And Kill Them All

by J. Lee Butts

  Boz broke the shotgun open, then examined each of its massive brass rounds. Big popper made a noisy, metallic click when he snapped it shut. My friend tilted his head to one side, as though somewhat sympathetic to Cosner’s situation. “Should’ve thought of your family before you pinned that badge to your shirt, ole son.”

  Cosner moaned and looked sneaky.

  “I ’uz you,” Boz went on, “I’d take me a job over at the mercantile selling flour, notions, and such. Maybe tending bar, chasing cows, or rentin’ rooms at the hotel. Bloody push comes to bloodier shove, my friend, appears you just ain’t up for curtains of blue whistlers and blisterin’ gun work.”

  Then my partner turned and pointed at the front door with the twin-barreled coach gun. He threw me a knowing glanced and said, “Drunk as those bastards out there are, doubt any of them could hit the jailhouse with a pistol shot, much less one of us, Lucius. So, hell, open the gate, pard. Let’s see how she jumps.”

  “Which direction you wanna go when we get outside?” I said.

  He winked and grinned. “Why don’t you go ahead and step on out first, Lucius. Heel it to the right. I’ll follow and go left. Figure we’re close enough so’s I can put lead in at least three of ’em with Deputy Cosner’s big honking blaster here, first jump outta the box. So, you take whoever’s willing to do the talkin’. Figure that’s gonna be ole Irby. Shouldn’t be too much of a problem for me to deal with the rest.”

  Well, I snatched that door open so fast it almost sucked the hats off them boys out in the street. Could tell it surprised most of them, more than a bit, when I came out the entryway with a cocked pistol in each hand, followed by Boz carrying that shoulder cannon of a shotgun.

  Three of the Teal bunch staggered back about half a step. But brother Irby glared at us like he wanted to rip our heads off. Man didn’t move so much as a single whisker, near as I could tell. Hard-eyed and mean as hell, the man was more than ready for a fight.

  “Just be goddamned,” Boston Teal’s oldest sibling thundered. “If it ain’t famed gun hound and man killer Texas Ranger Randall Bozworth Tatum.” He jerked a bullish head toward the right then added, “Keller here said he ’uz pert sure he’d seen you ride in, Boz.”

  A snaggle-toothed grin creaked across the unwashed face of Pogue Keller. Man straightened up as though right proud of himself. He shot a quick glance at the heavily armed dwarf on his right. The pair of them appeared to bask in that gratifying moment of unsolicited recognition like lizards on a hot rock.

  Boz let out a derisive snigger. “Would say it’s good to see you again, too, Irby, but I’d be lyin’ like a widder woman’s hooked rug if’n I did. As you’re well aware, I’ve never cared for your more’n sorry company.”

  Teal either ignored Boz’s remarks or was too drunk to care. A wicked sneer sliced its way across his pockmarked, dirt-encrusted face. He swung his boozy attention my direction. “And, lawsy mercy, you done brought along your up-and-comin’ partner in legal slaughter, Ranger Lucius ‘By God’ Dodge, I see. Been hearin’ a lot about you, Dodge. Rumor has it you’re a real man killer.”

  Waited for Boz to get completely settled before I offered, “That a fact?”

  The infamous outlaw rocked back on his heels. Took another long swig from his bottle. Wiped twisted lips on the arm of a bib-front shirt so dirty it got me to wondering if a bullet could penetrate the filthy garment.

  Then, he let the hand holding the liquor drop to one side. The amber-colored container slipped from grit-encrusted fingertips and hit the ground standing upright. A geyser of fluid squirted out and slopped onto the leg of his grubby, woolen pants.

  Irby Teal glared at me from a pair of slitted, rheumy, bloodshot, yellow-tinged eyes. The situation tensed up right quick when he let his hand hover over the walnut grip of his hip pistol. “You law-bringin’ bastards’ve got my little brother, Boston, locked up in that shit hole of a jail. Turn him loose. Git him out here, right by-God now.”

  Boz said, “Can’t do that, Irby, and you know it. Your brother’s got murder to answer for up in Fort Worth. Gonna take him back to stand trial. Likely hang ’im shortly after that.”

  Teal went to shaking all over, like he might have a man-killing dose of malaria. Face got redder than I thought humanly possible. For a second, I felt certain his melon-sized head might explode.

  “Be damned if that’s gonna happen, Tatum,” the outlaw snarled. “I’ll kill every man, woman, child, and dog in this pissant burg ’fore I let you outta here with Boston in tow for a hanging.”

  “Well,” Boz said, “given your feelin’s on the matter, best go on ahead and get to work with them pistols hangin’ on your hips.”

  ’Bout then, I heard a commotion behind me. Deputy Cosner said something like, “Here’s your sorry-assed brother, Teal. Start shootin’. Swear ’fore Jesus I’ll blow his ugly head clean off.”

  I shot a quick glance to my left, and sure enough I could’ve reached over and touched a grim-faced, shackled, and chained Boston Teal on the shoulder. Cosner was latched onto the man’s shirt collar with one hand and had a .45’s muzzle pressed into one of Teal’s ears. Must admit the deputy’s bold-as-polished-brass move impressed the hell out of me, at the time anyway.

  Now, I can’t say as how I’d be able to testify for sure on the subject, given so many years have flown by since those events transpired, but I’d be willing to avow I’m almost certain that midget, China Bob Tyler, brought his amputated shotgun up and opened the ball that bloody day. Appeared to come as something of a shocking surprise to ole Irby when Boz dropped both hammers on the runtified little killer. A thunderous, washtub-sized wad of buckshot knocked the sawed-off piece of a man clean out of both his boots and sprayed a blistering curtain of lead into the other outlaws in the street as well. My God, but they did do some screeching and hollering when those buckshot pellets sliced into ’em.

  As you can readily imagine, that sure as hell ripped the rag off the bush. Pistols came out all around. ’Fore a body could spit, or say howdy, Pogue Keller, Hector Manion, and Irby Teal went to grabbing at smoking shot holes in their clothing with one hand and, at the same time, spraying lead like a trio of midnight-roving tomcats staking out their territory with the other.

  Racket from all those weapons going off, people yelling, screaming, hollering, and cussing, at almost the same instant, came nigh on to being ear-shatteringly thunderous. Fortunately, in spite of their lurid reputations as bad men and famed pistoleers, think I could say, with no fear of ever being contradicted, wasn’t a single one of them boys could’ve hit a circus elephant with a Gatling gun that particular afternoon.

  Blue whistlers gouged valleys in the boardwalk at my feet. Punched holes in the wall and windows behind me. And generally peppered the entire front of the jail on every side of us. Wood splinters filled the air like horseflies buzzing around a bloated corpse.

  I had a right good feeling going, as I thumbed the hammers of my pistols and watched the scorching rounds I sent out hit home. Know for certain sure I put at least two in Irby Teal’s sorry hide. Saw his vest jump. By then Boz had abandoned the coach gun, drawn his own sidearms, and set to ripping off shot after death-dealing shot.

  Ten seconds into the noisy fracas, so much acrid-tasting, grayish-black gunpowder swirled in the dense south Texas air it got right difficult to pick out a target. But I’d swear on a stack of Bibles I was looking right into the elder Teal brother’s piss-colored eyes when I felt a burning sensation in my right side. I’m convinced to this very second he’s the one who put a hole in me that day. ’Course I returned his fire without flinching, or even so much as thinking about it. Teal and his drunken friends went to ground in front of our blazing assault like wheat under an Iowa farmer’s razor-sharp sickle.

  When all the yelping, hollering, and thunderation finally abated, I holstered my strong-side weapon, then ran a hand into the waistband of my pants. Fingers came out covered in a sticky coating of fresh blood. Went all weak in the knees. Stum
bled backward a step or two. Leaned against the jail’s bullet-riddled front wall.

  I glanced Boz’s direction. The jailhouse door stood wide open between us. Noticed the near-headless corpse of Boston Teal was draped atop Rufus Cosner. Appeared the luckless Cosner had somehow got blasted straight to a sulfurous Hell ’bout half a second before he removed most of Boston’s thick noggin with a single shot.

  Boz had gone down, too. Sat with his back to the slug-peppered, cross-tie wall and worked at poking a handkerchief into a blood-gushing hole in his pants’ leg. My partner didn’t even look up when he said, “Reckon we got ’em all, Lucius?”

  Ripped the bandanna from around my own neck. Shoved it against the leaker in my side. Pressed on the crude dressing and gasped for air. “You didn’t even bother to glance my direction, Boz. Hell, I could be deader’n Julius Caesar for all you’d know.”

  A strained chuckle came from my friend’s direction. “Hell, boy, figure there ain’t nobody livin’ right now who’s gonna have skill enough, or grit enough, to kill you in a straight-up pistol fight.”

  “Well, you could be wrong about that, by God. Lord could’ve come and taken me as easy as them skunks lyin’ yonder in the street. Or these two unfortunates splayed out here in the doorway for that matter. Shit, I could be just as dead as Andy Jackson right now.”

  My friend tightened the crude bandage around his blood-soaked leg. Then, he leaned back against the wall and let out a tired, exasperated sigh.

  “How bad you hurt?” I said.

  “Oh, not too awful much. Been hurt worse. Been shot in lots worse places, too.”

  “Well, not me. This is the first time for me, by God. Ain’t never been shot before. Damnation. Hurts like burnin’ perdition.”

  Boz struggled to his feet, then hobbled over. He pulled my hand away from the wound, then poked around in the bloody hole. “Aw, hell, boy. She ain’t near as bad as you think. ’Course she’s gonna take some time healin’. Gonna pain you worse’n the dickens for a spell. Might even put you in bed for a few weeks. Maybe more. Festerates could well kill you. Otherwise, figure you’ll heal.”

  I shot a glance at his leg. “That don’t look good.”

  He flopped down next to me and swept a pained glance up and down Rio Seco’s only street. “Oh, might not do any riding for a bit, that’s for certain sure. Suppose we’d best scare up a sawbones, Lucius. Wouldn’t want to go and bleed out ’fore we can get these holes plugged by someone with a bit more in the way of medical experience than I’ve got.”

  Turned out as how the town’s only pill pusher’d heard the commotion and came a-running. He had the pair of us cleaned up, sterilized, and stitched back together in a matter of minutes.

  Bone popper couldn’t do much of anything for them other boys though. First two blasts out of the box, from that big popper Boz carried, came near cutting Tyler, Manion, and Keller in half. Got to avow, though, they ’uz tough ole boys. The three of them went down blasting, in spite of being pretty much dead whilst doing it.

  Once we got them on their backs, all our other shooting didn’t really do much in the way of death-dealing damage. Except when it came to Irby Teal. Think me and Boz both might’ve put three or four each in the man. Literally shot him to pieces. Corpse leaked blood like we’d turned him into a human sieve. Could’ve read the Fort Worth Ledger through his bullet-riddled hide.

  From all we could determine, Deputy Cosner had made good on his threat. He’d touched off a single round that splattered Boston Teal’s pea-sized brain all over hell and yonder. Found a gory, fist-sized gob of the mess splattered across my back and shoulders. I was so preoccupied, though, I never even felt the man’s skull filler when it hit me.

  Me and Boz came to believe that Cosner must have figured that hiding behind Boston Teal was the safest place in town. Unfortunately the man couldn’t have been more wrong. Somebody still managed to put one through his right eye, and another bored its way through the tip of his nose. Made a hell of a mess. But we did discover, later on, as how he’d lied about a wife and child. Man was simply possessed of henhouse ways.

  Boz stood over Cosner’s corpse, shook his head, and said, “Guess the poor boy wasn’t as lucky as I figured.”

  And so, that bloody session of gun smoke and quick death is how me and a leg-shot Randall Bozworth Tatum came to rent a half-assed horse ranch and cattle operation out in the Devils River country, south of Sonora. We were both injured badly enough that traveling didn’t seem like a good idea at the time. Figured as how we’d just lay up in the shade and set to mending. You know, rest and recuperate for a spell before we headed on back to Fort Worth. Even made arrangements to send Cap’n Culpepper a telegraph message to let him know our plans. ’Course, he wasn’t at all happy with the situation but did seem to understand.

  Looking back on the whole dance, our plan seemed solid enough. But, as it turned out, that’s when my bad dreams started. And, not long after, that’s when me’n Boz got tangled up in one of the bloodiest, most awful messes of my entire ranger career.

  Thermometer I got from the Baker Brothers Funeral Home in Domino says it’s 105 in the shade right now. Thank God for lemons, ice, and sugar. Sitting here in the shade with a sweat-covered glass in my hand, just thinking on that whole grisly dance of uncommon horror and how we came to meet up with a beautiful little gal named Clementine Webb. Blood-soaked tale still has the power to send shivers charging up and down my ancient spine like a herd of longhorns stampeded by pitchfork lightning. Jesus, amazing how some memories have the capacity to make my aged blood run as cold as Rocky Mountain river water.

  5

  “DAMN IRBY TEAL FOR A GOOD SHOT.”

  NOW, ME AND Boz had hoped to get far enough away from civilization to forget about doing any ranger work for a spell. But, to my dismay, we hadn’t been living on the Devils River ranch much more than a few weeks when the realization thundered down on me that no hope existed of ever escaping the everyday events of my blood-soaked past.

  See, when the oft avoided blackness of sleep descended, the power of dreams could, once again, bring my bygone experiences, with blood and thunder, to vivid, brutal, frightening life. Always the dreams. Nightmares to be more precise.

  Looking back on it, I’m convinced that having Irby Teal plug me, in that Rio Seco dustup, was what precipitated the whole life-and-death dance that followed. Have always felt there’s nothing like getting shot to put a man in touch with his own mortality. In truth, I’ve come to realize that I had never suffered from such a crisis of conscience before that period. Or afterward, come to think on it.

  For reasons that are still unclear to me, the most compelling of the nocturnal reveries concerning my short but turbulent ranger career invariably involved the lingering, stomach-churning stench given off by slaughtered men. The acrid fragrance released by roiling clouds of spent, death-dealing gunpowder lingered in my sleep-leadened nose. The bilious odor of spilled blood hovered over my bed, along with the reek of puke, urine, and human waste. The bitter, coppery taste that swelled on the back of a man’s throat and always accompanied the putrid aroma of sudden death came along for the ride as well.

  Then there was the accompanying noise. The blistering roar from pistols, rifles, and shotguns when they sent the certainty of eternal damnation echoing through my quiescent brain. The entire ball of wax often seemed masked in a cacophonous, chilling cloak draped across the narrow shoulders of that insatiable, bony-fingered, skull-faced Thief of Souls.

  But even worse than those skin-pimpling horrors were the agonized, screeching cries and whimpers of wounded and dying men. The nerve-grating screams of injured, wild-eyed, panicked horses. My nighttime apparitions rolled themselves into a calamitous tumult brought on by a litany of misty and confused visions of gore, thunder, and violent death, that I came to feel sure had not yet occurred but would present themselves soon.

  There was no denying it, those blood-spattered nightmares seemed genuine beyond human understanding. So a
uthentically sharp, clear, and saturated in the colors of departing mortality. Even the piercing, gut-wrenching burn of being shot felt real. The hornet-like sting of the massive, red-hot slug as it entered the fleshy part of my side caused me to groan in my half consciousness and squirm atop twisted bedding. And for way longer than necessary, I relived the events that had transpired outside Marshal Jacob Cobb’s office each time my head hit the pillow and I closed my eyes.

  Top of everything else, it was doubled-up summertime in Texas and hotter’n a burning mesquite stump. During the day everything with legs spent most of its time looking for any spot not deep-fried by the sun. Even the coming of darkest night brought almost nothing in the way of much-needed respite. ’Course, as I’ve said before, I didn’t mind the heat back then.

  But early on one particular morning, the unrelenting, elevated temperature snapped me awake coated in the damp sheen of an icy sweat. Seemed as though every square inch of my aching body was slick with clammy flesh. Groggy from being snatched out of my dreadful nightly tossings and turnings, I rolled onto one side.

  Propped on an elbow, I hacked out a croupy cough, then wheezed as though being strangled by some evil, unseen spirit. Damn the nightmares. Ugly, confused visions possessed the uncommon power to give me a case of the waking willies. Or maybe it wasn’t the dreams this particular time. Something else, possibly.

  “Sweet Jesus, have mercy,” I grumbled and cast a heavy-lidded gaze at the open doorway and out onto the veranda.

  Fuzzy-headed from the night’s short, dank siesta, I swung aching legs around and came to a stoop-shouldered, humped-over sitting position. Clawed at a spot on my throat, beneath a stubble-covered chin. It felt as though my mouth had somehow been filled with a wad of flour glue laced with a handful of straw.

  My narrow, coffin-like cot—a wood-frame and leather-strapped contraption—appeared as though it had been specifically designed by hell-bred demons to torment the unsuspecting user. This medieval torture contrivance was topped by a lumpy, cotton-ticking bag stuffed with brittle corn shucks. The sack crackled and crunched with my slightest move.