And Kill Them All Read Online Free PDF Page B

against some of those iron straps. “Yeah, you badge-wearin’, ass-ugly bastard. Whaddaya want?”
    Boz’s hand darted forward like a fanged diamondback’s poison-filled head. Somehow, and don’t ask me how he managed it, my friend got his fingers laced into that surprised outlaw’s scraggly moustaches and beard. He latched on and jerked the man’s face up against that metal cage with a resounding clunk and held on like a Mississippi snapping turtle. Bounced Teal’s empty-sounding noggin off that cell door three or four times before he finally spoke.
    I barely heard him when Boz leaned up next to Teal’s bloody ear and hissed, “Sit down on your cot, and shut your irritating mouth.”
    Got to give Teal the credit where it’s due, he didn’t back off much. With blood-oozing lips pressed against the cell’s door, man could barely speak when he muttered, “An’ if’n I doan, whachu figger on doin’, you goober-headed turd knocker?”
    A twisted, nigh gleeful smile crept across Boz’s face. “I’ll have Deputy Cosner open this door for me. Then, I’ll come in there and kick your lardy backside till your nose bleeds.”
    Teal matched Boz’s sneer with a mocking grin of his own and said, “The hell you say.”
    Boz broke into a pleased smile. “The hell I do say, Boston ole friend. Get started and I just might keep on bootin’ your blubbery rump till you’ll have to unbutton your shirt when you’re once again able to hobble your way to an outhouse. Then I could just go on and stomp on that damaged foot of yours till it thunders. Hell, have to admit I’m right on the irritated edge of believing as how I might be willing to work like a Georgia field hand kicking the crap out of you.”
    Then, damned if he didn’t jerk one whole lip’s worth of Boston Teal’s whiskers right out of the man’s face. Toeless outlaw grabbed his mouth and went to bellering like a red-eyed cow. Hooted and hopped around the tiny enclosure on his only usable foot. Squirrelly bastard cussed everyone ever born from Adam to the most recent president. Ranted, raved, and acted like a mistreated lunatic.
    â€™Course Boz thought that was the funniest thing he’d seen in about ten years. Man laughed like something crazed as he strolled back toward the marshal’s rickety desk. Still in mid-chuckle when he flicked a wad of Teal’s lip hair onto the floor. Stuff hadn’t come to rest when several loud thumps and breaking glass against the jail’s front façade jerked our attention to the shuttered windows and barred door.
    I already had a pistol in each hand when I heard someone out in the street yell, “You mother-humpin’ lawmen get your sorry selves on out here, and right by-God now. Come on out, Deppidy Cosner. Bring your idiot friends with you. Gonna cut you boys down pocket high.”

4
    â€œMEANER’N A BUCKET OF TEASED RATTLERS.”
    WITH ONE BULGED eye pressed against the hoosegow’s partially opened peep slot, Boz crooked a finger my direction. “Take a gander at this, Lucius,” he said, then stepped out of the way as I strode up to the viewing port.
    I took my friend’s place and peeked outside. Four men swayed in Rio Seco’s central thoroughfare like a stand of drunken cottonwood saplings in a light, blistering hot breeze. The quartet couldn’t have been more than twenty feet from the boardwalk that ran along the calaboose’s front entrance.
    Unshaven, red-faced, and grubby as hell, all those boys bristled with pistols and knives. One feller carried an amputated shotgun that appeared to have been sawed down from both the barrel and stock ends. A tall, disheveled joker, who bore a striking resemblance to Deputy Cosner’s prisoner, occupied a spot about a step ahead of the other three. While I watched, he threw his scruffy head back and tried to