The Ballad of Dingus Magee (9 page)

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.