Bounty Hunter

Chapter 33

Bandy Evans’ body had been removed and Tone was alone in the house.

As the wind hustled around the eaves of the old building he closed his eyes and remembered a cleaner wind, in a more beautiful place. He saw a sea of long grass, swaying gracefully, first one way, then the other, a dance to commemorate the hushed stillness of a prairie that was never still. In the distance, where the lightning gathered, the blue mountains shouldered against the sky and the morning smelled fresh, coming in clean on the breeze, like the first day of creation.

Tone felt a sudden sharp pang of longing for the western lands, where a man could sit his horse and look out and see forever and wonder about his God, who had shaped indifferent matter into such glorious beauty.

His eyes blinked open and he returned to Langford’s shabby kitchen and the lingering smell of violent death and its somber handmaiden, the sense of evil that hung in the air like a foul mist.

Tone rose to his feet, coffee cup in hand, and pushed open the window, staring into a night as black as coal, spangled not with stars but with the distant lights of the waterfront.

He turned as three sharp raps beat on the front door. He laid down his cup and slid a revolver from the holsters hung on the back of a chair.

Gun in hand, he stood at the closed door and asked, “Who is there?”

“My name is Lizzie Granger, like that means anything to you.”

Without dropping his guard, Tone opened the door.

“Don’t look so surprised, Mr. Tone,” the woman said. “You’re not getting lucky. I’m here to deliver this.”

She was small and dark-haired, and possessed pretty brown eyes that peered out from under the brim of a straw boater that was perched atop her curls. She was holding out a long envelope.

Tone took the envelope and saw his name on the front, written in a woman’s hand. “Who gave you this?” he asked.

The girl had an impudent grin. “She didn’t tell me her name. She just gave me the envelope and told me where to deliver it. ‘Give it to Mr. Tone, and no one else,’ she said. I figure you have to be Mr. Tone. You look the kind who would know a fancy-got-up lady like her.”

The girl waved. “So long, Mr. Tone.” Then she turned and walked quickly into the night.

Tone waited until the click-clack of the girl’s heels faded before he closed and locked the door and stepped back to the kitchen.

He laid the envelope on the table, then poured himself more coffee. He sat and for a few moments turned the envelope over in his hands. It had probably come from Chastity Christian, perhaps a plea from a lady in distress, designed to lure him into a trap.

Well, there was one way to find out.

Tone opened the envelope.

It contained a single page torn from a Bible. Drawn in black ink on the page was a skull and crossbones, and under that, his name.

Sprague had passed sentence. It was John Tone’s time to die.

Tone rose, strapped on his shoulder holsters, and got himself a cigar. He sat at the table again and smoked, thinking.

Langford’s house was now a death trap. He couldn’t cover the door and every window and the idea of forting up inside a bedroom did not appeal to him. It would take away his freedom of movement.

How many would Sprague send? He knew the answer to that: enough.

And it was only a matter of time before they came calling.

Tone got to his feet and shrugged into his peacoat. He left the page on the table where Langford would see it, then stepped to the back door, a revolver in his hand. The door, badly in need of oil, opened with a loud creak and Tone froze, listening into the night.

He heard nothing but the wind prowling like a cougar among the trees. There were shadows everywhere, dark, mysterious and dangerous, that could suddenly band together and become the shapes of men.

His heartbeat thudding in his ears, Tone followed pavers toward a low picket fence at the rear of the yard.

Even in the gloom, he saw that the garden was well tended, planted with a large variety of desert blossoms and shrubs, bordered by yarrow, iris and red and yellow lupine.

Langford, a hard, unrelenting man who was exposed daily to the filth, degradation and violence of the waterfront, obviously spent time among the flowers for the good of his soul.

Stepping over the fence, Tone found himself in another yard. He melted into the shadows next to a garden shed as he heard roars of anger from the house, followed by the thud of boots and the crash of slamming doors.

Tone smiled slightly. Sprague’s gentlemen of fortune had left it too late and were now stumbling around in the dark house, palpitating in every pulse with rage, as they blamed each other for their tardiness.

Getting down on one knee, blanketed by darkness, Tone drew both his guns. No longer the prey, he was now the hunter. His breath coming fast, he watched the house . . . and waited.

Slow minutes ticked by, and then, one by one, rectangles of light appeared in the windows. Tone allowed himself another smile. The idiots were lighting the gas lamps!

A fine rain started to fall and the wind bustled. There was no moon, no stars, only a gunmetal sky that stretched away on all sides forever.

The back door creaked open.

Tone held his breath. A man appeared and was briefly silhouetted against the light of the kitchen. He let the door close behind him and stepped onto the paver path. The iron blade of the cutlass in his right hand gleamed as he walked warily toward the fence.

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.