Bounty Hunter

Chapter 17

The Opera Comique was a large two-story frame and timber building located on what was locally known as Murderer’s Corner. The rain had stopped, but fog prowled the streets and alleys. When the sky was visible, the moon looked like a red pool tucked in the clouds and the night air smelled of the shoaling fish out in the bay. Earlier, the crowds had sought shelter from the drizzle in the saloons and there were few travelers on the streets.

To Tone’s joy, a fruit and vegetable stand stood opposite the door to the concert saloon, bare and abandoned now that darkness had fallen. The building behind the stand had fallen on hard times and was boarded up. A faded sign above its door said:

THE SEAMAN’S MISSION

Bible meetings at 7 p.m. and 10 p.m. every weeknight

Tone guided Chastity along the docks, well clear of the taverns and brothels, then angled toward the fruit stand.

“I’ll be here when you come out,” he said quietly. “Run across the road, then keep on going.” He pointed down Jackson Street. “That way. A lot of the streetlamps are out for some reason and there will be plenty of dark places to hole up until I find you.”

“When I come out, I’ll be yelling, ‘Murder! Murder! ’ ” Chastity said. “With luck, the guards at the door will ignore a hysterical Chinese girl and dash upstairs.”

“If they don’t, I’ll open up,” Tone said. “Then run like hell. Just be sure not to shoot me, because I’ll be right on your heels.”

In the shadowed night, the woman looked small and vulnerable. “You certain you’re up for this?” Tone asked. “You’re about to make a grandstand play, you know.”

“I’m up for it. I’ve been in worse scrapes.”

“Back!” Tone exclaimed suddenly. He pushed Chastity into the dark doorway of the abandoned mission.

A man had stepped out of the Opera Comique and a match flared as he lit his pipe, casting a brief red glare on his tough, bearded features.

He smoked for a few minutes, then tapped out his pipe on his heel and walked back inside.

“One of the guards,” Tone said. “He sure was a big feller.”

“You trying to scare me?” Chastity asked.

“He’ll be a bigger target, is all.”

“No, you tried to scare me, Tone, and you succeeded. I don’t know the whore’s room, or that Mickey Kerr will even be there.”

“Chastity,” Tone said, using the woman’s name for the first time since he met her, “let me do it. I’ll claim to be a friend of Mickey’s and say I’m going upstairs to talk to him.”

“And if the guards don’t let you pass?”

“Then I start shooting.”

Chastity shook her head. “I told you before, that won’t work.” She hefted her bundle of linens. “I’ll find her room.” She smiled. “Me askee nice mens at door.”

Then she was gone, trotting across the street. Tone watched her disappear into the Opera Comique . . . and suddenly he was chewing on his own heart.

He drew his guns, thumbed back the hammers for faster first shots, then crouched behind the fruit stand, his arms straight out in front of him, elbows resting on the rim of a wooden display box.

A minute passed . . . then another. . . .

Tone touched his tongue to his dry top lip. Where was the woman? What was happening? An errant breeze tugged at him, then swirled among the fog. He felt sweat on his palms.

A shot! Muffled by the walls of the saloon. Then one more.

Long moments dragged past. Tone stood, his guns up and ready.

Chastity ran out of the door, screaming, “Murder!” at the top of her lungs. She ran past Tone, grinned at him, then vanished into the gaslit gloom of Jackson Street.

Tone waited a few moments, watching for any pursuit. There was none, and he followed after Chastity. He caught up with her after a hundred yards. She was standing, waiting for him, outside a noisy dance hall.

The woman’s face was vibrant, alive, as though illuminated by a strange inner glow. It did not add to Chastity’s prettiness; rather, it detracted from it. To Tone, her radiance seemed unearthly . . . unholy.

Her words came out in a rush. “They let me upstairs, and the door wasn’t even locked. Mickey Kerr, I suppose it was him, had the woman kneeling on the bed and he was humping behind her, both of them as naked as jaybirds. He tried to go for his gun on the nightstand, but I shot him right between his eyes. The redheaded bitch opened her big mouth to scream and I put a bullet into it.”

Chastity held up a hammered-silver bracelet. “I took this off her wrist, then started screaming blue murder. The stupid guards ran past me on the stairs. Can you believe that?”

“Why . . . but why did you take time to steal the woman’s bracelet?”

“A trophy—what else? When I make a kill I always take a memento. Mickey probably gave the whore this.”

Almost breathless with excitement, Chastity lifted shining eyes to Tone. “Now I’ve got five kills. Wherever Western men gather, they’ll talk about me in the same breath as Hardin, Thompson and Hickok. Think about it: I’m only a woman, but I’m making history.”

Tone was too stunned to speak. Was this what a born killer sounded like? And was he disturbed because he was hearing an unsettling echo of his own arrogance?

Chastity Christian enjoyed the act of killing and she was a woman without a conscience. Where was his own conscience? He had always presumed it was dead and buried with Molly O’Hara. But had he killed it himself, much later, when he’d first taken up the gun and hunted men?

Tone had no chance to question himself further. Chastity pressed her body against his, her lips parted, scarlet and glistening, her pelvis grinding into his. “Take me home, Tone. Take me home now, and ride me like an unbroken mare. I feel wonderful!”

They walked back to the alley through the thickening fog and neither of them spoke. But Chastity’s shining eyes were everywhere, as though seeing her surroundings for the first time and in a different light. The woman was ecstatic, radiant and as beautiful as a fallen angel.

In bed, Chastity came to Tone willingly, eagerly, but before he could hold her he had to invade her, forced to penetrate a defensive bulwark of elbows and knees.

When Tone woke, Chastity was already out of bed. She sat at the dresser, where she’d just finished cleaning her derringer.

She saw that Tone was awake and smiled at him. “I asked Chang to bring us coffee.”

“How long have you been up?”

“About an hour. You were sound asleep and I didn’t want to wake you.”

Chastity rose to her feet, wearing only the pink Chinese tunic, her breasts unfettered. She sat on the bed and crossed her legs.

“We meet Mr. Sprague later today, remember?” she said. “At least you have good news to give him.” She leaned over and kissed Tone lightly on the mouth. “I suspect Luther will also be here to greet his boss.”

At that moment the woman looked so desirable that Tone reached for her. She evaded him and got to her feet. “The moment’s gone, Tone,” she said, smiling. “I needed it last night, but not today. Wait until I make my next kill, huh?”

Tone shook his head, the woman’s coldness again shaking him to the core. “Chastity,” he said, “there’s more to life than killing.”

“That, coming from you, John Tone, the famous bounty hunter? How many have you killed?”

“I don’t enjoy killing. Every one of those men were notified and I tried my best to take them in alive.”

Chastity no longer seemed cold, merely indifferent. “The dodgers on the first three men I killed said, ‘Wanted, dead or alive,’ so I took them in dead. What was wrong in that?”

“It’s the fact that you enjoy killing that’s wrong. Can’t you understand?”

The woman slowed her speech, as though she was talking to a child. “Tone, when I was eight years old I watched my father beat my mother to death in a drunken rage. He tried to beat me too, but I ran away. I told our local sheriff what had happened and he brought me back to our cabin. The sheriff—I remember his name was Hank Dillbury—looked at what my father had done to my mother. Then he looked at my father snoring in his chair, then at me.

“Dillbury drew his gun, pressed the muzzle against my father’s forehead and pulled the trigger. I saw it happen and I smiled and so did the sheriff.”

Chastity waved her hand dismissively. “Men kill each other all the time, Tone, and most enjoy it. I can tell you that Dillbury did. Why should a woman be any different?”

“When you killed Mickey Kerr, why did you have to shoot the girl?”

“She was about to scream. She would have told the others what had happened.” Chastity shrugged. “Besides, like my mother, she was a whore. Does anybody care about the death of a whore?”

“It seems that Sheriff Dillbury did.”

The woman laughed. “Hell, he was one of them who went at Ma every chance they got. Dillbury didn’t care about her. He was mad at Pa for killing his favorite poke.”

Chastity picked up the hammered-silver bracelet and pushed it onto her left wrist. She held it up so it caught the morning light and asked Tone: “You like?”

He was spared the necessity of answering when Chang scratched at the door. Chastity told him to come in, and the little man entered, a grin on his face and a tray in his hands.

“Did missy sleep well?” he asked.

“Well enough, Mr. Chang,” the woman answered.

The man set the tray, bearing a coffeepot and cups, on the dresser, then turned to Chastity again. “Mr. Penman was here. He say he going to the docks, come back later. Seemed very cross.”

“Thank you,” Chastity said. “That will be all for now.”

She poured coffee into the cups. “Better get dressed, Tone,” she said. “If Penman really is cross, our good news should cheer him up.”

Tone nodded, but said nothing.