All Shot Up Read Online Free

dialects and the Seminole language; and she spoke English with a strange, indefinable accent that sounded somewhat similar to a conference of crows.
    “What you two p’licemens whispering about so seriously?” she asked suspiciously.
    It took a moment before they could piece together what she said.
    “We got a bet,” Grave Digger replied with a straight face.
    “Naw we haven’t,” Coffin Ed denied.
    “You p’licemens,” she said scornfully. “Gamblin’ an’ carryin’ on an’ whippin’ innocent folkses’ heads with your big pistols.”
    “Not if they’re innocent,” Grave Digger contradicted.
    “Don’t tell me,” she said argumentatively. “I has seen you.” She curled her thick, sensuous lips. “Whippin’ grown men about as if they was children. Mister Louise wouldn’t stand for it,” she added, looking slyly from her husband’s desperate face to the slobbering bulldog. “Get up, Mister Louise, and show these p’licemens how you captured them train robbers that time.”
    Mister Louise looked at her gratefully and started to his feet. The bulldog raised up and growled a warning; Mister Louise slumped back into his seat.
    Mammy Louise winked her off eye at the detectives. “Mister Louise ain’t so pokey tonight,” she explained. “He just want to set here and keep me company.”
    “So we noticed,” Coffin Ed said.
    Mister Louise stared longingly at the long-barreled, nickel-plated .38 caliber revolvers sticking from the two detectives’ shoulder holsters.
    They heard the front door to the store open and bang shut. Feet stamped. A whisky-thick voice called, “Hey, Mammy Louise, come out here and give me a pot of them frozen chitterlings.”
    She waddled through the curtained doorway leading to the store. They heard her opening a five-gallon milk can and shuffling about, and the customer protesting, “I don’t wants them loose chitterlings; I wants some frozen chitterlings,” and her sharp reply, “If you wants to eat ’em frozen just take ’em outside and freeze ’em; hit’s cold enough.”
    Grave Digger said, “Mammy Louise can’t stand this Northern climate.”
    “She got enough fat to keep her warm at the North Pole,” Coffin Ed replied.
    “The trouble is, her fat gets cold.”
    Mister Louise begged in a piteous voice, “One of you gentlemens shoot him for me, won’t you.” He glanced toward the curtained doorway and added, “I’ll pay you.”
    “It wouldn’t kill him,” Coffin Ed replied solemnly.
    “Bullets would just bounce off his head,” Grave Digger supplemented.
    Mammy Louise came back and looked at her husband suspiciously. Then she said to the detectives, “Your car is talking.”
    “I’ll get it,” Grave Digger said, getting to his feet before he’d finished saying it.
    He slipped an arm through his jacket, grabbed his hat from the peg and pushed through the curtains as he poked his second arm into its sleeve.
    The bulldog rolled its pink eyes at his receding figure and looked at Mammy Louise for instructions. But she paid it no attention. She was half moaning to herself. “Trouble, always trouble in dis wicked city. Whar Ah comes from—”
    “There ain’t no law,” Coffin Ed cut her off as he put on his jacket. “Folks cut one another’s throats and go on about their business.”
    “It’s better than getting kilt by the law,” she argued. “You can’t pay for one death by another one. Salvation ain’t the swapping market.”
    Coffin Ed jammed his hat on his head, turned up the brim and slipped into his overcoat.
    “Tell it to the voters, Mammy,” he said absently as he took down Grave Digger’s overcoat and straightened out a sleeve. “I didn’t make these laws.”
    “I’ll tell it to everybody,” she said.
    Grave Digger came back in a hurry. His face was set.
    “Hell’s broke loose on the street,” he said, poking his arm into the coat Coffin Ed held for him.
    “We’d better hop it then,” Coffin Ed said.
    Unnoticed by