We’re rarin t’go, sheriff!
Yippee! Lets git humpin!
He would, for he’s obliged, he knows, but can’t. Sorry, boys, yu’ll hafta go off without me, he says.
Caint do thet, sheriff. Aint a proper posse without yu.
Well too bad. Caint do nuthin about it.
Sheriff aint got a hoss, boys, his deputy explains.
No? Whutsamatter with him then?
I thought he wuz sposed t’ride the white stallion.
Thet’s right, whar is thet fastuous critter? Go brang it to him, deppity.
The prospect of seeing the white stallion again, and moreover of mounting it, enlivens him and somewhat reconciles him to riding out with the scalping party. The animal looks a bit different in the sunlight, however, more like an old swayback mule in truth, though at least it’s white. No tack, not even a saddle or a bridle, just a piece of rope looped around its knobbly withers. Takes him a couple of tries to get seated, and by the time he’s accomplished it the posse is nothing but a puff of dust out on the far horizon. He gives the decrepit old thing a sharp spur in the flanks and they lumber off in that general direction.
Yu take keer now, sheriff hon! the chanteuse calls out from between her legs as he plods past her, her milk-white arse aglow in the noonday sun. All us righteous folk is leanin on yu!
Shore. Watch yu dont git blistered up, he says.
His old mount must have a short leg. No matter how many times he points its nose away, the town is always over there to his right like they’re circling it. Or rather, like they’re on the rim of some wheel and the town’s the hub, for it keeps rotating with his own sluggish progress, showing him always the same distant view of the chanteuse’s tiny glowing butt over the hitching rail in front of the jailhouse, nailed there like a WANTED poster. A most desolate and desolating sight, that pitiful town, clumped there on the vast empty plain like debris blown together by a passing wind, but it won’t go away. Finally, having long since lost sight of the posse and weary of jerking on the rope and kicking the beast beneath him, he gives it over to a peculiarity of the landscape and continues on whatever way this sullen creature means to take him. Once, when he was still alone out on the desert (it comes back to him now, it was either before or after he shot his mustang), he came upon the skeletal ruins of an old covered wagon lying on its side, half buried in the sand. There were only a few tatters of canvas left, no cadaverous remains or abandoned chattel; it had been picked clean long ago. What was memorable about it, though, was that one of the spoked wooden wheels was still slowly turning in the dead air, round and round, as though recalling the clocking of time when there was time. He’d sat there for some time in the saddle, staring at that grinding wheel as if to stop it with his thoughts and so bring this misadventure to an end, but the longer he watched it the further he seemed to be from it, until it wasn’t there anymore and he was moving along again and that town over there was shimmering on the horizon, imitating a destination.
Now, as he winds round it, he hears gunfire, hallooing, the thudding of hoofbeats up ahead, though there’s nothing to be seen to account for it, whatever it is evidently obscured by a slight rise in the land which he hasn’t noticed before. As they trudge up it, it seems to deflate, collapsing back to level flats once more and revealing an old wooden shack all shot to splinters, an old fellow sprawled on the ground in front of it. He pushes his sluggardly rackabones up to where the old man is lying, or maybe it goes there by itself, and he leans over and asks him if he’s all right.
Shore, he groans. I been shot in sixteen places, they’ve cut off my arm’n et it, I got a permanent part in my hair now down t’my neckbone and a arrow up my arse, why shouldnt I be awright, yu dumb two-laigged jackass?
Oh, well, thet’s awright then. I thought yu might be ailin, he says, leaning back, having captured a whiff of the old codger’s reek. He appears to be the prospector type, a filthy eviscerated buckskin bag around his neck no doubt once meant for gold dust, his clothes a patchwork of old rags bound by a belt of rope, his face just a dirty beard with eyeholes in it, squinting up at him into the sun from under the turned-up brim of his soft slouched hat.
Them’s purty fancy duds yu’re sportin, podnuh, he says, all them thar fringes’n tassels’n porkypine quills, yu look tartier than one a them dandified joolbox coffins from out the east, which I sorely wisht I had now fer my imminent layin out in.
They aint mine. They wuz give t’me.
Do tell. A shudder ripples through his prostrate body, if it’s not vermin in his clothes. And them gaudy shootin irons, he gasps when the shudder passes, kin yu use em or are they jest fer showin off?
I kin use em. Ifn I hafta.
Well yu’re a sight fer sore eyes, sonny, I mean thet literal. Even hurtin as I am most elsewhars, thet bedazzlin white tengallon a yer’n plumb makes my eyes ache. Dont tell me — yu must be one a the good ole boys.
Caint rightly say. I aint one t’take sides.
The old fellow cackles drily at that and then breaks into a spasm of hollow chest-raking coughing, bouncing about on the hard ground like a Mexican jumping bean. Aw shit, he whimpers when he can and shakes his head and some sort of muck leaks out his ears. And whar’d yu git thet big white stallion, kid? Thought all them critters wuz wholly extincted. He turns his head and sends some dark spit out through the hole in his beard. Yu wanta sell it? Give yu a thousand bucks fer it.
Thet’s a purty decent offer.
Hafta be on credit a course. Sumbitchin outlaw rustlers tuck everthin I got. I wuz holed up thar in my cabin in a all-day firefight standin off hunderds of em. It were mighty festive fer a time. I musta plugged fifty a them lowdown sneakthief claim-jumpin desperadoes afore I burnt up all my munitions, hadta rassle barehand with the last of em; thet’s when them savages et my arm’n stuck alla these here knives in me. But ifn I’da had another gun at my side we mighta whupped them consarned butt-fuckin no-good rannahans. So whut tuck yu so long gittin here, podnuh?
I only jest got wind of it, as yu might say. He looks around at the barren plain. But whut happent to the ones yu killt?
Dunno. Aint they thar? They musta drug em off. I done em no especial favors and so they wuz purty unsightly. So how do they call yu anyways, stranger?
Nuthin. I’m jest the sheriff.
Thet figgers. They call me Goldy on accounta I aint never had none nor even seed any, wouldnt know whut the shit looked like ifn I did. Other times they call me Parson on accounta how fuckin decorous I talk, or else Mister Dude fer my smart dressin, y’know, though purty soon I spect they’ll be callin me Sleepin Byooty and gittin it right fer wunst. He cackles softly again through his faceful of hair, then suddenly screws up his beady eyes and lets out with a dreadful yowl, heaving about on the ground and clutching the collar of his raggedy flannel shirt with his good arm as though to tear it away. The other arm is gone below the elbow and nothing but gnawed bone above. Oh shitfire, podnuh, this ole cuss is in a mizzerbul fuckin way! he wheezes when he’s able. Damn! Y’aint got a spare chaw on yu, do yu?
Nope. Aint got no kinder provisions.
Tarnation! Yu aint good fer much, are yu, bucko? Someone fer a dyin hombre t’rattle at, thet’s about it.
Aint outstandin at thet neither, ole man. In fact I gotta be moseyin along. Anythin else I kin do fer yu afore I go?