Ralph Compton - Bounty Hunter

“And this young bandit, do you suppose he is with the woman now?”

Chang shrugged. “If he was a real person, I think he would wait until tonight.”

“And where would the woman dwell?” Chastity asked.

“If she was a real person, she would have a room above the Opera Comique at the corner of Jackson and Kearny.”

“And this young bandit, does he have a name?”

“He is not a real person, so he has no name.” Chang looked sly. “But he was the least of the bandits because his brothers were much more feared and powerful. You can give him a name and, if I like it, I will nod.”

Chastity looked at Tone. “There’s only one man suits that description. His name is Mickey Kerr and he strong-arms for the others.”

Chang was nodding vehemently and the woman said to him, “A very interesting story, Mr. Chang. A pity it’s not true.”

“Yes, a pity. But alas, it is just a good-news fairy tale.” Chang bowed to Chastity. “If you need anything, Miss Christian, my office is at the front of the hallway.”

After the man left, Chastity threw a bundle of Chinese clothes to Tone. “Wear these and get used to them.” She took hers behind the screen and began to undress.

“I’m going after Mickey Kerr tonight and start earning my money,” Tone said, talking to rice paper and cherry blossoms.

“No, we are,” Chastity said. “Both of us.”

“It’s something I have to do myself.”

Chastity screeched in horror and Tone stepped quickly to the screen. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing. I just discovered what Chinese women wear in place of bloomers. They’re . . . they’re . . . indecent.”

“Let me see,” Tone said.

“Back off,” Chastity said. “I told you, they’re downright indecent.” A rustling pause, then, “But comfortable, though.”

Tone was having his own problems. Chang had obviously described him to his seamstress as a giant, because his blue tunic swamped him, the sleeves falling over his hands. The baggy black pants were also voluminous, the crotch sagging between his thighs.

Then he remembered his holsters. Sighing, he yanked off the shirt and strapped himself into the harness. A two-gun rig is uncomfortable at the best of times, but the leather and buckles chafed against his bare chest when he moved around.

There was nothing to be done about it. He couldn’t wear his guns over the tunic in full view of everybody.

“Ready?” Chastity asked from behind the screen.

She stepped into the room and Tone felt his breath catch in his throat. She wore a pink embroidered tunic that showed off every luscious curve of her body and her dark hair fell in glossy waves over her shoulders.

“You look . . . You look . . .” Tone couldn’t find the words.

“Ugly?”

“No! No! You look . . . wonderful.”

The woman joined her hands together in front of her breasts and bowed low. “Thank you, kind sir.” She studied Tone from his shoes to the top of his head. “And you look—”

“I know what I look like.”

“Since you don’t have a pigtail, a hat will cover your hair, but the big mustache has to go.”

Tone was horrified. “It’s taken me years to get this mustache to where I like it. It stays. Rather than shave it off, I’d dress like a sailor again and take my chances.”

Chastity shrugged. “Your funeral, Mr. Tone.” “Thanks, but when we’re in bed you can call me John.”

Chastity gave him a sidelong glance but said nothing.

She picked up her bag off the floor and laid it on the bed. She removed her .41-caliber Remington over-and-under derringer and a strange-looking gun rig that Tone had never seen before.

The woman held it up for him to see. “It’s a sleeve holster. Not something I use often,” she said. She raised an arm, revealing the wide sleeve of her tunic. “But tonight, this will conceal it.”

The holster was finely crafted of soft, thin leather, and two thin straps secured it to Chastity’s forearm. The derringer snapped into a leather-covered metal clip.

Chastity let her sleeve cover the rig, then she raised her arm and opened her hand. The derringer sprang into her palm, hammer up and ready.

“I had it made for me in El Paso,” she said. “It’s uncomfortable to wear, like your shoulder holsters, but, under certain circumstances, quite effective.”

Tone smiled as Chastity replaced the derringer in the rig. “I’ve got to get me one of those,” he said.

“Then you’d better wear a coat with roomy enough sleeves or the gun will snag inside and you’ll be a dead man.”

“A thing to remember,” Tone said, immediately losing any passing interest he might have had in sleeve holsters.

He stepped to the window and glanced outside, bending to see the sky. It was still raining, but the dark clouds were splintered with light.

“Long time until dark,” Tone said. He looked at Chastity and raised an eyebrow. “What can we do to pass the dreary hours?”

“I’ll get Chang to bring you a book,” the woman said.

Chapter 16

Night fell along the Barbary Coast and the streets thronged with sailors who rubbed shoulders with drovers down from the hills, bearded miners, rubes from the sticks and respectable businessmen in from the city who knew that any degenerate appetite they possessed, no matter how perverted, would be satisfied, so long as they had money to pay. Amid this bedlam bustled thugs, murderers, thieves, burglars, gamblers, pimps and whores, scuttling through the darkness like cockroaches.

The rain that had promised to stop had lied, and now fell in a light drizzle that added its gray curtain to the veil of the fog. Wet cobblestones gleamed like polished blue iron in the light of the streetlamps and passing cabs threw up cascades of water from their rattling wheels.

A gas lamp burned in the rear room of Chang’s house in Murder Alley, the window a rectangle of pale turquoise in the gloom.

Inside, John Tone was not in the best of moods. The round Chinese hat Chang had given him to wear was, like his clothes, too big for him and kept falling down over his eyes. Irritably, he pushed it back for the tenth time that evening, then growled when Chastity asked him a question.

Getting no answer, she asked it again: “How do you want to play this?”

Tone snatched the infernal hat off his head and glared at the woman. “Mickey Kerr is visiting his lady-love in her room above the Opera Comique. I plan to climb the stairs, kick in the door and gun him. Then I’ll turn around and get the hell out of there.”

Chastity nodded. “A fine plan, Tone. Just a couple of problems: One, Luther Penman told me the Opera Comique is a concert saloon with a dance hall in the cellar. The front door will be guarded and they won’t let you inside. You’re supposed to be Chinese, remember? And two, you’d never get out of there alive after shooting Kerr.”

Fighting down his irritation, Tone said, “Then what, pray, do you suggest?”

“I’ll go inside and take care of Kerr. But when I come out again, I want your guns covering me.”

“You’re also supposed to be Chinese, you know. Why would they let you inside and not me?”

Chastity stepped to the closet. She settled a straw coolie hat on her head, then picked up a bundle of clothing. Taking small, mincing steps, she trotted toward Tone, carrying the bundle.

“Let pass, please,” she said in a high, accented voice, keeping her head down, her face covered by the wide brim of the hat. “Laundlee for missy upstairs. She in velly big hurry.” She looked at Tone and said in her normal voice. “The toughs at the door will let me go. They’ll probably grope my tits and ass as I run past, but I’ll get to Mickey Kerr.”