Ralph Compton - Bounty Hunter

Rising to his feet, Tone whispered, “Hey, pardner, you brought a sword to a gunfight.” He took a step forward, half in shadow, half in the dim light from the house windows. “I guess you’re not too familiar with the rules, huh?”

The man froze into an immobile statue. “Mister,” he said, his voice a frog croak, “I’m turning around an’ weighing anchor. For God’s sake, don’t shoot a poor sailorman in the back.”

He opened his fingers, letting go of the cutlass, and it clanged onto the path. Then he turned and walked back toward the house, stiff and jerky as an automaton, expecting a bullet with every step.

Tone let him go, already changing position. He made his way along the fence and stood behind the trunk of a large live oak, keeping his eye on the kitchen door.

Inside the house, the gas lamps were turned off and once again the building was a rectangular block of inkier darkness against the sky.

The kitchen door creaked. . . . Moments slowly passed. . . . Creaked again.

A hoarse whisper. “Billy, you lay athwart o’ me and pay me mind. You others, spread out. If you find Tone bring him to me. By God, I’ll hear him squeal. I’ll gut him like a hog.”

Another man’s voice, a grin in the words. “You’re square, Jack. You got no lights, but you’re square as they come.”

“Belay them pretties, and find Tone, damn you, or more than one cove will be cut this night.”

Blind Jack’s voice, a man who could sense through darkness like a bat.

Tone rubbed the back of his hand across his dry mouth. How many of them were out there?

Then the shadows started to move. . . .

Eight of them at least. Maybe more.

Sprague sent an army, Tone thought to himself. I must be a mighty dangerous hombre.

And he was, that night or any other.

The quiet nerves, muscle and tendon speed and the hand and eye coordination required of a top-rated gunfighter were a gift given to few men, perhaps one in ten thousand or even a hundred thousand. Named men like Hickok, Thompson and Allison were few and rarely encountered. Such men were sudden, sure, dangerous beyond all measure, and best avoided.

Sprague’s doomed sailors were just seconds away from finding this out for themselves. And those who survived this night would, years later, wake in the shrieking darkness, eyes wide, hearts clamoring . . . hearing footsteps.

The shadows drifted closer, crouched men, holding revolvers.

Tone stepped out from behind the oak.

His guns hammered out a harsh, rapid staccato, like an iron bedstead being dragged across a rough pine floor. Tone aimed low. He did not want to hit Langford’s expensive windows or have his bullets crash through nearby houses.

Screams . . . the sound of falling men, then a wild stampede for the kitchen door.

Men jammed in the doorway as they frantically battled to get into the house, away from the deadly gun-fire. Tone, his teeth bared in a snarl, fired into them. A man dropped, then another.

And, as suddenly as it had begun, it was over.

Tone moved again, back to the garden shed. He took time to reload his guns from the loose ammunition in his peacoat pocket, then stood still, heeding the sounds of the night.

Around him sudden lights were showing in nearby houses, and a window opened in an upper story and a man yelled, “Hey, what the hell’s going on down there?”

“Police!” Tone called out. “It’s all right. Go back inside.”

Out in Langford’s garden someone groaned in pain. By the kitchen door another coughed, the bubbling hack of a gut-shot man.

Tone waited . . . one minute . . . then another. The lamps in the surrounding houses were being extinguished and a window slammed shut, followed by the click-click of a lock being pushed into place.

He jumped over the fence and walked directly to the kitchen door, stepping over dead men. He lit the gas lamp and went outside again, where elongated rectangles of bluish yellow light stretched across the yard.

It took a while, but he finally located three dead men and two wounded. Blind Jack was not among them. The gut-shot man died as Tone looked down at him. The second wounded man lay with his face in a tangle of yarrow. Tone pushed him over with his foot. The man had a gaping hole in his chest, another in his left shoulder.

He looked up at Tone, his eyes feverish and bright. “Have ye done for me, matey?”

“You can lay to that, sailor.”

“Then damn your soul, John Tone. I wish I’d never set eyes on ye.”

“Lie quiet,” Tone said. “Your time is short.”

“I sail along o’ Cap’n Sprague,” the man said. “He’ll see you tangle your feet in your own guts. That’s what I’m sayin’.”

Tone nodded. “Well, he hasn’t done very well so far, has he?”

“Get away from me,” the dying man said. “I’ve got a course to lay I never charted afore, an’ I’ll be damned if I want you to watch me do it.”

Tone glanced toward the now silent house and when he looked back, the sailor was dead.

He prodded the man’s still body with his toe and shook his head. This would be the third time in one night that the police had taken dead men from the house at 141 Stuart Lane.

It might not be the last.

Chapter 34

“Mr. Tone, this is getting tedious,” Inspector Muldoon said. “Seven dead men carried from this house in one evening is, to say the least, most unusual, and unfortunate to boot.”

He looked at Sergeant Langford. “Well, Thomas, what have you got to say for yourself?”

“Those were Sprague’s men,” Langford said. “Tone was defending himself.”

“Yes, I recognized Billy Charbonneau out there with the dead. He was a bad one and he’d been one of Sprague’s right-hand men for years.”

Muldoon sighed. “I’m going down to the waterfront to speak with Sprague, see if I can get to the bottom of this. He’ll deny everything, of course.”

“Please give him this, Inspector,” Tone said. “Tell him it’s from me.”

Muldoon looked at the Bible page in his hands. Tone had scored out his name and has substituted “Lambert Sprague.”

“He’ll know what it means,” Tone said.

“I’ve heard of this, but never seen one before,” Muldoon said, looking hard at Tone. “It’s given only to those who break the pirate oath.”

“I know,” Tone said.

“Did you take such an oath, Mr. Tone?”

“I did, before I fully knew what was involved.”

Now it was Langford’s turn to feel the full force of Muldoon’s icy stare. “I must say, Sergeant, for an officer of the law you keep some strange company, Mr. Tone included.”

“It’s all part of the job, sir,” Langford said defiantly.

“And I believe John Tone will make a fine police officer one day.”

Muldoon was unimpressed. “That remains to be seen, doesn’t it? No one knows better than you, Sergeant, that the standards of our department have become very high in recent years.”

Langford seemed to consider that a conversation stopper and said nothing.

The inspector seemed to enjoy the pause his words had caused, then said finally, “Well, I’ll root out Sprague and perhaps scare him into letting go of this foolish pirate-oath business. And perhaps I can get him to name the date and time of his peace meeting.”

Muldoon smiled. “We might be able to work with that, Thomas. Catch all the scoundrels in one place.” The smile slipped a couple of notches. “Of course, catching is one thing, charging with a criminal offense is quite another. It seems that when it comes to the police, the entire population of the Barbary Coast is blind, deaf and dumb.”

“Indeed, sir,” Langford said, his face betraying nothing.

Muldoon sighed again, this time more deeply. “Well, then, I’ll be on my way.”