Tull had spat in the dead man’s carcass with utter contempt.
On the way back to the train, one of the other passengers misguidedly bushwhacked Tull and the other passengers dog-piled him and knocked him to the ground. Afterwards, they’d tied him up and thrown him over the side of the dead man’s half Mustang gelding. Tull hadn’t put up a fuss, because he figured someone in that posse would have safe vouched him and borne witness to the fact the perverted lawdog had tried to face-rape and possibly turn to sodomy afterwards. But not an one of those cowardly mongrels stood forth and witnessed that Tull Morrison had committed no more crime than to try and defend himself from a deviant attacker who’d held him at knife-point. Tull was appointed a tired, bloodhound faced public defender who hadn’t been worth the spittle Tull had wasted on the deviant lawman, and the circuit judge, who was half-baked on locoweed gave Tull five years’ hard labour at the Yuma Territorial Prison. Tull had created havoc in the courtroom that afternoon, busted the pot bellied judge in the mouth, breaking his bulbish nose and knocking out a couple of his rotting yellowed teeth. He’d gotten life without parole ( a ruling an expensive attorney-at-law from San Francisco had later over turned) and spent the first night in prison in solitary confinement.
Life in the prison had been nightmarish for Tull who was quite a handsome feller, even with all the scars his misadvantures inside the prison had garnered him. And at the end of five years; because he’d gone to the defence of one of the bulls during an attempted prison riot, in the which several visitors had been taken hostage, he was released back into society under his own recognizance as hard bitten and bitter a man as had ever spent time behind swinging bar doors. He left the Yuma Territorial Prison wearing a brand new tailored suit, made for him by the bull’s grateful mail-order Russian bride and the watch fob and weapons and slouch hat and boots of the degenerate lawman he’d slain. All these Tull obtained when one of the girlfriends of one of the train passengers who’d formed the posse which later been instrumental in getting him sent to prison came forward and testified on his behalf. The public defender who worked his case; having learned of his release, had bribed the evidence room clerk to turn over the murdered marshall’s personal effects over to him and he’d given them; including the mashall’s badge, to Tull Morrison.. The Russian woman; who’d looked far older than the date of birth she’d given Tull, had come forward after her man’s death by the fever, because she’d wanted a man; any man, to help rear her children and work her homestead. Tull had spent one night in the frigid woman’s bed, but had pushed on, before the sun rose over the Arizona sky the next day. He might have eventually helped the woman overcome her frigidity, but Tull was gonna be damned before he helped rear the children of the son-of-a-bitch who’d helped him get sent away in the first place.
Now, months later, he was riding around the country masquerading as a US Marshall, acting the part of a vigilante and putting paid to any lawman he found to be abusing the powers granted him by the wearing of a badge. But Buford Holdermann had had friends in Arizona Territory and somehow they’d caught wind of Morrison’s release and came gunning for him. He’d killed all those who’d come for him; thus far, and had garnered quite a collection of rifles and revolvers in the doing,…
“Door’s open, ” Tull croaked “I’m too tired ta come to th’ door, so’s you c’n let yourself in.”
Even while he was yet speaking a sloe eyed, succulent titted and large, round-assed mulatto girl, who couldn’t have been more than fifteen,; if that, crossed the threshold of his room and came in out of the blast furnace heat.
