Ralph Compton - Bounty Hunter

Penman glanced over his shoulder, then leaned forward in his chair. “Are you armed, Mr. Tone?”

Tone nodded. “A .44-40 in a shoulder holster.” He grinned. “By Sam Colt of Hartford, Connecticut.”

“Yes, a clever little quip to be sure,” Penman said, flashing a grimace that may have been a smile. “But, you understand, I have enemies in Reno and they could quite soon become yours.”

Tone raised an eyebrow in surprise, but said only: “Coffee?”

“Tea, if you please.”

The waiter, a sad-looking man wearing a black claw-hammer suit, was eyeing the table, wringing his hands. Whether he was eager to leave or fearful of interrupting, Tone could not guess.

“Henry, tea for the gentleman.”

The waiter seemed relieved. He smiled and bowed, then returned a couple of minutes later with a china tea-pot, cup and saucer.

Tone poured tea for Penman. “Cream? Sugar?”

“Neither, thank you.”

“Cigar?”

“I don’t indulge.”

“Bourbon?”

The lawyer shook his bald head.

“Then perhaps you should state your business.” Tone sipped his whiskey, then picked up his cigar. “I must admit, the idea of your enemies all of a sudden becoming mine intrigues me.”

“I will talk plainly, Mr. Tone. No beating about the bush, but I will be circumspect of speech.”

“Yes, please do.”

Penman tried his tea, holding the cup in both white, blue-veined hands. He peered over the rim. “I’m here to make you rich, Mr. Tone.”

Speaking through a cloud of fragrant blue smoke, Tone said, “Now you interest me even more.”

“I can’t reveal all the details of my proposition. That will be done by my principal. But it involves the deaths of six men, I can tell you that.” Penman set his cup on the saucer without a sound. “Ah, the elimination of, shall we say, six business rivals is your line of work, is it not?”

“There are bounties on these men?”

“Yes.”

“Enough to make me rich? That seems hardly likely.”

“You are correct—you will not make a lot of money from the bounties. In fact, none at all. But, as you will learn, my client will pay a bonus, a very large bonus, for each of the dead men.”

“Who are these . . . business rivals?”

Penman’s back teeth nibbled the insides of his cheeks. Finally he said, “Come now, Mr. Tone, be circumspect. Remember, curiosity killed the cat. Be assured, all will be revealed in the course of time.”

Tone drained his glass. “When do I meet this client of yours? I’m meeting a lady of my recent acquaintance for a late lunch and I expect to spend the evening with her.”

“That will be impossible, I’m afraid. We leave on the one-thirty cannonball for San Francisco.”

Tone shook his head. “No. What you suggest is impossible. If you knew the young lady in question, I’m sure you would understand why.”

“I realize that courtesans don’t come cheap in Reno, Mr. Tone, but is she really worth many thousands of dollars?” The lawyer’s hard obsidian gaze razored into the younger man’s face. “Give me an answer to that question and be quick. If you prefer riding a sweating, grunting whore to earning a fortune, then I must find someone else.”

“The lady is not a whore, Mr. Penman,” Tone said, his voice edged.

“All women are whores, Mr. Tone. The sin of Eve condemned them to eternal damnation and they use their wicked feminine wiles to drag men down to hell with them.”

Penman sat back in his chair, allowing his shoulders to just touch the upholstery, and spoke above steepled fingers. “I can see the answer to my question in your eyes, Mr. Tone. You desire the woman, yes, but you want the money more.”

Tone made no answer, and the lawyer said, “I want you, above anyone else, for this task. I sense a stillness in you, Mr. Tone, but it is the calm before the storm. Handsome, elegant, right now you look like any other prosperous businessman in Reno, but we know better, you and I, don’t we? You’re a killer, Mr. Tone, and the job I’m offering you requires just that: a man who will kill without hesitation.”

Tone attempted to explain that he was a bounty hunter, bound to the letter of the law, but Penman talked over him. “I heard about your desperate shooting scrape with the Stillwell gang. That was well handled.”

“There was no Stillwell gang. John Wesley Stillwell would dab a loop on a few slick-eared calves now and then and nobody much minded. But when a cowboy got killed chasing him, for fun probably, everything changed. It seems the cowboy was well liked—at least that’s what folks claimed after he was dead. I don’t know what they claimed when he was still alive.”

“Whether he was a calf poacher or not, you killed Stillwell anyway, and a couple of his sons.”

“The local ranchers had the Yuma vigilantes put a price on Stillwell’s head, dead or alive. I went to collect it.”

“I say again, you killed him.”

Tone nodded. “He was notified, but he ignored me.”

“Come, Mr. Tone, a straight answer to a simple question: will you accompany me to San Francisco on the one-thirty train?”

“Yes, since at the moment I have no other pressing business, except lunch with my lady friend.”

“I’m sure she’ll get over it. I hazard that by ten o’clock tonight some other young buck will have his head between her thighs.”

“Penman, did anyone ever tell you that you have the soul of a poet?”

“Mr. Tone, I have no soul. I am an attorney, a very successful one, and poetry is no part of me.” The little man consulted the gold watch he’d taken from his vest pocket. “It’s now noon. I suggest you throw a few things in your bag and meet me in the lobby in half an hour.”

“You’re allowing us a lot of time. The station is only a ten-minute walk away.”

“Mr. Tone, we may need that time. I am convinced someone will make an attempt on our lives before we even reach our destination.”

Chapter 3

“I should be back in a couple of days, Lawson,” Tone told the desk clerk.

The man smiled. “I will see that your room is undisturbed.”

Tone nodded, picked up his key and climbed the stairs to the second floor. His room lay at the end of the hallway and he unlocked the door and stepped inside.

After throwing a few items of clothing in a carpetbag, Tone opened a dresser drawer and removed a .44- 40 Colt with a seven-and-a-half-inch barrel. It had once been a match for the revolver he wore in the shoulder holster under his coat, but he’d had the barrel of his hideout gun shortened to three inches and the ejector and front sight had been removed. It was a weapon modified for close-up, personal work, but he might also need the long-barreled Colt’s longer reach.

Tone tossed the Colt into the bag, removed his gray top hat and checked himself in the mirror. Staring back at him was a handsome, black-haired young man with a long, faintly melancholy face and eyes the color of ice in a mountain crevasse. His mouth under the sweeping dragoon mustache was wide and generous and had once, in another time and place, been quick to smile.

Tone dropped his hands from his cravat and gazed at his reflection, unsettled by the coldness of his eyes. He detected no hint of humanity, no songs still to be sung. Rather he saw the eyes of a predatory animal, ruthless, merciless and calculating.

Women looked at him, he knew, and their bold stares lingered, wondering. And so did men. But most would glance away quickly, not liking what they saw.

The others, the ones who would meet his eyes and not look away, were men like himself, wolves among sheep, those who lived by the Colt and had long since accepted the hard lessons it taught and its violent tyranny.