Aboard the straight-talking train

Blowing curlicues of smoke after the fashion of an old time train, and pausing only occasionally to tap away dead finger-ends of ash, the sheriff once again struck up conversation, which he always prefigured with a contrived facial spasm loosening his reading glass so as to initiate unmediated ball-to-ball contact.

You're about the best deputy I ever had.

I appreciate that Sir, I surely do, especially since how's it coming from someone I much admire such as yourself.

But you're too much the butt licker. Save your candy and flowers for the whores.

The sheriff lent forward into the light to reveal purple thread veins vine weaving under pocked pores and punctuated the ensuing silence by stubbing the smouldering cigar stump into the tray with slow, deliberate twists of the wrist.