And Kill Them All by J. Lee Butts Read Free Book Online

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