The Ballad of Dingus Magee by David Markson

pounding on up to the bordello and yammering the Lord’s own storm about fornication and what all else, or fer as long as he can outrun Belle anyways. Don’t do no harm, I judge. Hold on there, this might pain you some—”
    Dingus pressed his jaws together, clutching the arm of the couch as the doctor probed. He released his breath slowly.
    “Got it,” the doctor went on. “I reckon it must of been spent a little, maybe deflected off’n your saddle first, or otherwise it would of torn right through. But this ain’t critical a-tall.” He crossed the room, removing something from a low cabinet. “Yep, Brother Rowbottom. Been around about a month now. Does a little pan mining too, I believe, though he ain’t had much luck with it. Mostly he jest tickles folks.” The doctor came back. “Won’t be but a while longer—keep on lying still there. Come to think on it, we been getting a right smart of new folks in town of late. Even a new schoolteacher.”
    Dingus winced, tensing his cheeks at an unexpected sting. “I dint even hear tell there were a school,” he said.
    “Well, there weren’t, until Miss Pfeffer chanced on along last month. She come out to many up with some Army lieutenant over to Las Cruces, were the original of it, except the lieutenant drunk some alkali water about a week before she got here and up and died. You recollect that wood frame house Otis Bierbauer were building up the road here before that drunk Navajo bit him one night, and then it turned out the Navajo weren’t drunk but had the rabies and we had to shoot the both of them? She moved in there. Right proper Eastern lady, a little horsy-looking in the face maybe, but a Up-smacking shape to her, even if’n it’s all such virgin soil there’s doubtless nine rows o’ taters could be harvested under her skirts.”
    “Ain’t no such animal,” Dingus offered.
    “Well, your chum Hoke Birdsill’s sure found out otherwise. He’s been courting to beat all, ever since she got here, without he had no more luck than a gelded jackrabbit. Sits up there in her parlor holding his derby hat on his knee is the all of it. But then Hoke’s been in a bad fix over proper flesh to bed down for half a year now, ever since he apprehended you that one time and Belle cut him off from free poontang up to the house. That’s how come he got hisself into trouble with that squaw to start with.”
    “I don’t reckon I heard about that neither, Doc.”
    The doctor was trimming bandages with a Bowie knife, standing within Dingus’s vision now, although he did not look up. “Pretty amusing, actually,” he said. “She’d be a Kiowa from the square shape to her forehead, I’d judge, although most like she’s got some mongrel strains to her too. Name’s Anna Hotah or some such, but folks settles for Anna Hot Water and lets it go at that. Seems old Hoke got to be mighty tight with a dollar once you’d escaped him out of both his pimping job and that reward money to boot, which didn’t leave him no more than his forty dollars a month from being sheriff, and so one day he rides off into the hills and he’s gone for, oh, like onto a week, and when he gets back it develops he’s got this squaw in tow. Comes in a bit battered and hangdog-looking also, like he’s had a wearying time somewheres, but he don’t say nothing about that. This were eight, ten weeks ago, I calculate, and he had the squaw living in a lean-to out back of the jail after that. But then like I say, Miss Pfeffer gets to town, and Hoke kicked out the squaw and commenced his courting. But poor old Hoke, Anna Hot Water ain’t took to the idea so good yet. What I hear tell, she keeps tracking after him, calling him some right potent names and threatening to claim his scalp too, if’n he don’t marry up with her. Causes Hoke a mite of embarrassment, you might say, specially what with his intentions toward Miss Pfeffer.”
    “I reckon,” Dingus laughed. The doctor was wiping his