The Ballad of Dingus Magee by David Markson
“Dear heaven! And now you’re all alone—”
“All alone on God’s earth, yes’m. But I’m safe here. Only—”
“Yes, what is it?”
“I’m so cold. All of a sudden, my wound hurts right bad, and I feel this terrible chill. I can’t hardly keep from shivering.”
“Wait, here, let me—”
Dingus felt the additional blankets being spread across him. “But them must be what you would of slept with yourself,” he protested, shaking now. “I c-c-couldn’t take y-y-yours.”
“Oh, dear, it is bad, isn’t it?”
“Yes’m. I sure wish I had a brother or some kin here. My mommy always used to tell me that were the only way to stop a ch-ch-chill, to sleep all huddled up close to your brother. Excepting it were Apaches that kilt him. When I were nine. They—they—”
Dingus shivered and shivered. “Oh, heavens,” Miss Pfeffer said in the darkness, talking as if to herself now. “Oh dear me. But I must, yes. It is only charitable. Christian. I must—”
He waited until he was certain, hearing the rustling. Then he cried, “Ma’am, ma’am, what are you doing?”
“Hush now. That chill could be the death of you.”
“Oh, I know that, ma’am. I could go to my reward before the night is past, I don’t doubt that I could. But I done stripped down completely out’n my—”
“But that’s how it must be done.” Dingus felt the blankets being drawn aside, waiting without a move as she drew him into her embrace. “Of course,” she said, “you feel feverish too. Indeed. I think perhaps if you would turn over, then I could cover you more fully.”
“Oh, dear,” Dingus said. “Is that the only way it will save me? Because I can’t stay nohow but on my stomach, alas, what with this wound I got. Would it work to keep me warm the same way if’n I was the one who climbed on the—”
“Yes, I believe so. It’s the transference of the body’s heat which is important. Here. Wait, and I’ll—”
“This sure is a kindness, ma’am. I’m feeling considerable warmer already. But I’m right embarrassed too. What I mean, I’ve never been in the same bed with a female person, of course, but isn’t this how—I mean the way—I mean—”
“Heavens, I don’t know either. Do you think this is all that—”
“Well, I certainly never expected you would know, ma’am, not a respectable unmarried lady like yourself. But what I would guess, it probably has got something to do with—well, not meaning anything, but jest sort of hypothetical, I reckon I would have to adjust my position a trifle, sort of like this—I mean if I were growed up enough and we were married folks and all, which is the only circumstances under which I would give a passing thought to such things…”
“Of course. But hypothetically, yes, if we were, do you imagine it’s anything like—”
“Well, this could be it, maybe. But next I would most likely have to arrange myself like this, and then sort of like…”
“Like that?”
“I reckon so. And then I’d—”
“Oh, dear. Oh, dear me—”
“Don’t you reckon that would be how it—”
“Well, I don’t know, but—but—”
“Oh. Oh, well, hang it now—”
“What is it? What are you doing? Oh, don’t! Please don’t, I—”
“Well, now, I jest can’t help it, ma’am, I truly can’t. Durned if’n that chill ain’t come back over me, worse’n ever. Why, I jest think I’m about to start shivering so I can’t stop for nothing—”
Perhaps he heard her. In any event he dozed only fitfully, vaguely conscious that she was pacing. Moonlight was streaming through a window then, and later he would definitely recall a vision of her standing over him, wringing her hands. “What have we done?” she was wailing. “What have we done!” But then he turned away from the disturbance.
Or perhaps he saw her when she was dressing also, or heard her when she decided, talking only to herself. “I’ll have to ask someone,” she said. “Because there must be a man of the cloth in town, surely. The sheriff would know. Yes, I’ll ask Mr. Birdsill.” But if he heard he gave no sign.
Yet when the pain woke him he seemed to know instinctively, knew even before he became aware that the blankets were coarser now, the bed more lumpy. What told him first was the ache itself, which was in his temple. Then, when he lifted a hand to touch the soreness, he knew without question, since his other hand was jerked upward by the movement, fixed fast to the first by the ancient rusted iron manacles.
He was in his woolens, but he could see his clothing where it lay in a pile on the cell floor. He found the tender lump behind his ear then too, and he moaned once, less in realization of his new predicament than from ineffable, sad resignation. “Oh, Dingus, you jest never ought to have gonter sleep,” he said aloud.
“I don’t reckon you should of,” Hoke Birdsill said indulgendy.
Dingus was on his right side, and he turned his head experimentally, considering Hoke through the bars. The sheriff sat at his all-too-familiar desk, evidently writing something, and a shotgun was situated at his right hand, pointing direct;y into the cell. “Nice to have you back, you double-dealing, women-and-children-terrifying dishonorable skunk,” Hoke said, setting aside the pen.
So Dingus felt it then himself, finally began to taste the beginning of an outrage of his own. He started to sit up, forgetting about his wound, and then had to jerk back quickly as the pain caught him up. Hoke laughed. “You feeling somewhat peaked, are you, you miserable twerp?”
“I feel all right,” Dingus grunted. “No thanks to you, you boudoir-crawling varmint. Goldang it now, every durned time a feller takes off* his pants you—how’d you get me in here? You found me asleep and went and pistol-whipped me, dint you, you—”
“Weren’t nothing,” Hoke said casually. “Although as it happens I were jest writing the facts of it down, on account of the newspapers will no doubt be interested.”
“You gonter tell me, or jest sit there licking that floppy yeller mustache?”
“Why, sure, but like I say, it weren’t nothing. Miss Agnes Pfeffer come rushing in here, oh, maybe half an hour back, all distracted and talking about a preacher or some such, and so first I thought maybe it were a feller in town, name of Brother Rowbottom, raising a small ruckus somewheres like he does. But then she remarked about it being a boy all shot up, and so I dint have to ask what boy, not being a famous peace officer jest because of my handsome good looks alone, nacherly. So anyways I dint let her rave no more, but I told her who you was, and then that poor helpless creature, why, she like to scared me out’n my wits with a heartrending fainting fit. Goes to show you what being confronted with a immoral desperado like yourself will do to a well-bred lady, all right. Which reminds me that Doc has no doubt took her back home by now, and I ought to go on up and reassure her that you’re permanently out’n harm’s way once again in your degenerate career. I already done finished writing that letter, incidentally, asking when I kin get to put a rope around your miserable neck again, and the one to Santa Fe about that nine thousand and five hundred dollars in the new rewards likewise. Meantimes don’t start thinking you’re gonter trick me about escaping no second time, Dingus, not with them handcuffs and—”
“Did I ask you about all that? Did I ask you any blasted thing more than except how you got me in here?”
“Well, that were the all of it, anyways. After I took Miss Pfeffer to Doc’s I jest went on up to her residence and apprehended you.”
Dingus had raised himself to his hands and knees on the cot. “Well, fix your ornery hide—and I were asleep, weren’t I? So what did you have to go and coldcock me for in the process?”
“Why, Dingus, whatever give you the idea you was asleep? You was a mite drunk, I reckon, seeing as how you’d done took your clothes off after the lady ran out, but you was parading around the house with your six-guns all primed and strapped on under your nekked belly-button, sure enough.
“Huh? Why, my guns wasn’t nowheres near the—”
“ ‘Course they was. And then we drawed on each other, like always happens when a stalwart sheriff meets up with a notorious desperado—but I beat you easy. Had the drop on you afore you could scratch two gnats off’n a whore’s behind. So then you tried to skedaddle, being cowardly at heart like most immoral criminals. I could of kilt you, but I dint see no reason to do that, seeing as how I get the same reward money either way. So I jest calmly shot you on a tangent, like, in a location where you couldn’t run too fast, is all.”
Dingus howled at him, charging to the front of the cell. “Why, you—you—is that what you’re saying done happened?”
“Reckon so, especially seeing as how I jest wrote it that way.”
“Why, you coyote-brained, pussle-gutted, limp-tooled old polecat!” Dingus was sputtering. “Now blast it all, Hoke, I were shot in the ass long afore you ever snuck on into Miss Pfeffer’s, and you know that for a gen-u-ine true fact!”
Hoke pursed his lips, eyeing him. “Now Dingus,” he said. “You think a famous law officer like C. L. Hoke Birdsill has got time to fret over details?”
4
“… the best job that was ever offered to me
was to become a landlord in a brothel.
In my opinion it’s the perfect milieu
for an artist to work in.”
William Faulkner
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
“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—”