Ralph Compton - Bounty Hunter

The huge sergeant, his face a mask of fury, had not been carrying a rifle, but he’d drawn the bayonet from the frog at his side and was advancing on Tone, cursing. This time the boy took careful aim, holding the big Tranter at eye level in both hands. The bullet hit just under the polished brim of the man’s shako, driving into the bridge of his nose.

The sergeant screamed, staggered, then crashed facedown onto the pine floor.

Through a thick gray mist of powder smoke Tone jumped over the fallen soldier and ran to Molly’s side. The faces of the old women kneeling beside the girl told him all he needed to know. Death shadows had already gathered in the girl’s face and her half-open eyes were staring into her eternity.

Racking sobs shook the boy’s slender frame as he bent over Molly’s still body, but the luxury of grief was not for John Tone that day.

Strong hands were pulling him to his feet and James O’Hara’s bloody face swam into his view. The big man’s expression of sorrow and shock had been carved into his features like lines on granite and they would remain there for the rest of his life.

O’Hara pressed notes into Tone’s hand. “That’s forty English pounds there, John. Use it to get out of Ireland. Go to America, lad, where the British can’t reach you.” The man’s blue eyes bored into his own. “Now get ye gone into the hills or you’ll hang at Dublin Castle before the week is out. There are informers all around us who would sell their own mothers for ten shillings.”

Behind him, Tone heard a gurgling shriek as a wounded soldier’s throat was cut. He shoved the money into the pocket of his pants as O’Hara’s words finally got through to him.

“Molly . . . ,” he said.

“She knows what’s happening, John,” O’Hara said. “Trust me, she knows. Now go before it’s too late.”

John Tone blinked, the face in the mirror again his own, older, harder. Lines of time and life and the living of it had engraved the corners of his eyes and mouth. It was a face from which all the songs had fled. Since that day in the pub at Ballenlake he had never sung another.

He turned away, a small grief in him for youth’s lost innocence and his love for a girl whose face he could no longer remember.

Chapter 4

Tone and Penman made their way through crowded, noisy streets and reached the Central Pacific railroad station without incident.

“So far, so good,” the lawyer said, his eyes darting this way and that like those of an inquisitive sparrow. “But we must remain on guard at all times until we reach San Francisco.”

Before he settled into the cushions, Tone stashed his bag in the net rack above his seat along with a heavy coach coat. Penman had advised him to bring the coat because the nights could get chilly in a city surrounded on three sides by water.

After the train pulled out of the station, Penman began to relax.

“When we reach our destination, we’ll take a cab to the waterfront,” he said. “We’ll be met at the dock by a boat that will take us out to my client’s steam yacht.”

“You still won’t tell me his name?”

Penman ignored that and said, “The dock is in a district called the Barbary Coast. Have you ever been there?”

Tone shook his head. “No, but I’ve heard of it.”

“And no wonder. Its infamy is known all over the world. The place is home to murderers, footpads, burglars and hoodlums of all kinds. Thousands of whores and their pimps prey on the poor, foolish sailormen who frequent the dives along Front and Pacific streets and all too often end up robbed, drugged and shanghaied.”

“Seems to me your client could have chosen a safer place to meet,” Tone said.

“He has many business interests along the Barbary Coast,” Penman said. “And from time to time it is his home.”

The little lawyer looked out the window, signaling that any talk about his client was over for now. “The mountains of the Sierra Nevada are beautiful at this time of the year, are they not?” he asked.

“At any time of the year,” Tone answered.

“Indeed, yes.”

Tone sat back and tipped his top hat over his eyes. “Wake me if we run into trouble,” he said.

A heavy mist curled through the dark streets of the Barbary Coast as Tone and Penman’s cab threaded through traffic toward the dock on Pacific Street.

The horse’s hooves clattered and clanged over slick cobbles and every so often the driver would vent his lungs, unleashing a string of curses as a drunk staggered into his path.

“Over there to our right is Shanghai Kelly’s saloon and boardinghouse, in which my client owns a considerable interest,” Penman said. “Kelly is a violent man and the most notorious runner in the city.”

Tone’s face was in shadow, but Penman, with a lawyer’s acumen, noticed the question in his eyes. “There are hell ships out of New York City commanded by captains under whom no sailorman in his right mind would sail.” In the gloom Penman’s smile looked like the grin on a yellow skull. “Runners provide those crews.”

“I guess business makes for some strange bedfellows,” Tone said.

“Ah, you mean my client and Kelly? Well, my client got his start here along the coast, working for a runner named Johnny Devine. After Johnny was hanged for murder, my client inherited his saloon and boardinghouse. He’s now rich, but still looks back with fondness on the days when he was reckoned to be the best man with the blackjack, slingshot and brass knuckles along the entire Barbary Coast.”

Tone smiled. “I’m looking forward to meeting this paragon of virtue.”

“Be circumspect, Mr. Tone, be respectful,” Penman snapped. “Remember, times change and so do men.”

The cab horse clashed to a stop and the hansom creaked on its springs.

“The Pacific Street dock, gentlemen,” the cabbie said. “In this fog I can’t get any closer or I could drive right over the seawall.”

Tone pulled the lever that opened the doors, picked up his bag and stepped outside. The air was chill, heavy with dampness, and the night smells of oily, stagnant water, filthy ships waiting to be scrubbed out and the nearby dives were more pungent than polite.

The saloons lining the street were doing a roistering business, their gas lamps glimmering like stars through the mist. With his far-seeing eyes, Tone could make out a few of the painted signs hanging over the front doors: THE ROARING GIMLET, THE COCK OF THE WALK, BULL’S RUN, THE RAMPANT ROOSTER, BELLE OF THE UNION. He could also see one particularly disreputable dive that laid its main attraction on the line—THE HAPPY HARLOT.

As Penman stepped to Tone’s side, the cabbie, a black man wearing a greatcoat and top hat, peered through the drifting fog at them. “Are you sure you want dropped off here?” he asked. “If you don’t mind me saying so, this dock is no place for two gentlemens of your quality. Why don’t I bring you back tomorrow in the daylight?”

“We’ll be fine, cabbie,” Penman said frostily. “Now, be off with you and mind your business.”

The man shrugged. He touched his hat, then drove into the gloom, the cab’s orange side lanterns bobbing until they were swallowed by darkness and distance.

The mist curled around Tone and Penman like a gigantic gray cat, the topmasts of the moored sailing ships just barely visible above the murk. Somewhere far out in the bay a buoy bell clanged, a lonely, melancholy sound.

“Where is that damned boat?” Penman said testily. “It should have been here waiting for us.”

“The fog?” Tone suggested.

“There’s always a damned fog in the bay. Any boatman worth his salt won’t let a little sea mist hamper him.”

Tone shivered and wrapped his heavy coach coat closer around him, glad of the triple cape that gave him some protection from the evening cold. Penman wore only a light tweed topcoat, but the night was no chillier than the man himself and apparently brought him no discomfort.