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

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.”
    â€œWell, 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.
    â€œHow bad you hurt?” I said.
    â€œOh, not too awful much. Been hurt worse. Been shot in lots worse places, too.”
    â€œWell, 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. Literally shot him to pieces. Corpse leaked blood like we’d turned him into a human sieve. Could’ve read the Fort Worth Ledger through his bullet-riddled hide.
    From all we could determine, Deputy Cosner had made good on his threat. He’d touched off a single round that splattered Boston Teal’s pea-sized brain all over hell and yonder. Found a gory, fist-sized gob of the mess splattered across my back and shoulders. I was so preoccupied, though, I never even felt the man’s skull filler when it hit me.
    Me and Boz came to believe that Cosner must have figured that hiding behind Boston Teal was the safest place in town. Unfortunately the man couldn’t have been more wrong. Somebody still managed to put one through his right eye, and another bored its way through the tip of his nose. Made a hell of a mess. But we did discover, later on, as how he’d lied about a wife and child. Man was simply possessed of henhouse ways.
    Boz stood over Cosner’s corpse, shook his head, and said, “Guess the poor boy wasn’t as lucky as I figured.”
    And so, that bloody session of gun smoke and quick death is how me and a leg-shot Randall Bozworth Tatum came to rent a half-assed horse ranch and cattle operation out in the Devils River country, south of Sonora. We were both injured