Ralph Compton - Bounty Hunter

Despite his peevishness, Tone saw the logic in what Chastity was suggesting. It showed in his eyes, because the woman said, “What are you worried about, Tone? You’ll still get credit for the kill.”

That gave Tone pause. Bounty hunting was a dirty, sometimes violent and bloody business, but he’d never bragged on the men he’d killed and considered those who did to be low-life tinhorns.

Chastity knew his wages depended on gunning Kerr and five others, and that was why she’d told him he’d get the credit. But to hear it put so coldly and matter-offactly as she’d just done troubled him.

Or was it bounty hunting that troubled him? Had he ever been completely at ease killing men or tearing them away from their wives and children all in the name of supporting his expensive lifestyle in Reno?

Angry at himself now, realizing that having second thoughts about his profession was a form of betrayal, Tone shoved the notion from his mind. His reaction to his self-damning introspection was to tear the Chinese tunic off his back and yell, “Hell, I’m dressing like a white man. I’ve had enough of this coolie shit.”

Chastity’s voice was controlled, level. “Penman is trying to save your life, Tone, or at least keep you alive long enough to fulfill your contract. I suggest you do as he says and wear the Chinaman’s clothes.”

Tone threw the round hat across the room. “Penman is an idiot!”

The woman refused to be baited. In the same controlled voice she said, “He is far from being an idiot. He’s possessed of a shrewd, calculating brain that helped make Mr. Sprague a millionaire.” She smiled without warmth. “Don’t make the mistake of underestimating Luther Penman.”

Tone stripped off the shoulder rig and picked up his seaman’s jersey.

“Where did you get those shoulders, Tone?” Chastity asked, smiling.

“Down on the farm, when I was a boy.”

“Your father was a farmer?”

“Yes, and a good one. Then the British came and burned everything he had. My mother died, of grief, the doctor said, and me dad soon followed.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Ireland’s history is written in sorrow.” Tone pulled on the jersey. “Anyway, it all happened a long time ago when I still had songs to sing.”

“You don’t sing now?”

“No. I can recall the words of the songs, but the music has long since fled.”

“How sad that is.”

“I don’t need sympathy.” Tone strapped on the shoulder rig.

“No, I suppose you’re not a man who does. But it’s still sad.”

Tone shrugged into his peacoat, then donned his watch cap. He glanced in the mirror. “There. I look myself again.”

“You mean you’re a target again,” Chastity said.

“I mean I’m a bounty hunter with a job to do and I start doing it tonight.” He looked at the woman, a delicate, haunting beauty in the pale blue gaslight. “Are you ready?”

Chastity checked her derringer, then picked up her bundle of linens. “I’m ready.”

“Then let’s get it done,” Tone said.

Chapter 17

The Opera Comique was a large two-story frame and timber building located on what was locally known as Murderer’s Corner. The rain had stopped, but fog prowled the streets and alleys. When the sky was visible, the moon looked like a red pool tucked in the clouds and the night air smelled of the shoaling fish out in the bay. Earlier, the crowds had sought shelter from the drizzle in the saloons and there were few travelers on the streets.

To Tone’s joy, a fruit and vegetable stand stood opposite the door to the concert saloon, bare and abandoned now that darkness had fallen. The building behind the stand had fallen on hard times and was boarded up. A faded sign above its door said:

THE SEAMAN’S MISSION

Bible meetings at 7 p.m. and 10 p.m. every weeknight

Tone guided Chastity along the docks, well clear of the taverns and brothels, then angled toward the fruit stand.

“I’ll be here when you come out,” he said quietly. “Run across the road, then keep on going.” He pointed down Jackson Street. “That way. A lot of the streetlamps are out for some reason and there will be plenty of dark places to hole up until I find you.”

“When I come out, I’ll be yelling, ‘Murder! Murder! ’ ” Chastity said. “With luck, the guards at the door will ignore a hysterical Chinese girl and dash upstairs.”

“If they don’t, I’ll open up,” Tone said. “Then run like hell. Just be sure not to shoot me, because I’ll be right on your heels.”

In the shadowed night, the woman looked small and vulnerable. “You certain you’re up for this?” Tone asked. “You’re about to make a grandstand play, you know.”

“I’m up for it. I’ve been in worse scrapes.”

“Back!” Tone exclaimed suddenly. He pushed Chastity into the dark doorway of the abandoned mission.

A man had stepped out of the Opera Comique and a match flared as he lit his pipe, casting a brief red glare on his tough, bearded features.

He smoked for a few minutes, then tapped out his pipe on his heel and walked back inside.

“One of the guards,” Tone said. “He sure was a big feller.”

“You trying to scare me?” Chastity asked.

“He’ll be a bigger target, is all.”

“No, you tried to scare me, Tone, and you succeeded. I don’t know the whore’s room, or that Mickey Kerr will even be there.”

“Chastity,” Tone said, using the woman’s name for the first time since he met her, “let me do it. I’ll claim to be a friend of Mickey’s and say I’m going upstairs to talk to him.”

“And if the guards don’t let you pass?”

“Then I start shooting.”

Chastity shook her head. “I told you before, that won’t work.” She hefted her bundle of linens. “I’ll find her room.” She smiled. “Me askee nice mens at door.”

Then she was gone, trotting across the street. Tone watched her disappear into the Opera Comique . . . and suddenly he was chewing on his own heart.

He drew his guns, thumbed back the hammers for faster first shots, then crouched behind the fruit stand, his arms straight out in front of him, elbows resting on the rim of a wooden display box.

A minute passed . . . then another. . . .

Tone touched his tongue to his dry top lip. Where was the woman? What was happening? An errant breeze tugged at him, then swirled among the fog. He felt sweat on his palms.

A shot! Muffled by the walls of the saloon. Then one more.

Long moments dragged past. Tone stood, his guns up and ready.

Chastity ran out of the door, screaming, “Murder!” at the top of her lungs. She ran past Tone, grinned at him, then vanished into the gaslit gloom of Jackson Street.

Tone waited a few moments, watching for any pursuit. There was none, and he followed after Chastity. He caught up with her after a hundred yards. She was standing, waiting for him, outside a noisy dance hall.

The woman’s face was vibrant, alive, as though illuminated by a strange inner glow. It did not add to Chastity’s prettiness; rather, it detracted from it. To Tone, her radiance seemed unearthly . . . unholy.

Her words came out in a rush. “They let me upstairs, and the door wasn’t even locked. Mickey Kerr, I suppose it was him, had the woman kneeling on the bed and he was humping behind her, both of them as naked as jaybirds. He tried to go for his gun on the nightstand, but I shot him right between his eyes. The redheaded bitch opened her big mouth to scream and I put a bullet into it.”

Chastity held up a hammered-silver bracelet. “I took this off her wrist, then started screaming blue murder. The stupid guards ran past me on the stairs. Can you believe that?”