The Ballad of Dingus Magee Read Online Free PDF Page B

lately, have you?”
    “Been over east.”
    “Well, jobs is mighty scarce. Matter of fact, things is so bad—well, it jest come to me I’d like to throw in with you, if’n you ever take partners now and then?”
    “I donno, Hoke. Sort of delicate, deciding to trust a feller bears you a grudge.”
    “I could forget the grudge right soon, once we achieved us some cash money, I reckon.”
    Dingus exhaled pensively, considering things. Hoke was still thinking for all he was worth. “My hand’s off’n my gun on the bed there, Dingus—”
    Dingus raised himself cautiously. “Back off slow, Hoke—”
    “I’m abackin’, Dingus—”
    He saw the other weapon drop finally to the bed. They stood eyeing each other.
    “Shucks,” Hoke said reassuringly, “I reckon you had to take my poke that time, once you was started robbing my hat.”
    “Weren’t no way out’n it, jest by the ethics of the thing.”
    “Sure. But meantimes, well, what’s the sense to keep up a grudge against a feller’s been my chum, even if I only knowed you here and yon? But say, I got to get this here bed tidied up before I go, or Belle is apt to skin me. You want to give me some assistance?”
    “Thisaway? Durned if’n I ever tidied up a bed in my life.”
    “Thataway’s pretty near. Wait’ll I come round and direct you. What you got to do, you lean over more, sort of not touching it at the same time, so’s you can leave the pillers all fluffed.”
    “Feller never knows when he’s gonter learn something new, I reckon. This correct?”
    “That’s right dandy there, Dingus,” Hoke told him. “And now jest sort of stay bent over a spell while I collect me your guns peaceable like, seeing as how I got my own aimed right into your miserable skull. What you jest learned, you polecat, it ain’t how to tidy up a bed, but jest what bed you should of rode clear of to start with. And you can consider yourself lucky we ain’t outside nowheres neither, or you can bet a cash dollar I’d make you pee down your woolens there too, jest to get us all the more evened up—”
    But Hoke had been in the wrong bed also, or at least at the wrong time, because Belle Nops fired him the next morning. “But he’s jest that desperado,” Hoke pleaded, “he ought to be in jail anyways.”
    “I don’t care if he’s Jesse James’s pet hound,” Belle told him. “What kind of sheriff do you think you are, galavanting around the countryside arresting outlaws when you were supposed to be keeping an eye on my whores!”
    “Well, I weren’t even actually galavanting,” Hoke insisted, ‘we was jest—”
    “Look, I don’t care if you tell me you found him in that bed of mine you spend so much time in, which as a matter of fact you likely did, since the horny little twerp has come sneaking in there and tried to assault my bloomers at least three times since he stole a key one night. Which is—”
    “What?” Hoke said, “you mean he ain’t your—?”
    “You’ll never knowjest what you lost, brother,” she said. “You can keep that badge if you want to; I don’t give a belch in a hot wind about that. But any juicy hocks you grab around here now, you’ll pay the going rate among the girls or else go dig yourself up a squaw somewheres.”
    “But Belle,” Hoke said.
    Yet it was considerably less calamitous than he thought, since there remained that reward money to compensate for the lost sinecure. First, however, a circuit judge had to be gotten hold of, to try Dingus. (The legalities themselves were remarkably informal. The judge arrived on mule-back, wearing a Remington revolver on each hip and with a Blackstone under one arm and a Bible beneath the other, and he confronted Dingus through the bars of his cell. “You Dingus Bobby Magee?” he asked. “I reckon that’s close,” Dingus allowed. “You assassinate all them critters we got warrants swore out to?” the judge asked. “How many assassinations you got?” Dingus said. “Guilty