The Ballad of Dingus Magee

by David Markson

  Hoke had his old boots on the desk. “Ain’t rightly thought,” he said.

  “Leastways you don’t have to bear me that grudge no more, seeing as how you got your eight hundred dollars back. Way it turns out, you’re about twenty-two hundred dollars to the good.”

  “I don’t hold you no more grudge, Dingus. None a-tall. I reckon now it’s your turn to hold one on me.”

  “You was jest doing your job, was all. Sheriffs a sheriff, even in bed. Sort of a unglorious way to get took though, in a feller’s underdrawers.”

  “I ain’t told nobody that aspect of it, Dingus.”

  “I appreciate that, Hoke.”

  Again Hoke was happy to see the subject drop. What he had failed to mention was that there must indeed have been a story about the capture, since several of the newspapers had long since written in request of his participant’s version of the episode. Hoke had replied with laudable modesty in each case, if with a certain cloudiness of detail.

  Meanwhile Dingus had arisen, stretching. He stood rubbing his neck with his left hand.

  That reminded Hoke of something. “Say now, how come you ain’t got no scar on your wrist there, from where you was all bandaged that time you robbed me?”

  For a moment Dingus considered the wrist vacantly. Then he gestured in dismissal. “Oh, that—that weren’t but a slight puncture, was all. I always did heal pretty quick anyways.”

  “You dint actually have it out with some peace officer, truly now? What I mean, not no authentic face-on gun shooting?”

  “Weren’t nothing,” Dingus reiterated. “Couple fellers over to Tombstone, got a little rambunctious in a saloon one night and tried to draw down on me. Feller name of Earp, I believe it were, and one name of Holliday. Should of kilt ‘em both, most probably, but I were in a sort of playful mood, so I jest poked ‘em around with the butt end of a pistol, and then I—”

  Hoke’s jaw had fallen. Wyatt Earp? And Doc Holliday?

  Dingus shrugged. “Same fellers, doubtless. I don’t generally give such incidents too much notice, seeing as how they get to happening all the time. You know how it is, them little chaps trying to cut in on a bigger chap’s reputation—”

  Dingus actually yawned then, while Hoke continued to stare. “Sure never thought they’d swing me at only a tender nineteen and a quarter years,” the youth went on.

  “Happens that way, ‘times,” Hoke ventured, still impressed.

  “Well, I had me some fun,” Dingus decided.

  “I reckon you done, all right.”

  “Seems a shame, though, jest when I were going right good. Year or so more, I could have got as notorious as the best, say like Billy the Kid hisself, maybe.”

  “Well, the Kid were jest luckier’n you, insofar as he got to murder more folks. But you’re pretty notorious anyways.”

  “I’d still like to read me the story about that deadly gun battle,” Dingus sighed. “Sort of a shame for you too, Hoke, when you stop to think.”

  “How you calculate?”

  “Not getting but only three thousand dollars. You ought to have waited a spell to capture me. Dint they get ten thousand when they shot down the Kid, up to Fort Sumner?”

  “Well, I reckon Pat Garrett’s a luckier peace officer’n me, same as the Kid were a luckier outlaw’n you,” Hoke judged. “But what’s done is done, like they say.”

  “Don’t rightly have to be, I reckon.”

  “How’s that, now?”

  “It jest come to me out’n the blue, Hoke, standing right here in my stocking feet. Be right interesting if’n I escaped from this here jail of yours. A couple months and I reckon there’d be all sorts of new warrants on me, seeing as how I don’t believe I’d change my rascal’s ways none. You capture me again, say in a year, and doubtless you could collect a whole ten thousand fer your strongbox that time.”

  Hoke Birdsill was gazing at him narrowly. “Say that again?”

  Dingus cocked the sombrero back on his fair head. “All I’m informing you, Hoke, is that right now you got yourself a holt of three thousand dollars, ain’t you? Ain’t no way they can take it back, is there?”

  This time Hoke did not reply. He had swung around in his chair to squint at a tacked-up reward poster.

  “Reward for the capture of ain’t that what it says?” Dingus asked. “Don’t say nothing about you need to get me hanged in addition, does it?”

  Hoke Birdsill stood up, nibbling his mustache.

  “Ain’t no rule says it can’t go to more’n ten thousand, neither,” Dingus added.

  “But supposing it’s some other sheriff shoots you? Like say Mister Earp again, or—”

  Dingus shrugged. “Feller needs to take some risk to get ahead in this world, I reckon. But you know for a fact I have a fondness for Yerkey’s Hole, especially with the attraction of Belle’s place to lure a man. On top of which, like you jest said without even thinking on it—now that I been sentenced, why, all you’d need next time, you’d murder me on sight.”

  Hoke Birdsill scowled and scowled, watching Dingus watch him.

  “How would be a good way to do it?”

  “I could slug you, I reckon. I’d be gentle, nacherly, but there oughter be a lump.”

  “I got a lump already, where I happened to bang my head in a outhouse this morning. Ain’t nobody saw that one.”

  “Well, there you be, that’s half the job done then. It’s like a omen. So now all you got to do is lay low a spell, until I can appropriate a horse, and then you call out a posse and go west whilst I go east.”

  Hoke folded his arms, gazing at the cell door.

  “I ain’t never done nothing dishonest before,” he decided next. “I ain’t got the habit.”

  “You ain’t never had ten thousand dollars to grab holt of, neither.”

  “How kin I be sure it’ll get to ten thousand?”

  “Supposing I took the notion to shoot up a whole town, one Wednesday? Or to rob me a train?”

  “Rob one. Give me your sworn word of honor you’ll rob a train.”

  “Got to travel a good ways north to do that, Hoke.”

  “Well, you jest come on back fast afterwards. I’m taking chances anyways.”

  “Hoke, you got my oath. And trains’ll get a feller up to ten thousand faster’n anything.”

  Hoke was convinced. Hastily, with a furtive glance toward the street, he unlocked the cell. “There’s always horses hitched down near Belle’s,” he whispered.

  “Jest as soon’s I climb into my boots,” Dingus said. “I’ll use the rear exit, I reckon.”

  Hoke watched him depart, then almost snatched up a shotgun to halt him again even as the rear door closed. “Earp?” he repeated. Hoke swallowed. Then he shook his head, since it was too late now anyway. “But I’ll sure jest have to find him betwixt the bedsheets the next time round again also,” he decided. He paced nervously for some minutes, tasting the wax from his mustache now. Then, carefully, he set his derby upside down upon a moderately clean spot on the floor, wrinkled his shirt with regret, and smudged gun oil across his cheek and ran, stumbling, toward the nearest saloon. “Dingus!” he shouted, bursting through the batwing doors. “He clobbered me good, boys, he made his escape!”

  But whether it was his own outcry or the sound of the gunfire which brought the few drinkers up short he did not know. There were exactly four shots, with a pause between the first two and the last, in the direction from which he himself had just come. Hoke whirled in confusion.

  “What’s he shootin’ at if’n he already done got loose?” someone asked.

  And then Hoke knew. Clutching at the key ring in his vest with one hand, he clapped the other against his forehead, and the moan came from deep in his throat.

  He was the first one back to the jail, but when he raced past the smashed door of the smallest cell and saw the fractured lock on his private strongbox beneath the cot, he did not even have to look into the box itself. He sank to his knees, burying his face in
to the mattress. “I might have knowed,” he told himself, sobbing, “I might have knowed. And now probably he don’t intend to go rob that train, neither!”

  That was when the outrage had begun for C. L. Hoke Birdsill. It ran deep now, refulgent and intractable, as he stood in the alley behind the Yerkey’s Hole livery stable six months later clutching the Smith and Wesson he had just emptied at the sight of that long-familiar and hateful Mexican vest, confronted by the sprawled form of a man who was not Dingus Billy Magee and not anyone else he had ever seen and whose name, he would learn, was Turkey Doolan. Hoke commenced to curse unremittingly.

  There was gathering chaos about him now, however, and there were incalculably more people than the lone stable-hand with whom he had been talking when the shooting began, when he had heard the stablehand shout and had glanced up to see the fool he had taken for Dingus riding brazenly past the livery’s rear doorway and had flung himself behind the nearest animal, snatching at his revolver— townspeople collecting, come in their cautious good time now that the firing was patently done with. Hoke cursed them also.

  “Who is it? Who’d Birdbrain go shooting this time?”

  “Is it Dingus? Did he finally nail the critter?”

  “Fooled him again, I reckon”

  “Say, I know that feller—jest a Missouri drifter, name of Rooster something— “

  “Hoke done shot up some chickens, you say ?”

  Hoke gazed at Turkey, who had been lying beatifically for several moments now, since muttering some words about his comradeship with Dingus Billy Magee. And then abruptly the youth began to scream.

  “It’s stopped!” he cried. “The dripping’s stopped! All my blood is dripped out! I’m kilt, I’m kilt!”

  People were kneeling near him. “Easy now, easy,” someone told him. “Hold him down, somebody!”

  “Well, he sure ain’t dead, anyways,” Hoke said.

  “I am dead!” Turkey screamed. “My blood is all dripped out! I could hear it dripping and now I can’t!”

  “Does look like he’s lost a intolerable amount at that,” a cowboy remarked. Hoke could see it now also. “Lying in a whole flood of it there—”

  “I told you!” Turkey wailed. “And now there ain’t no more to drip!”

  “Can’t be from this here wound in his side. This ain’t nothing but a harmless crease.”

  “I doubt if’n I hit more than the once,” Hoke said. “Durned forty-fours jest ain’t no account fer accuracy.”

  “You think maybe he jest done peed in his pants with the fright of it?”

  “I dint never pee!” Turkey cried. “I’m murdered!”

  “Oh, thunderation, ain’t blood. Ain’t pee neither.” A man had lifted something from beneath him. “Ain’t nothing but his canteen been dripping here. It got punctured.”

  Turkey fainted on the spot.

  “Somebody lug him down to the doc’s,” Hoke said. He did not assist them. He had lost his derby while shooting and he went to retrieve it now. Then, still outraged, he was striding toward the main street when someone called to him.

  “Hey, Sheriff, look here—”

  “I got work to do,” Hoke snarled. “If that diaper-bottomed damn desperado thinks he can keep getting away with riding in here and making me shoot up innocent folks he’s got another think coming. And I don’t give a whorehouse hoot if’n he does face up to Wyatt Earp and the rest of them. I got to git back to my office and ponder what sort of mischief he’s most likely got in mind. Because this time I’m gonter—”

  “You better look at this here blood first, I reckon—”

  “I already seen it. I been hearing enough about it too. All that commotion over a little bullet hole in the belly—”

  “Not this. This ain’t his’n.”

  “This ain’t whose’n?”

  “Here, where the second horse skittered afore it run off. Bring a lamp, somebody. This is too far aside to be that Turkey feller’s.”

  Hoke gazed at the stains in the dim light. He ran his tongue across his mustache, which tasted faintly of gunpowder at the moment.

  “What do you think, Hoke? You think maybe one of the five bullets that didn’t hit the one you thought was Dingus and was aiming at might of hit the one you didn’t think was, and wasn’t?”

  “Unless it’s horse blood,” someone else speculated.

  “Ain’t horse blood neither,” Hoke said, “but either way he ain’t going far, and that’s the Lord’s truth of it.” He started off once more, then whirled anew. “And you’re all witnesses to that blood now too,” he said, “jest in case he crawls into a dung pile somewheres and dies, and somebody else goes picking up the remains and claiming them rewards. Because he’s worked hisself all the way back up to nine thousand and five hundred dollars last I were informed, even without no train, and that money’s mine!”

  3

  “When I play poker, a six-gun beats four aces.”

  Attributed to Johnny Ringo

  Dingus, on the other hand, was mostly amused.

  He had spurred his mount through a back trail to the far end of the town, and then he had almost fallen from the saddle, but even this failed to disturb him. “That Hoke,” he told himself merely. “He gets into the habit of shooting folks he ain’t pointing at and I’m gonter have to commence wearing that vest again myself.”

  He rested beneath a cottonwood tree while waiting for the blood to stop, which it did. It was lull dark now, and not far away he could see a lamp burning within the doorway of a makeshift clapboard miner’s shack. There was an odor of woodsmoke in the air, faintly tinged with kerosene and manure.

  When he stood again he discovered he had bled a good bit down his right pantleg and into his boot. That sock was soggy, and he limped gingerly with his weight on the other foot. “Well, howdy do,” he muttered. He kept one hand clasped over the wound, which pained him only slightly.

  The shack was set apart from several others like it, amid tall weeds. There was no door, only a threadbare horse blanket hung from nails. Dingus considered this for a moment or two, then lifted the blanket and peered in.

  The single room was dense with smoke from an untrimmed wick, and the faulty lamp itself stood on an upended wood crate. Beyond that Dingus saw a disreputable shuck mattress on the dirt floor, a half-finished tin of beans on an upturned nail keg with flies swarming around that, and some rag ends of clothing hung from pegs. Otherwise there was nothing in the rank room except the man himself, whom Dingus did not know. He doubted that he wanted to. The man was tall and gaunt, with a face like a hastily peeled potato, and he had only one arm, the right one. He was also completely bald.

  “I’m ahurtin’,” Dingus told him.

  The man had been gazing emptily into the uneven, flickering glow of the lamp, and when he turned toward Dingus it was slowly, without surprise and without evident interest either. His long yellowed underwear was out at elbow and knee, spotted with savorings of a hundred meals. For a time he stood absently. Then his one arm lifted as if in accusation. “There’s gonter be violence wrought upon this new Sodom,” he intoned. “The wrathful fist of the Lord is gonter bring down fireballs and brimstone on it, sure as bulls has pizzles.”

  Dingus cocked his head in curiosity. The man scowled, preoccupied. Then he nodded. “It’s whoredom,” he said knowingly. “Whoredom and the barter of womanflesh, arunning rampant. The emissaries of Satan, that’s what they be, and their name is women.”

  “I’m ahurtin’ moderately bad,” Dingus said.

  But the man was brooding now, or perhaps he was somewhat deaf. He could have been Dingus’s own age or twice that; with the light gleaming on his hairless narrow lumpy skull Dingus found it impossible to tell. “Gomorrah,” the man muttered. “But like it come to them cities of the plain, so too’s it gonter come to Yerkey’s Hole, which is a turd-heap and a abomination in the eye of the Lord. That’s a fact, ain’t it?”

  “I ain’t thought about it none,” Dingus said, remotely i
nterested now. So now the tall man merely belched.

  “Womenflesh and womenwhores,” he said, “but they ain’t atricking Brother Rowbottom, even if’n my appointed mission ain’t quite clear yet. Give me a dollar.”

  “It’s got started throbbing some,” Dingus remembered.

  He was still holding one hand against the wound. “How far up the path there is the doc’s?”

  “The doc’s?” The hand of the tall man rose and fell contemptuously. His voice was becoming more resonant now also. “A doc of the bones. I am a doc of the spirit, a doc of the soul. The wages of sin is Boot Hill, sure as sheep get buggered, but the way to salvation burns like a dose of clap. Ain’t you got a lousy dollar to give me?”

  “I reckon I’ll find it myself, then,” Dingus decided.

  “Go then. But you’re gonter regret it, same’s all the rest, soon’s I get the notification clear about my mission, oh yair.” Abrupdy the man whirled to settle himself onto the shuck mattress, pulling a motded quilt about his trunk with his one arm. The activity revealed an upright whiskey jug at the wall. “Go,” he muttered.

  “Pleased to make your acquaintance,” Dingus told him.

  The man yanked the quilt over his head, turning aside. “Go on, scram,” he repeated. “Beat it. See if I give a fart on a wet Wednesday.”

  Dingus shook his head, backing out. “Folks is right kindly,” he told his horse, still holding himself. He began to draw the animal along a rocky path which led toward the main cluster of buildings.

  It was a walk of some length, but he was still amused. He knew roughly where the doctor’s would be, anyway, even approaching from the rear, and then a moon appeared, which helped.

  But he had not yet achieved his destination when a dark squat figure loomed up to block his way. He was passing the fractured remains of an abandoned sutler’s wagon, and he sprang against it, a handjerking at one of his revolvers.

  “You want bim-bam? Best damn bim-bam this whole town.”

  This time Dingus laughed aloud, releasing the gun. The squaw’s thickly buttered hair gleamed dimly, and she stank of it. She was short and square-headed.