A Lust For Lead (6 page)

Shane had returned to the Babson ranch at first light the following morning, his arrival scaring crows into flight as he led his horse through the stink of the battleground. His mind cold to the events of the night before, he knelt outside the open gate of the corral and examined the hoof marks that were left there.
Benedict Hunte had fled westwards. He was no great horseman and in his panic he had exhausted his mount in the first hour of riding. Thereafter he had been forced to travel slowly and by midday Shane had caught up with him enough that the chase looked certain to be over before nightfall.
Shane was glad. He was eager to get the job done and put the events of the previous night behind him. The murder of the Babson woman and her child still haunted him, sitting badly on a conscience he had not known he had until he had woken that morning.
It was the senselessness of the incident that bothered him the most. Shane had never killed a child before. He had shot over a hundred men and more than his fair share of women, but he had never found reason to shoot a child. He was not altogether convinced that he’d had a reason this time either. Quick hands were something that every gunfighter was fast to develop if he wanted to survive, but however quick the hands the eye was always faster and Shane had known who his targets were before he had pulled the trigger.
He had known and he had still done it and he did not know why. It was almost as if, for a brief moment, somebody else had been in control of his body and that bothered him because it made him wonder if he was going mad.
He pondered heavily on these thoughts while he rode and by midday he arrived at the town of Wainsford.
His appearance earned him suspicious looks as he rode into town. A mother hastily dragged her children indoors out of his way and a shop sign in the window of the general store was hastily flipped over to read ‘closed’. Shane drew up outside a fine-looking hotel and he hitched his horse beside it and went inside. A bell, situated above the door, rang to announce his arrival and a man called out from one of the other rooms, asking him to be patient. ‘I’ll be with you in a minute.’
Shane was not feeling patient and tracked the voice to its source: a middle-aged man dressed in a floral-print apron, who was spring-cleaning. He looked embarrassed to have been discovered and hastily shed the apron, casting it aside. ‘Belongs to the wife,’ he muttered. ‘We’re dining with the vicar tonight; I didn’t want to get my clothes dirty. You must want a room real bad, mister.’
‘A man came into town recently. Did you see him?’
‘You a friend of his?’ The hotelier clearly did not believe he was.
‘I want to know where he is.’
The look in Shane’s eyes and the tone of his voice convinced him to answer. ‘He’s across the street in the marshal’s office. Marshal Fletcher come by and arrested him just a half-hour ago. If you’re looking for a bounty, mister, I guess you’re too late.’ He gave a nervous laugh which Shane silenced with a glare. Hunte getting himself arrested was a complication he could have well done without.
‘This Marshal Fletcher, he got a deputy?’
‘He’s got two. Alan Grant and young Ben. They’re more than capable of taking care of things, mister.’
Shane cursed silently to himself. Killing lawmen always meant trouble and if there were three of them then that made matters even worse. He left the hotelier to his spring cleaning and stepped outside.
Word of him had spread across town and the marshal was waiting for him as he walked out the door. With him was a young man who held a 12-guage shotgun, which he pointed right at Shane’s chest.
‘Howdy,’ the marshal said amicably. He was an elderly man with wiry grey hair and a moustache like a steel brush. He was thin but had the sort of lean physique that suggested he was still a force to be reckoned with. ‘You know, I didn’t believe it at first when I heard that Shane Ennis was in town but now I see it with my own eyes. What you doing here son?’
Shane declined to answer. ‘Am I under arrest?’ he asked.
‘No, you’re not. Ben here is just my insurance. You’ve got a nasty reputation Mister Ennis and my old bones ain’t what they used to be. Now I believe I asked you a question.’
‘I’m looking for someone.’
‘And who might that be?’
‘Just someone.’
The old lawman sighed wearily. He knew that Shane had come into town looking for Hunte. Shane was a professional gun for hire and Hunte was a man with a high price on his head; it didn’t take a suspicious mind to put two and two together. Fletcher was out-matched but he managed to look cool. ‘So what’s this someone look like?’ he asked. ‘It could be that maybe I’ve seen him around.’
‘I’d like to tell you, marshal, but to tell you the truth I haven’t seen him.’
‘That might make it hard for you to find him.’
‘Hard.’ Shane agreed. ‘But not impossible. I got a pretty good idea I know where he is.’
‘You fixing to cause trouble in my town?’ Fletcher asked.
Shane looked him levelly in the eyes. ‘Not if I can help it,’ he said.
The marshal nodded, understanding him perfectly. ‘Well then,’ he said. ‘In that case I’ll leave you to go about your business. Oh there is one thing: Benedict Hunte rode into town a little while ago and I understand there’s quite a price on his head. I’ve got him locked up in the jailhouse and there’s some federal marshals coming to pick him up in a couple of days. Until they get here though, me and the boys are likely to be a little nervous so I’d stay out of our way if I were you. I’m not threatening you, you understand; I’m just saying. A man like you has a reputation and we don’t want any misunderstandings around here now do we?’
Shane smiled slightly, admiring the old man’s nerve. ‘No, we wouldn’t want that at all.’
‘So everything’s clear?’
‘Perfectly.’
‘Well, good day to you then.’
Shane tipped his hat to them and watched as they retreated back toward the jailhouse. He had hoped to have been able to intimidate them into giving him Hunte without any trouble, but it seemed as though things were going to be a little more complicated than that.
He swore quietly to himself. Hunte was becoming more trouble than he was worth.

The stroke of noon was the Gunfighter’s Hour. It was sacred to the Fastest Guns and Shane thought it curious that no match was fought to honour it. Instead, the contest between Luke Ferris and the woman, Vendetta, took place, like every other match, at half-past the hour.
Vendetta was the woman that evil men feared. Ten years ago, her husband had been murdered by a gang of outlaws led a famous gunfighter named Michael Brett. The local sheriff had been powerless to do anything about it, being too scared and too underpaid to risk his neck over something as trivial as justice, and so Mary Elizabeth Becker had learned to handle a gun, changed her name to Vendetta, and sought her own retribution.
It had been bloody and dangerous. Vendetta had pursued her enemies relentlessly and only Michael Brett had managed to elude her. In 1881 he had competed in the first tournament at Covenant, from which he had never returned. Since then she had wandered the continent, fighting for others that the law was powerless to protect and championing the causes of those too weak to fight for themselves.
Shane had it on good authority that Michael Brett had been one of the six men who had won the first tournament and was willing to bet that Vendetta had come to Covenant to complete her revenge. To do that, however, she would need to win.
She squared-off against her opponent with a look of tough determination smouldering in her eyes. Luke Ferris was a handsome man in his late twenties whose deceptively laconic nature concealed a vicious talent for murder. He wore no gunbelt but simply had his gun tucked into the waistline of his pants. It was a .44-40 calibre Remington with an inch-long brass spur protruding from the handle for use in close-combat. With it, Ferris had killed close to three-dozen men. He was a notorious train and coach robber, wanted dead or alive in Nevada, Utah, Texas and Oklahoma. He stood with his left shoulder slouched, hands idle, the stub of a cigar hanging from the corner of his lips.
When Nathaniel called it, both fighters burst into an explosion of speed. Their hands reached instantly for their guns, flicked back the hammers and drew.
Two gunshots rang out almost simultaneously, thundering through the silent streets of town. Vendetta’s hat was blown from her head and fell, spinning, into the dust behind her. As it landed, a sudden hush closed upon the crossroads as if a smothering fist had tightened, choking all further sounds.
Then there was a heavy thump as a body hit the ground.

Luke Ferris had been the quicker of the two by a mere fraction of a second but his haste had proven costly. He had fired high and his shot had missed the top of Vendetta’s skull by just an inch and a half. Vendetta had been more accurate. Her shot had found its mark and split Luke’s heart in two, separating the left and right ventricles before cleaving through his shoulder blade in an explosion of blood and shattered bone.
She stooped now, retrieved her hat and dusted it down before putting it back on and tilting it to shield her eyes from the sun. She then walked calmly from the street.
The other contestants dispersed and did not return to the crossroads until the fourth match was due to begin. The renegade Apache, Nanache, took his place on the crossroads opposite the Canadian, Daniel Blaine, and stared at his opponent with hate-filled eyes.
Nanache had served in the US Army as a scout during the Geronimo Campaign. He had been promised ten ponies and his freedom in exchange for his services, but when Geronimo surrendered the US Government had broken its word and sentenced ‘friendly’ Apaches like Nanache to share Geronimo’s exile in Florida. Nanache had escaped from the prison train and become an outlaw rather than suffer that fate. His bitterness at being betrayed after years spent fighting his own kinsmen had turned into a deadly hatred for the US Government and its people, and over the following years he had built a name for himself as a ruthless killer of men, women and children. He was known to torture his victims slowly to death, to cover them in pitch and set them on fire or stake them out in the sun for the buzzards to eat alive. The Federal Government had issued a thousand dollar reward for his capture, dead or alive, but so far he had killed every bounty hunter who had ever searched for him.
He wore his old US Army jacket as a mark of spite, decorating it with kachinas made from beads and feathers and horse’s hair. At his side, he wore a seven-inch bone-handled knife and a Colt 1873 Single Action revolver.
Blaine was an enormous man with a thick chest and hairy arms. He stood ramrod-straight, his feet planted a shoulder’s width apart and his knees slightly bent. He was a competition marksman by profession and a murderer by habit. His gun was custom-made to his own specifications and was based on a Remington 1875 revolver, rechambered to take a .50 calibre cartridge and fitted with an Alvan Clarke telescopic sight above the barrel. With its monstrously powerful cartridge and five times magnification, he boasted that it was lethal at ranges of up to a hundred yards.
Nanache fingered the grisly necklace of finger bones that hung around his throat.
‘That’s a pretty rosary you have there.’ Blaine told him. ‘But praying to your heathen gods won’t save you.’
Nanache regarded him coldly. ‘Every one of these bones is the trigger finger of a gunfighter I have killed. This one,’ he said, stroking one of the small, yellowed bones. ‘Was fast on the draw. Whereas this one,’ he said, stroking another. ‘Came from a man who shot well. Now I shoot well and I am fast on the draw. Not only have I taken their bones, I have taken their skills as well. When this is over I will take your finger and your famous marksmanship and I will go into the second round better than I am today.’
Blaine did not know whether to take his boasts seriously or not. He curled his lip. ‘First you’ll have to beat me, chief.’
The two contestants glanced sideways as Nathaniel came to the edge of the porch and called for their attention. They tensed. Blaine shook his fingers to loosen them and heighten his responsiveness. Nanache checked his footing.
Nathaniel raised his voice. ‘You may fire when ready.’
It was over in seconds. Nanache’s shot hit Blaine hit in the neck. The bullet clipped off the underside of his jawbone and ricocheted into his spine. His head jerked sideways, blood spurting from his mouth as fragments of his shattered jaw ripped through his tongue and into his pallet.
He rotated slowly on the spot, hand still rising to bring his heavy revolver to bear.
Nanache fired again and this time Blaine hit the ground. He twitched once, then lay still. The invigilators moved forward to collect his body but Nanache waved them back. He holstered his gun and walked over to Blaine’s body, where he knelt and drew his knife. Prising the gun from Blaine’s tightly clenched hand, he straightened the man’s trigger finger and carefully cut it off at the root.
‘You may take him now,’ he told the invigilators, and stepped aside to let them carry him away.

The sound of hoof beats on the road outside his window startled Shane from his thoughts. He rose and parted the curtains a crack so that he could see outside.
The horseman was a wild-looking man, dusty from the trail, with a revolver worn prominently in a shoulder holster and a pair of knives strapped across his back.
He was the fifth bounty hunter to have arrived in Wainsford in the last couple of days, and Shane did not think that he would be the last. Word had gotten out that Hunte was in town and now bounty hunters from all across America were flocking in, each one vying to be the man who killed Hunte.
Marshal Fletcher had stopped greeting them as he had greeted Shane and now just watched from the jailhouse porch. He was outnumbered and outgunned and praying that the federal marshals would arrive soon.
Shane withdrew from the window and let the curtains fall back into place, dimming the light. It was hot and stuffy in his hotel room and Shane’s naked body was greased with sweat. He crossed to where he had laid his guns out on the floor and sat down, cross-legged in front of them.
Both were Colt 1873 Single Action .45 calibre revolvers. A lot of people criticised the Colts but Shane had always preferred them over competing manufacturers because they were finely balanced and leant themselves easily to the kind of fast handling that he preferred.
Some gunfighters chose to personalise their weapons with ivory or solid silver handles, or with stylised engravings on the frame and barrel, but Shane disliked such affectations. A gun was a tool, not an ornament. The only modification that he had made to his guns was to have the barrel of one of them shortened from seven and a half inches to just five inches long. This made it faster and easier to draw and it was this gun that he fired with his right hand, for while Shane could shoot accurately with both hands he was marginally better with his right.
He had arranged both guns on the floor before him pointing outwards. Both had been cleaned and oiled reverently and the blackened metal gleamed in the dusky light. Their scent, acrid and sharp, reminded him of the smell that lingered after sex. It was perversely erotic.
Both guns were fully loaded and the hammers cocked. Danger radiated from them. A slight knock was all that it would take to set them off. A door could be slammed in another part of the hotel and the vibration might cause the hammer to fall, discharging one of the powerful .45 Long cartridges. Capable of penetrating through as much as four inches of solid timber, the result of being on the receiving end of one of those bullets was likely to be fatal and as Shane sat there, meditating on his weapons, he fancied that they wanted to be fired, that they wanted to kill and that, while he was a necessary medium by which they could achieve that desire, they would gladly kill him if there was no one else around.
The idea that his guns could think and that they had desires of their own was nothing new to Shane. He had often thought as much. During the long times that he spent alone, travelling across the country he had formulated quite a complex mythology for them.
A gun existed solely to kill. Unlike a knife that could be used for a variety of purposes, a gun was singular in its design. It was good for nothing else. Shane had admired that simplicity ever since he was a boy. He had been envious of it. Human life was so full of questions and uncertainties, so bewildering in comparison that the world of the gun had seemed seductively well-ordered to him, and he had sought to emulate it in his own way of life. He had many times sought to find solace in them as he did now, meditating on them and seeking to perfect his state of mind and be more like them, to eliminate doubt and focus purely on the task at hand.
This time, however, the clarity that he sought kept eluding him. He kept thinking back to that night at the Babson ranch. Each time, he vividly recalled the look of surprise on the woman’s face, the splash of wet blood.
What was more, he kept thinking about how he had not felt in control of himself at that time but rather as if some other mind was working him while he had been just a spectator. He stared at his guns, his body sheathed in perspiration, and wondered if he was going crazy.
Outside, the bounty hunters were gathering and Shane knew that he was wasting time. The more bounty hunters that arrived in town, the more competition he would have to contend with, and yet he felt unmotivated to do anything about it. He sat in his room, plagued with strange doubts and staring at his guns.
And trying to deny something that he knew in his heart was true.