Bounty Hunter

Chapter 6

Lambert Sprague waved an indolent hand, as though he was already getting bored. “Tell him, Luther.”

“All six of the names on your list currently reside in Virginia City,” Penman said. “They grew rich off the sweat of the Comstock miners—”

“The hell they did,” Sprague snapped, suddenly angry. “They grew rich from blackhearted piracy on the high seas. Many a fine ship and brave sailor lad they sent to the bottom, aye, and wench too if the truth be told.” The man shook his head, a small act of contrition for past sins. “And God help me, for seven long, bloody years I was one of them.”

Tone looked up from the list of names he’d been memorizing. “Then these six men were your friends.”

“Friends? No, not my friends. I was their captain.”

Sprague turned his head to look at the lawyer. “Luther, bring the decanter.”

“I’ll get it,” Tone said, half rising to his feet.

“You stay there,” Sprague said. Then louder: “Luther, the decanter!”

As the lawyer stepped to the liquor cabinet, Sprague said to Tone: “As long as you are on board this ship, don’t ever countermand an order of mine again. Why would I keep a dog like Luther Penman and do my own barking?”

Again Tone sensed the latent cruelty in Sprague, and the steel. Sitting behind his desk, his iron gray hair cropped closed to his great nail keg of a head, he looked indestructible, a hard man to kill.

Sprague was talking again. “We got our start in the late War Between the States after I bought the twenty-gun sloop Devonshire from the British navy. She was laid up in ordinary at the time in a dry dock at Ports-mouth and her masts, rigging, sails and guns had been removed. I had a crew, but no money to refurbish her.”

Penman poured bourbon for Sprague, then refilled Tone’s glass.

“Luckily, that first year of the war, British sympathies were with the Confederacy,” Sprague said. “I had a letter of marque as a privateer signed by Jefferson Davis himself, and that convinced the Admiralty to refit the sloop, provided I changed her name. That I did, and when we finally sailed she was the Tuscaloosa .”

As though warming to his story, Sprague sat forward in his chair. “We ran the Union blockade for two years, carrying arms and goods from England, doing our bounden duty for the South, you might say. Then, in the spring of 1863, we chanced on a fat French merchantman loaded to the gunnels with wine and cognac, bound for Boston town.

“Well, we took the ship, cut the throats of the crew and tossed them overboard. Then we loaded the cargo onto our own ship and scuttled the Frenchman in the middle of an empty ocean and not a soul the wiser.

“It was then, Mr. Tone, that we decided there was more money to be made from piracy than blockade running. The risk was less, so long as we stayed out of the way of Union frigates, and the rewards were enormous.”

Sprague looked behind him at Penman. “Isn’t that so, Luther?”

He turned to Tone again. “Luther handled our first cargo, then all the others. He invested heavily in San Francisco and the Barbary Coast and by the time the war was over I was a rich man, and so was Luther. He always made sure to take his pound of flesh.”

“As the Bible says, the laborer is worthy of his hire, Mr. Sprague,” Penman said.

“Aye, and you’ve been worthy, Luther, a born crook like me and the six on my list. You can tie up to that.”

“I’ll ask you again, Mr. Sprague,” Tone said. “Why do you want these men dead?”

“The short answer is because they want me dead.” He nodded to the paper in Tone’s hand. “Those men were my ship’s officers, and like me, they were rich when the war ended. Luther is right—they moved to the Comstock and bought saloons and hotels, providing what the miners wanted: gambling, whores and whiskey. All six of them are good with guns, and very few other hard cases in Virginia City were willing to challenge them. Those that did ended up dead.

“They also sank money into the Barbary Coast, and now that the Comstock mines are played out and the miners moving on, their San Francisco holdings have suddenly become very important to them. They want more of the liquor and prostitution business along the Barbary and the one person standing in their way is me, their old cap’n. I already own most of the waterfront and I’m not selling and I won’t be pushed out.”

“So you want me to kill them before they kill you, is that it?”

“Exactly. And you’re being well paid for your trouble.”

Tone smiled, the bourbon helping him mellow. “There’s law in Virginia City. At least five police precincts as I recall. You just don’t walk up to six men in the street and gun them.”

“You won’t need to go to Virginia City, Mr. Tone,” Sprague said. “Once the word gets around, and it will, that you’re working for me, the six will come after you.” The man’s smile was wintry. “Depend on it.”

Sprague looked at Tone, his face like a hunk of hewn granite. “Well?”

“Well, what?”

“Damn your eyes, man, will you take on the task I’ve offered ye?”

Tone nodded. “It’s my business, and money talks.”

“Aye, it does. It speaks every tongue on earth.” Sprague turned to Penman. “Get Blind Jack and tell him to bring Tom McGill. Then administer the oath.”

After the lawyer left, Tone said, “Administer the oath? To me or to Blind Jack?”

“It is you who will take the Pirate’s Oath, Mr. Tone.”

Tone smiled. “I’m not a pirate.”

“Nor am I, at least no longer. Being a gentleman of fortune was an honest trade once, but now it’s gone forever. The oceans are full of ironclads carrying guns that can shoot for miles and there’s nowhere left, on land or sea, for even a lively pirate lad to hide. You’ll meet Black Tom McGill soon. He was one of the greatest pirates of them all, until a Brazilian ironclad blasted his sloop out of the water east of Barbados not a dozen years since. Black Tom couldn’t see that his day was over, and in the end it done for him.

“But the oath remains, an unbreakable bond between men.”

The door opened and Penman stepped inside, followed by a giant of a man, a narrow black band wrapped across his eyes and tied at the back of his head. Blind Jack topped Tone’s six-four by several inches and his massive shoulders were an axe handle wide, his huge hands the size of shovels.

“Jack lost his lights when a cannon breech burst on him,” Sprague said. “But he can see more than most men, in light or in dark. Set Black Tom on my desk, Jack, will ye?”

His shoulders bent under the low overhang, the big man opened the velvet drawstring bag he was carrying and removed a skull. With unerring accuracy, he laid the skull in front of Sprague, then stepped back.

Sprague poured a full glass of whiskey and held it out toward the giant. “A drink with you, Jack, to wet your pipe, like.”

“Thank’ee, Cap’n,” the giant said. He took the glass from Sprague’s hand as easily as would a sighted man.

“You’ll witness the oath, Jack,” Sprague said. “We have a new recruit on board, Mr. John Tone of Reno town.”

“Aye, Cap’n, a tall man who’s sitting down at the moment, young, and he has a revolver with him, recently fired.”

Sprague looked at the startled Tone and smiled. “He heard your breath from where you sit and gauged your height. Your breathing is strong, so you are young and healthy. He smelled the revolver.”

“I could be a short man standing,” Tone said.

Sprague shook his head. “Jack heard the chair creak. I didn’t, nor did you, but Blind Jack heard it.”

Tone’s attention was drawn to the skull on the desk. Its entire yellowed dome was covered in a fine golden filigree depicting ships at sea and bare-breasted mermaids. The lower jaw was bound to the rest of the skull with gold wire and rubies had been set into the few teeth it still possessed.

The skull, Tone decided, was a work of art.

“Tom McGill, I presume,” he said.

Sprague nodded. “All that’s left of him. After he was shot by the Brazilians, I managed to acquire his head after it hung from their mainmast for a six-month. I needed to call in a lot of favors, but it still cost me a pretty penny.”

“And you did the gold work?”

“Had it done in San Francisco. It’s the least I could do for the last gentleman of fortune to freely sail the Seven Seas.”

“I’m sure he was a fine man,” Tone said with a straight face.

Sprague looked at him sharply, but the younger man’s expression revealed nothing. He reached into a drawer, produced a scuffed, leather-bound Bible and slid it across the desk. “Luther, administer the oath,” he said.

Penman told Tone to rise and approach the desk. “Take the Good Book in your left hand, place your right hand on Black Tom’s skull,” he said.

Slightly drunk, wholly bemused, Tone did as he was told.

“Jack,” Penman said.

For a blind man, Jack moved easily and with incredible speed. Before his alcohol-dulled senses could react, Tone’s head was bent back and the keen edge of Blind Jack’s knife was at his throat.

As though nothing unusual had happened, Penman said, “Do you, John Tone, in the presence of this assembled company, pledge your undying loyalty to Captain Lambert Sprague?”

Aware of the knife, imprisoned in the rough embrace of Blind Jack’s steel hawser arms, Tone said nothing. Penman told him to say: “I swear it.”

“I swear it.”

“Do you, Jack Tone, swear your willingness to be bound with chains, branded with irons, lashed with whips, hung by a noose or have your carcass left to rot in a cage rather than betray the sacred trust of Captain Lambert Sprague?”

“I swear it.”

“Do you, Jack Tone, swear on the skull of Black Tom McGill and the Bible to carry out all lawful orders, commands, directives, mandates, prescriptions and assignments as Captain Lambert Sprague deems necessary?”

“I swear it.”

“Now, after due consideration, if you wish to renege on the terms of your service, speak up at once, though be warned that your life will immediately be forfeit.”

The blade of the knife pressed deeper into Tone’s throat.

Penman told him to say that after all due consideration, he did not wish to renege on his sacred oaths.

Tone said the words and the knife blade was taken away from his throat. He looked around him, ready to smile, expecting the three other men to laugh, slap his back and tell him he’d been a good sport.

It did not happen.

The faces of Sprague, Blind Jack and Penman were solemn, like broadcloth-wearing bankers in church. Tone had thought the oath silly. He knew now that if he broke it Sprague wouldn’t rest until he was dead.

With great reverence, the skull was placed in the velvet bag again. The Bible got shorter shrift. Sprague picked it up and threw it back in the drawer.

He looked at Tone. “You will return to the coast tonight. I’ve arranged for you to take a room at one of my own places, a tavern called the Rose Garter. It’s better than most dives along the waterfront. The rum is good, the beds clean and the poker fairly honest. The Rose Garter is run by a man who took the same oath as you did. His name is Simon Hogg and Penman will instruct him to supply you with anything you need—food, liquor or women. And he’ll stand by you in a fight.”

“Hogg will supply your needs within reason, of course,” Penman said. “You should try to keep your expenses as reasonable as possible.”

“There speaks the bookkeeper,” Sprague said. He studied Tone from head to foot. “Until you know your way around the waterfront and my six old shipmates make their move, best you look like an ordinary sailorman. Those fine clothes you’re wearing will draw unwelcome attention.”

Sprague turned to Penman. “Find him something from the slop chest.”

He looked at Tone again. “For safety’s sake, I stay to sea as much as possible and let Luther handle my affairs on land. But I’ll be back in the Barbary Coast in a few weeks and I fully expect you to have some successes to report by then. Any questions?”

“None,” Tone said.

“A word of warning to ye, then. You’ve sworn a scared oath, Mr. Tone. If you betray any part or parcel of that oath, the punishment is to be marooned on an island with your eyes burned out and your blue guts tied to a tree.” Sprague paused, then: “Do you understand?”

Tone nodded. “I catch your drift.”

“So be it. I believe you’re a good man, Mr. Tone.

You’ve already proved you’re a hand with a gun. Now prove yourself to me.” He shook his head. “Don’t disappoint me.”

There was no note of encouragement in Sprague’s last statement.

It was a warning.