The Ballad of Dingus Magee Read Online Free PDF

both.
    Then again by virtue of the same fateful occurrence he was to find himself no longer merely an anonymous territorial sheriff but a man of parts and of fame, and with a newspaper cutting to prove it that he would carry in his billfold for years:
    Hanging of Desperado
    Dingus Billy Magee, that notorious desperado who has been terrorizing folks throughout the New Mex. Territory, has been sentenced to hang, and good riddance say God-fearing people. As has been stated by reliable persons, said Magee was captured after a deadly gun battle in the Territory by a stalwart law officer, Mr. C. L. Hoke Birdbottom, and more power to the likes of him. It needed a brave man indeed to face up to that cowardly and murderous outlaw and Sheriff Birdbottom was just that man. He deserves his various reward money and then some.
    It happened after Hoke had worn the star about eight weeks, on a quiet Wednesday (most of Belle’s trade came on weekends). Belle herself was holding court in one of the smaller parlors, dealing faro for Texas cattlemen in what experience had already taught Hoke would be an all-night session. He had himself dealt out of his own game, climbed the stairs, stripped to his woolens, and curled self-indulgendy among the luxurious silk sheets.
    He had no idea how long he had been asleep when he sensed the sagging of the mattress as it took the extra weight, and then almost instantly the two impatient arms fetched him close.
    Still drowsy, yet puzzled vaguely by the coarse, familiarly tacky garment his own groping hands now touched, he muttered, “Well say, now, what kind of night duds you took to wearing there, Belle?”
    “Great gawd almighty!” said a voice that was decidedly not his employer’s. Nor was it even a woman’s. “Hoke Bird-sill? Is that Hoke? Well, I’ll be a mule-sniffing son of a—”

    They got to their guns simultaneously, vaulting to opposite sides of the sprawling, improbable field.
    “What the thunderation?”
    “Why, howdy do, Hoke!”
    Hoke ducked, trembling. He could see the gleam of the revolver facing him. He presumed Dingus could see his own equally well.
    “Least you could do is wake a man up afore you crawl betwixt his blankets, durn it,” Hoke protested.
    “Tell the truth, I weren’t rightly expecting you in there—”
    “I oughter blast you where you’re squatting—”
    “Don’t reckon you could hit much in this dark, not any better’n I would.”
    Hoke thought about that. “I’ll stand up and back off if you will,” he suggested.
    “We could hold a truce until we git some trousers on, I reckon.”
    “That’s near to what I had in mind.”
    “Except I don’t know as I could rightly trust you, Hoke. You still bearing a grudge about that money from your derby hat, are you?”
    “I reckon I got the privilege.”
    “Sure enough. But I reckon I ain’t gonter put aside this here Colt to climb into my pants then, neither.”
    So they squatted some more. “We’ll just sort of hold tight ‘til daylight then,” Hoke said.
    “Or ‘til Belle comes in and heaves us both out.”
    “I never took you for a beau of Belle’s, Dingus.”
    “Ain’t nothing. Older women always do sort of cotton to me, seems. It’s that boyish face I got, maybe. I never figured you for one, neither.”
    “Well—” Hoke paused, the seed of a solution in his mind now. “Tell you the truth, Dingus, I ain’t no beau at that. I were jest sort of borrowing the bed fer a spell, is the truth of it.”
    “How’s that?”
    “Jest sleeping a spell.”

    “Well say, now, you mean you ain’t come into any cash money since I divested that there chapeau? You mean things has got so bad you have to take the loan of a bed in a house of ill repute that ain’t in use?”
    “Things is pretty bad, all right—”
    They continued to squat. Still thinking hard, Hoke said, “jobs is difficult to come by hereabouts, Dingus. You’d know that if’n you’d been around. But you ain’t been around