“Sure can,” the young man with the beer said.
“You’re jest asking me for trouble, boys,” Turkey said.
“Who says, now?”
Turkey finally got around to considering him. He was probably Turkey’s own age, which was nineteen. He was slight, and his boots against the tabletop evidenced their newness and their cost. He wore a fringed red-and-yellow Mexican wool vest. And he smiled and smiled, from under fair unruly hair and a memorable sombrero.
But Turkey was looking at the weapons now also. The youth bore a gleaming sheathed revolver on each hip, slung low and almost plumbing the floor where his chair was tilted backward, and a third revolver lay between his heels on the table, evidently removed there from his waistband. Behind his chair a repeating Winchester rifle slanted against the peeling adobe. Next to that a shotgun reposed.
And something was happening to Turkey now at that, at last it truly was. “You got aholt of yourself yet?” the seated youth asked.
“Aw, now,” Turkey said.
“Have a cerveza” the youth said.
Turkey had begun to scratch himself. “I seen your pitcher,” he pronounced, “drawed on a ‘Wanted’ poster. You’re Mister Dingus Billy Magee.”
“Have a cerveza, seeing as how you got holt of yourself.”
“Aw, now,” Turkey said. “Aw, now, I dint mean nothing.”
“Ain’t nobody said otherwise.”
Turkey shuffled toward the table, tickled pink. Already he could hear himself talking about it. “Boys, yes sir, one day over there to the New Mex, I had me a drink with Mister Dingus Billy Magee hisself.”
He finally got close enough, still scratching, when Mister Dingus Billy Magee, desperado whom Turkey had long since cherished as a paradigm, reached up and clobbered him back of the ear with a fourth revolver that had been concealed below the chair in his other hand.
So the sense of expectation was greater than ever now. Because that was almost two weeks ago, and a man could not ride with Dingus Billy Magee for two weeks without something extraordinary coming to pass; Turkey surmised this for a fact. Dingus had magnanimously dismissed the circumstances of their meeting, this after Turkey had awakened beneath the table the following morning, and a few days later had even made Turkey a gift of the gaudy red-and-yellow Mexican vest. Turkey had discovered several bullet holes in the garment.
“I shouldn’t oughter accept it, Dingus,” he protested. “Duds a feller’s been shot at in, it’s sort of sentimental.”
But if he rode with pride and assurance now, it was also with a certain bafflement. Because they had been moving undeviatingly across the flat, hot, seemingly endless mesa since that first morning, yet with neither aim nor object that Turkey could perceive. They were headed generally west; he fathomed that much without difficulty, because the mountains of Old Mexico remained always at their left. But not once had Dingus offered a word about what was in his mind.
So Turkey kept on waiting. That was what he was doing now, after the two weeks, scratching his groin on an otherwise unstimulating sultry afternoon as Dingus moved up from behind him to contemplate the cavalry patrol approaching slowly along the ragged trail. There were some dozen troopers, led by a captain whose braid they could discern from a considerable remove. Dingus greeted the sight with contempt. “Bunch of Fettermans,” he snorted.
“What’s a fetterman?” Turkey wanted to know.
“You never heard of Fetterman?”
“Don’t reckon.”
Dingus grimaced. “Fetterman was this brave captain they had somewheres — up to Fort Phil Kearny — used to brag he could take eighty men and ride smack through the whole Sioux nation. So comes one time they have to rescue this wagon train, and off goes Fetterman with jest the eighty men he always bragged on. Ptheww! Ptheww! Sioux and Cheyenne and Arapahoes under every bush. And this brave Fettermen, not only is he mortally shot hisself, but all the rest of them soljers get mortally shot likewise. The complete eighty.”
“They wasn’t all killed, was they?”
But the troopers were almost abreast of them now, pacing their mounts at a walk. It became evident that they had been in the field for some time, since both horses and men were grime-streaked and dusty.
“You think it’s okay if’n they see you?” Turkey thought abruptly to whisper. “I mean, suppose they read some posters like I done?”
“Who, them Fettermans? They’re too busy keeping their heads down, smelling out Apache ponyshit along the trails.”
“Apaches? I ain’t heard tell of Apaches lately a-tall.”
“ ‘Course not. They’re all down to Old Mex, pausing for springtime papoose-producing. That’s what makes these Fettermans so brave.”
The troopers were wearily passing them then, not halting, however, with the exception of the captain, who reined to one side. He was quite young, and mud had caked at the yellow stripe of his right thigh. His name, Fiedler, was etched into his tooled saddle.
“Morning, Captain Fetterman, sir,” Dingus said affably.
The captain spun toward them.
Dingus was innocent. “Handsome-looking troop. I said you can’t get any better men, indeed. Reminds me, my chum and me, here, we cut some Apache sign this morning.’’
Lifting his unshaven jaw, the captain scowled. “Mescalero? Near here?”
“Them or Chiricahuas. Right shameful, the way that Geronimo’s still running loose. Burning folks’ homes, looting and pillaging. Why, them two wagons never had a chance.”
“Wagons?” The captain was open-eyed now. “What wagons? You saw two wagons that—”
“ ‘Bout six hours’ lazy walk, the way we jest come.” Dingus gestured gravely. “My chum and me, we buried the men, poor devils, it appeared the Christian thing to do. But there was lady’s clothing all scattered, so I reckon old Gee’mo done appropriated the womenfolk. Must be all raped bow-legged by now. You can pick up the trail, most like, if you—”
But the captain, ashen, had already spurred his mount. He shouted a command and the troopers fell into a gallop, skittering off.
— And that was Dingus Billy Magee. “Oh, you’re a belly-busting caution, you are,” Turkey told him as they stepped out. He rode now grinning from ear to ear.
But Dingus fell behind him almost at once, as was his curious habit. He rode huddled low in the saddle also, another characteristic, sitting slope-shouldered as if resigned to an incessant rain. “Tell me somethin’,” Turkey asked idly after a period. “There any special reason, we jest keep roaming on west like we been?”
For a time Dingus did not answer, coming ahead in that hunched way, and Turkey himself was still preoccupied enough with the recent prank so that another minute passed before he finally became sensible of the other’s expression. And then it was too late. “You ever wondered what kind of a commotion it would make,” Dingus was asking, “if’n a feller went and stuck a gun into each of your ears, and then squeezed off both triggers at the same time? What do you reckon them shots would sound like from inside your head?”
And this too, this abruptly, was Dingus. Hardly amused now, Turkey flopped limply about in the saddle. “Aw, now why do you want to go talking about a thing like that?”
“You reckon you’d hear two sounds, maybe? One when you was shot, and again when them two bullets met head-on inside there?”
“Aw, Dingus—”
“A feller don’t like persons to go questioning his private intentions,” Dingus said.
“Aw, Dingus—”
“Git on along,” Dingus said.
Turkey sighed as he shifted forward again, heeling up a slight incline. He rode sullenly.