The Ballad of Dingus Magee (14 page)

Some weeks after that, when he was two days away from being hanged, he complained moderately to Hoke Bird-sill. “Least you might have done,” he said,
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could of wore that there new sheriff’s star on your woolens, I reckon, so a feller’d know jest who it were he was about ready to violate.”

But even after he had talked Hoke into letting him escape, simultaneously appropriating the latter’s reward money as an afterthought, the sense of his unfulfilled mission continued to plague him. It had become a matter of more than Drucilla and their bank; there was a man’s pride. Yet in his next two attempts he did not even reach the bordello itself, what with Hoke lying in wait for him behind it.

Dingus supposed he could not blame Hoke for a certain annoyance, though as a matter of truth the man’s intrepidity puzzled him. “Maybe I oughter of added it where Johnny
Ringo and the Dalton brothers involved with Mister Earp in the valiant story of how I got my wrist wounded that time,” he speculated. When Hoke put a bullet through the loaned-out vest for the second consecutive time, Dingus concluded the project could wait again after all. He decided he might as well add Hoke’s three thousand eight hundred dollars to the four hundred in his sock at Santa Fe.

But he was still some distance away, curled foetally into his blankets on a chilly night west of the Pecos, when he had a new educational experience altogether. He had no opportunity to flee as the two men appeared, since they materialized so unexpectedly in the flickering glow of his campfire, and so soundlessly, that for an instant he almost believed it a dream. In fact the first thing he saw was the naked bore of the sawed-off shotgun itself, as it was thrust beneath his chin. “One move and you’re deceased,” he was told.

But then he was less afraid of being murdered intentionally than of having it occur by accident, since the man covering him was so nervous that the shotgun commenced to tremble unconscionably in his hands, pointing into Dingus’ left eye one instant, his navel the next. Nor was the second thief any more composed. Snatching up Dingus’ weapons, he dropped each of them at least once before managing to scatter them beyond reach in the mesquite.

Then, abruptly, constellations exploded inside Dingus’ skull. So the conversation which followed seemed dreamlike also:

“Great gawd amighty, what did you clobber him for?”

“Well, will you jest look! All that there cash! I thought he’d be jest some cowpuncher on the trail, prob’ly, but this critter is very doubtless a outlaw hisself I mean a authentic one, and—”

“Well, it’s too late now, since we got it half took anyways”

“Oh, I jest knew it! I jest knew we’d git our fannies stomped on. Because now he’s likely to hunt us down fer revenge, or—”

“Well, we still got to take it Because we been intending at least one gen-u-ine daring deed fer years now, instead of jest
writing to them newspapers, and this has got to be it I’llget the horses.”

“Shouldn’t we oughter bind him up, maybe? I mean it, Vm right scared, Doc
—
“

“Let’s jest get the b Jesus out of here fast, Wyatt—”

Then he had one further lesson to muse upon when he reached Santa Fe itself, since Horn’s leather shop was already boarded up when he got there, and cousin Redburn and his three younger daughters were in the very process of loading a wagon with what appeared to be the totality of their household effects. Nor was Drucilla herself anywhere in evidence. Cousin Redburn glanced at Dingus as if he had been absent no longer than a matter of days. “Come into a bit of cash currency,” he announced matter-of-factly, “so I’m heading back East like I always wanted. Real windfall it were, I do admit.”

“What?” Dingus said. “Cash? Lissen, you didn’t happen to go and find no four hundred dollars in a old sock out back in the—?”

“Well say, ain’t it a coincidence that I done jest that! But how on earth would you happen to of guessed it, Dingus?”

“How? Only because it’s my own durned last-remaining money, is all. How else do you think, you mule-sniffing old—”

“I don’t reckon you could prove that, could you, nephew? A notorious outlaw like you turned out to be? Now who do you think would accept your word against that of a respectable, hard-working shopkeeper who done took you in one time out’n Christian decency, and you jest a poor waif of an orphan then too?”

Dingus did not argue. He didn’t cave, even after what he had already lost. “All right,” he said, “never mind that. At least this time it’s straight stealing again anyways, upright reaching in and taking it, which puts you in a class with some better folks than the rest of my cousins. It’s almost a pleasure. But where’s Drucilla? That’s what I come back for anyways, not no piddling four hundred dollars or—”

“Ain’t heard, huh?” cousin Redburn asked.

“Heard what?”

“Well now, old Drucy, she done got married up with a lawyer feller.”

“She done
what?
With a
who?”

“Yep. Right interesting story, too. You recollect that Comanche uprising here in town, back a while ago? Well, seems like what started it, it were some white feller diddling around with Comanche pussy, although as a matter of fact nobody could ever rightly learn that part of it too straight. But anyhow there was this one big buck was involved someway, and it seems he jest never did get over bearing a grudge. So even after the territorial governor declared a amnesty, this particular critter, he kept agitating troubles. Big foul-looking monstrosity, got a knife scar down one side of his face, and been shot in the shoulder once, likewise. And the ironic part was, he weren’t even married, but it appears what annoyed him was a white man carnal-ing jest any squaw a-tall. So anyways it turns out, he broods and broods back there on the reservation all this time, and then one day he comes riding on into town here, right smack down the main street bold as a fart in church. Couple of fellers like to shot him on sight, nacherly, but what with that there amnesty and all, well, they think twice about it. So meanwhile this here buck, by now he’s over to the main plaza, out front of the Fred Harvey Hotel it were, and the next thing you know, he’s sitting there crosslegged on the ground with his horse hobbled under a tree. Jest asittin’, is all, like maybe he’s resting a spell. He had a supply of jerkey with him, I reckon, or whatever all else it is them heathens eat, because the next thing after that, darned if’n he didn’t keep right on sitting there too, fer four whole days and nights. Weren’t nobody could figure out what he had in mind neither, except for watching folks contemptuous-like, and he sure done a heap of that, staring beady-eyed at anybody who went on by. Got to be a mite spooky after a time, sure enough, and some of the folks with shops down that way didn’t appreciate it nohow, since a right smart of the wives in town had already took to
doing their purchasing elsewhere. So it’s likely he would of got shot after all, if’n he didn’t finally quit it. And by then we should of had some notion what he planned on doing, of course, seeing as how he hadn’t done it that anybody’d noticed before that, not once in the four days or nights. It must of been jest before dawn when he skedaddled, although nobody seen him go, but then the next morning it was like he was still sitting there anyhow, in a way, since folks had got so used to taking a nervous glance at him there still weren’t nobody could pass the spot without they looked over now also. Which must of been jest what he calculated on, in his scornful manner, because right there it stood, heaped up fer all to see and looking like there weren’t no human being in this world, and not even no redskinned one neither, could leave that much of a monument behind with jest one solitary dumping of his bowels—”

“Well hang it all,” Dingus demanded, “what do I care about that? What has that got to do with—”

“Well, I’m getting there, if’n you’ll be patient,” Redburn Horn declared. “Because it weren’t no more’n half a week later, and darned if’n he weren’t back again. This whole affair itself weren’t no more’n eight, ten days ago, incidentally. So anyhow this time the sheriff gets holt of him right quick, but now the Injun promises he won’t commit no more public nuisances. Because anyways he don’t intend to be here long enough for that, not this visit. Because this time what’s he do but parade right on into the courthouse and ask for a paper to be notarized. And not only is the paper writ in English, and by his own hand, but darned if’n he don’t talk the language better’n most native-born white folks, too. And what’s the paper, meantimes, but a draft on some Boston bank
(or five thousand dollars,
cash currency of the United States of America, and which the judge verifies for him likewise, and which he then takes on over to Zeke Burger’s clothing emporium and commences to buy clothes with. And not jest regular duds neither, like the usual calico shirt a ordinary Injun’d buy, but the absolutely fanciest stuff Zeke’s got in stock—like striped pants and what do you call them
things, frock coats, and a gen-u-ine silk top hat to boot. And by this time there’s half the loafers in town looking through the window, of course, and after that when he walks on over to the stage office and asks for a ticket for as far north as you got to travel to catch a railroad train to Massachusetts, well now there’s not only the remaining half of the loafers but a good smart of the working folk in addition. And after this when it develops there ain’t no transportation until tomorrow, darned if’n the next thing he don’t do is march across to the hotel and request a place to sleep—and not jest no plain bedroom neither, mind you, even though the last time the polecat was in town he’d reposed under a cottonwood tree fer four consecutive nights, but he wants a whole durned sweet. Now old Phineas Austin back of the desk, he ain’t about to rent out no room or no sweet neither, not to no redskin, even if’n the redskin does happen to be outfitted like some Egyptian duke or something, but then the judge tells Phineas he better go ahead or else the Injun is apt to purchase the whole danged hotel and fire him. Because what happened is this. He were a full-blooded Comanche all right, but it seems when he was maybe nine years old he got lost one time, and hurt too, and some white folks in a passing stagecoach got holt of him—not only jest took care of him fer a spell, but finally even brung him all the way East and give him a education. Name’s White Eagle in Comanche, but it’s also Sidney Lowell Cabot Astor or some approximate thing in American, all plumb legal from where them Easterners eventually adopted him to boot. Evidendy he’d got restless after a spell, and had come back on out this-a-way, but now all of a sudden his foster father had caught the dropsy and died. Letter must of got to the reservation while he were in town here perpetrating that turdheap the week before, I reckon, but anyways he’d done inherited something akin to ten full street-blocks of downtown Boston, if not to mention a whole fleet of ocean-traveling boats, and some railroads, and the biggest law company in the state of Massachusetts. I forgot to mention that part, that he’d got educated in the law hisself. And that was when it came to pass with Drucilla, you
see, when the judge happened to remark about that. Because I reckon you been away too long to know, but that Drucilla, why she jest had her heart set on marrying up with a lawyer feller, fer, oh, at least two or three months now, Dingus—”

That was something less than half a year ago. At first Dingus had been more confused than dismayed, but the confusion had stemmed from just the fact that there was no dismay. So it took him only a few days to realize that he had actually ceased to think about Drucilla a good while before. All he really cared about was that safe.

Nor was it the money either, the sixty or eighty thousand dollars which might surprise him by being considerably more than that. It was principle. Yet he did not rush back to it, on the premise that man cannot rush destiny anyway. Instead, he dropped hints and promoted rumors until some four thousand five hundred dollars in new rewards had accrued to his name. And even then he thought of this as mere exercise, as a sort of renewed apprenticeship before the ultimate, irreproachably professional enterprise of the safe itself.

But it amused him to wait, also, since it further enhanced the mood of anticipation. Deliberately he set out on a long, aimless journey into Old Mexico, where he had never been, to prolong it.

So then in Chihuahua he caught dysentery, a case so extreme that it not only postponed his return to Yerkey’s Hole for some months, but precluded mobility of any sort in the interim. “Less’n I want to leave a trail clear across the territory that even a old stuff-nosed mule-sniffer like Hoke Birdsill couldn’t miss,” he said.

Then, when he did return to New Mexico, the first thing he discovered was that the bounty on his head had mysteriously more than doubled, in major part because of a posting by something called the Fairweather Transportation Company, of which Dingus could have sworn he’d never heard. “But maybe I ought to get to it at that,” he decided, “ifn they even made it a criminal offense when I shit now.” He
was some two weeks’ distance from Yerkey’s Hole when he picked up an innocuously moronic drifter named Turkey Doolan and headed west.

He had no attack in mind, only an abiding, bemused sense of confidence, as if the entire project were now less a matter of premeditation than of ordination, of fate itself. And even when Hoke Birdsill turned out to be as irascible as ever, not only banging Turkey Doolan from the saddle but wounding Dingus himself, Dingus remained merrily undaunted.