Bounty Hunter by Ralph Compton

Author:Ralph Compton
Language: eng
Format: azw3
ISBN: 9781101140680
Publisher: Penguin Group US
Published: 2009-10-06T07:00:00+00:00

Chapter 21

Tone walked along Pacific Street with Sprague. The drift of the swarming crowd was toward the saloons, dance halls, opium dens and brothels, and nobody except the bold-eyed whores gave either man a second glance as they passed.

A sense of wrongness at what he was doing gnawed at John Tone.

He had hunted and shot down men in the past and the right or wrong of it had never troubled him. By the very nature of their profession, outlaws were destined to be shot, hanged or imprisoned and all Tone did was hasten their inevitable end.

But a bomb is an indiscriminate killer and a coward’s weapon, the choice of a man with no real bottom to him. For the first time, Tone realized that Sprague, despite all his piratical bluster and belligerence, was such a man.

“Stay near me, Mr. Tone,” Sprague said. “We’re real close.” The man thumbed a match into flame, touched flame to the fuse.

“Listen, I—”

The crash of the fizzing bomb shattering the window of the Bucket of Blood drowned out Tone’s voice.

“Keep walking,” Sprague said urgently, without turning. “Don’t run.”

Behind them, women’s screams. The hoarse curses of frightened men. The sound of pounding feet. A man yelling, “Out! Out!”

An instant later the saloon exploded with a noise like thunder.

A brilliant billow of scarlet and yellow flame erupted through the collapsing wall at the front of the saloon, then the entire second story and higher turret rooms rose twenty feet in the air, only to crash down again into a boiling cauldron of fire.

A man ran screaming into the street, ablaze from head to toe, and collapsed on the cobbles, tinting those around him with crimson light. The screams and shrieks of people burning to death in mortal agony filled the night and a thick column of smoke rose into the red-stained sky.

Walking briskly, Sprague turned and grinned at Tone. “Damn my eyes, but that was even better than I expected. Did you see the whole goddamned roof of the building go sky high?” He made an upward gesture with his hands. “Boom!”

Somewhere behind them bells clanged as fire engines drawn by galloping horses raced to the conflagration.

“That will bring Joe Carpenter out of hiding,” Sprague said. “After this night’s work he’ll come looking for me.”

Purposely leaving off the “Mister,” Tone said, “Sprague, how many people did you kill tonight to flush a rat out of its hole?”

Now Sprague stopped. He and Tone stood in shadow and alone, the crowds attracted by the spectacle of death and fire.

“What the hell does it matter?” Sprague demanded. “So I killed a few whores, pimps and drunks. Who will miss them?”

“You may have killed hundreds.”

Sprague shook his head. “I should have brought Jim Hunter with me. He was right—you don’t have the guts for this kind of work.”

“You’re right,” Tone said. “I don’t. I’m quitting you as of this moment.”

“You can’t quit me, Tone. You swore an oath, and it’s binding until I say it’s not.”

Before he walked away, Tone grabbed the man by the front of his coat and pulled him closer.

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