Of White Snakes and Misshaped Owls by Debra Hyde

Author:Debra Hyde [Hyde, Debra]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

The night had turned glorious for the murderer. Where his boys had indulged themselves and consumed his whiskey, he had been cautious. It seemed everyone in the tavern that night was intent on indulging with wild drunkenness as the outcome. Let them, he decided. It'll give me plenty of opportunity to prove myself.

At The Morgue, boozing often led to boasting and boasting to arguments—and such differences of opinions were more often than not settled through gunfire.

Men that drunk rarely killed each other outright. If they had the wherewithal to even lift their gats and pull the trigger, they rarely had the ability to aim. It was not uncommon for the gang to engage in an hour-long gun fight and emerge with hardly a scratch, they'd been so blinded by booze. Regardless, he saw such an evening brewing and excused himself and Meg from the floor. Passing by McGloin with a nod, he headed upstairs to make good use of his woman.

He must have slept through the haphazard battle when it came, waking only when McGloin himself came to his bedside and shook him. He rose, pulled his pants on and shrugged a shirt into place, then followed the man downstairs. There, he found tables upended, chairs strewn about and some broken. Most of the crowd had scattered, leaving about only a few knocked heads, bruised fists and broken knuckles.

McGloin had already triaged the place, ordering it vacated, and he could see why. His right-hand man had been hit. So had another chap—someone who had likely passed out in his seat—but from the brain and bone splatter, he never knew what had hit him. McGloin's man did, though. Blood seeped from his neck but the mess was not as serious as the bleeding suggested. The burly fellow was sound enough to complain about the pain like a little crybaby, meaning the bullet hadn't hit anything substantial like a windpipe or the jaw—or the jugular.

A quick examination showed the bullet had caught and passed through the side of his neck. Nearby, the gang's current doctor, Old Bones McGregor, snored in his own stupor. Had he been sober, he would've assessed the man as much by touch and feel as by cloudy sight. He smiled, glad that the woes of an old man had provided this in with McGloin,

“Clean shot,” he told the man. “Bullet passed right through.”

“But my jugular!” the fellow exclaimed, as piss-drunk as the rest of them.

“A bullet through your jugular and you'd be too busy dying to complain.” He wanted to say, You oaf! but he held back. The man was, after all, McGloin's second. But a smart man would go places in this gang, and being a smart man, he was sure it would be him.

A few stitches here and a few stitches there closed the wounds, his patient squealing like a frightened little girl the entire time. He grinned. Yes, the night had turned glorious indeed.

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