Then,just as suddenly, all this ceased. Ordinary circulars came in as usual, but no more concerning Dingus. The price on his head held fast at four thousand five hundred dollars for the next three full months.

So Hoke was more than anxious again. And when he finally heard a rumor that Dingus had been seen in a town named Fronteras, some three days’ ride from Yerkey’s Hole, he oiled his Smith and Wesson, two Colt.45 Peacemakers, a Buntline Special, a shotgun, and a repeating Winchester, and he rode off.

He didn’t find Dingus. He almost did not find the town either, since its mines had played out a year before and it had been summarily abandoned, at least by its builders. It had never numbered more than a dozen structures to start with, and now a motley gathering of displaced Indians was camped near its wells. Hoke had not even unsaddled when a short, square-headed, foul-smelling squaw whom he took to be at least part Kiowa approached his horse.

“You want bim-bam, hey? Only damn bim-bam two-day ride any direction.”

Hoke ignored her, although she gave him an idea. In the four months since Belle Nops had fired him he had earned a grand total of one hundred and sixty dollars as sheriff. He was still living at the jail, but food alone had cost him almost a dollar a day for some hundred and twenty days. Hoke commenced to study the females in the tawdry encampment.

Several of them appealed to him. They were fairly young, and Hoke knew that they would not be married, since there were no buck warriors in evidence (he hardly would have stayed if there had been). He sought out the chief, an ancient, gnarled creature with a head startlingly flattened at the back from having been strapped too tightly to a cradle-board decades before, and with a face that had weathered into a mask of sewn leather. Hoke made his offer. “These here two Colt revolvers,” he said, not wanting to part with what meager cash he did possess, “or the nice hand-tooled Buntline.”

But the chief could only gaze at him vapidly, not understanding English. He was eating something which Hoke made out to be an unskinned wood rat, evidently boiled. Even before Hoke could seek her out then, the squaw who had stopped him initially again materialized at his side. “Why you trade for bim-bam, hey? You take Anna Hot Water, she come for free. Sick and tired, live with all these damn savages anyways. Anna Hot Water fix you up pretty damn nifty, sure hey?”

Most of the thirty-odd people in the encampment had gathered near them in curiosity, and Hoke had already settled on a thin girl of no more than thirteen, who appeared cleaner than most. “That there one,” he pointed. “Tell the chief them’s real accurate Colts, too.”

“Ah, listen, Anna Hot Water plenty better for you than those damn baby bim-bams, no yes? Plenty experience, even married one damn time. Hey?”

Hoke fumbled in a vest pocket and came up with a silver dollar. “Here,” he said, “I’ll pay you, you put it into a lingo he can savvy. That skinny one over there, tell him.”

Anna Hot Water tested the coin first on her teeth, then shrugged and commenced to speak, gesturing frequently. The young girl blushed, but the chief remained sullen, still gnawing on the rat. Finally he muttered something, nodding toward Hoke and then toward Hoke’s mount.

“Chief say you stick lousy old Colts up you know where,” Anna Hot Water interpreted. “He take Winchester repeater rifle, damn sure. And he say your loco hat too, hey.”

Hoke frowned, briefly contemplative. The derby was not his best, however, and he finally removed it. He also lifted the Winchester from its scabbard. Then he motioned for the girl to follow, turning to mount but suddenly the chief had begun to mumble again.

“What’s that, now?” Hoke asked.

“Tribal custom,” Anna Hot Water explained. There were seven or eight birch wickiups in the encampment, and several tepees, and she indicated one of the latter. “Chief say not enough you pay, you got to prove you make good husband. You go into wigwam, you unbutton old Sitting Bull, and when him standing, girl she come in too. She not happy, you lose girl.”

Hoke raised an eyebrow. “Huh?”

Then he saw that several old men, carrying rifles of their own, were eyeing him threatfully. “Oh, now look here,” he said, “first off, it’s broad daylight, and I ain’t never remarkably interested unless’n it’s dark. And anyways I—”

“You be pretty damn interested I think,” Anna Hot Water said. “Because if first girl no happy, chief send in second. If second say bum job, send third. Because it got to be fair trade, and it damn sure he not give back Winchester. He keep send in girls until one say okay.”

“But what if’n none of them — I mean if’n it ain’t satisfactory at the beginning it sure ain’t gonter get to be more so after two or three or—”

“There seventeen bim-bam here, you betcha,” Anna Hot Water said, “not count four old squaws of chief. You better be the hot stuff one time out of seventeen, or chief maybe forget about be fair, just shoot you pretty damn quick. Chief say man can’t get it up one time in seventeen ought to be shot anyways, hey?”

“But this ain’t sporting,” Hoke protested. “You jest can’t expect a man to—”

But he was actually being prodded toward the tepee now, the guns at his back, and then he discovered he was being undressed also, although he tried to fight it. “Lissen, be careful there, that coat come all the way from St. Louis by mail ordering. And anyways I been in the saddle for three whole days. I’m plumb tuckered out, and a man can’t never—”

He was stripped to his stockings before being pushed through the entrance, roughly enough so that he went to his hands and knees. And then he saw that four women, very old and with faces even more deeply rutted than the chief’s whose wives they probably were, were following him inside. They circled the perimeter of the tepee and then proceeded to take seats, crosslegged, on scattered skins. “Hey,” Hoke called, “hey, now look—”

Hoke clapped a hand over his privates and whirled away, only to blush at what the new perspective revealed. The women sat grinning toothlessly.

“But — but — you ain’t gonter stay in here too? You don’t expect a man to perform his functions like he’s a actor on a stage, or—”

But the first girl had appeared by now also, the one he had chosen. She began to giggle. Hoke lunged toward the entrance.

The rifles drove him back. Still giggling, the girl was disrobing then, nor were there undergarments beneath her buckskins. Hoke clapped his unoccupied hand across his eyes.

The old women commenced to titter now also, as he stood hopping from foot to foot.

Hoke finally heard moccasins scuffing, indicating that the girl had given up. “Okay, hey,” Anna Hot Water said from the entry, “is one in, one out, pretty damn quick for tall nutsy feller like you, you betcha.”

Hoke moaned, turning to glare from one of the old wives to another. “Now blast it all, how am I supposed to—”

But then another girl appeared, giggling even as she disclosed her respectable bosom. This time Hoke flung himself against the ridgepole of the tepee, pressing his face into the crook of his arm. “I can’t!” he cried. “A man jest can’t!”

“Is two in, two out, and not even one damn hard on,” Anna Hot Water called. “But lots more damn time.”

But now he did not even turn when the next girl entered, so after she had stripped herself one of the grinning old women reached across and thwacked him on the thigh with a stick. “I won’t,” Hoke said. “I won’t!” He saw the girl, however, if only because of the increasing force of the blows, which finally made him dance away. But then as a fourth candidate was entering he threw himself to the ground, pounding at it with his fists.

The old women grinned and tittered, and he might have seen a fifth girl, and even a sixth (noticing obliquely, if he noticed anything at all, that they became progressively less attractive, less young) but after that he not only ignored the smarting of the blows but the yanking at his hair also, and when his head was jerked forcibly upward he squeezed his eyes tight. “Take it,” he was sobbing. “Take the durned rifle. Take the hat. Take the Colts too, and my horse. Jest don’t send in no more. It jest ain’t sporting. A man could go plumb out’n his—”