Bounty Hunter

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.

Heading in their direction, footsteps thudded on the cobbles and voices were raised in drunken song. As Tone watched, three men staggered out of the mist. Two of them were supporting a third, who was so hopelessly drunk the toes of his boots dragged along the street behind him.

“Tone,” Penman said, quietly but urgently.

“I see them.”

“Be on guard.”

Though the three were big, rough-looking characters, Tone had been willing to give them the benefit of the doubt. But the alarm in Penman’s voice, a man not easily scared, had him on edge.

Suddenly the three men separated, the one in the middle now squarely on his feet. The guns came out of their pockets fast.

But Tone had already drawn and fired.

One of the men went down, and the others looked at him, hesitating for just a moment as they were stunned by Tone’s speed. In a gunfight any pause can be a fatal mistake.

Tone fired again, another hit. The man who’d been playing the drunk staggered back a step, then crashed onto his back. The third ruffian, scared now, turned and tried to flee. Tone aimed between the man’s shoulder blades and fired. All at once the tough’s legs seemed to be made of rubber. He lurched forward, taking a few ungainly steps, then sprawled his length on the ground.

Gun smoke drifted with the mist as Tone swung his Colt on men who were running from the nearby dives.

“ ’Ere, you bloody toffs, what are you up to, then?” a man cried in an English-accented voice that even after twenty years set John Tone’s teeth on edge.

“Those footpads attacked us,” Penman said. “We were forced to defend ourselves.”

The Englishman was big, walked with a sailor’s rolling gait and had chosen to be belligerent. The two dozen or so others with him were no friendlier and Tone and Penman were surrounded by a sea of hostile faces.

“That there is Long Tom Piggott,” the Englishman said. “And over there is Billy Maitland.” He looked at a man in the crowd. “You, go see who our other dead shipmate is.”

The man stepped to the body and turned it over with the toe of his boot. He looked across at the Englishman and yelled, “It’s Cod McNear, Sam.”

“Three of the finest sailor lads to ever walk the streets of the Barbary Coast,” the man called Sam said. “They was all good shipmates, but Cod was gold dust.”

“Aye, an’ always good for a drink when a poor sailorman was down on his luck,” another man yelled.

There was a muttering among the crowd, which had swollen by the addition of a score of eager-eyed whores. Fists clenched and curses were thrown in Tone and Penman’s direction.

Sam turned, obviously enjoying being the center of attention. Now he played to the crowd. “Lads—an’ ladies”—that last brought a ribald cheer from the whores, as the man knew it would—“I say it’s coming to it when honest men can’t walk the streets without being gunned down by toffs out for a night on the town.”

Men cheered and a whore spat in Tone’s direction and screamed, “I say we tar an’ feather them and run them out of the waterfront on a rail.”

The crowd was eager for any diversion and cheered wildly.

A tarring and feathering often resulted in death, but Sam, basking in his sudden glory, had something even more radical in mind.

“Or we can string ’em up, lads. What do you say?”

This time the cheering was louder. A man yelled, “I’ll get ropes!” He turned and ran toward one of the dives, his feet growing wings as the crowd urged him on.

Tone was aware that he had only two rounds left in his Colt. With a wild recklessness in him, partly driven by his hatred for Englishmen, he took two long paces and was suddenly in front of Sam.

He jammed the muzzle of the revolver into the man’s forehead, thumbed back the hammer and smiled. “You first, Sammy boy. As soon as your man shows up with a rope I’m going to scatter your goddamned brains.”

The Englishman was suddenly so terrified that he pissed his pants and everyone saw it. At least temporarily, it took the wind out of the crowd as they saw their hero so humiliated.

“That won’t be necessary, Mr. Tone.”

Tone took a quick glance behind him. A tall man wearing an officer’s rings on the sleeves of his uniform coat was watching him. He was backed by four tough sailors armed with Winchesters.

The officer looked at Penman. “Sorry we’re late. The fog out in the head of the strait is thick as molasses in winter.”

“I’d say, Mr. Brown, that you arrived in the nick of time,” the lawyer said, flashing his wintry smile.

Brown looked over at Sam, who was standing as still as a stone statue, his eyes crossed as he fixed his horrified gaze on Tone’s gun. Clubs and brass knuckles he knew, but guns and the gunfighters who used them had not been any part of his education.

“Sam Wilkins, go back to your rum and your whores,” Brown said. “There will be no more talk of hanging, or tarring and feathering either.”

Wilkins’ throat worked for a few moments, and then, standing stock-still, he said, “He’s going to shoot me, Mr. Brown.”

“I doubt it, Sam. Why would he waste a bullet on the likes of you?”

Tone eased down the hammer of his Colt. “You’re lucky, Sammy,” he said. “I really don’t like you.” He laid emphasis on the statement by driving his left fist into Wilkins’ belly. Then as the man bent over, retching green bile, Tone slammed the barrel of his revolver on the back of his head. He stepped aside to let Wilkins fall, then walked around him and picked up his bag.

“Shall we get on board, gentlemen?” Brown asked, looking emotionlessly at Wilkins, who was groaning on the damp cobbles. “It’s a long ways out to the strait.”

Brown’s cold eyes swept the crowd. “I’d advise you people to get off the street. If you have any more mischief in mind, let me warn you that my men will drop a dozen of you before you cover a couple of yards.”

The mob was surly, still on the prod, but the sound of levering Winchesters convinced them that this was not a good night to die.

Brown watched them go for a few moments, then called out, “When Sam Wilkins recovers tell him to bury the recently departed, since he was so fond of the dear, honest souls.”

Penman stepped to Tone’s side. “Not a man to forgive and forget, are you?” he asked.

“Live longer that way,” Tone answered.