And Kill Them All (21 page)

Pool stick that Boz grasped in both hands sounded like another pistol shot when he cracked it over one knee. He held up the two freshly rendered pieces as though looking for something special. Compared both halves like a jeweler working on an antique watch. Laid the narrowest and sharpest of the pair on the table next to the side cushion. One handed, he waved the big end over Atwood's nose.

“You're gonna answer Ranger Lucius ‘By God' Dodge's questions, Tanner, or I'm gonna beat the hell out of you,” Boz said and grinned. “You don't get to jabberin' like a trained parrot, swear 'fore a benevolent Jesus, you're gonna wish your mama'd never given birth to your sorry ass by the time I get finished.”

Atwood rolled his wobbly head Boz's direction. He let out an overly confident snicker. I've always felt the man's conduct was ill considered at best, but I thought him downright crazy when he hissed between bloody teeth, “Do your worst, Tatum.”

Chest shot, bleeding like hell, well on his way to a certain death, no doubt in my mind the man couldn't have been thinking straight. This misguided challenge was all the encouragement Randall Bozworth Tatum needed.

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.”

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, ‘
Webb
gave her to Eagle Cutner.' Ain't that right, mister? Didn't I just hear you say, ‘
Webb
gave her to Eagle Cutner'?”

“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 of pitiful, near heartrending moans.