“But Miss Pfeffer, it weren’t me who started the—”

“Oh, what have you done! Taking advantage of me when I was helpless, helpless! You’ll have to many me. If you don’t, I’ll—”

“But Miss Pfeffer!” Hoke was fumbling for his trousers, swallowing hard. “But—”

“Stained, my honor stained forever! My virtue lost—”

“Please,” Hoke pleaded, “Miss Pfeffer, get aholt of yourself. It weren’t nothing more than—”

“I’ll kill myself—”

“Huh?”

“If you don’t make an honest woman out of me, I will! I must! There’s no other salvation, none! And my blood will be on your hands, Mr. Birdsill!”

“But Miss Pfeffer, ma’am, I know I been courting you and such, but it weren’t for — I mean I jest couldn’t afford to go to Belle’s too often, but now I already done got what I–I mean…”

Miss Pfeffer wailed in the darkness. “With a gun!” she cried. “I’ll get a gun, and I’ll put a bullet into my heart. Two bullets. Six! On your doorstep, Mr. Birdsill, for all the world to know who wronged me—”

“But I got to have some time, I…”

“Time?” Miss Pfeffer’s voice changed abruptly, and again Hoke felt that she was eyeing him strangely. “How much time?” she asked him.

Hoke struggled with it. “A year?”

Miss Pfeffer wailed.

“A month, then?” Hoke ventured.

“Midnight,” Miss Pfeffer declared.

“Midnight?”

“Midnight,” she repeated. “It is now approximately ten o’clock. If you don’t come to me with a man of the cloth by midnight, you will find my mortal remains upon the doorstep of the jail.”

“A man of the—?” Hoke’s head was swimming.

“Until then, Mr. Birdsill.”

“But—”

He stumbled out, gathering his hat and coat mindlessly as he went. He was muttering to himself, all the way into the dark street, so he did not see the shotgun until it loomed beneath his very nose.

“Okay, you son-um-beetch,” she said, “is no damn lie then, hey?”

“Huh?” Hoke had sprung back instinctively, his hands shooting up. He dropped his jacket. “Now blast it all, ain’t I got enough troubles of my own without—”

But the enormous weapon was pressing against his chest now. “You make bim-bam with that horsy paleface, you son-um-beetch? Is true what I hear, hey?”

“Now who ever went and told you such a lie? And where’d you get holt of a shotgun like—”

“Never mind where I hear. Never mind shotgun neither. You try to get married up with that horsy twat or no, yes hey?”

“Aw now, Anna…”

“Stick up your damn hands again, you son-um-beetch.”

“Now lissen here, I got things to do. There’s a dangerous desperado over there in jail I got to keep track of. And on top of that I—”

“You keep track that one-arm feller instead, I think. I think you forget everything damn else, go find him pretty damn quick.”

“One-armed feller? Find him for what? You mean that crazy preacher?”

“Preacher feller, oh yes, hey. I give you one hour, maybe two. Then damn quick you marry me, never mind that paleface bim-bam. I give you until midnight is damn all.”

“Midnight?”

“Midnight,” Anna Hot Water said. “Oh yes, hey. Otherwise I blow you apart from nuts to mustache, you son-um-beetch!”

She left him there, trailing her stench behind her.

He did not go back to the jail. In fact he would not have been able to say where he went at first, pacing the streets dismally. “And I can’t even jest saddle up and skedaddle,” he realized, “because I got to get Dingus hanged proper first, if’n I want to collect that new reward money.”

He stopped at Belle’s. Again he did not know why, except that the house itself, its sheer size, seemed to suggest sanctuary. In the main saloon he gulped several whiskeys, to no avail, however. He did not see Belle herself. People accosted him to ask about the new capture, but he scarcely heard what he told them. An image of Anna Hot Water’s oiled flat head hovered before his eyes. When he squeezed them shut Miss Pfeffer’s blunt, mare-like features replaced it. He saw himself surrounded by whimpering infants, all girls, all with mouse-colored, curl-papered hair.

So when he found that he had climbed to the door of Belle’s office bedroom, standing indecisively but with a hand raised to knock, he still could not have said precisely what he had in mind. He had exchanged hardly a dozen words with Belle in six months. She took a moment to open, then appeared fastening a sleeveless robe about her waist. Muscles rippled in her blacksmith’s arms, and she raised an eyebrow dubiously.

“Well,” she told him, “so you’re a big hombre again, are you? How much do you get that he can connive you out of this time — ten thousand almost, ain’t it? What’s on your alleged mind, Birdsill — you got some business, or do you think your new bank account makes us social equals who just ought to chat for a spell?”

But he wasn’t really listening. So maybe it was the familiar bed behind her, the sheer enormity of that too, which had unconsciously drawn him. But the whole room itself, in the dim glow of a single lamp at the desk, intimated safety, security. Hoke knew the solution then. Because she could hide him here easily, certainly until his money arrived. “I’ll pay you,” he said. “I won’t be too long, it’s jest from Santa Fe. I’ll give you five hundred dollars. And—”

“What?” Belle eyed him askance. “You’ll give me—”

“Five,” Hoke said. “All right, never mind. A thousand. But that’s as high as I kin go. All I want is a few days, and…”

“Well, I’m damned,” Belle said. “You mean to say — because I’ve been offered twenty in my time, and once fifty, too, but that doesn’t count since the varmint didn’t have the cash to start with. But this is—”

“No,” Hoke said. “You got the wrong idea, I jest mean—”

But Hoke did not get to explain. Because what suddenly happened then, what was already starting to happen even as he spoke, could not possibly have astonished or confused him more. Belle Nops abruptly swallowed once, then a second time, standing with one hand lifted to her immemorial bosom. Then the bosom heaved, and her face became contorted, and the swallowing became a series of ragged, inarticulate sobs. “A thousand dollars?” she choked. “A thousand?”

“Well, yair,” Hoke said, “but I don’t see no reason fer—”

And then Belle Nops was weeping. Tears flooded down her painted cheeks, beyond any control. “Oh, Birdsill,” she cried, “you mean after six months you’re that desperate? You truly missed me so much that—”

“Huh?”

“Never,” she sobbed, “never! No man has ever cared that much before. And to think that I made you suffer so long, let your heart break for all this time!”

So now it was Hoke who had commenced to swallow, clutching his derby and stumbling backward against the door. “But—”

Moaning, her incredible bosom rising and falling, she lurched after him. Her eyes were wet, they gleamed. “A thousand dollars! In thirty-nine long years, never once have I been so deeply touched! Keep your money, keep it! I’m yours for nothing! Because I’ve missed you too! Oh, my sweetie, I’ve pined for you so!”

Hoke stumbled against a large stuffed chair, going over. “But I jest wanted to stay for — for—”

“Yes, stay — stay forever! We’ll get married, now, tonight! Because it’s so romantic I could…”

Hoke did not quite scream.

“Because I’ve always loved you,” she cried. “From the very beginning!”

“But — but — all them names you used to call me, every time we—”

“Oh, you foolish, foolish boy, didn’t you understand? It was because a girl can’t be the one to say it, and you yourself were so blind, so blind! But what does the past matter now? What does anything matter? Oh, to think, at last—Missies Hoke Birdsill! Oh, my own sweetie pie—”

Flowing open, her robe enveloped him. The astonishing bosom unfurled like gonfalons loosed, like melons in dehiscence. But Hoke saw not, partook not. He had already fainted.