But Belle had already marched to a cabinet, selecting a whiskey bottle. Beaming from behind it she withdrew the cork with her teeth, then spat that aside. “Yep. Because I waited too durned long since my one previous marriage to let some runny-nozzled twerp of an outlaw turn me into a widow from this present one even before we got around to holding the official ceremony, I reckon. But jest how much of that cotton-picking nonsense did he think a girl would stand for anyways, busting out of jail and farting around challenging folks’ fiancees to gunfights, and smack in the middle of my busiest night of the week yet, or—”
“Busting out of — huh? Lissen, lissen, you mean he truly— and she weren’t jest—?”
“Oh, but it’s over now, ducky nuts.” Belle disregarded his confusion. She was pouring two drinks. “On top of which the whole cock-knocking town saw how brave you faced up to him, likewise. I hope your jaw don’t pain you too much, meanwhile — didn’t give you but a incidental jolt with the side of my fist, was all, especially since you were snoring up a storm from that there swoon you’d had to start with. But here, here, guzzle your booze—”
Hoke was too stupefied not to accept the glass. “Right smart fit in these duds too,” Belle continued happily. “I used your Smith and Wesson here, first couple of shots, but then when the mangy little sidewinder actually had the gumption to let fly back at me once, why I jest twiddled that ole scattergun and gave him hallelujah. And he sure lit out pronto after that, I reckon. Well, anyways, drink up, honey jewels, and as soon’s I get changed into something a shade more appropriate we’ll go fetch Brother Rowbottom. Any of the girls ain’t getting reamed can do for witnesses. But here’s to it, meanwhile, doll of mine!”
Belle threw down her drink at a gulp, smacking her lips and then wiping them on the sleeve of Hoke’s most costly frock coat. Hoke was barely watching, however, still struggling with it. “Escaped?” he repeated. “But I got the durned key right in my pocket here, I mean there, but—”
“Aw, sugar boots, now who gives a good gob of spit about how the ballbreaker ever done it? Good riddance, I say, and—”
“But — but there’s all that bounty payment, my rewards that I worked so hard to — all of nine thousand and five hun—”
“Now Hoke Birdsill, you don’t truly conceive you have to fret your cow-punching ass over any piddling little sum like that? When you’re no more than minutes away from being wedded to Belle Nops herself? Why, if I ain’t got twenty times that amount in cold cash in my safe here, if not to mention six outsize pisspots full of dust in there that ain’t even ever been properly weighed yet likewise, and—”
Belle dismissed his meager concerns with a confident, expansive gesture in the direction of a corner beyond her desk, where the safe had long reposed, although Hoke was still far too vexed to glance that way. Then he could scarcely help himself. Her shriek tore through the roof.
So Hoke himself was barely able to begin to explain then either, since almost before he started she had taken him by the shoulders and was shaking him maniacally, still screaming also. “Girl!” she cried. “Sick mother? Why there hasn’t been a bimbo in this house in ten years who ever knew if her mother was dead or still peddling it, let alone ever got a letter from one or could even read it if she—in my own wardrobe trunk? And you helped her carry it down? HELPED HER!”
Hoke was sick. But he understood the remainder of it now, of course, saw it with all the certainty of prophetic revelation. “Oh, no!” he moaned. “No. Because then who was you shooting at out there? Out in that street, at exactly the same time when her and me was standing next to that buckboard and you fired my Smith and Wesson and then the shotgun, who was—”
“Well who in thunderation do you think it was? Dingus Turdface Magee, that’s who, and anyway what’s that got to do with—”
But Hoke went on with it, torturing them both now, compounding the ordeal. “Sure,” he said. “Sure. And meantimes you got a bright frilly red dress somewheres maybe, with a bow jest under the boobies? And a red sunbonnet to match, with strings you kin pull tight so’s your hair would be covered up, and—”
“Well blast that too, you’ve seen me wearing them. They’re right in—” Belle whirled, as if to retrieve the garments from her closet. Then she stopped, finally, utterly, for the instant actually rigid with the comprehension. She stared and stared.
“And you never truly seen him neither, did you?” Hoke said. “Yair, because it were dark as a Ethiopian’s bunghole out there, weren’t it? So if’n I ought of thought to burn the confounded thing six months ago, only I dint, then tonight I should of took it offn that Turkey Doolan feller and put it into a crate and mailed it to somebody in Siberia. Because it were that vest. All you seen were that red-and-yeller vest and that makes four times now he’s done give it to somebody else to get shot at in, only this is the first of the times he his-self went and put on something else in its place. And with a pillow stuffed inside his—”
Belle hit him. Her fist materialized like the hind hoof of a mule and took him on the opposite side of the face this time, slamming him back against the wall and leaving him with his legs stiff but with his heels beginning to slide from under him at once anyway, not trying to stop himself and not really hurt either, not hurting even when he thumped noisily to the floor itself, simply beyond all ability of feeling. “Because I’m probably gonter have heart failure anyways,” he thought. “Because I doubtless am.”
So it was not until he was climbing into Belle’s surrey five minutes later that he began to curse, began to match Belle’s incessant, monotonous yet unrepetitive stream word for word with one of his own, reminded faintly of something by the very sound of it also, although he could not think what, nor did he care. And even then it wasn’t the money, not the long-despaired eight hundred dollars from his derby hat which had started it all and not the subsequent three thousand from the original rewards either, not that and not this latest, the nine thousand five hundred. Nor was it even the dress which he himself, Hoke, was wearing now, the dress which Belle had only moments before flung into his face while changing hurriedly into one over his pants herself and scattering what remained of his own clothing through the upper rear door and into the yard at the same time, telling him, “Yes, a dress, and the damndest gaudiest silkiest one I own likewise, so maybe the next time you spend half a night being helpful to some other saggy-tooled cluck in one of them you’ll have the sense to lift his skirts and see if he’s got the right sort of equipment under there or not.” It wasn’t even that which evoked the oaths.
So it was the pillow, the false bosom. “Because I almost grabbed a quick feel on him,” Hoke realized. “I mean her. Him. Standing next to that buckboard and thinking on how all of a sudden I had three durned women to get myself hid from, which it looked like I’d already done give up trying anyways, and I almost grabbed holt of that one right then and there, jest to show myself a man’s still got some free choice left. And it wouldn’t of been the first time I were in bed with the erection-wasting skunk neither. So now I’m gonter git him. I’m gonter git him now if’n it’s the last thing I do on this earth!”
The surrey skidded and slewed, careening out of the alley and into the street, the road. “Yaaaa!” Belle’s voice roared and roared, her whip exploding over the mares. “Yaaaa!” Hoke rode with his head held low, fearing the sunbonnet might fail to disguise him adequately even in the darkness, and with a hand clasped across his mustache also, until they had thundered well beyond the town itself along the only obvious trail for the top-heavy Dingus to have taken with his prize.