The Ballad of Dingus Magee

by David Markson

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 st
age 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 darkne
ss 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—”