Ralph Compton - Bounty Hunter

How would she be in bed?

He let his mind wander . . . wondering . . . straying far from the cold rain of his immediate surroundings into soft, scented, silken places. . . .

The cab rocked to a halt. “Here is it, folks,” the driver called from his perch. “Hans Gruber the gunsmith.”

Tone helped Chastity from the cab and retrieved the bags that they’d earlier picked up at her hotel. He paid the driver and saw that the woman had already walked into the gun store, a small one-story building wedged between a couple of run-down office blocks within sight of the waterfront.

Stepping inside, Tone took a moment to enjoy the familiar odor of gun oil and leather and the gleam of light on blue metal, then walked up to the counter.

Chastity was browsing display cases of revolvers when Gruber stepped out of his workshop and greeted Tone. The German was a tall man, stooped, with large, capable hands, surrounded by that almost unworldly aura of serenity that all good gunsmiths seem to possess.

Tone explained his needs: something small but hard-hitting and the leather to conceal it effectively.

The gunsmith beamed. “You’re in luck, mein Herr. I have the very thing.” He disappeared into his workshop and when he returned he laid two beautiful guns and a fancy double-rig shoulder holster on the counter.

“A matching pair of double-action, Colt Model 1877 revolvers, ivory grips, nickel-plated, in .38 caliber,” Gruber said proudly. “They have two-and-a-half-inch barrels and I tuned the triggers myself for the gentleman who owned them.”

“Why did the gentleman part with them?” Tone asked.

“It was an unwilling parting, I’m afraid. The gentleman was a gambler, now deceased, who was fast on the deal but slow on the draw. Since he owed me money, I claimed the guns from his estate.”

Tone picked up the Colts, smiling as he admired their heft and excellent balance. He tried the triggers, which were as smooth as silk, breaking crisp and clean, like glass rods. Chastity looked over his shoulder, nodded her approval, but said nothing.

Deciding to strike while the iron was hot, the German said, “I’ll throw in the leather at no charge. Now, the price for the pair of revolvers is—”

“I don’t care what they cost,” Tone said. “Luther Penman is paying for them.”

Gruber looked slightly disappointed. “In the past, Mr. Penman has sent several gentlemen here to be armed,” he said. “He always pays his bills, of course, but never on time.”

“I’ll take the Colts,” Tone said. “And a box of cartridges to go with them.”

“I load my own ammunition,” Gruber said, brightening. “Each round is top quality, mein Herr, and I guarantee that you will never have a misfire.”

The gunsmith sacked up the guns, then said, “If you ever need anything else, you know where to come . . . Herr . . . um . . .”

“Tone, John Tone.”

It was obvious that Gruber had heard the name before. Men talk of arms in gun shops and of the pistoleros who use them.

“Would you be the John Tone from up Reno, Nevada, way?”

“I would.”

“Then this is an honor, Herr Tone. I spent many hours tuning those Colts and I’m happy that they’re going to a man who can appreciate them and use them well. Their last owner was a fine gentleman who fancied himself a gunfighter, but wasn’t.”

“What was his name?” Chastity asked, speaking for the first time.

“Nathan Black, ma’am,” Gruber answered.

“Never heard of him,” Chastity said.

The gun shop was within walking distance of the waterfront, but Tone waved down a cab, not wanting to take a chance on being recognized by an early riser, unlikely as that was.

The driver, an elderly man wearing an oilskin coat and a battered top hat, allowed that if it was after dark and not morning, it would take a hundred dollars and a cavalry escort to get him to set foot in Murder Alley, but since the thugs and dance-hall loungers would still be in bed he’d take the chance and be damned to all of them.

As they clattered over the cobbles, Chastity determinedly kept her eyes to the front, saying nothing. But her rounded hip pressed closer to Tone on the seat, whether by accident or design, he could not guess.

Chapter 15

The Barbary Coast’s Murder Alley was so named long before the Chinese took it over. So narrow that the rain barely fell on its cobbled street, it was lined with gimcrack stores, opium dens and brothels. Even at that early hour, the alley was thronged with people speaking a rapid language that rose and fell like the call of birds.

Tone stopped men and women, asking for Chang’s house. They bustled past him without answering, either not understanding what he said or at least pretending they didn’t.

Finally Chastity convinced an old woman sitting in the doorway of a store to point out the house, a rickety, unpainted frame and timber building that teetered alarmingly into the alley as it soared to a second and then an overhanging third floor.

A tiny wizened man, who seemed to carry the wisdom of centuries in his black eyes, opened the door. He had obviously been well briefed by Penman because he looked at Chastity and smiled. “I am Chang, Miss Christian. Welcome to my humble abode.”

Chastity and Tone stepped into a hallway that smelled of incense, boiled cabbage and sex. This early in the morning, there were no women in evidence, but nailed to each doorway along the corridor was a framed, well-painted picture of the specialty of the woman inside. It seemed that every facet of men’s lust was covered, plus a few even the most perverted of them probably never imagined.

Tone expected to see a maidenly blush on Chastity’s cheeks and downcast eyes, but instead she closely studied each illustration and finally gave her verdict to Tone, summing it up in a single word: “Exhausting.”

Chang led the way to the end of the hall and opened the door to a sparsely furnished room with a dresser and chair, a rice-paper screen painted with cherry blossoms and, Tone noticed immediately, a single iron bedstead made up with a thick mattress and clean sheets and pillows.

If Chastity took note of the sleeping arrangements, she didn’t let it show. “Mr. Chang,” she said, her voice brittle and businesslike, “you have clothing for us?”

“Yes, Miss Christian, for you and the gentleman.” He looked Tone up and down. “I had his specially made by a seamstress I can trust.”

He opened a door that Tone had thought led to another room, but it turned out to be a closet, with a variety of folded pants and colorful tunics on the shelves.

Chastity stepped to the closet, inspected the clothes, then turned to Chang. “Those will do nicely. You will arrange food and drink, should we require it?”

The Chinese bowed. “But of course, Miss Christian.”

Chastity sat on the edge of the bed. “Do you have information for myself and Mr. Tone?”

Chang shook his head, his lined face grave. “I have no information to give. I am not an informer, for that is a dangerous occupation along the waterfront. But I can pass on good news. Good news is always welcome, is it not?”

“I like to hear good news,” Chastity said evenly.

The Chinese man smiled. “Then here is a good-news story. Once there was a certain bandit who lived with his five brothers in a big house by the great ocean. Now this bandit did not wish to stay home, but left almost every night to visit a fallen woman. The bandit’s behavior was so strange that his brothers began to laugh and say that he’d fallen in love with a whore. The young bandit didn’t mind; he went on visiting the woman, and still does to this very day. All this was very good news for his enemies, for they hated the young man and planned to cut off his head.”