“All right,” Hoke said finally, “I’ll say it quick. And it ain’t even the idea of getting hitched, which maybe I done been a bachelor long enough to accept anyways. And doubtless I could even get used to you being a part of it. But not when she made me kiss your boyish brow goodnight like a daddy oughter, which is jest one step more’n any self-respecting man could take. So meantimes what’s your reason?”
“All that talking she done about the three of us turning respectable,” Dingus said. “About going somewheres that nobody knows us and living like good Christian folk. Because I been there before, with every danged relative I ever got tied to. I’ll take my chances on remaining a orphan, if’n it’s all the same.”
“How far will she chase us, do you reckon?”
Just south of San Francisco, an ill-guarded freight office supplied the price of their fares. She emptied several lethal devices from the wharf about seven minutes after the gangplank was raised, but the damage to the smokestack was nominal. They had to share a cabin with two other gentle-men, having been unexpected, and while they got on with both, it was the youth, Doolan, for whom they felt the larger affection. Rowbottom’s flatulence drove them above decks often. Otherwise poker for modest stakes occupied them until Valparaiso.
The Ballad of Dingus Magee
It was dusk that night when he rode on in
To the town of Yerkey’s Hole—
He was only a boy just turned nineteen,
Yet the gallows was his goal.
For Dingus Magee was a desperate lad,
The worst New Mex. then saw—
‘Twas plain he’d come with aroused intent
To trample on the law.
But the law in town was a sheriff bold,
Hoke Birdsill was his name,
And Hoke himself was no man’s fool
In that deadly shooting game.
So both were calm, and hard as rock,
Though bullets flew like hail,
As they staged their mortal duel that night,
In the street before the jail.
And then what occurred was an awesome thing
That cowards fear to tell—
For some say Hoke took so much lead
He sank clear down to hell.
But others remark ‘twas queerer still
For Dingus Magee, alas—
They claim he crawled off limp to die
While caressing a maiden’s knee.
Yet none can name, and name for true
The place where each was laid,
And none can judge, are heroes born,
Or are they only made?
But sometimes still, in Yerkey’s Hole,
Where Belle’s Place used to lie,
It seems you can hear the banging yet—
“That’s them!” old-timers cry.
Refrain
But sometimes still, in Yerkey’s Hole,
& Cetera.
Mrs. Agnes Pfeffer Fiedler
Yerkey’s Hob, 1885