoming a murderer over — not only tonight with Turkey Doolan but twice before. Even now, as he smirked over his ultimate victory, the memory of those earlier misdirected shootings still brought a taste of gall to Hoke’s mouth.

Both episodes had occurred very soon after Dingus tricked him. Hoke had taken instinctively to hanging around Belle’s again, in the hope that he might redeem at least part of the calamity by getting his original job back, but Belle would not hear of it. As a matter of fact she had finally added insult to injury by ordering him to keep away from the bordello altogether unless he had money to spend.

So he was actually moping disconsolately outside the house one night — wistfully eyeing Belle’s own prohibited upper rear doorway, in fact — when the first of the new indignities befell him. Two riders appeared along a rarely used trail, and before Hoke quite knew what he was doing he had emptied his Smith and Wesson at one of them. The second rider spurred off, but Hoke could not have cared less — until he discovered that the man he’d hit, the man in the red-and-yellow hinged Mexican-wool vest, was an inconsequential saddle tramp named Honig. The tramp had suffered a mild gash in the hip. What Hoke himself suffered at the realization of this new treachery was hardly endurable.

So he began to spend time behind the bordello deliberately after that, well-hidden in a grove of cottonwoods and no longer even caring that he was further alienating Belle by being there. In fact he virtually camped in the trees for eight days, or more precisely nights, until Dingus cantered up along the same trail once again. This time it developed that he had presented the vest to a down-at-the-heels prospector named Arden. Hoke had set out three revolvers on a dry pine stump, and his third shot from the second gun nicked the prospector in the shoulder, going away.

So by then the outrage was more than unappeasable: Hoke was almost mad. Belle actually threatened to shoot him on sight if she caught him within a hundred yards of her premises now — as did one of her better customers likewise, an elderly, normally undemonstrative barber who had suffered a mild stroke in the arms of a twelve-year-old Mexican girl while Hoke was blasting away at the vest for the second time, yet Hoke ignored both threats. In fact he was even starting to construct a semi-permanent lean-to shelter in the trees before the doctor finally managed to calm him down somewhat.

Reluctantly Hoke let himself be talked into returning to the more banal routines of his office. But then it did seem most sensible to wait anyhow, since, abruptly, new warrants on Dingus began to cross his desk with gratifying frequency. In quick succession the youth was accused of stopping a Wells Fargo stage, of emptying a bank, of removing the contents of a safe in a freight office. Little more than a month after his escape, he was worth exactly fifteen hundred dollars more than he had been the last time.

Then,just as suddenly, all this ceased. Ordinary circulars came in as usual, but no more concerning Dingus. The price on his head held fast at four thousand five hundred dollars for the next three full months.

So Hoke was more than anxious again. And when he finally heard a rumor that Dingus had been seen in a town named Fronteras, some three days’ ride from Yerkey’s Hole, he oiled his Smith and Wesson, two Colt.45 Peacemakers, a Buntline Special, a shotgun, and a repeating Winchester, and he rode off.

He didn’t find Dingus. He almost did not find the town either, since its mines had played out a year before and it had been summarily abandoned, at least by its builders. It had never numbered more than a dozen structures to start with, and now a motley gathering of displaced Indians was camped near its wells. Hoke had not even unsaddled when a short, square-headed, foul-smelling squaw whom he took to be at least part Kiowa approached his horse.

“You want bim-bam, hey? Only damn bim-bam two-day ride any direction.”

Hoke ignored her, although she gave him an idea. In the four months since Belle Nops had fired him he had earned a grand total of one hundred and sixty dollars as sheriff. He was still living at the jail, but food alone had cost him almost a dollar a day for some hundred and twenty days. Hoke commenced to study the females in the tawdry encampment.

Several of them appealed to him. They were fairly young, and Hoke knew that they would not be married, since there were no buck warriors in evidence (he hardly would have stayed if there had been). He sought out the chief, an ancient, gnarled creature with a head startlingly flattened at the back from having been strapped too tightly to a cradle-board decades before, and with a face that had weathered into a mask of sewn leather. Hoke made his offer. “These here two Colt revolvers,” he said, not wanting to part with what meager cash he did possess, “or the nice hand-tooled Buntline.”

But the chief could only gaze at him vapidly, not understanding English. He was eating something which Hoke made out to be an unskinned wood rat, evidently boiled. Even before Hoke could seek her out then, the squaw who had stopped him initially again materialized at his side. “Why you trade for bim-bam, hey? You take Anna Hot Water, she come for free. Sick and tired, live with all these damn savages anyways. Anna Hot Water fix you up pretty damn nifty, sure hey?”

Most of the thirty-odd people in the encampment had gathered near them in curiosity, and Hoke had already settled on a thin girl of no more than thirteen, who appeared cleaner than most. “That there one,” he pointed. “Tell the chief them’s real accurate Colts, too.”

“Ah, listen, Anna Hot Water plenty better for you than those damn baby bim-bams, no yes? Plenty experience, even married one damn time. Hey?”

Hoke fumbled in a vest pocket and came up with a silver dollar. “Here,” he said, “I’ll pay you, you put it into a lingo he can savvy. That skinny one over there, tell him.”

Anna Hot Water tested the coin first on her teeth, then shrugged and commenced to speak, gesturing frequently. The young girl blushed, but the chief remained sullen, still gnawing on the rat. Finally he muttered something, nodding toward Hoke and then toward Hoke’s mount.

“Chief say you stick lousy old Colts up you know where,” Anna Hot Water interpreted. “He take Winchester repeater rifle, damn sure. And he say your loco hat too, hey.”

Hoke frowned, briefly contemplative. The derby was not his best, however, and he finally removed it. He also lifted the Winchester from its scabbard. Then he motioned for the girl to follow, turning to mount but suddenly the chief had begun to mumble again.

“What’s that, now?” Hoke asked.

“Tribal custom,” Anna Hot Water explained. There were seven or eight birch wickiups in the encampment, and several tepees, and she indicated one of the latter. “Chief say not enough you pay, you got to prove you make good husband. You go into wigwam, you unbutton old Sitting Bull, and when him standing, girl she come in too. She not happy, you lose girl.”

Hoke raised an eyebrow. “Huh?”

Then he saw that several old men, carrying rifles of their own, were eyeing him threatfully. “Oh, now look here,” he said, “first off, it’s broad daylight, and I ain’t never remarkably interested unless’n it’s dark. And anyways I—”

“You be pretty damn interested I think,” Anna Hot Water said. “Because if first girl no happy, chief send in second. If second say bum job, send third. Because it got to be fair trade, and it damn sure he not give back Winchester. He keep send in girls until one say okay.”

“But what if’n none of them — I mean if’n it ain’t satisfactory at the beginning it sure ain’t gonter get to be more so after two or three or—”

“There seventeen bim-bam here, you betcha,” Anna Hot Water said, “not count four old squaws of chief. You better be the hot stuff one time out of seventeen, or chief maybe forget about be fair, just shoot you pretty damn quick. Chief say man can’t get it up one time in seventeen ought to be shot anyways, hey?”

“But this ain’t sporting,” Hoke protested. “You jest can’t expect a man to—”

But he was actually being prodded toward the tepee now, the guns at his back, and then he discovered he was being undressed also, although he tried to fight it. “Lissen, be careful there, that coat come all the way from St. Louis by mail ordering. And anyways I been in the saddle for three whole days. I’m plumb tuckered out, and a man can’t never—”

He was stripped to his stockings before being pushed through the entrance, roughly enough so that he went to his hands and knees. And then he saw that four women, very old and with faces even more deeply rutted than the chief’s whose wives they probably were, were following him inside. They circled the perimeter of the tepee and then proceeded to take seats, crosslegged, on scattered skins. “Hey,” Hoke called, “hey, now look—”

Hoke clapped a hand over his privates and whirled away, only to blush at what the new perspective revealed. The women sat grinning toothlessly.

“But — but — you ain’t gonter stay in here too? You don’t expect a man to perform his functions like he’s a actor on a stage, or—”

But the first girl had appeared by now also, the one he had chosen. She began to giggle. Hoke lunged toward the entrance.

The rifles drove him back. Still giggling, the girl was disrobing then, nor were there undergarments beneath her buckskins. Hoke clapped his unoccupied hand across his eyes.

The old women commenced to titter now also, as he stood hopping from foot to foot.

Hoke finally heard moccasins scuffing, indicating that the girl had given up. “Okay, hey,” Anna Hot Water said from the entry, “is one in, one out, pretty damn quick for tall nutsy feller like you, you betcha.”

Hoke moaned, turning to glare from one of the old wives to another. “Now blast it all, how am I supposed to—”

But then another girl appeared, giggling even as she disclosed her respectable bosom. This time Hoke flung himself against the ridgepole of the tepee, pressing his face into the crook of his arm. “I can’t!” he cried. “A man jest can’t!”

“Is two in, two out, and not even one damn hard on,” Anna Hot Water called. “But lots more damn time.”

But now he did not even turn when the next girl entered, so after she had stripped herself one of the grinning old women reached across and thwacked him on the thigh with a stick. “I won’t,” Hoke said. “I won’t!” He saw the girl, however, if only because of the increasing force of the blows, which finally made him dance away. But then as a fourth candidate was entering he threw himself to the ground, pounding at it with his fists.

The old women grinned and tittered, and he might have seen a fifth girl, and even a sixth (noticing obliquely, if he noticed anything at all, that they became progressively less attractive, less young) but after that he not only ignored the smarting of the blows but the yanking at his hair also, and when his head was jerked forcibly upward he squeezed his eyes tight. “Take it,” he was sobbing. “Take the durned rifle. Take the hat. Take the Colts too, and my horse. Jest don’t send in no more. It jest ain’t sporting. A man could go plumb out’n his—”

So he had no idea how long it took. When he at last became aware that he was alone, light through the entrance told him that not too much time could have passed after all. His clothing lay in a disorderly heap near him. He dressed slowly, vanquished, oblivious of the dirt on his garments.

His horse remained where he had left it, and his saddle gear likewise. The Indians, evidently all of them, were sitting in a half-circle, facing him, and he could read nothing in their expressions. The few old men with rifles held them approximately in his direction still. The four old wives sat indifferently to one side, picking lice from one another’s hair.

“Okay,” Hoke said, “so I couldn’t. So I dint. Go ahead then, if’n that’s your custom, shoot me and git it done with. But I reckon you could paint up a notice or something, to tell a feller he’d best coax it up in advance, afore he—”

The chief grunted in irritation, gesturing toward Hoke’s horse. “He say take your squaw and scram,” Anna Hot Water told him.

“Huh?” Hoke said.

“Chief say paleface usually pretty damn lousy at bim-bam anyways, but you the most miserable he ever got rifle from. Pretty lucky, you find some manhood in time to keep bargain, hey?”

“I done?” Hoke said. “But I never even—”

The chief grunted again, as if in dismissal, so Hoke edged toward the horse, although still totally confused. Then he realized that she had risen to follow after him.

“We get to civilization, you marry me pretty damn quick, I think,” she said then. “Because it cost me that whole damn silver dollar, bribe old hags in teepee there. But oh, lover, you got yourself hottest damn bim-bam this whole territory, oh yes, hey!”

And there seemed no way to get rid of her. She had a pony, remarkably old and erratically gaited, but capable somehow of keeping in sight of his own roan when he tried to outrun her. “What for you want to do that anyways, hey?” she asked him reasonably. “I save your life back that stinking place, no? How quick we get married, yes?”

“Sure,” Hoke said. “All right. Whatever suits you. I done give up on all hope back there anyways. But wash that smelly bear fat out’n your hair.”

This was the first night, after they had camped near an arroyo through which a stream ran. “And while you’re at it scrub down your durned clothes too,” he told her.

“And then you have nice clean bim-bam, hey? Sure, must want it pretty damn bad, after seventeen times you don’t get it. One feller, he come through there, decide to trade horse for squaw — he test all them women, twenty damn hours nonstop. Then all of them tell chief he too damn something, too, not want to be wife or be burned out in three weeks probably. Like make bim-bam with repeater rifle. And then chief have to give back horse damn fast himself, because old wives get hot fer feller too. This before I get stuck up there, but they still talk about it, oh yes. Feller named Dean Goose, I hear tell. That some hung feller, you betcha. Greatest bim-bam of all!”

Hoke rolled dismally into his blanket. “Feller named what?”

“Dean Goose.”

Hoke sobbed once.

“That remind me, what your names, lover hey?”

Hoke did not answer.

“Well, I think I call you Dean Goose anyways, maybe that make you better bim-bam. You want bim-bam now, Dean Goose?”

“I’m right weary,” Hoke sobbed.

“Sure, Dean Goose. We got plenty damn time, you bet-cha. Whole damn life I think.”

But he finally got an idea the next afternoon. Their trail crossed the route followed by a stage line, and he picked a spot on a rise below which the road snaked for a substantial distance around a fully visible horseshoe curve. He said nothing to Anna Hot Water at all, gave no indication why they were camping in midafternoon. Nor did he explain when they sat there two days and nights.

When he finally saw a coach, perhaps five minutes away and coming fast, he strode quickly to where Anna Hot Water’s pony was hobbled and put a bullet through the animal’s head. The squaw leaped toward him. “Hey, what for you damn fool do that, hey?”

“He had that there limp.”

“Hey, that no limp. He gaited that way long time now, damn good pony.”

But Hoke was already mounting up. “He wouldn’t of never got to California,” he said.

“California? Hey, that where we go?”

“Dint I tell you? Sure, and now we’ll have to find you another horse. Or say, ain’t this some luck, because here comes a stage. I’ll jest run on down and stop her, and then you can ride and I’ll foller along after—”

“Hey?” Anna Hot Water said.

“Sure. And I reckon you never rode in no stagecoach before, neither. Git on down there quick, now.”

Hoke galloped off. There was no trail where he angled toward the road below, and his horse skidded several times, raising dust, but with the instinct of his years as a cowhand he yanked his kerchief about his mouth and nose. It had already occurred to him that a stage might not make an unscheduled stop in Indian country, but he had decided that his personal emergency would warrant halting it with a gun. Because he truly meant to buy a ticket for as far away from Yerkey’s Hole as his last few dollars would take her.

But then the coach surprised him by pulling up even before he had done any more than wave with his Buntline.

As a matter of fact it seemed the driver had begun to brake before that, when he had still been slipping down the hillside.

“Howdy there,” Hoke shouted from a distance, heeling toward them. “I thank you kindly—”

But then they were to puzzle him even more. Because there were no passengers, apparently, and of the two men in the cockpit only one looked like an ordinary hand. The other, who should have been carrying a shotgun, was not only unarmed but quite elderly, and far too handsomely dressed for his situation. It was he who began to shout:

“Don’t kill us! Don’t! We’re carrying nothing — no mail, nothing. Here’s my wallet! There’s three hundred dollars in it, and—”

“But—”

And then the man actually did toss a wallet toward him. Hoke gaped at it where it dropped into the dirt. “But I jest wanted to—”

The older man clutched at his breast then, gasping. “Oh, don’t shoot!”

“But look, I’m jest trying to tell you—”

“Lissen, mister, lissen.” It was the driver this time, leaning down to speak almost confidentially. “That’s all we got with us, honest. This here’s Mr. Fairweather, the owner. He’s jest taking a private ride, you see. And he’s got this weak heart, so I’m under orders not to put up no resistance. So if—”

“Well, sure,” Hoke said. “Anyways, all I want is—”

Still confused, Hoke happened to lift a hand to his face. That was when he realized he had not put away his revolver. Nor had he removed his kerchief.

So he was just about to rid himself of both, grimacing at his stupidity, when the rest of it happened. Anna Hot Water came panting along the trail behind them. “What you say?” she called. “It all set now, Dean Goose?”

“Dean Goose?” the driver muttered. “Dean Goose?”

“Dingus Billy Magee!”

Hoke’s horse shied at the abrupt lurching of the vehicle, rearing high. Probably he could have caught them if he tried, but he was still simply not thinking well. “Yaaaa!” the driver screamed. “Yaaaa!” The coach jerked and skidded, rocking wildly down the road.

So the new circular on Dingus reached his office only a day after he himself got home (with Anna Hot Water plodding inexorably after him). It was for three thousand dollars, posted by an organization named the Fairweather Transportation Company, and it bore a facsimile signature of one Hiram J. Fairweather, President, who personally guaranteed payment. Hoke shoved the announcement into a locked drawer, along with the wallet. He sat for long hours, brooding over it.

Two weeks later, in a town called Oscuro where Dingus was believed to have previously committed certain felonies, several mail sacks containing federal papers were stolen from a post office. The postmaster who reported the theft also produced a crumpled piece of paper on which a scrawled note read Dingus, the best time to steel them bags is after mid-nite. A week after that, in another small town in the same area, certain ranch deeds and water titles were removed from a land office, and this time a kerchief was discovered on the scene, embroidered with the initials DBM. No cash money was involved in either larceny, according to the official circulars which subsequently crossed Hoke’s desk, but each governmental department announced it was adding one thousand dollars to the over-all bounty nonetheless.

That still left Dingus five hundred dollars shy of the original ten thousand about which he and Hoke had spoken. “But he can go and manage the last of it hisself,” Hoke decided, burying the mail sacks and sundry other evidence. “Meantimes this’ll teach the critter to promise Hoke Birdsill a train and then not rob one, I reckon!”

But that had only been desperation. And anyway, it was over now. Now even the crowning public indignity of Turkey Doolan did not matter, especially since the loafers who had seen Hoke dragging the unconscious Dingus from Miss Pfeffer’s to the jail had quickly spread word of the new capture. (It had occurred essentially as Dingus himself suspected, of course. After escorting Miss Pfeffer to the doctor’s, Hoke had lurked beneath her rear window for some moments first, to make certain that the snoring was authentic. What he’d hit Dingus with had not been a pistol, however, but a handy fty pan.) Hoke had explained the episode with modesty, if with a certain vagueness becoming characteristic in such situations, and then had arranged for his letter about the reward to depart with the morning stage. Now, still exultant, enthroned in his office he brushed the dust from a mail-order catalog, ready to consider the first possible additions to his wardrobe in the six long months since Dingus had been his prisoner before.

“Yep,” he speculated aloud, “might even git me some Colts with gutta percha handles this time, like I seen that feller Bat Masterson wearing once, up to Dodge City.”

Dingus merely snarled. Hoke had removed his handcuffs, but he continued to pace the cell like an abused animal, kicking at the spittoon one moment, at the slopbucket the next. The welt behind his ear was reddening also, which did not fail to compound Hoke’s sense of gratification.

Much as he savored the moment, however, it occurred to him that he ought to look in briefly on Miss Pfeffer. “You reckon you won’t start to weep for lonesomeness,” he asked Dingus, “if’n I leave you in there by yourself fer a spell?”

“Go pee down a rattlesnake hole, you pistol-whipping mule-sniffer,” Dingus told him.

“Poor old Dingus,” Hoke chuckled. “You jest ain’t got no sporting attitude, is all.”

Nor could a confrontation with Miss Pfeffer’s continued indisposition dampen his spirits either. When he had led her to the doctor’s earlier she had been speechless, and in reply to questions about Dingus she had only wailed piteously; now, with the sound of Hoke’s solicitous inquiry from her front door, she commenced to wail all over again.

The doctor was just emerging from her bedroom. “Sure does rend your heart, don’t it, Doc?” Hoke commented.

“Rends something, I reckon,” the doctor said ambiguously, whereupon Miss Pfeffer wailed anew.

“Hang it now, Agnes, it jest ain’t all that tragic,” the doctor called across his shoulder. “It’s happened a couple times in history before, you know.”

“Sure,” Hoke contributed expansively, speaking toward the bedroom. “Lots of ladies has been terrorized by desperadoes. How about all them fair damsels got carried off by wicked dukes and such, as we had in school, only they was rescued by knights in shiny armour? Or in Mister Fenimore Cooper’s writings, where—”

This time it was the doctor who seemed to moan, starting out.

“Well, say, you don’t jest aim to leave her here alone?” Hoke asked (it had just come to him, if obliquely, that he did owe Miss Pfeffer a certain debt of gratitude).

“I got a sick team of oxen to look after, up to Denny Cross’s place,” the doctor said. “Man’s got to make a serious living somewheres.”

“But supposing she gets a relapse or something, after all the…” Hoke edged closer to the bedroom, peering within to see Miss Pfeffer gazing bleakly at nothing from beneath her blankets. “Why, a helpless woman all alone after a experience like that — I’d be right honored to sit a spell, ma’am, if’n you’d rest easier? I could jest blow out that lamp there, and then make myself to home in the parlor—?”

Hoke again thought he heard the doctor moan, or perhaps it was only the closing door. Miss Pfeffer sighed once. Then, distantly, with infinite weariness, she said, “Yes. Thank you. I—”

Then Miss Pfeffer did turn toward him, staring somewhat oddly in fact, as if she had only now become aware of his presence. But Hoke had already started to blow into the chimney. The light died.

“Well, now,” he offered. Even in the new darkness he retained the impression that Miss Pfeffer continued to stare, though there was only silence. “I’ll mosey on out front then, I reckon,” he said finally.

“No. Wait. Mr. Birdsill, I—”

“Yes’m?”

Another moment passed. Miss Pfeffer’s voice was strained. “Mr. Birdsill, I know it will sound forward of me, but — well, after that terrible encounter, thinking he was just a young man in difficulty, and then learning that he was…”

“The most murderous outlaw in the untamed West, yes’m. But you can relax now, because I done bested him in mortal combat and—”

“Yes,” Miss Pfeffer cut in. “It was quite shocking. Mr. Birdsill, would you mind if—”

“What’s that, Miss Pfeffer?”

“It’s such a comfort to a girl to know that someone sympathetic is nearby. Would you remain here, Mr. Birdsill, in my room? On the chair? If you don’t think it would be too compromising for an unmarried gentleman, I’d feel far more secure—”

“Well — why, sure, ma’am, I’d be more than—”

“Thank you, Mr. Birdsill. You’re so understanding. You may use tobacco if you wish. As a matter of fact I’m partial to the odor.”

“Well, it jest does happen I got me a cigar here,” Hoke admitted.

He sat, smoking, holding his derby hat on his knee. They were quiet again. But still he had the sensation that Miss Pfeffer was considering him in that puzzling, thoughtful way.

Then Hoke suddenly believed he realized what it was. “Why, Miss Pfeffer,” he cried, “you’re truly ill from all you went through, ain’t you?”

“Oh, it’s nothing,” Miss Pfeffer protested. “Nothing. Don’t trouble yourself about poor me…”

“But I can hear you from all the way over here. You’re—”

“No, I’m fine. It’s only—”

“But ain’t there something I can git you — more blankets or—”

“I’m afraid I’m using all of them already. Oh d-d-dear, it’s-it’s—”

“Well, we jest got to do something, or else you’ll—”

“Oh, dear, if I only had a sister here, or some kinfolk. Because there’s only one way to stop it. Oh, forgive me for even mentioning it, Mr. Birdsill, but — but—”

“Yes’m?”

“Oh, heavens, would you think me shameless if I—”

“Oh, ma’am, I couldn’t think badly of a well-bred lady like yourself, no matter what.”

“Well, it’s — the only cure for a chill like this, is — oh, forgive me, but I’m certain you’ll understand, in such emergency, if you c-c-could—”

“Miss Pfeffer! You want me to—?”

“It will be my death if you don’t, I truly fear it will—”

“Oh,” Hoke said. “Oh! You wait, then. I jest got to git out’n my—”

“Thank you, Mr. Birdsill. Oh, thank you. I feel warmer already, I truly do. But — dear heavens, this is so compromising, I hope you don’t think—”

“Oh, no ma’am, I wouldn’t never—”

“But—”

“Yes’m?”

“Isn’t this the way people would — I mean married folk, of course — somewhat in this same manner, although with a certain arrangement, like—”

“Miss Pfeffer, ma’am?”

“And then like—”

“Miss Pfeffer!”

“Oh, dear,” Miss Pfeffer said. “Oh, dear. And now the chill has come back, just dreadfully, dreadfully! Why, it’s so bad, I don’t believe I’ll be able to stop shivering for anything at all—”

“Married?” Hoke cried. “Married! But—”

“Because I’m ruined, ruined!” Miss Pfeffer was weeping hysterically. “Oh dear, dear, how could you do this to me? A poor, defenseless girl like myself, trusting you, looking to you for protection in my moment of need—”

“But Miss Pfeffer, it weren’t me who started the—”

“Oh, what have you done! Taking advantage of me when I was helpless, helpless! You’ll have to many me. If you don’t, I’ll—”

“But Miss Pfeffer!” Hoke was fumbling for his trousers, swallowing hard. “But—”

“Stained, my honor stained forever! My virtue lost—”

“Please,” Hoke pleaded, “Miss Pfeffer, get aholt of yourself. It weren’t nothing more than—”

“I’ll kill myself—”

“Huh?”

“If you don’t make an honest woman out of me, I will! I must! There’s no other salvation, none! And my blood will be on your hands, Mr. Birdsill!”

“But Miss Pfeffer, ma’am, I know I been courting you and such, but it weren’t for — I mean I jest couldn’t afford to go to Belle’s too often, but now I already done got what I–I mean…”

Miss Pfeffer wailed in the darkness. “With a gun!” she cried. “I’ll get a gun, and I’ll put a bullet into my heart. Two bullets. Six! On your doorstep, Mr. Birdsill, for all the world to know who wronged me—”

“But I got to have some time, I…”

“Time?” Miss Pfeffer’s voice changed abruptly, and again Hoke felt that she was eyeing him strangely. “How much time?” she asked him.

Hoke struggled with it. “A year?”

Miss Pfeffer wailed.

“A month, then?” Hoke ventured.

“Midnight,” Miss Pfeffer declared.

“Midnight?”

“Midnight,” she repeated. “It is now approximately ten o’clock. If you don’t come to me with a man of the cloth by midnight, you will find my mortal remains upon the doorstep of the jail.”

“A man of the—?” Hoke’s head was swimming.

“Until then, Mr. Birdsill.”

“But—”

He stumbled out, gathering his hat and coat mindlessly as he went. He was muttering to himself, all the way into the dark street, so he did not see the shotgun until it loomed beneath his very nose.

“Okay, you son-um-beetch,” she said, “is no damn lie then, hey?”

“Huh?” Hoke had sprung back instinctively, his hands shooting up. He dropped his jacket. “Now blast it all, ain’t I got enough troubles of my own without—”

But the enormous weapon was pressing against his chest now. “You make bim-bam with that horsy paleface, you son-um-beetch? Is true what I hear, hey?”

“Now who ever went and told you such a lie? And where’d you get holt of a shotgun like—”

“Never mind where I hear. Never mind shotgun neither. You try to get married up with that horsy twat or no, yes hey?”

“Aw now, Anna…”

“Stick up your damn hands again, you son-um-beetch.”

“Now lissen here, I got things to do. There’s a dangerous desperado over there in jail I got to keep track of. And on top of that I—”

“You keep track that one-arm feller instead, I think. I think you forget everything damn else, go find him pretty damn quick.”

“One-armed feller? Find him for what? You mean that crazy preacher?”

“Preacher feller, oh yes, hey. I give you one hour, maybe two. Then damn quick you marry me, never mind that paleface bim-bam. I give you until midnight is damn all.”

“Midnight?”

“Midnight,” Anna Hot Water said. “Oh yes, hey. Otherwise I blow you apart from nuts to mustache, you son-um-beetch!”

She left him there, trailing her stench behind her.

He did not go back to the jail. In fact he would not have been able to say where he went at first, pacing the streets dismally. “And I can’t even jest saddle up and skedaddle,” he realized, “because I got to get Dingus hanged proper first, if’n I want to collect that new reward money.”

He stopped at Belle’s. Again he did not know why, except that the house itself, its sheer size, seemed to suggest sanctuary. In the main saloon he gulped several whiskeys, to no avail, however. He did not see Belle herself. People accosted him to ask about the new capture, but he scarcely heard what he told them. An image of Anna Hot Water’s oiled flat head hovered before his eyes. When he squeezed them shut Miss Pfeffer’s blunt, mare-like features replaced it. He saw himself surrounded by whimpering infants, all girls, all with mouse-colored, curl-papered hair.

So when he found that he had climbed to the door of Belle’s office bedroom, standing indecisively but with a hand raised to knock, he still could not have said precisely what he had in mind. He had exchanged hardly a dozen words with Belle in six months. She took a moment to open, then appeared fastening a sleeveless robe about her waist. Muscles rippled in her blacksmith’s arms, and she raised an eyebrow dubiously.

“Well,” she told him, “so you’re a big hombre again, are you? How much do you get that he can connive you out of this time — ten thousand almost, ain’t it? What’s on your alleged mind, Birdsill — you got some business, or do you think your new bank account makes us social equals who just ought to chat for a spell?”

But he wasn’t really listening. So maybe it was the familiar bed behind her, the sheer enormity of that too, which had unconsciously drawn him. But the whole room itself, in the dim glow of a single lamp at the desk, intimated safety, security. Hoke knew the solution then. Because she could hide him here easily, certainly until his money arrived. “I’ll pay you,” he said. “I won’t be too long, it’s jest from Santa Fe. I’ll give you five hundred dollars. And—”

“What?” Belle eyed him askance. “You’ll give me—”

“Five,” Hoke said. “All right, never mind. A thousand. But that’s as high as I kin go. All I want is a few days, and…”

“Well, I’m damned,” Belle said. “You mean to say — because I’ve been offered twenty in my time, and once fifty, too, but that doesn’t count since the varmint didn’t have the cash to start with. But this is—”

“No,” Hoke said. “You got the wrong idea, I jest mean—”

But Hoke did not get to explain. Because what suddenly happened then, what was already starting to happen even as he spoke, could not possibly have astonished or confused him more. Belle Nops abruptly swallowed once, then a second time, standing with one hand lifted to her immemorial bosom. Then the bosom heaved, and her face became contorted, and the swallowing became a series of ragged, inarticulate sobs. “A thousand dollars?” she choked. “A thousand?”

“Well, yair,” Hoke said, “but I don’t see no reason fer—”

And then Belle Nops was weeping. Tears flooded down her painted cheeks, beyond any control. “Oh, Birdsill,” she cried, “you mean after six months you’re that desperate? You truly missed me so much that—”

“Huh?”

“Never,” she sobbed, “never! No man has ever cared that much before. And to think that I made you suffer so long, let your heart break for all this time!”

So now it was Hoke who had commenced to swallow, clutching his derby and stumbling backward against the door. “But—”

Moaning, her incredible bosom rising and falling, she lurched after him. Her eyes were wet, they gleamed. “A thousand dollars! In thirty-nine long years, never once have I been so deeply touched! Keep your money, keep it! I’m yours for nothing! Because I’ve missed you too! Oh, my sweetie, I’ve pined for you so!”

Hoke stumbled against a large stuffed chair, going over. “But I jest wanted to stay for — for—”

“Yes, stay — stay forever! We’ll get married, now, tonight! Because it’s so romantic I could…”

Hoke did not quite scream.

“Because I’ve always loved you,” she cried. “From the very beginning!”

“But — but — all them names you used to call me, every time we—”

“Oh, you foolish, foolish boy, didn’t you understand? It was because a girl can’t be the one to say it, and you yourself were so blind, so blind! But what does the past matter now? What does anything matter? Oh, to think, at last—Missies Hoke Birdsill! Oh, my own sweetie pie—”

Flowing open, her robe enveloped him. The astonishing bosom unfurled like gonfalons loosed, like melons in dehiscence. But Hoke saw not, partook not. He had already fainted.