Ralph Compton - Bounty Hunter

Tone thrust with the point of the cutlass, stepping into it. Sprague easily avoided the other man’s clumsy rush and Tone stumbled and fell facedown onto the deck, the cutlass clattering away from him. He rolled over quickly. Sprague, grinning, had the axe raised above his head, ready to drive the blade into Tone’s brain. Knowing it was over, Tone threw up his right arm in a futile attempt to ward off the blow.

Sprague tensed, the axe swung. . . .

With a thunderous roar, the abused boiler of the little boat exploded.

The gigantic blast staggered the Spindrift like a terrier shaking a rat and she immediately listed crazily to starboard. Sprague was knocked off his feet and his head struck hard on the deck.

As debris thudded and clanked around him, Tone rose, his red-rimmed eyes searching. He spotted what he’d hoped to find, a securing rope neatly coiled at the base of the Hotchkiss cannon.

As Sprague groaned and rose to a sitting position, stunned, Tone made a loop in the rope. He stepped behind Sprague, dropped the noose over the man’s head, and tightened it around his throat.

Suddenly aware of what was happening, Sprague tried to scramble erect. Tone kicked him viciously in the side of the head and the man fell on his back.

“I’ll kill you, Tone,” Sprague croaked. “As sure as my mother is roasting in hell, I’ll kill you.”

“After I hang you for a damned pirate,” Tone said.

The Spindrift was sinking fast. Tone heard Langford yelling to get boats launched and, forward, feet pounded on the deck.

“You can’t hang me, Tone.” Sprague grinned. “I’ll take you down with me.” He grabbed the rope and rose to his feet, his face a twisted mask of hate. “Damn you, we’ll feed the sharks together.”

Tone felt unsteady and sick. His head swam and the slanting deck, sea and sky reeled around him. Sprague was closer, a taut stretch of rope in his hand extended in front of him like a garrote. The man’s eyes looked as though they were made of iron—flat, pitiless, eager to kill.

Letting go of the rope, Tone dropped to one knee and picked up the axe. Sprague was almost on top of him. The man ducked behind him and dropped the rope over his head and around his neck. Immediately the hemp tightened, crushing into Tone’s throat.

Gasping, his mouth a strangled O of pain and fear, Tone summoned his last reserves of strength. As pirates had done for hundreds of years before battle, Sprague had taken off his shoes for a better grip on the slippery deck. His bare right foot was extended in front of him to Tone’s side.

As blackness threatened to envelop him, Tone raised the axe and chopped down hard on Sprague’s unprotected toes. The man screamed and the pressure on Tone’s throat immediately stopped. Sprague had left four bloody toes on the deck.

Unable to stand on the stump of his right foot, the man dropped to a sitting position. Tone rose to his feet, swung the axe in a roundhouse arc, and Sprague’s head jumped a foot into the air, then rolled like a ball on the deck.

Roaring, teeth bared in a savage snarl, Tone lifted the gory, grinning head by the hair and held it aloft, an ancient Celtic warrior ritual as old as time, a throwback to a more savage age that still ran strong in his blood.

It was Langford who took the head from him and threw it into the sea. “John,” he said gently, “you must get into a boat. We’re sinking fast.”

Tone looked at the big sergeant, but neither heard nor understood.

Then, at long last, the blackness took him.

Chapter 43

“I woke up and saw this nun bending over me, smiling,” Tone said. “I thought I’d died and had gone to heaven, and that pleased me. I always figured I’d end up in the other place.”

“Give it time, Tone,” Sergeant Langford said solemnly.

Tone sat higher on the creaking St. Mary’s Hospital cot. “I killed Sprague, didn’t I?”

“You killed him.” Langford shook his head, his eyes bleak. “The butcher’s bill was too high, John, all those dead officers. I talked to nine widows, and twice that many orphans, telling them how gallantly their husbands and fathers had died.” He sighed deeply. “It didn’t help much. Sprague was not worth one of those officers’ lives and they knew it.” The big cop managed a smile. “Benson was promoted posthumously to sergeant. His wife is very proud of him.”

Tone nodded. “He deserved it. The man had sand.”

He let a silence stretch between them, then said, “How long have I been out of it?”

“Nigh on three weeks. A few times we thought we’d lost you, but the nuns always pulled you through. Surprising, I guess, because when we brought you in you were at death’s door, all shot and cut to pieces.”

“Chastity Christian and Luther Penman got away clean, huh?”

“They did. But the woman didn’t last long. We found her body in a room at the Imperial Hotel. She’d been gutted and her tongue had been cut out because Penman had wanted to take his time with her.”

Tone shook his head. “Bad as she was, she didn’t deserve that. No human being should die that hard.” He looked at Langford. “And Penman? Did you get him?”

“He’s long gone, cleaned out the safe in his office and vanished. I’d guess he’s out of the country by this time.”

Langford closed his eyes, as though trying to get rid of an image he had not wanted to bring to mind, then opened them again. “On the wall above the bed where Chastity Christian’s body was found, he’d written, ‘Now jaunty Jack is off to have a jolly good time.’ ”

“Jolly good time . . . that’s an English expression, isn’t it?” Tone said.

The cop nodded. “Penman will go where there’s fog and whores, and what city fits the bill better than London town?”

“Jack the Ripper in London,” Tone said. “There’s a harrowing thought.”

“He won’t escape justice for long. Scotland Yard has an excellent detective branch and after his first murder they’ll catch him and hang him.”

“The sooner the better,” Tone said.

Langford pushed his chair away from the cot and got to his feet. “It’s been quiet around the waterfront since you’ve been gone, Tone. But you’ll be out in a couple of days and we’ve got another war to fight. We have to put the crawl on the Tong and run them out of the Barbary Coast.” The big sergeant smiled. “I’d like you to be at my side.”

“I’ll give it some thought.” Tone sighed. He looked around his tiny, bare room. “I’ve got nothing better to do.”

Three days later Tone lay on a new mattress in Langford’s spare room. Outside, rain lashed through the darkness and a keening wind tossed the trees, but lost in a volume by Mr. Dickens, Tone paid it no mind. He felt relaxed, perfectly at ease and comfortable, since the sergeant had spared no expense in his choice of bedding. There was a glass of whiskey at his elbow and a cigar waiting to be smoked, and Tone was eagerly anticipating both.

There was a tap on his door, and Langford, his hair much grayer since the sea fight, stuck his head into the room. “I’m going to bed now, Tone,” he said.

“Pleasant dreams, Thomas.” Tone smiled.

“I’ve brought you something.” Langford stepped inside and hung a blue uniform on the hook behind the door. “Later I can have it altered to fit you better,” he said.

After Langford was gone, Tone stared at the uniform for a long time. Finally he rose to his feet and padded to the door. He ran his fingers down the blue wool serge and lightly touched the patrolman’s copper badge.

It was a fine uniform, and one he’d be honored to wear.

Tone sat back on the bed and silently studied the blue tunic for many minutes, lost in thought.