Lobo Loma

“Hey, lawdog!” a call came from the back of the smoke filled room.
Hopkins slowly turned, easing the rawhide thong from the hammer of his .44, to face a figure, materializing out of the Smokey haze. He was dressed in a sooty, wrinkled suit that fit him badly with short pants legs that exposed bare skin above laid over brogan shoes. He had a, round top, derby hat on his head, cocked to the side. Cagle couldn’t help but notice the Colt handle sticking out from behind his belt, in front.
“Were you talking to me, stranger?” Cagle drawled. His hand was already resting on his belt, thumb inside, three fingers from his .44 handle. “What can I do for you?” he asked.
“I’m Jed Perkins; you killed my brother, cold as a snake. You stopped his heart with a bullet and I’m here to stop yours.”
“So, you’re Ike Perkins’s brother,” Cagle drawled , watching the whole body of the challenger, looking for that certain twitch that always occurred in a man a half a heartbeat before he made his move. “Like I said, what can I do for you?”
“You can go to hell, you son-of-a-bitch.” There it was, that twitch of muscles. Jed’s hand swung to the Colt, grabbed the handle and had the pistol half out of his pants before Cagle went into action. Like greased lightning, his hand flashed to the handle of his .44, he drew, pointed and fired in half the time it took a man to blink. Cagle’s lead pill hit Jed Perkins right in the middle of his half open, yelling mouth, taking green stained, teeth out the back of his head and lodging them in the support post behind him.
He had a muscle jerk reaction that discharged his Colt, tucked in behind his belt and his own bullet hit him square in his manhood, tore through his nut sack, into his thigh, popped out through his left kneecap, landed on and rolled across the floor like a bloody marble, laying down a crimson trail and bumped into the toe of Cagle’s boot. All this happened while Perkins’ body flew back from the impact of the .44 slug, against the support post, hitting it below where his teeth were. The impact shook his teeth loose and they fell on top of his derby hat, like hail stones from a thunderous storm.
There was deadly silence after the roar of the gunfire echoed out the swinging doors. A cloud of thick smoke filled the air with a strong acrid odor and everyone was looking at the slumped body of Jed Perkins. The bartender leaned over the bar for a look at the corpse.
“Damn, Cagle, you turned him into a cripple,” O’Toole said.