But certain sensuous remnants of the preacher’s flatulence were abruptly wafted toward him then, and he had to go hurriedly elsewhere.
6
“A loaded man is hopeless against a loaded six-shooter”
Walter Noble Burns
Turkey Doolan was to see most of it. Nor would he ever forget.
At first, in the dim cast of light from a lamp in an adjacent room, he did not remember where he was. Then, when he recognized the doctor’s office, when he found himself shirtless and with a fresh neat swath of bandage below his left armpit, he endured a moment of acute anxiety. He sat up gingerly, exploring flesh with his fingertips. But there was little pain, even when he pressed forcefully against the gauze itself. So then a new expression came into his freckled face. It was a look of unrestrained enchantment. “Boys,” Turkey said, and almost aloud, “yes sir, I dint jest know Dingus Billy Magee, but him and me was such fond chums—why one time over to the New Mex, darned if’n that Hoke Birdsill dint go and near assassinate me fer Dingus by mistake!”
Breathing deeply, deliciously, Turkey stood. Then he paused again, gazing at his boots where they lay beneath a chair, at his shirt folded on the seat. “Doc?” he said tentatively.
The vest was nowhere to be seen. Turkey’s eyes darted about the small, sparsely furnished quarters. “Now where the hang—?”
So when he heard the sound again, not realizing that this was what had awakened him to start with, he paid no attention, or not immediately. Then, thunder struck, he bolted to the window.
“Escaped?” he muttered. “And done challenged Hoke Birdsill to a—?”
Turkey could barely discern the shouting man himself in the outer darkness, other than to judge him to be tall and evidently bald. He was already some distance away, moving in the direction of Belle Nops’ bordello, although his voice was remarkably sonorous. “Dingus got escaped again?” Turkey repeated. “Again?’9
But it wasn’t that, wasn’t the puzzlement that mattered. It was the remainder of the announcement, as its overwhelming significance dawned upon him, that staggered Turkey Doolan. “Right out there?” he said. “With pistols? At twelve mid—”
Turkey was already fumbling for his watch (actually the property of one P. Strom, or thus it was engraved; Turkey had found it atop some loose sheets from a farmer’s almanac years before, in a latrine behind a Lubbock restaurant). The watch read only eleven-forty, but Turkey snatched up his boots and shirt nonetheless. “Because I wouldn’t take a chance on missing this fer all the free nooky from here to Medicine Hat,” he declared. He rushed into the next room.
So there sat the doctor in his nightshirt, calmly drinking something from a steaming mug as if nothing of earth-shaking consequence were about to occur at all. “Why, howdy, son,” he said pleasantly. “Feeling ballsy after your sleep, are you? Go help yourself to a spot of coffee—”
“Coffee?” Turkey stared at him incredulously. “Now? When the notoriousest desperado and the hardest-rock sheriff in the whole untamed West is gonter meet each other face-to-face in a gun shoot? How could any human bean in his right mind sit there drinking coffee at a time like—”
“Now, son,” the doctor said, his look inexplicably one of amusement also, “I reckon Dingus Billy Magee is up to some mischief or other right about now, sure as snakes suck eggs.
But you don’t rightly expect that either of them two critters is imbecile enough to parade on out there into that pitch-black street and—”
“Huh?” Turkey said. “Well, you heard the feller calling it out, dint you? Why, this is a event folks’ll be recollecting about fer jest years, like they does about all Wild Bill’s gun battles up to Kansas, or—”
“Wild Bill?” The doctor raised an eyebrow. “Wild Bill Hickok? Now where’d you ever hear about him having a actual—”
“Hear?” Turkey stomped into a boot. “Jest every darned place I ever rode, is all, about how he faced down more foes’n you could count, and—”
“Seems right peculiar to me,” the doctor decided, “seeing as how I come from Kansas myself, and the onliest time I ever heard of Wild Bill actually killing even one single person a-tall—I mean not counting in the war or against Injuns, of course—well, it were sure a mite different from what you’re talking on. That were up to Abilene in Seventy-one, if’n you’re interested, one night when there happened to be some ruckus going on which it were Bill’s obligation to investigate, him being town marshal. Now he waits until things is simmered down, nacherly, afore he saunters out, but then jest about the same time, why here comes another feller creeping round likewise, whereupon Bill murders him on sight. Or what I mean, it were sound he murdered him on, because if’n he took time to look first he might of noticed it were his best chumjest being curious like Bill hisself concerning what the fuss were about. Which is what’s likely to happen to you, incidentally, like it done once tonight already, if’n you go poking outside there. But it also oughter make the point somewhat clear that there jest ain’t no such occurrence as a pistol fracas where two fellers march straight on up the avenue and—”
Turkey was buttoning his shirt. “Doc, you must of been seeing things. But even if you wasn’t, what about say Mister Wyatt Earp then, when him and his brothers and Doc Hol-liday kilt them other fellers in the famous disagreement over to the O.K. Corral in Tombstone? Now you can’t tell me that one dint happen just like—”
“Oh, that were a case where folks jest walked right on up to each other, I reckon,” the doctor admitted. “Excepting how it turned out after the smoke blowed away, them mis-fortunate Clanton riders hadn’t had but one lone handgun betwixt the four of them—which the Earps just happened to be informed of in advance, incidentally, since it were Wyatt hisself who’d pointed out the town ordinance against carrying weapons and made them other boys turn ‘em in to commence with. So—”
“Aw, well, what’s that got to do with anything anyways?” Turkey demanded. “It’s still all besides the point to what’s gonter happen out there in that street in jest about ten quick minutes, when—”
So now the doctor began to mumble as if for his own conviction only. “Wild Bill were sitting at a poker table with’n his back turned when they shot him in it. Billy Bonney were on his way to carve hisself a slice of eating beef when Pat Garrett kilt him in a dark room without no word of previous notice neither. Bill Longley got strung up by the neck, and Clay Allison fell out’n a mule wagon and broke his’n. That feller Ford snuck up to the ass-end of Jesse James, and John Ringo blowed out his own personal brains, and John Wesley Hardin is doing twenty-five years in the Huntsville Penitentiary.” The doctor looked up almost sadly. “But now all of a sudden either Hoke Birdsill or Dingus Billy Magee is gonter become the first individual in modern-day history, outside of maybe in that there traveling show Buffalo Bill Cody done put together to bamboozle a bunch of lard-headed Easterners, who’s gonter get kilt by sashaying accommodatingly on up to another feller he knows is carrying a primed firearm in his hand and—”
“Doc, don’t tell me no more,” Turkey cut in then. “Because none of that applies nohow, since this here’s Dingus Billy Magee hisself, and not them others. And you jest don’t seem to know it, I reckon, but Dingus is the boldest, fear-somest, most lion-heartedest desperado that ever drawed blood. Why, he’s a real modern Robbing Hood, too, who’d loan a pard the actual duds ofPn his back. Or you take what he informed me jest the other week, about how he met up with Mister Earp and Doc HoUiday theirselves when they was down on their luck over towards the Pecos once, and he dint even bear them no grudge from their previous disagreements neither, as when he’d had to pistol-whip them one time, but out’n pure Christian generosity he give them every red cent he had in his poke. And now tonight—why tonight’s gonter be jest the most valiant episode in his whole astounding career, is all.”
The doctor considered all that with an expression which eluded Turkey completely, finally returning to his coffee. But Turkey had no more time to discuss
the matter anyhow. Because if he himself had waited all these years for something to happen, and then had been under the illusion it had finally come to pass when Hoke Birdsill shot him, Turkey knew now that he had been sorely mistaken. Because that had been prelude merely, had been but the first rude intimation of what lay ahead. “Because now is really when it’s gonter happen, all right,” he told himself, “and if this misbelieving old fud don’t know it, well that’s jest his poor dumb luck.”
So he not only disregarded the doctor entirely but forgot to ask about the vest also, striding rapidly toward the door. “Jest don’t come weeping to me when you wanter know the facts of it later,” he declared in dismissal.
“Oh, I’ll hear ‘em somewheres soon enough, I don’t doubt,” the doctor sighed. “Feller’d almost get the notion it were worth minted money or some such, the way folks is so quick to rush around telling each other about—”
But Turkey had already drawn the door after himself. “Money,” he muttered contemptuously. “Don’t he know there’s jest some experiences in this life you can’t never buy?”
The street was actually darker than he had anticipated, despite lights that glimmered here and there in houses and saloons, since the moon was lost amid racing shards of clouds. Turkey started to his right, moving furtively and keeping clear of the roadway itself, although peering into its profound, reaching shadows. Unconsciously, he was licking his lips as he went. “Were I there?” he enunciated smugly, already practicing, already in preparation for all the long, fecund years ahead, “—why, where else would I of been? You think Dingus would of made a move without he had Turkey Doolan close to hand?”
Deep in the blackness at the corner of a wooden frame house he chose his spot. He was diagonally across from the adobe jail itself, close enough to discern a single hanging lamp beyond a high barred window. Somewhere a coyote howled as if in presentiment, with foreboding and yet expectantly at once, although P. Strom’s watch informed him dimly there were perhaps five minutes yet. Turkey decided to slip behind a post on the porch then, an even finer vantage point, since another lamp in a window behind him cast a shallow but precious glow across this immediate section of the street.
Then, abruptly, that lamp moved, terrifying him for a fraction of a second before he realized it had simply been lifted, carried away by someone inside the house. He saw no one, however, glancing rearward too late. So he had just returned to his vigil, shifting to peer into the grim, ominous shadows once again, when the door opened and the woman emerged.
Turkey cried out in genuine concern. “Oh, ma’am, you sure better get back on inside there—”
Startled herself, the woman shuddered as Turkey arose quickly to reassure her. “Begging your pardon for being on your premises,” he explained. “But there’s about to be this immortal gun duel, you see, involving that famous desperado, Dingus Billy Magee, which I’m sure you’ve heard of, and—”
Something happened to the woman at mention of the name. In fact for a moment Turkey thought she might drop the lamp. Still alarmed anyway, he snatched it from her, deciding at the same time to extinguish it as a precautionary measure (if pausing for the briefest moment to consider the woman herself first, her face striking him as unengagingly long and marelike, her hair twisted into curl papers for some reason decidedly the worse for wear). “Please now, ma’am,” he insisted, “and you’d best hasten, too. Not that Dingus hisself won’t shoot straight as a arrow, but that Hoke Birdsill, why he’s apt to be fusillading in nine different directions at once out’n sheer terror, afore he finally gets kilt, so—”
“What?” the woman demanded then, seeming to scowl in the darkness. “Sheriff Birdsill will be what? Why, I’m just on my way to the jail myself. What are you—?”
“He’s gonter get hisself deceased in this pistol battle with Dingus Billy Magee, yes’m. Smack out in the street here, any instant now, which is why I were suggesting you oughter get youself to—”
“Deceased? Sheriff Birdsill—” She continued to hesitate. “But I’m afraid I still don’t understand. Because he and I are scheduled to be—a fight? With actual weapons? In which it is possible that—that Mr. Birdsill might be—might—?”
“Ma’am,” Turkey proclaimed gravely, “you can take my solemn true oath on it. That feller Birdsill, he’s as good as worm-eaten already. Because when Dingus gets his dander up, well there jest ain’t no—”
But then it was too late for explanation. Suddenly— magnificently, gloriously—a revolver shot shattered the night. Turkey Doolan’s heart leaped, even as he was instinctively whirling to fling himself behind the post again. “Protect yourself, ma’am!” he cried.
But then just as quickly the exultation, the ecstasy, melted for an instant into panic. Because when he searched the street now, when his eyes strained to penetrate the sprawling, interlaced shadows, he saw nothing at all. Horrified that it might be over even before it seemed to have begun, Turkey could have cursed the woman’s interruption, the moment’s distraction.
Then a new shot exploded, allowing Turkey to sigh with relief even as he made out the sheriff, Hoke Birdsill himself, in the flash of powder, as he recognized the frock coat which had hovered above him near the livery stable earlier, the derby hat as well. Darkness enveloped the figure again before the sound ceased reverberating, however. Turkey caught his breath, waiting once more.
The next shot came too swiftly, and from too far off, for Turkey to discern anything in its flash. But with this one he did not have to. “Git ‘im, Dingus!” he cried. “Git the wick-dipping polecat where it hurts!”
Then he actually did see him after all, saw Dingus, and this time it seemed to Turkey Doolan that not only his breath, not only his heart, but the world itself had stopped for the fleeting, immemorial moment. Because it was the vest that Turkey recognized now, the gaudy red-and-yellow fringed Mexican vest that he himself, he, Millard Fillmore Doolan, had worn that very day and which Dingus had somehow retrieved, which like some charmed protective talisman Dingus had felt indispensable for this ultimate deadly confrontation with his eternal nemesis. Turkey recognized it beyond any doubting as the shadowy, sprinting figure darted through the spillage of light from the doorway of a saloon, as the colors flashed in apotheosis to name the headlong dashing presence of Dingus Billy Magee! Turkey trembled with the thrill, with the consciousness of history itself in the making.
“Oh boy, oh boy, oh boy!” he cried, although oblivious of his own exclamations now, “that dopey old Doc! This’ll learn him what a feller kin believe in, I reckon!”
Then Dingus was gone (Turkey had seen him for half a second actually, perhaps less) and silence again flooded the night. There was no visible movement now, Dingus could be anywhere, Hoke Birdsill similarly. So when the next shot came, and no mere revolver’s crack this time but the unmistakable boom of a shotgun instead, flashing behind a hooded wagon toward which Turkey was not looking at all, he had no idea who had fired, no way of determining shooter or intended victim. The echo rocked and clattered across the town, a dog yelped in disapprobation—and then the stillness settled again like doom. Turkey’s heartbeat ceased one further time. “Dingus?” he whispered. “Aw, come on, git ‘im, git’im!”
Then a sickening, an impossible idea crossed Turkey Doolan’s mind, one that he could not have conceived of even a moment before. “Dingus?” he said again. Turkey dared not move.
Yet only the silence persisted, the impenetrable dark, through which an immense sadness stole over Turkey Doolan where he crouched. And then with it, from out of nowhere, from out of memory long years buried now, four lines of poetry came into his head, the only lines of poetry Turkey had ever learned, written by that beloved frontiersman Captain Jack Crawford at the death of Wild Bill himself. Doc was an old turd, Doc’s mockery could never detract from their grace, their beauty. As always, they brought tears into Turkey Doolan’s eyes:
Under the sod at Deadwood Gulch
We have laid Bill’s last remains:
<
br /> No more his manly form will hail
The Red Man on the plains…
And Dingus? If the impossible happened to Dingus, would he too find his bard, would there arise someone to compose the stanzas worthy of this so much nobler life? Turkey felt bereft, a terrible desolation visited him.
But finally now, faintly, at long last he believed he heard footsteps, people approaching distantly. He could not be sure—nor could he bear it any longer. Turkey built himself shaking to his feet.
So he was already feeling his way toward the top step when he became aware of the woman again, when he heard her venture forward through the darkness herself. “What happened?” she whispered hoarsely. “Did it—was it the way you said it would—?”
And then Turkey despised himself for his doubts, for his lapse of faith. Rising to his full height, less in restitution for the affront to Dingus alone than to everything he himself held sacred, Turkey proclaimed, “Ma’am, you could wager your last gold dollar on it. Now a slight portion weren’t too distinct, maybe, but it were Hoke Birdsill got his’n, absolutely.”
“Sheriff Birdsill,dead?”
The woman’s voice was remote, although perhaps somewhat thoughtful also. “Yes’m,” Turkey said, peering into the street anew. “Why, I don’t doubt, if’n we lighted that there lamp we could be the first lucky folks to view his mutilated remains where they fell. Especially since it don’t appear nobody else in town is rushing out awful hasty—”
So he had glanced back once more, waiting to see if she might in fact retrieve the lamp, when a curious sensation of self-consciousness took hold of him. Because the woman seemed to be considering him oddly in the blackness now, looking him up and down intently as if she had not before been truly aware of his presence at all. “Sheriff Birdsill is dead?” she said again.
The Ballad of Dingus Magee Page 12