don’t do much but shovel all the horse manure outta the streets, keep the pigs run off and sech. Locks up a drunk railroader now and again. Railroad takes care of most of its own problems. Have their own troop of lawmen for dealin’ with railroad problems.”
“Hell with local law then,” Boz said. “We’re Texas Rangers, by God. Go wherever’n the hell we need to and do whatever we have to do when the occasion presents itself. Personally think we should stick to the plan. March right in, brace any of them bad boys as we can find. If that don’t work, we can always adjust our methods to whatever the situation requires.”
So, that’s how we decided to play it. Got ourselves mounted and headed straight for the Broke Mill Saloon. Tied our animals outside a grocery and mercantile across Del Rio’s main thoroughfare named Rocha’s.
Wagon traffic passing up and down the street didn’t pan out near as problematic as I’d figured it might. Glo allowed as how most of the railroad’s numerous track crews were probably somewhere out west of town and wouldn’t return until a good bit after dark. Sounded reasonable to me.
Boz pulled his cut-down shotgun. He hoofed it for the alley between the Broke Mill and a leather-working outfit, where it appeared the owner mostly dealt in custom-made saddles.
According to my big-ticking Ingersoll pocket watch, Glo and me gave Boz five minutes to get situated. Then we sauntered across the near-deserted thoroughfare to a spot on the boardwalk out front of the watering hole’s fancy, bloodred batwing doors.
Being as how Pitt Murdock would for sure recognize my face first jump out of the box, I had Glo peek inside and give me a description of the layout. He stared over the door for near a minute before he nodded to the left and held up two fingers. “ ’S Murdock and Atwood,” he hissed.
Seemed some of our prey had gone missing. Didn’t matter one whit to me. I pulled at Glo’s sleeve and said, “Either of ’em goes for his weapon before we can brace ’em, don’t you dare hesitate. Send ’em straight to Jesus.”
We pushed our way inside. Unlimbered my belly gun as I stepped across the joint’s rugged threshold. I was immediately enveloped by a dark curtain of interior coolness. Cocked the weapon and held it next to my leg as we quickly sidestepped to the right. Heard the heavy hammers come back on Glo’s long-barreled Greener.
We eased our way over to the middle of the narrow, oblong room and took up spots about midway of a marble-topped, hand-carved, mahogany bar. Other than that astonishingly out-of-place liquor serving counter, wasn’t much that could be called fancy about the Broke Mill Saloon in the remotest stretch of the word’s definition.
The joint sported a dozen or so crude tables along the wall on our left. Spittoons the size of a Messican’s favorite sombrero were jammed under virtually every table and a thick layer of fresh sawdust covered the rough-cut board floor. Customers were scattered here and there, but not that many.
A snooker table, in serious need of a new covering of felt, filled the open bit of floor space at the far end of the bar. A couple of beer-swigging cowboys smoked hand-rolled ciga-reets and bumped balls back and forth. I spotted Boz standing near a potbellied stove in the corner opposite the dilapidated billiards table.
I can’t even begin to say how happy it made me when I spotted those two skunks huddled together like a couple of old biddies perched on the last railing in a henhouse. They were sitting at a table near the back of the room. Had their heads together and were engrossed in such deep, whispering discussions that neither of them appeared aware of me and Glo—leastwise, not at first.
A number of the regular tipplers sure enough took notice of our arrival, though. Right difficult not to detect a pair of heavily armed, hard-looking men who appear on the prowl for a fight. Several of the red-faced drunks eyeballed us like we carried some form of horrible disease that needed to be avoided at all costs. We had barely got situated when a good many of those boys threw down the remnants of their drinks and scurried for the door like cockroaches running from the light.
Guess me and Glo stood there next to the bar for nigh on fifteen seconds, letting everything sort itself out, before Pitt Murdock glanced over the rim of his dripping whiskey glass and spotted us. I flashed a friendly grin his direction and nodded like we were long-lost family that hadn’t seen each other in a spell.
I thought sure the man would have a brain-killing, eye-popper of a stroke. The beaker of panther sweat he held between trembling fingers hung on his bottom lip as if he’d suddenly become petrified. The ropelike scar I’d put across his ugly countenance, with a pistol barrel, glowed pink and suddenly got pinker, then damn near turned bloodred.
Color flooded up in the man’s neck and tinted his ears. Another second or so of glaring at me, and he threw the entire shot of hooch down in one swallow. He slammed the glass onto the tabletop with a resounding thud, then reached over and touched Tanner Atwood on the arm. He cut a rheumy, bloodshot gaze back our direction and nodded.
Atwood twisted in his wobbly, creaking seat, then let one hand fall beneath the table. He glared at me like he wanted to twist my head off and take a dump down the hole left in my neck. Then he whispered something to Murdock from the corner of a sneering, twisted mouth. The pair of them got to looking right wormy, but calmed a bit when Murdock glanced over his shoulder and spotted Boz standing in the corner behind them with his shotgun pointed their direction.
I nudged Glo with my elbow and whispered, “Well, let’s stroll on over and say howdy.”
Tension in the room shot through the roof as we moved to a spot less than ten feet from that pair of murderous swine. Couple of the remaining local boozehounds finally realized something dangerous was definitely afoot. Could see it on their pinched faces as they hastily threw back what remained of their most recent beaker of scamper juice and headed for the safer climes of anyplace except where gunfire might be about to ensue. Hollow- eyed Death himself had very definitely strolled into the Broke Mill. Anyone who could get out of Ole Bony Finger’s way was, for damned sure, heeling it for the perceived safety afforded them somewhere out along Del Rio’s central thoroughfare.
18
“DO YOUR WORST.”
PITT MURDOCK BROUGHT both hands up to the tabletop, pushed his chair back onto two legs, and said, “You’re just about the last man on this earth I expected to see today, Dodge. Swear to Jesus you are.”
Cocked pistol still held behind my leg, I grinned and said, “Sorry to put a crimp in your drinkin’, Pitt.”
Murdock twisted his stringy-haired head to one side like a mangy dog about to lift a foot and scratch a flea- riddled ear. He said, “See, Dodge, I done heard tell as how you’d went and got kilt all to hell and gone over in Rio Seco. ’Course I offered up prayers of thanks soon’s that more’n welcome news hit my baby-pink, shell-like ears.”
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
