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—”
“Hey?” Anna Hot Water said.
“Sure. And I reckon you never rode in no stagecoach before, neither. Git on down there quick, now.”
Hoke galloped off. There was no trail where he angled toward the road below, and his horse skidded several times, raising dust, but with the instinct of his years as a cowhand he yanked his kerchief about his mouth and nose. It had already occurred to him that a stage might not make an unscheduled stop in Indian country, but he had decided that his personal emergency would warrant halting it with a gun. Because he truly meant to buy a ticket for as far away from Yerkey’s Hole as his last few dollars would take her.
But then the coach surprised him by pulling up even before he had done any more than wave with his Buntline.
As a matter of fact it seemed the driver had begun to brake before that, when he had still been slipping down the hillside.
“Howdy there,” Hoke shouted from a distance, heeling toward them. “I thank you kindly—”
But then they were to puzzle him even more. Because there were no passengers, apparently, and of the two men in the cockpit only one looked like an ordinary hand. The other, who should have been carrying a shotgun, was not only unarmed but quite elderly, and far too handsomely dressed for his situation. It was he who began to shout:
“Don’t kill us! Don’t! We’re carrying nothing — no mail, nothing. Here’s my wallet! There’s three hundred dollars in it, and—”
“But—”
And then the man actually did toss a wallet toward him. Hoke gaped at it where it dropped into the dirt. “But I jest wanted to—”
The older man clutched at his breast then, gasping. “Oh, don’t shoot!”
“But look, I’m jest trying to tell you—”
“Lissen, mister, lissen.” It was the driver this time, leaning down to speak almost confidentially. “That’s all we got with us, honest. This here’s Mr. Fairweather, the owner. He’s jest taking a private ride, you see. And he’s got this weak heart, so I’m under orders not to put up no resistance. So if—”
“Well, sure,” Hoke said. “Anyways, all I want is—”
Still confused, Hoke happened to lift a hand to his face. That was when he realized he had not put away his revolver. Nor had he removed his kerchief.
So he was just about to rid himself of both, grimacing at his stupidity, when the rest of it happened. Anna Hot Water came panting along the trail behind them. “What you say?” she called. “It all set now, Dean Goose?”
“Dean Goose?” the driver muttered. “Dean Goose?”
“Dingus Billy Magee!”
Hoke’s horse shied at the abrupt lurching of the vehicle, rearing high. Probably he could have caught them if he tried, but he was still simply not thinking well. “Yaaaa!” the driver screamed. “Yaaaa!” The coach jerked and skidded, rocking wildly down the road.
So the new circular on Dingus reached his office only a day after he himself got home (with Anna Hot Water plodding inexorably after him). It was for three thousand dollars, posted by an organization named the Fairweather Transportation Company, and it bore a facsimile signature of one Hiram J. Fairweather, President, who personally guaranteed payment. Hoke shoved the announcement into a locked drawer, along with the wallet. He sat for long hours, brooding over it.
Two weeks later, in a town called Oscuro where Dingus was believed to have previously committed certain felonies, several mail sacks containing federal papers were stolen from a post office. The postmaster who reported the theft also produced a crumpled piece of paper on which a scrawled note read Dingus, the best time to steel them bags is after mid-nite. A week after that, in another small town in the same area, certain ranch deeds and water titles were removed from a land office, and this time a kerchief was discovered on the scene, embroidered with the initials DBM. No cash money was involved in either larceny, according to the official circulars which subsequently crossed Hoke’s desk, but each governmental department announced it was adding one thousand dollars to the over-all bounty nonetheless.