Ralph Compton - Bounty Hunter

Chastity let the poker thud to the floor. She looked at Sprague, her hair wild, her eyes wilder. “Now, Lambert,” she gasped. “Take me now!”

Sprague jumped to his feet and grabbed the woman’s arm, pushing her roughly toward the door. “Get rid of that mess, Jack,” he threw over his shoulder. Then he and Chastity were gone.

Tone sat on the chair, his face buried in his hands as shrieks of a different kind rang through the top floor of Sprague’s house—the cries of a madwoman in demented rapture.

Chapter 20

Tone had been allotted a guest room on the ground floor of Sprague’s house, ornately and overly decorated in the respectable middle-class fashion of the time.

The only point of interest was a portrait of Lambert Sprague, resplendent in the gray and gold of a Confederate naval officer, that hung on one wall. Sprague, twenty years younger and heavily bearded, leaned confidently against a cannon, posing stiffly for the camera.

Tone looked up at the picture, wondering if it had been taken before or after the gallant captain had turned from blockade runner to pirate.

He turned as someone knocked on the door and swung it open.

Sprague stepped into the room, Blind Jack and a couple of armed sailors backing him.

Tone’s guns were on the bed, too far a reach if the man planned a shooting.

“How are you, Mr. Tone?” Sprague asked pleasantly. “Do you find your quarters comfortable?”

Allowing that he did, Tone added, “To what do I owe this honor?”

“Ah, there’s big happenings afoot, Mr. Tone, and tonight you and I will be part of them.” He moved to the side of the bed, a seemingly casual change of position that nonetheless put him between Tone and his guns.

“But first, I have something to tell you.” Sprague shook his head, almost sadly. “By this time you know that I dislike unpleasantness of any sort, but what I have to say must be said. Do you understand?”

“I don’t like to see a man, any man, tortured,” Tone answered.

“Yes, and there we have the crux of the matter, so I will state my position fairly and clearly.” He smiled, but quickly replaced it by an angry scowl. “If you ever try to cross me again, I will have Blind Jack break every bone in your body, one by one, starting at your toes. Trust me, Mr. Tone, it is a most painful death.”

Tone realized he was on dangerous ground. Blind Jack and the sailors were alert and ready and he read no backup in their eyes.

“The man knew nothing,” he said. “There was no point in torturing him further.”

“A simple apology will do, Mr. Tone.”

Swallowing his pride like a dry chicken bone, Tone said, “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have interfered.”

“There,” Sprague beamed. “It’s done, and we are perfect friends again.”

The man sat on the bed. “Since our friend Johnny Kemp disappointed us, I have a plan to bring the rats out of their holes. Joe Carpenter owns the Bucket of Blood saloon, and other dives besides, but it is from the saloon that he derives most of his income. Tonight we will put a dent in his little gold mine.”

He turned his head. “Jack, the bomb.”

The blind man handed a burlap sack to Sprague, who held it open so Tone could see inside. “It’s a ten-pound cast-iron grenade filled with lead balls, on a fifteen-second fuse. When this goes up inside the Bucket of Blood it will destroy the whole rotten den.”

“And a whole lot of people,” Tone said.

Sprague cocked his head to one side. “Mr. Tone, I’m beginning to suspect you don’t have the belly for this kind of work. This isn’t Dodge City, it’s the Barbary Coast, and we do things a little differently here.”

“Why kill innocent people? Wait until the saloon closes and then bomb the place.”

“Firstly, there are no innocents along the waterfront, and, secondly, the Bucket of Blood never closes.” Sprague shrugged. “If people are killed it can’t be helped. It’s the cost of doing business in San Francisco.”

“Cap’n, let me go with you,” one of the sailors said. “That man has a yeller streak a mile wide.”

Tone’s cold eyes turned on the man, a young towhead with blue eyes and freckles. “Sonny, if you want to see your next birthday, I suggest you hobble your lip.”

“The devil roast your damned hide, Jim Hunter,” Sprague snapped. “I told you I want no unpleasantness. Step outside and wait in the hallway.”

The towhead gave Tone a sneer that he obviously hoped made him look tough, then turned and swaggered outside.

Sprague turned his attention to Tone again. “The bomb will bring Carpenter out of his hole and probably the others. Once they’re in the open we can deal with them and you’ll start earning your money.” He hesitated, studying the other man’s face, then said, “Well, Mr. Tone, are you for us or against us?”

“I signed on to use my guns. I don’t throw bombs.”

“And you won’t. I’ll toss the bomb. You’ll stand by and keep a weather eye open for Langford.”

Tone didn’t say it, but he wouldn’t draw down on the big cop. Langford had sand and a sense of honor, traits that Tone respected in a man.

“Well?” Sprague’s irritation was growing, and Blind Jack, with his heightened awareness, had sensed it. He moved closer to Tone, his huge hands dangling by his side like meat hooks.

Tone wanted out. But this was not the time or the place.

“I’ll ride shotgun,” he said. Yet another small betrayal that troubled him greatly.

Sprague nodded. “Good. I need a gun-canny man at my side and I’m glad you remembered the oath you took, Mr. Tone. Remember, I’m the only one who can release you from it and it would go badly for you if you broke it.”

Tone nodded but said nothing.

“Then let’s get it done,” Sprague said. He rose to his feet, the burlap bag in his hands. He looked at the blind man. “Jack, make sure the cook has dinner on the table for me and Chastity as soon as I get back. If Langford shows up it’s got to look like I’ve been here all night. You understand?”

“I’ll make sure it’s done, Cap’n. Beggin’ your pardon, but how long will you be gone?”

“Hell, man, I don’t know,” Sprague said. He grinned. “How long does it take to lob a ten-pound bomb through a window?”

Chapter 21

Tone walked along Pacific Street with Sprague. The drift of the swarming crowd was toward the saloons, dance halls, opium dens and brothels, and nobody except the bold-eyed whores gave either man a second glance as they passed.

A sense of wrongness at what he was doing gnawed at John Tone.

He had hunted and shot down men in the past and the right or wrong of it had never troubled him. By the very nature of their profession, outlaws were destined to be shot, hanged or imprisoned and all Tone did was hasten their inevitable end.

But a bomb is an indiscriminate killer and a coward’s weapon, the choice of a man with no real bottom to him. For the first time, Tone realized that Sprague, despite all his piratical bluster and belligerence, was such a man.

“Stay near me, Mr. Tone,” Sprague said. “We’re real close.” The man thumbed a match into flame, touched flame to the fuse.

“Listen, I—”

The crash of the fizzing bomb shattering the window of the Bucket of Blood drowned out Tone’s voice.

“Keep walking,” Sprague said urgently, without turning. “Don’t run.”

Behind them, women’s screams. The hoarse curses of frightened men. The sound of pounding feet. A man yelling, “Out! Out!”

An instant later the saloon exploded with a noise like thunder.

A brilliant billow of scarlet and yellow flame erupted through the collapsing wall at the front of the saloon, then the entire second story and higher turret rooms rose twenty feet in the air, only to crash down again into a boiling cauldron of fire.