Cosner’s neck went red. Man stared at the toes of his boots. I barely heard him, when he squeaked, “Got a wife and child. Just cain’t chance it, fellers. Sorry.”
Boz broke the shotgun open, then examined each of its massive brass rounds. Big popper made a noisy, metallic click when he snapped it shut. My friend tilted his head to one side, as though somewhat sympathetic to Cosner’s situation. “Should’ve thought of your family before you pinned that badge to your shirt, ole son.”
Cosner moaned and looked sneaky.
“I ’uz you,” Boz went on, “I’d take me a job over at the mercantile selling flour, notions, and such. Maybe tending bar, chasing cows, or rentin’ rooms at the hotel. Bloody push comes to bloodier shove, my friend, appears you just ain’t up for curtains of blue whistlers and blisterin’ gun work.”
Then my partner turned and pointed at the front door with the twin-barreled coach gun. He threw me a knowing glanced and said, “Drunk as those bastards out there are, doubt any of them could hit the jailhouse with a pistol shot, much less one of us, Lucius. So, hell, open the gate, pard. Let’s see how she jumps.”
“Which direction you wanna go when we get outside?” I said.
He winked and grinned. “Why don’t you go ahead and step on out first, Lucius. Heel it to the right. I’ll follow and go left. Figure we’re close enough so’s I can put lead in at least three of ’em with Deputy Cosner’s big honking blaster here, first jump outta the box. So, you take whoever’s willing to do the talkin’. Figure that’s gonna be ole Irby. Shouldn’t be too much of a problem for me to deal with the rest.”
Well, I snatched that door open so fast it almost sucked the hats off them boys out in the street. Could tell it surprised most of them, more than a bit, when I came out the entryway with a cocked pistol in each hand, followed by Boz carrying that shoulder cannon of a shotgun.
Three of the Teal bunch staggered back about half a step. But brother Irby glared at us like he wanted to rip our heads off. Man didn’t move so much as a single whisker, near as I could tell. Hard-eyed and mean as hell, the man was more than ready for a fight.
“Just be goddamned,” Boston Teal’s oldest sibling thundered. “If it ain’t famed gun hound and man killer Texas Ranger Randall Bozworth Tatum.” He jerked a bullish head toward the right then added, “Keller here said he ’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.