’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. Stumbled 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.
