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.”
Beneath an arched eyebrow, Boz snarled, “You helped murder the most part of an entire family, you scum-sucking bastard. Decent, God fearin’ people, no doubt. You know where the only one of those folks left living is. Best get to coughin’ up her location and right by-God now. Or, I swear ’fore Jesus, Tanner, you’re gonna wish yourself dead a thousand times over ’fore the sun goes down today. Get started and it can take me hours to finish up a project like this.”
I couldn’t believe my eyes or ears. Tanner Atwood actually spit a raspy, blood-soaked chuckle into Tatum’s face. He said, “S-S-Screw you and the horse you rode in on, you badge-totin’ son of a b-b-bitch.” Then he hacked again and spit blood onto my friend’s bib-front shirt. Sweet merciful Jesus, but that single act proved a horrendous error in judgment.
Slower than an Arkansas hound dog in August, Boz leaned over and placed the half-full beer bucket on the floor next to one of the snooker table’s thick, wooden legs. Then, quick as blue-tinted, pitchfork lightning, he grabbed up his makeshift cue-stick club and went to whacking on Atwood’s shins.
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 poor soul as a livin’ body can get. Hell, he just killed one of his own friends right in front of our faces. Blew the top of ole Murdock’s head clean off to keep the man from talking to us. Did the sorry deed with no more feeling than a body who’d just crushed a louse between his thumb and forefinger.”
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.”