David Markson - The Ballad of Dingus Magee

“But this ain’t sporting,” Hoke protested. “You jest can’t expect a man to—”

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—”