Hoke had his old boots on the desk. “Ain’t rightly thought,” he said.
“Leastways you don’t have to bear me that grudge no more, seeing as how you got your eight hundred dollars back. Way it turns out, you’re about twenty-two hundred dollars to the good.”
“I don’t hold you no more grudge, Dingus. None a-tall. I reckon now it’s your turn to hold one on me.”
“You was jest doing your job, was all. Sheriffs a sheriff, even in bed. Sort of a unglorious way to get took though, in a feller’s underdrawers.”
“I ain’t told nobody that aspect of it, Dingus.”
“I appreciate that, Hoke.”
Again Hoke was happy to see the subject drop. What he had failed to mention was that there must indeed have been a story about the capture, since several of the newspapers had long since written in request of his participant’s version of the episode. Hoke had replied with laudable modesty in each case, if with a certain cloudiness of detail.
Meanwhile Dingus had arisen, stretching. He stood rubbing his neck with his left hand.
That reminded Hoke of something. “Say now, how come you ain’t got no scar on your wrist there, from where you was all bandaged that time you robbed me?”
For a moment Dingus considered the wrist vacantly. Then he gestured in dismissal. “Oh, that — that weren’t but a slight puncture, was all. I always did heal pretty quick anyways.”
“You dint actually have it out with some peace officer, truly now? What I mean, not no authentic face-on gun shooting?”
“Weren’t nothing,” Dingus reiterated. “Couple fellers over to Tombstone, got a little rambunctious in a saloon one night and tried to draw down on me. Feller name of Earp, I believe it were, and one name of Holliday. Should of kilt ‘em both, most probably, but I were in a sort of playful mood, so I jest poked ‘em around with the butt end of a pistol, and then I—”
Hoke’s jaw had fallen. Wyatt Earp? And Doc Holliday?
Dingus shrugged. “Same fellers, doubtless. I don’t generally give such incidents too much notice, seeing as how they get to happening all the time. You know how it is, them little chaps trying to cut in on a bigger chap’s reputation—”
Dingus actually yawned then, while Hoke continued to stare. “Sure never thought they’d swing me at only a tender nineteen and a quarter years,” the youth went on.
“Happens that way, ‘times,” Hoke ventured, still impressed.
“Well, I had me some fun,” Dingus decided.
“I reckon you done, all right.”
“Seems a shame, though, jest when I were going right good. Year or so more, I could have got as notorious as the best, say like Billy the Kid hisself, maybe.”
“Well, the Kid were jest luckier’n you, insofar as he got to murder more folks. But you’re pretty notorious anyways.”
“I’d still like to read me the story about that deadly gun battle,” Dingus sighed. “Sort of a shame for you too, Hoke, when you stop to think.”
“How you calculate?”
“Not getting but only three thousand dollars. You ought to have waited a spell to capture me. Dint they get ten thousand when they shot down the Kid, up to Fort Sumner?”
“Well, I reckon Pat Garrett’s a luckier peace officer’n me, same as the Kid were a luckier outlaw’n you,” Hoke judged. “But what’s done is done, like they say.”
“Don’t rightly have to be, I reckon.”
“How’s that, now?”
“It jest come to me out’n the blue, Hoke, standing right here in my stocking feet. Be right interesting if’n I escaped from this here jail of yours. A couple months and I reckon there’d be all sorts of new warrants on me, seeing as how I don’t believe I’d change my rascal’s ways none. You capture me again, say in a year, and doubtless you could collect a whole ten thousand fer your strongbox that time.”
Hoke Birdsill was gazing at him narrowly. “Say that again?”
Dingus cocked the sombrero back on his fair head. “All I’m informing you, Hoke, is that right now you got yourself a holt of three thousand dollars, ain’t you? Ain’t no way they can take it back, is there?”
This time Hoke did not reply. He had swung around in his chair to squint at a tacked-up reward poster.
“Reward for the capture of ain’t that what it says?” Dingus asked. “Don’t say nothing about you need to get me hanged in addition, does it?”
Hoke Birdsill stood up, nibbling his mustache.
“Ain’t no rule says it can’t go to more’n ten thousand, neither,” Dingus added.
“But supposing it’s some other sheriff shoots you? Like say Mister Earp again, or—”
Dingus shrugged. “Feller needs to take some risk to get ahead in this world, I reckon. But you know for a fact I have a fondness for Yerkey’s Hole, especially with the attraction of Belle’s place to lure a man. On top of which, like you jest said without even thinking on it — now that I been sentenced, why, all you’d need next time, you’d murder me on sight.”
Hoke Birdsill scowled and scowled, watching Dingus watch him.
“How would be a good way to do it?”
“I could slug you, I reckon. I’d be gentle, nacherly, but there oughter be a lump.”
“I got a lump already, where I happened to bang my head in a outhouse this morning. Ain’t nobody saw that one.”
“Well, there you be, that’s half the job done then. It’s like a omen. So now all you got to do is lay low a spell, until I can appropriate a horse, and then you call out a posse and go west whilst I go east.”
Hoke folded his arms, gazing at the cell door.
“I ain’t never done nothing dishonest before,” he decided next. “I ain’t got the habit.”
“You ain’t never had ten thousand dollars to grab holt of, neither.”
“How kin I be sure it’ll get to ten thousand?”
“Supposing I took the notion to shoot up a whole town, one Wednesday? Or to rob me a train?”
“Rob one. Give me your sworn word of honor you’ll rob a train.”
“Got to travel a good ways north to do that, Hoke.”
“Well, you jest come on back fast afterwards. I’m taking chances anyways.”
“Hoke, you got my oath. And trains’ll get a feller up to ten thousand faster’n anything.”
Hoke was convinced. Hastily, with a furtive glance toward the street, he unlocked the cell. “There’s always horses hitched down near Belle’s,” he whispered.
“Jest as soon’s I climb into my boots,” Dingus said. “I’ll use the rear exit, I reckon.”
Hoke watched him depart, then almost snatched up a shotgun to halt him again even as the rear door closed. “Earp?” he repeated. Hoke swallowed. Then he shook his head, since it was too late now anyway. “But I’ll sure jest have to find him betwixt the bedsheets the next time round again also,” he decided. He paced nervously for some minutes, tasting the wax from his mustache now. Then, carefully, he set his derby upside down upon a moderately clean spot on the floor, wrinkled his shirt with regret, and smudged gun oil across his cheek and ran, stumbling, toward the nearest saloon. “Dingus!” he shouted, bursting through the batwing doors. “He clobbered me good, boys, he made his escape!”
But whether it was his own outcry or the sound of the gunfire which brought the few drinkers up short he did not know. There were exactly four shots, with a pause between the first two and the last, in the direction from which he himself had just come. Hoke whirled in confusion.
“What’s he shootin’ at if’n he already done got loose?” someone asked.