My God, but I’ve never heard such a load of screaming from a single man in all my entire life, before or since. It sounded like Tatum was beating on a metal barrel filled with baby kittens. Made the hair on the back of my neck stand up and sent prickly, crawling chicken flesh running up and down between my sweaty, scrunched shoulder blades like waves on a storm-blasted beach.
Think Boz might’ve missed his target once or twice and cracked the murderous sack of hammered manure’s kneecaps a time or three. Looking back on that unmerciful beating, I’d guess he must’ve hit that poor, hard-headed brigand ten or fifteen stunning licks before he started slowing down. Appeared to me as how he just suddenly got tired. Decided to give that stick of his a rest.
Once the yelping and screeching died down a bit, Glo moved up next to me and said, “Mistuh Boz, you gotta stop this. Jus’ gotta stop this. Ain’t no call for such behavior. We ain’t the kind what does such things. We don’t be about torturing people. Even low-life, ass-lickin’ dogs like this ’un.”
The crazed wildness in Tatum’s eyes had grown more pronounced. Frightening thing to witness, you ask me. He leaned against the edge of the snooker table as though winded and said, “If you can’t handle what it’s necessary for us to do, Glo, go outside and wait on the boardwalk till I’m finished. This child-murderin’ slug’s gonna talk if it takes me till next week to make it happen.”
Glo gazed at the bloody mess that had, only a few minutes before, been a bold, self-assured, and confident Tanner Atwood. Great day in the morning, but that killer appeared to be floating in a growing pool of blood. That snooker table resembled the felt-covered floor of a barn where someone had slaughtered a sizable pig.
“Please, Mr. Boz. Let it go,” Glo said. “My solemn promise, I’ll track down them as took Miss Clementine. You know I can do it. No matter what it takes. I’ll start sniffin’ out their trail soon’s you want. Get on the track right now, might even have ’em in our sights ’fore night can fall. Help you kill ’em.”
Boz waved one hand at the battered, groaning, quivering glob of wickedness on the table. He stabbed a finger into Atwood’s heaving chest. Then he glared at Glo and said, “This evil bastard knows something he’s not telling us. Something that could easily get us all killed graveyard dead. Or maybe get Clementine Webb killed. Or both. Or worse, maybe she’s already dead. Top of all that, this tight-lipped weasel helped murder a man, his wife, and three kids in the most brutal fashion I’ve seen since the days when you and me used to chase them murderin’ Comanche all over Hell and Mexico. You forgot that already? Forgot what you saw in that little spot of green out on the river a few miles from the ranch.”
I could tell Glo was getting more agitated with each passing second. “Ain’t forgot nothin’, by God,” he snapped. “I ’uz there when we found them chil‘rens, and you know it, Mistuh Boz. It’s just that torturin’ this poor, damned soul ain’t proper. Just ain’t the right thing for men like us to be a-doin’.”
Think Boz could’ve bit the shoes off a draft horse when he growled, “Poor soul, my big hairy ass. Tanner Atwood’s about as far from a
Glo stared at his feet. “Seen the sorry deed my very own myself, Mistuh Boz. Damn well know as how I ’uz right here when it happened. Seen it,” he mumbled.
Boz snatched the pail of beer up and took another long, sloppy swig. He wiped his lips, pulled at the corner of his droopy moustache, and said, “Whatever it takes to save Clementine Webb is as right as rain, far as I’m concerned. Comes a time when good men have to step up and do whatever they have to do in an all out effort to save innocent lives. Right now we have it in our power to save the only remaining member of the entire Webb family. I won’t let that chance escape me without finding out exactly what we need to know, Glo.”
Glo said, “Be the first to admit as how we done terrible things when we ’uz killin’ Comanches back in the bad times, Mistuh Boz. But that were then, this is now, and this is different.”
“Not as far as I’m concerned. This is a bad time, too,” Boz said and shook a finger in Atwood’s direction. “And if I have to drag this son of a bitch down the street by the heels to the nearest butcher’s shop and feed him through a hand-crank meat grinder one bloody chunk at a time, then that’s what I’m gonna do.” He paused, pointed at the batwings and added, “I’ll turn his sorry ass into chili meat without a second thought. You can’t deal with it, or don’t want to deal with it, you need to wait outside ’cause this dance is about to get a helluva lot worse.”
A look of pained, muted panic rushed over Glo’s face. “What you gonna do now?” he said.
Boz snatched the pointed end of the stick from beneath the pool table’s cushioned railing. He held the jagged piece of polished wood up in Atwood’s face. Bent over next to the gunny’s ear, he hissed, “I’m gonna shove this into the bullet hole Lucius put in his chest, then I’m gonna lean on it till I push it all the way through him and the tip hits the slate under his back.”
Atwood sucked in a ragged, terrified gasp. He twisted back and forth like a snake trying to get out of a hot frying pan. Took in a number of terrified, bloody, gurgling, wheezy breaths. “All right,” he spat. “All right, for the love of God, I’ll tell you whatever you want. Just don’t go stab-bin’ me with the broke end of that stick.”
Boz suddenly looked tired to the bone. He tossed the broken piece of hickory onto the floor at his feet. The two-and-a-half-foot-long splinter of wood bounced and made a loud clacking sound, then rolled to a spot against the wall.
My friend snatched his hat off. He wiped thumb-sized beads of salty sweat away from his forehead with the sleeve of his shirt, then tiredly said, “Question’s still the same, Atwood. Hasn’t changed since first asked. Where’s the girl?”
I had to move closer to Atwood’s blood-soaked resting place to hear him. In truth, the man appeared but a step or two from his own demise and could barely speak. He said, “God’s truth, Tatum, I-I-I don’t k-k-know— exactly. Swear I don’t. Just know Webb gave her to Eagle Cutner. Told Eagle he could do with her as he pleased.”
Atwood’s surprising remark shot right past me and Boz. But Glo heard him well enough. He strode to the table like he just might pick Tatum’s stick up off the floor and go back to whacking on Atwood’s shins himself. He glared at the outlaw and growled, “You said, ‘
“Damned if he didn’t,” Boz mumbled and scratched a stubble-covered chin. “Heard it myself.”
Frothy, pink slobbers dribbled from the corners of Atwood’s grinning mouth. He coughed. A gobbet of blood the size of a hen egg squirted out onto his chest. A wet, bloody, almost unearthly chuckle rattled out from somewhere deep inside the dying outlaw. “That’s right. ’S exactly what I said. Got you boys doin’ a-right smart a- thinkin’ now, d-d-don’t I?”
20
“WHERE WOULD CUTNER TAKE THE GIRL?”
“PROP ME UP,” Tanner Atwood wheezed. “Gotta get me off my back, boys. Can’t seem to suck down enough air a-layin’ here like this.”
Glo grabbed several of the cushions off some of the cane-backed chairs provided for the Broke Mill’s snooker lovers. We helped the groaning, back-shooting lowlife into a sitting position and jammed the well-worn pads under his head, neck, and shoulders.
Once we’d got him somewhat comfortable, Boz offered the battered man another run at his tin bucket of beer. Atwood refused. Said, “Could sure ’nuff use some water though, Tatum. Mighty dry right now. Feels like I ain’t had a good, long, refreshin’ drink of water in years.”
While we waited, Glo rummaged around behind the bar and came up with a heavy-bottomed mug filled to the lip with cold, clear water. He helped get some down Atwood’s gullet, then, under his breath, I heard him say, “Best get to talkin’, Mistuh Atwood. Not sure we can stop Mistuh Boz again, if’n he takes it into his head to go a beatin’ on you some more.”
“I’ll try,” Atwood said, then gasped for air. “Gar-n-tee I’ll sure ’nuff try.”
Glo nodded, then added, “Well, I’ll gar-n-tee, if you don’t have somethin’ important to offer him, little girl’s screamin’ voice you’re gonna hear beggin’ for mercy is gonna be yours.”
Atwood gulped down near half that mug of liquid before he stopped. ’Course that set the thumb-sized hole in his chest to pumping blood out at a considerably faster pace. He set to clutching at the wound and let out a series
