Nate Coffin's Revenge Read Free

poor crazed beast headed any place away from the brutally bloody action. Took some seconds to scramble out of the pile of busted-up timber and rusted nails.
    Finally staggered to unsteady feet, just in time to see that Twiggens had Boz by the throat and held him in the air like a child’s corn-shuck doll. He rattled ole Boz, from head to foot, as easy as any whiskey slinger waves a wet bar rag at spilled booze on a busy Saturday night in Hell’s Half Acre.
    Figured out right quick my shotgun was about as worthless as a nail without a hammer. Would’ve killed both of them had I fired. Pitched the sawed-off aside, and pulled two pistols about the time Boz fumbled around and managed to get a grip on his short-barreled belly gun. He brought it up between the two of them and pushed the muzzle against his attacker’s breastbone.
    Barely heard the muffled blast from the Colt when it went off. Two shots knocked Twiggens backward and forced his fingers from around Boz’s neck. Both slugs came out of the big man’s back in separate wads of tissue, bone, and a vaporous cloud of bloody spray.
    My friend’s brutal method had the desired effect. Ole Dolphus dropped to his knees, coughed, spit, and clawed at his throat like he had a fistful of cockleburs stuck somewhere behind raw tonsils and couldn’t cough them up.
    He knee-walked a step or two, landed on his perforated back like an anvil dropped from Heaven. Stunned the hell out of me when he did a rubber ball and bounced right back up on wobbly legs like nothing had happened. Grabbed at the two holes in his chest, and let out a shriek that made my eyes water.
    Then, I swear before Jesus, he bent over and puked gouts of blood, bone, and everything he’d eaten in a week. Straightened up, and shot a murderous glance my direction. Stumbled toward me with one arm out like a blind drunk searching for a hidden bottle of Old Spider Killer. Tripped over poor Sunset’s gore-drenched neck, fell, and hopped up again. A blood-saturated hand the size of a camp skillet covered holes in his chest that oozed and bubbled a crimson froth.
    Have to admit, I found myself in something of a state of flabbergastedness. Hell, I’d never witnessed anything to match it. Stood like a tree rooted since the beginning of recorded time. Couldn’t believe a man as dead as the twice-shot Dolphus Twiggens could still suck air and move around. But by God he could, and headed for me with the look of death on an ashen skull of a face and murder in his flat black eyes.
    Must have finally come back to myself when he was almost on top of me. Would wager I ripped off half a dozen shots fast as I could thumb them. Got him dead center with every single one of those bullets, but he kept coming. Dead man stumbled one final step, and fell on me like a downtown Dallas brick bank building. Damn near crushed the life out of me—right on the spot.
    Not sure how long I laid there and tried to push that gushing three-hundred-pound corpse off. Couldn’t breathe worth a bucket of cold spit. Then, of a sudden, the weight rolled away, and Boz jerked me up by the collar. Helped me over to the porch and made me sit. Slapped me on the back till I thought my eyes would pop out. Had me bend over at the waist and take in as much air as I could. Got all my innards started back up again.
    Then he stomped over to the corpse and went to talking to it. “Hope you like the way everything turned out, you crazy bastard. Just couldn’t go peaceable, could you? Just had to fight. Made up your feeble-assed mind not to get hung. Settled on gettin’ shot all to hell and gone. And on top of everything else, you killed my horse, you son of a bitch.”
    For a few seconds I went to thinking as how maybe my friend and mentor had completely lost his mind. He finally did come back around to something like sanity. But that was only after he’d pulled his hip pistol and plugged ole Dolphus three more times. Said it was just to make sure, you