A Lust For Lead

• Chapter 1
  
• Chapter 2
  
• Chapter 3
  
• Chapter 4
  
• Chapter 5
  
• Chapter 6
  
• Chapter 7
  
• Chapter 8
  
• Chapter 9
  
• Chapter 10
  
• Chapter 11
  
• Chapter 12
  
• Chapter 13
  
• Chapter 14
  
• Chapter 15
  
• Chapter 16
  
• Chapter 17
  
• Chapter 18
  
• Chapter 19
  
• Chapter 20
  
• Chapter 21
  
• Chapter 22
  
• Chapter 23
  
• Chapter 24
  
• Chapter 25
  

After six days of stifling heat, the storm had finally broken. Still air had erupted into a savage fury; harsh winds that stripped the desert raw. The sky had become choked with grit, turning the midday sun into a murky twilight, stained brown, like the colour of dried blood.
At the edge of the storm, the town of Santa Morgana trembled on shallow foundations. It was little more than a shanty, grown up around a weak copper mine in the middle of nowhere. Thin clapboard walls bowed beneath the wind’s ferocious energy and tarpaulin roofs strained the tacks that held them down. Some had broken loose already and the tarps flapped in the maelstrom like crows with broken wings. Wood creaked and groaned in a tortured cacophony of stress. The scaffold above the main pit swayed drunkenly, taut cables screaming.
It was during this storm in the spring of 1881 that Death and the Devil faced each other at the edge of town. The two gunfighters stood with ten paces between them, their faces muffled with scarves, hats drawn low to shield their eyes from the driving gusts of sand, their hands poised above their six-shooters, tensed and ready.
The man known as Death was tall and gaunt, with a pale and leathery complexion. His eyes were cold and unfeeling as oblivion, pitiless and devoid of mercy. He stood like a man carved of stone, motionless but for his long white hair whipping in the fury of the gale.
The man they called the Devil had the broad-shoulders of a farm labourer and a handsome, square-jawed face. A look of madness glimmered in his eyes. As wild as the storm, he rolled his shoulders, tapped his feet and drummed his fingers against the stiff leather of his belt, enervated by the thrill of the duel.
A dust cloud blew between them and suddenly the Devil ceased his constant motion. He became as still as his opponent, muscles tensed like stretched wire. Neither man could see. All was darkness and spitting sand, the air hotter than the fires of Hell.
And then the cloud parted.
And each man drew his gun.

The sudden crack of gunfire became the words of a man, spoken harshly and accompanied by a sharp kick in the ribs.
‘Wake up, Ennis! It’s time to go.’
Shane Ennis surfaced from the dream with a start. He was grateful for the interruption until he remembered where he was. Groaning, he shifted from where he lay and fended off a second kick with his forearms.
It had been a cold night and he had slept on the bare earth, his overcoat wadded for a pillow. Old scars felt stiff and painful and his joints cracked noisily as he rose. The morning air was crisp and contrasted sharply to the hot, sand-choked world of his nightmare. His wrists ached where his tossing and turning had made the ropes that bound them chafe.
The man who had woken him was a bounty hunter, an old grey wolf of a man in faded denims and a brown leather waistcoat. Alijah Noonan was his name, and Shane had learned to curse it in the week that had passed since Noonan and his gang had captured him. Shane was a wanted man in thirteen states and faced the death penalty in just about all of them but Noonan was not taking him to the authorities. Somebody else had put a price on Shane’s head that was worth a lot more than the ten-thousand dollars the federal government was willing to pay for him, and it was to this mysterious figure that Shane was being taken. To a place called Saddle Horn Rock, way out in the badlands near the Mexican border.
‘Go on, get moving you cuss!’ Noonan hauled Shane to his feet and pushed him over to where his horse was waiting. It had been saddled and Noonan’s men were ready to set out on the last leg of their journey. One of them spat at Shane as he passed. ‘They’re gonna hang you today, Ennis.’
‘Maybe,’ one of the others remarked. ‘If he’s lucky.’
Shane voiced no comment to their taunts. He had long since lost the will to fight them. He bowed his head and stumbled clumsily to his horse, mounted as he was told and turned to face the southern horizon with a grim sense of resignation.
Today was the last day of his life.

There had been a time, six years ago, when none of this would have happened. Shane had been a different man then, colder and more ruthless. It would have taken much more than a man like Noonan to bring him in.
At forty-one years old, Shane was a gaunt, hard figure of a man dressed in patched and tattered clothes. His hair was long and bleached white by the sun, his face sharp and angular and dominated by cold, pitiless eyes. If the saying was true and his eyes really were the windows to his soul, then Shane’s soul was as barren as the desert. He did not look at his captors directly, even when they taunted him and called him a coward. His surroundings passed by unregarded. His mind was elsewhere.
They had travelled far beyond the civilised lands and all around them the desert stretched seemingly into infinity: a sea of rust-coloured dirt that was broken sporadically by islands of coarse dry grass and cacti. Two isolated mesas marked the horizon and Saddle Horn Rock was only a short distance from there.
Shane’s thoughts were of his future. Not even Noonan knew who would be waiting for them at Saddle Horn Rock. He had spoken only with middlemen: lawyers who had despatched telegrams to another lawyer based in Santa Fe and who had divulged nothing of his employer’s identity. Shane could think of a dozen enemies who might have the resources to go to such trouble. He had killed hundreds of men during the twenty-odd years that he had sold his guns as a professional killer, any number of whom had wealthy friends or family left who might now seek revenge. And likely not a quick revenge at that. Shane expected to be tortured. He expected to die slowly and in great pain.
At least, that was how he hoped it would be.
Shane was not afraid of suffering; it was dying that he feared. He had seen beyond the veil of death and knew what waited for him there. And it scared him so badly that he would gladly endure any pain, any humiliation, if only to prolong his life another second.

It was almost midday when Saddle Horn Rock showed on the horizon. It was a weathered finger of stone that rose abruptly opposite a rounded slope known as Cantle Ridge.
Noonan sent two of his men on ahead to scout things out while the rest of them kept their distance. The desert shimmered in the ferocious heat. One of Noonan’s men removed his hat and wiped the sweat from his balding pate. ‘You think they’ll be there?’ he asked.
‘They’ll be there.’ Noonan said solemnly. ‘Last chance to turn back, Hooper.’
The man shook his head. Shane had heard them have this discussion several times already. ‘You want to?’ he asked
‘No.’
‘Ten-thousand dollars is a lot of money.’
‘Twenty-thousand is a whole lot more.’ Noonan replied.
But it was risky. There were no guarantees that Noonan’s anonymous contacts would be willing to part with such a large sum of money and that was why he had gathered his gang together to make a show of force. They all knew this. They had all come ready for a fight.
The two scouts returned. They were young men, twin boys belonging to one of Noonan’s old army buddies. At seventeen, Chris and Cole Dalton were eager to make their mark on the world and to them this ride was an adventure. Cole’s eyes were wild with excitement as he described what they had seen: ‘They’re there all right. Three men. They got themselves a pair of rifles. Third man’s packing a six-gun. Looks like he’s the leader.’
‘A gunslinger.’ Hooper mused. ‘Makes sense. Old friend, you reckon Ennis?’
More than likely, Shane thought, nerves tightening in his gut.
‘What about the money?’ Noonan asked.
‘They got a horse with two of the biggest wooden boxes you ever saw strapped to its back.’ Chris stretched his arms apart to demonstrate the size. ‘Like coffins they are!’
‘Okay, we’re here to do business.’ Noonan said. ‘Did they get a look at you?’
‘They saw us.’
‘And?’
‘They watched us real good, Al. Especially that gunslinger. He looks like a mean sonofabitch to be sure.’
Noonan nodded his head solemnly. ‘We do this like we planned,’ he said. ‘Hooper, you stick to Ennis like glue. Anything happens. . .’
Hooper pointed two fingers at Shane’s head and drew back his thumb like he was cocking a gun. ‘Bang!’ he promised.

The three waiting men were just as Cole had described them. Two of them carried rifles. Not the lever-action repeating kind that the Dalton brothers were armed with, but the more powerful, more accurate single-shot breach-loaders popular with marksmen. They spread out when they saw the gang approaching, one heading to the shadow of the Rock while the other trekked out wide to the opposite flank.
The gunslinger held the middle. Shane looked but could not see him clearly enough through the shimmering heat haze to tell if he recognised him or not. Behind him, five horses had been roped to a stunted Joshua tree. One carried the two boxes that Cole had boasted were so big. Neither was as big as a coffin, but they were not far off.
Five horses seemed one too many by Shane’s reckoning, unless one was intended for him to ride, and that just didn’t sit right. He scanned the slopes of Cantle Ridge and found what he was looking for: a momentary flash as the sunlight reflected off a glass lens, betraying the presence of a third sharpshooter, armed with a high-powered rifle and a telescopic sight.
Noonan and his boys were unaware of the marksman’s presence and Shane felt disinclined to tell them about him. They rode on as they had planned; the Dalton brothers reining in about a hundred yards from where the exchange would take place, off to either flank. Hooper jabbed his revolver into the side of Shane’s head. ‘That’s far enough, Ennis.’
Shane drew on the reins and held back, leaving Noonan to ride on, accompanied by the fifth man in the gang: Jim Walters, a grizzled old bear with a sawn-off shotgun.
The gunslinger strode out and met them about halfway from the money. Now that he was closer, Shane could see him more clearly. He was in his late thirties with a stocky frame and curly brown hair. A Smith and Wesson Model Three Russian revolver was slung from his belt, rigged for a left-handed draw. He had drawn with his right the last time they had met.
A sudden gust of wind blew grit in Shane’s face, bringing sharp memories.

He stood with his hat pulled low and his face wrapped in a scarf as the storm howled all around him. His hand was poised above the handle of his gun and his eyes were narrowed, staring into the blinding wind at the figure that was nothing more than a shadow in the sandstorm’s murk. A shadow who had come to kill him.
Shane had hoped this moment would never come. He would have run rather than hold his ground, but the storm had closed in too suddenly and trapped him and now there was no choice but to fight.
His cold, dark eyes showed nothing of the turmoil that raged inside of him, the fear and the joy that competed so savagely for the prize of his soul.
Shane Ennis stood his ground and prepared for what he felt with certainty would be the end of his life.
The wind suddenly dropped. Shane recognised it as a momentary lull that would be followed seconds later by a raging torrent. Then there would be a brief, fleeting calm. The dust would settle and in that moment his opponent would draw, in the instant that the air cleared enough for him to see his target, yet still catch him by surprise.
With that certainty, Shane knew that what remained of his future could be measured in seconds. His heart began to quicken. His senses grew sharp.
The windblast hit, just as he had anticipated. It blotted out everything in a cloud of dust so thick and so hot that it seemed as if the air was on fire. Shane had instinctively closed his eyes to protect them. He felt the sandstorm’s heat against his face and when the cooler breeze returned he knew that it was safe to open his eyes again.
He reached for his gun immediately. Through the sandstorm, he saw his opponent likewise draw.
It was all over in a heartbeat.
Thought required too much time; Shane acted on instinct. His hand became a separate entity, no longer a part of him but acting entirely on muscle memory. His arm came up. He held his breath to stop his hand from shaking. Aimed. His finger tightened against the trigger.
He had his opponent dead to rights but in that moment Shane refused to kill him. He dropped his aim by a fraction.
And fired.
The shot caught his opponent on the trigger finger, tore straight through it and shattered his hand. He screamed and pitched away into the storm.