by J. Lee Butts
Showed him as many teeth as I could manage, when I smiled again. “Well, Pitt, all I can say ’bout that is that the numerous ugly rumors of my unfortunate, bloody, and unplanned-for demise have been greatly exaggerated.”
“As my friend Atwood, here, and I can well see,” he grumbled. “Damn near breaks our hearts—as I’m sure you can well imagine. See, I hate your law-bringin’ ass for the way you went and treated me in the past.”
I glared at the idiot and snapped, “Be totally truthful, I couldn’t care damned less how you feel, Murdock—heartfelt or otherwise. Come here today to take you into custody for murder.”
He flashed me an insincere, shocked grin. “What murder? Doan know nothin’ ’bout no murder.”
“That’s bullshit. You know exactly what murder I’m talking about. Tracked you boys directly here from the scene of the slaughter. Already took care of the Pickett boys. They’re all deader than a six-card poker hand. My friends and I killed the bejabbers out of ’em yesterday.”
Murdock shot Tanner Atwood a look that could’ve peeled paint off a barn door.
“You cain’t prove none a that,” Atwood mumbled and glared at me like a cornered weasel.
“Don’t have to prove anything,” I said. “Figure as how we’re just gonna kill the hell outta both you skunks soon as we find out what we came for. ’Course I might be prone toward a bit of leniency if you get to telling me what I want to know, and right damned quick.”
Murdock squirmed in his seat. “And just what is it you think we can tell you about anything, lawdog?”
From his vantage point in the back corner near the door, Boz called out, “Enough of this bullshit. Where’s the girl, Pitt? Give ’er up and maybe we won’t kill the pair of you today. Just maybe we’ll let you start runnin’ again and live a little bit longer. Then run you down later and kill you like the rabid coyotes you are.”
Atwood threw a snarling glance over his shoulder at Boz, then swung back around my direction. “What girl?” he said, as if he were something akin to an innocent babe.
“We don’t know nothin’ ’bout no girl,” Murdock grumped. Then he spat a fist-sized gob of tobacco juice into the glop-covered spittoon on the floor next to his chair leg.
“Well, now, Pitt, my man, that’s exactly the wrong answer to Ranger Tatum’s rather pointed question,” I offered. “Gonna have to come up with something better than that. A lot better, as a matter of pure fact. Otherwise I just might have a problem keeping ole Boz from cutting loose with that big-bore scattergun of his and splattering you two barn weasels all over hell and yonder.”
Murdock slid both hands off the table and raised them to his chest. Palms out, he looked like a man attempting to hold off an attacker. “Now, I can most certainly see that you boys mean business, Dodge. Don’t want any of you to go and jump the gun here and do something the pair of us might end up regrettin’ a minute or so later.”
“The hell with ’em, by God,” Atwood growled under his breath.
I said, “Should you manage to live more’n another minute, Pitt, way I recall it, think both you ole boys are supposed to be locked up in an iron-barred cell over in Huntsville. Figure, even if we don’t kill you, we’re gonna have to take the pair of you into custody at the very least. Have some of our law enforcement friends look into why you’re not in some stinkin’ cell where you belong. Very likely have to send you back to prison soon as we can. Lock you up so you can go back to pickin’ peas and choppin’ cotton for the state for a few more years. You bastards are a menace to society.”
Atwood twisted in his chair as if his pants were about to burst into flame. He said, “Ain’t nobody sendin’ me back to Huntsville, Dodge. And that’s for damned certain. I done had all of that hellhole I’m willing to take in this lifetime, by God.”
“Where’s the girl?” I said.
Crazed eyes twirling in their rheumy sockets, Murdock slapped the tabletop with a calloused palm and snapped, “We don’t know nothin’ ’bout no girl, Dodge, and that’s the truth of it.”
“Guess you don’t know anything ’bout killing my dog right outside the door of this place earlier today, do you? Or rubbin’ out most of an entire family name of Webb yesterday mornin’,” I said.
If I had walked over, snatched his hat off, then pissed on his head, don’t think Pitt Murdock or Tanner Atwood, either one, would’ve been any more surprised and shocked. Both men set to fidgeting and looking sneaky.
Murdock cut a shifty-eyed, worried glance at Atwood, then said, “Well, now, wait a second, Dodge. Maybe we can work something out here. You done gone and mentioned it twice, but I swear we don’t know nothing ’bout no family gettin’ rudely slaughtered. But seems like I might remember somethin’ ’bout a girl showin’ up here earlier today. Yeah, maybe I do.”
“Best keep that rain barrel of a mouth of yours shut ’bout that particular subject, Pitt, or anything else this law-bringin’ bastard mentions,” Atwood snapped. “Just shut the hell up and right by-God now. Talkin’ to this son of a bitch can get you killed, and right quicklike too.”
“Being as how we’ve already sent three men to the grave of recent. And being as how I’m feelin’ almost generous, you tell me where the girl is, Pitt, and I might consider letting the two of you get up and walk right out of here. Guess I could even let you have a day’s worth of head start, maybe two, before we come find you and then kill you,” I said.
A look of relief washed over Murdock’s face. “Ain’t kid-din’ now, are you? We can just walk on away from here?”
“That’s what I said. Have my word on it. Let you boys walk right on out. Have forty-eight hours’ head start. Hell, you could probably be in Nuevo Laredo by then. Sipping tequila and sporting a Mexican senorita on each arm.”
“Well, I ...”
Murdock didn’t get to finish his thought. In a barely audible tone, Atwood hissed, “Shut the hell up. Damn your stupid ass. This bunch might not kill us. But, by God, you go and open your mouth and I can pretty much gar-n-tee Cutner’ll show up, and he for damn sure will. That crazy bastard’ll chase us to Hell’s front doorstep to rub us out. So shut your gob.”
With both hands resting atop the table once again, a look of considerable distress chewed its way onto Pitt Murdock’s scarred, greasy countenance. “Look, Dodge, here’s the thing. Maybe the girl I’m thinkin’ ’bout ain’t the one you’re lookin’ for.”
“Then again maybe she is, you stupid son of a bitch,” Boz yelled from his corner.
Murdock’s weasely gaze darted from Glo, to me, to Boz, and back again. Then he said, “Blond, blue eyes, maybe sixteen . . .”
Then, I swear ’fore Jesus, the entire top of that poker table exploded with a thunderous, ear-splitting report. Shards of glass from a shattered whiskey bottle, wood fragments from the tabletop, and chunks of green felt filled the air like an angry swarm of multicolored bees.
About half a heartbeat later, I came to the stunned realization that Tanner Atwood had fired a single pistol shot that caught Pitt Murdock beneath the chin. A .45-caliber slug bored through all the bony passages of ole Pitt’s sizable skull and exited through the top of his surprised noggin.
The thuggish bastard’s hat flew off, followed by a shower of brain matter that splattered the wall behind him. He twitched, wiggled a bit, then came to rest sitting upright in his chair. A budding, flowerlike gusher of blood spouted from the hole in his head. Unmoving, he stared at the ceiling with frozen eyes, while a ropy stream of gore coated everything within arm’s length.
I had my weapon up like double-geared lightning. A nigh on deafening blast from the two-and-a-half-pound Colt delivered a chunk of lead that hit Tanner Atwood in the upper right side of his chest. Monstrous, slow-moving pellet knocked him out of the chair in the manner of some enormous, invisible hand that had reached down from Heaven’s front doorstep and slapped the unmerciful hell out of him. Wasn’t exactly a killer shot. Needed his sorry ass alive. My slug caught the worthless bastard in j
ust the right place to jar his weapon loose and paralyze him to the point where he couldn’t do much of anything after being shot. Except maybe roll around on the floor and moan like a dying wolf.
I waved Boz and Glo off quick as I could. A thick cloud of spent gun smoke from the two pistol shots still swirled around the table. Didn’t want either of them cutting loose with those big ole shotguns of theirs and accidentally blowing Atwood to blood-soaked smithereens before we had a chance to talk with him.
I hustled over to the squirming, groaning killer and pulled him into a sitting position by the collar of his shirt and vest. Slapped the hell out of him in an effort to bring his rubbery, swirling eyes out of the top of his head and back into focus.
Then I got right up in his face and yelled, “You’ve done for your trail mate, Atwood. He ain’t gonna be talkin’ to no one but God from now on. My unanswered question falls to you. Where’s the girl, damn you? You men helped murder her whole family. She’s the only one left alive, you worthless son of a bitch. Now give it up. Where is she?”
He grunted and made a series of guttural sounds like a dog being drowned. Then, between frothy, blood-soaked gurgles, he said, “Hell with you, Dodge. Hell w-w-with all of you.”
I couldn’t believe the cold-eyed boldness of the evil snake’s response. Pretty sure an uncontrolled look of frustration and consternation creaked itself across my brow. Tell the truth I felt totally stymied. Then, as it sometimes happens, fate stepped up and took a hand in Tanner Atwood’s dwindling time amongst the living.
19
“. . . WEBB GAVE HER TO EAGLE CUTNER.”
BOZ STROLLED OVER. He glanced down at the wounded outlaw as if he’d found a dung beetle swimming on its back atop his bacon-and-egg breakfast. He flashed a crooked grimace of a grin at Atwood, then placed a foot on the wounded man’s heaving chest and pushed him onto his back again. He ground the stacked heel of his boot into the fresh bullet wound the way a man would squash some kind of poisonous spider. That mean-mouthed, bold-as-brass outlaw squealed like a baby piglet, then whimpered in the manner of an injured child.
“Man asked you a question, you dyin’ son of a bitch,” Boz growled. “Best come up with an answer for Ranger Dodge, and be quick about it, or you’ll sure as hell wish you had. Get me to working on you, mister, and you’ll wish you’d stayed the hell away from the Devils River country like it was infested with the black plague.”
From behind a mask of torment and pain, Atwood pawed at the bullet wound and said, “S-S-Screw you, Tatum. I ain’t got nothin’ to say to either of you badge-totin’ turds.”
Boz turned his head slightly sidewise, then snarled, “ ’Fore you leave this world, you skunk-ugly son of a bitch, and meet up with a forgiving Jesus for judgment, I’m gonna make you wish you’d never seen my face. I’m right on the ragged edge of becoming the worst element of your most horrible nightmare.”
Atwood huffed and puffed and groaned again. Bloody slobbers dribbled from both corners of his mouth. He said, “Hell with you, Tatum. You law-bringin’ b-b-bastards ain’t gettin’ nothin’ outta me today. A-A-And you can take that to the nearest Cattleman’s Bank. Put it on deposit and draw interest, by God. I done kilt P-P-Pitt to keep him from tellin’. D-D-Die ’fore I’ll tell you another goddamned thing.”
Boz shook his head as though amazed by Atwood’s brazen comeback. He held his big popper out for me to take. Then he hauled ole Tanner up off the floor by his shirtfront. Didn’t like the look I saw on my friend’s face one little bit. I detected something crazed and dangerous there I’d only seen a few times before. I knew beyond any doubt that something worse than awful might be afoot when he got that look on him. A wildness had crept into the man’s eyes that would’ve given a rabid grizzly pause. Ole Boz didn’t lose control often, but when he did, Katy bar the door.
Glo and I stood aside and watched as Boz dragged the blood-gushing, screeching brigand across fifteen feet of rough-cut pine flooring and then jerked him on top of the saloon’s snooker table. Atwood took on all the aspects of a dead man laid out in a green-felt coffin. He appeared ready for burying when Boz let him loose and then turned toward the half-filled rack of cue sticks hanging on the back wall.
The cowboys who’d been shooting snooker when we arrived scampered from behind the bar. Spurs a-jingling, chaps a-flapping, they hit the saloon’s batwings in a dead run. They came near removing those café doors from their squeaky hinges when they rammed their way through them so hard. I could hear that pair of exited brush poppers yelling back and forth to each other as they hoofed it down the street and away from any real or perceived danger.
The hairless, sweaty-scalped bartender eased his way from a hidey-hole beneath his liquor selling counter as well. He waved a damp bar towel at us and yelped, “Now, see here. This is a damned nice establishment. Nicest in town, by God. We ain’t never had anything occur to match this in the Broke Mill before.”
I said, “Might want to follow your customers on outta here, mister. Not sure you want to be a witness to what’s about to happen.”
“You fellers got no right behaving in such a manner, by God,” the drink wrangler said. “Killin’ folks in cold blood and such. Think you should leave this establishment right this minute. Right this very minute, by God.”
“Naw, suh, we didn’t kill nobody,” Glo said. “Man on the pool table, he the one what kilt that feller sittin’ yonder in the chair. Naw, suh, we ain’t kilt nobody—yet.”
Boz snatched a cue stick from the half-filled rack and carefully checked the blue-chalked, leather-padded tip of the polished length of hickory as though about to start a fresh game. Then he whirled around but didn’t even glance at the mouthy drink slinger when he growled, “You don’t want to see somethin’ awful, mister, you’d best beat a hot path away from here like Ranger Dodge suggested. Don’t let them swingin’ doors hit you in your fat ass on the way out.”
The barkeep started backing his way toward the street but couldn’t keep his wagon wheel of a mouth shut. He shook that rag at us one more time before he hit the boardwalk and said, “I’m goin’ for the town marshal. Gonna put a stop this promiscuous behavior, right by-God now. You fellers best be gone when the marshal gets here. Yessiree, bob sir. He’s a dangerous man. Kill all three of you at the drop of a hat.”
Pool stick that Boz grasped in both hands sounded like another pistol shot when he cracked it over one knee. He held up the two freshly rendered pieces as though looking for something special. Compared both halves like a jeweler working on an antique watch. Laid the narrowest and sharpest of the pair on the table next to the side cushion. One handed, he waved the big end over Atwood’s nose.
“You’re gonna answer Ranger Lucius ‘By God’ Dodge’s questions, Tanner, or I’m gonna beat the hell out of you,” Boz said and grinned. “You don’t get to jabberin’ like a trained parrot, swear ’fore a benevolent Jesus, you’re gonna wish your mama’d never given birth to your sorry ass by the time I get finished.”
Atwood rolled his wobbly head Boz’s direction. He let out an overly confident snicker. I’ve always felt the man’s conduct was ill considered at best, but I thought him downright crazy when he hissed between bloody teeth, “Do your worst, Tatum.”
Chest shot, bleeding like hell, well on his way to a certain death, no doubt in my mind the man couldn’t have been thinking straight. This misguided challenge was all the encouragement Randall Bozworth Tatum needed.
Those poorly chosen words had barely died on Atwood’s lips when my friend brought his homemade club up two-handed and whacked that mouthy outlaw a crushing blow across the bridge of his nose. Gristle and bone made a cracking noise like a rotten cottonwood limb breaking. Damn near made me want to puke my spurs up. People out in the street must’ve heard it. And if not that, then they heard the piercing, surprised screech that escaped the man’s twisted lips before he passed slap out and lay on that table in the manner of a dead man for near a minute.
A gusher of blood squirted
from the middle of Atwood’s face and bedecked the wall behind the snooker table like red paint delivered from a fire hose. Boz stepped aside to avoid getting doused. Then he examined the bulbous end of the heavy stick and said, “Well, don’t appear as how his nose damaged my club much. Big, ugly honker of his barely put a dent in it.” Then he turned to Glo and said, “Bring me a bucket of beer.”
Glo looked puzzled. He swayed from foot to foot and toed at the boards under his feet. “Bucket of beer, Mistuh Boz?”
Tatum propped his club against the wall and said, “Yeah, Glo. A bucket of beer. A bucket of beer. Gonna take me a much-needed drink, then use what’s left to revive this bastard.”
I could tell our old compadre didn’t care for the direction things had taken. Not sure I did, either, but I knew there was no stopping Boz once he’d started down such a path. Any attempt to bring a halt to his efforts could put a man’s life at risk.
Shaking his head the whole time, Glo shuffled over the beer tap behind the bar. With a metallic click, he laid his heavy shotgun on the drink serving station’s polished marble top. He dragged out a tin bucket from somewhere and proceeded to fill it.
“This ain’t good, Mr. Boz,” Glo said when he handed the froth-covered pail of liquid over to Tatum.
Boz turned the metal container of cold liquor up and took a long swallow. Wiped suds from his drooping moustaches with one arm, then walked over and poured a glass or two into Tanner Atwood’s crushed, gore-spattered face. The pitiless child killer coughed, choked a bit, then revived enough to cough and spit out a fist-sized glob of bloody drool and broken teeth onto his own chest.
Atwood’s eyes swam in their sockets when he tried to sit up. He said, “G-G-God A-A-Almighty, T-Tatum. N-N-Never figured you for anythin’ like this. You done busted my nose. Musta knocked out nigh on half my forkin’ teeth, you vicious son of a bitch.”
