was right strange-like and mysterious myself.”
Boz spanked one leg with his hat. “Now wait a second. This ain’t makin’ no kind of reasonable sense. Let’s back up some. Go at it from the beginning. Start with a place where I can get a real handle on this, Glo.”
Glo ran a hand up to the side of his head, scratched a spot over one ear, and looked puzzled. He said, “Well, like I done said, I followed the trail on into town. Spotted Miss Clementine outside the Broke Mill. Slipped up on that store’s covered porch to see what was happenin’.”
“Store’s covered porch,” I mumbled.
“Yah, suh. Did kinda surprise me some when I seen Miss Webb a-standin’ there in the street. She had that little pistol of hers out, you know. Appeared she ’uz a yellin’ at them four men what was just a standin’ on the boardwalk out front of the saloon.”
“Confronted them right out in the street?” Boz mumbled.
“Yah, suh. Well, kinda. Started out like that but didn’t last, you know?”
“No, we don’t, Glo. Go on, clarify this thing for us,” I said.
He took a deep breath and ran a finger back and forth under his nose as though something was tickling his upper lip. He coughed, then backed up again. “See, I got there right behind the girl. Seen her jump off that pony Big Jim done sold her. Bear, he right in the middle of it all, growlin’ and snappin’. She went and pulled her pistol. Goes to yellin’ at one of the fellers on the porch.”
“You hear any of the conversation?” I said.
“No, suh. Couldn’t, for certain sure, make out what was being said. Too far away. But, lawdy, Mistuh Dodge, that ’ere little gal was some kinda fierce upset with one a them fellers in particular. Sounded most like she called him ever kinda name she could lay her tongue on.”
“You didn’t recognize the man Clem singled out?” I said.
“Naw, suh. Never seen that particular man before.”
“So, standing outside the Broke Mill Saloon there was Atwood, Murdock, a feller you didn’t know that the Webb girl was yellin’ at, and one other gent. You recognize the other gent, the forth one, by any chance?” Boz said, while swiping at the drenched, inside band of his hat with a faded bandanna.
Glo stared at the ground and kicked at the brittle, dusty earth with the toe of one worn boot. “Yah, suh. Sorry to say, but I knowed ’im alright. I done seen ’im before. Took a spell of studyin’, but I knowed ’im for sure.”
A second or so of silence followed before I said, “Well, you gonna tell us, or do we rub the bumps on your head and hope it just comes to us through our fingertips?”
Glo almost looked embarrassed when he hissed, “Hateful to say, but I’m pert sure it were Eagle Cutner, Mistuh Dodge. Didn’t recognize him at first. Like I said, too far away. Got a better look a minute or so after the dance started. Man turned my way, pushed his hat back. That’s when I recognized him. Was Cutner alright.”
Boz’s hat slipped from his fingers and plopped upright onto the peon’s manure-covered yard. He stared at Glo, as if the man had slapped him across the face with a paper bag full of rotten cow guts that had a hole in the bottom of it. Came nigh on to whispering when he said, “Shit almighty. For sure? Eagle ‘Mad Dog’ Cutner?”
“You’re absolutely certain, Glo?” I said. “Ain’t no doubt the man you saw Clem jawin’ at was traveling with Mad Dog Cutner, Pitt Murdock, and Tanner Atwood?”
“Yah, suh. ’S right as rain. Scared the pure bejabberous hellfire outta me, Mistuh Dodge. Figured on bringin’ that little gal back this way with me, leastways till I seen Cutner. Always heard as how that man’s a good one not to mess with. Bet I’ve heard a hundred people tell as how he’s meaner’n ten acres of snakes and will kill you dead as Hell in a Baptist preacher’s front vestibule. Most folks say he’s killed more people than a body can read about in the first three books of the Bible. Worse, he’s had his evil ways wid more women than any dozen other men’ll ever know in a lifetime.”
I could see the puzzled pain in Boz’s eyes when he said, “Do you believe this, Dodge? Three of the worst killers in Texas and they’re all here, together, at the same time. Two of ’em just recently left the company of them stinkin’ Pickett brothers for the company of a murderer and brutal rapist of the first water like Eagle ‘Mad Dog’ Cutner. And somehow, they’re all related to the massacred family of a little-known state senator name of Webb. All them poor folks killed on property we’re responsible for.”
I felt like my brain flip-flopped inside my skull. Rubbed one temple with a fingertip. “I thought sure as how ole Mad Dog was locked safely away in prison over in Huntsville. Seems I heard tell as how he finally got caught in the very act of committing heinous acts on a lady from down Reynosa way.”
“Me, too,” Boz mumbled.
Right certain I looked most like the man who’d been slapped sillier than a bag full of tumblebugs when I said, “Anything else you can tell us, Glo? Anything else you might recall but didn’t mention.”
“Naw, suh. ’Cept that feller I didn’t recognize, he stepped off the saloon’s board porch, walked up to Miss Clementine and took her pistol away like he was dealin’ with his very own child. Like he was her father, or somethin’. And that’s when Pitt Murdock went and shot the dog. Kilt poor ole Bear like he warn’t nothing more’n a passin’ nuisance.”
Boz snatched his hat off the ground and whacked it against his leg again. A roiling cloud of powdery dust puffed up around him. Gritted his teeth and snarled, “Damnation. You mean to tell me the son of a bitch shot Bear?”
“Yah, sur, Mistuh Boz. Kilt that poor unarmed animal deader’n Santa Anna. Little gal went to screeching like a gut-shot panther. That there feller I didn’t know grabbed her by the wrist and set to draggin’ her off sommeres. But I ain’t sure to this very minute exactly where they went. Just seemed to vanish of a sudden, like a couple a puffs of driftin’ smoke carried away by an invisible wind.”
Felt like I was eating an entire beehive when I snapped, “Murdock went and killed Bear, did he? Well, he’ll pay for that, by God. I’ll see to it if it’s the last thing I ever do. Dog never hurt a soul—lest he was told he could.”
Boz looked like a man whose fevered brain was about to explode when he growled, “You sure you didn’t see anything else we need to know about?”
Glo stared at his feet again. “Naw, suh. Didn’t stick around after I seen that feller take Miss Clementine’s pistol away and Murdock went and kilt Bear. Figured there weren’t nothin’ a man alone, like me, could go a doin’ with gents like Murdock, Atwood, and Mad Dog Cutner hangin’ around. Decided as how I’d best be gettin’ on back this way fast as I could ’fore somethin’ happened to me. Hoofed it back so’s I could let you fellers know what’s a waitin’ for us just down the road a piece.”
There was more than a bit of shuffling and dirt kicking after that. Finally, Boz pawed at the grip of his belly gun and said, “Well, how you wanna handle this poisonous mess, Dodge? Go along with anything you can bring to mind.”
I shook my head, then said, “Not sure, and that’s a pure fact, Boz. Hatful of unknowns in this twisted spider’s nest. Sure don’t want to do anything to jeopardize Clem’s young life, if we can keep from it. However we go at this manure pie, though, don’t sound like it’s gonna be any kind of party, does it?”
Boz squinted and pushed at his hip pistol’s shiny, well-used grip with the heel of his gun hand. He scratched a whiskered chin, then said, “Well, here’s how I see it, Lucius. We might as well just go on ahead and grab the bull by the tail. Face on up to a really bad situation. Don’t you think?”
“Yeah, suppose you’re right,” I offered. “If nothing else, we should still have the advantage of surprise on our side. No way any of those boys can have the slightest inkling we’re fogging up behind them, unless Clem lets that particular cat out of the bag before we can get to her.”
Boz unlimbered the cross-draw hand cannon snugged against his bony left hip. He flipped the loading gate open, then rolled the cylinder down his arm, and eyeballed the primers of each round. “Might as well start at the Broke Mill,” he said. “I could sneak around back while you and Glo hit ’em from the front. That way we can brace whoever might still be hanging around from both directions. Confronted by enough guns, maybe they’ll think twice ’bout getting all froggy and jumping into a fight.”
“Sounds like a good ’nuff plan to me,” I said. “Would like to talk to at least one of them skunks ’fore we have to kill the whole damned pack though.”
“Well, you know that might prove hard to do, Lucius. Especially if the girl’s still somewhere nearby and they can get at her,” Boz said and re-holstered his weapon.
“What about local law?” I said.
“Ain’t enough to worry ourselves over,” Glo said. “Del Rio’s got a town marshal, but way I done heard it, he
