A Lust For Lead (13 page)

The dawn rose over Wainsford, drawing back the shadows and exposing the effect of the night’s crimes. Like a rape victim, the town was huddled in shock. Its population cowered, hiding behind closed doors while the men who had brought death and terror to its streets held the jailhouse in siege.
Shane stepped from his hotel and took a deep breath before he crossed the road. He had scarcely slept at all that night for he had been plagued by nightmares in which his guns had compelled him to kill over and over again; but to look at him, nobody would ever have known. He kept his inner turmoil locked away behind the implacable surface of his cold, dark eyes and he walked with the confident knowledge that, one way or another, the siege would end today.
The bounty hunters had gathered in a semi-circle around the jailhouse. They parted so that Shane could pass, then closed in again behind him. He felt the presence of their guns at his back, scratching at his paranoia, but again he was confident. Buchanan would not let any other man kill him. He wanted to prove himself against Shane too badly to let anybody else spoil the opportunity and so, for the time being, Shane could trust him like a brother.
The jailhouse stood quiet and subdued before him. The morning sun revealed the bullet marks in the door and the dark stain of Ben’s blood from the night before. Shane was aware that his approach was being watched from inside and that the men in there were more likely to shoot him than listen to what he had to say but he forced himself to appear calm. To show any kind of fear right now would invite disaster.
‘Are you in there Fletcher?’
The sound of a gun being cocked was his first reply.
‘Back off Ennis! I ought to shoot you where you stand.’
‘I’m not here to fight with you, Fletcher. I came here to make peace.’
‘Why you cocksucking son-of-a-whore! You come here and say you’ll talk peace with me after what you murderers did last night?’
‘What happened last night was unfortunate, Fletcher. I didn’t have any part in it.’
‘Bullshit!’
‘You have my word.’ Shane called back. He did not consider that he was lying as such, since it was true that he had not actually taken part in any of the night’s misdoings despite his role in engineering them. ‘There are a lot of dangerous men in town. I took care of a few of them yesterday. I guess I must have missed some.’
‘Why don’t you stick that gun of yours in your own mouth and pull the trigger? You won’t miss then!’
‘You’re wasting your time Fletcher. Your federal marshal’s aren’t coming. Federal marshals have got better things to do than get themselves killed over a piece of shit like Hunte. There’s nobody here wants him alive but you. Give it up. If you come out now I swear to you that no one else will get hurt.’
Fletcher couldn’t find the words to express what he thought of Shane’s offer and silence was his only answer. Shane sighed. ‘You’re not the marshal any more, Fletcher. I am. I got a signed writ here and I’ve been authorised to remove you from my jailhouse with force if necessary. I’d rather it didn’t come to that.’
‘You can take that writ and stick it, Ennis!’ Fletcher shouted back. ‘That piece of paper’s not worth spit, nor the men who signed it.’
Shane was beginning to lose his patience. The idea of just killing Fletcher was getting to feel more and more welcome all the time. His hand stroked the butt of his revolver.
He was distracted by a sudden shout from one of his men. The bounty hunter was pointing and Shane turned to see a band of five horsemen riding into town. They were wild-looking men. Three of them looked like half-blooded Apaches. They had long black hair that was decorated with feathers and beads. The other two were white, and one of them – the leader judging by his bearing – was built like a blacksmith’s anvil.
Shane swore beneath his breath. He recognised the leader. Though he had never met him face to face, he knew of his reputation. He was an Arizona Ranger, which meant that Shane’s predictions had been wrong.
The federal marshals had come to town and they had come looking for a fight.

Shane watched a dust devil spiral along the road before dissipating in a shower of grit. He did not feel the breeze that had caused it. The air was heavy and stale and hot as the fires of Hell.
‘I need a drink,’ he said.
‘So?’ Buchanan asked.
‘So are you going to get one for me?’
‘Do I look like your fucking servant?’
Shane gave him a shrug and turned away. ‘It’s not like you’re good for anything else.’ It was the sort of comment that Buchanan could not simply let pass.
‘What the fuck is that supposed to mean?’ he said, loud enough that the closest invigilators turned to see what was happening.
‘Nothing.’ Shane replied. ‘Except that I notice you aren’t competing in this tournament.’
He had expected this to be a sore point with Buchanan, and he was right. ‘I could compete if I wanted too.’
‘But you’re not.’
‘If you’ve got something to say to me then you say it.’ Buchanan said, rising to his feet.
Shane rose also and turned to face him directly. They were more or less of an equal height, although Buchanan was bulkier by about twenty pounds of muscle. The invigilators started to get nervous. Rifles were cocked and, irritably, Buchanan waved them to stand down.
‘Say it!’ he said fiercely.
But Shane turned away, saying nothing.
‘Yeah, I thought as much.’ Buchanan said, his voice rancorous with disgust. ‘Get out of my sight! You don’t fucking deserve to compete in this tournament, you yellow-bellied bastard.’
Shane slouched away, looking defeated. A few of the invigilators jeered at him but their taunts fell on deaf ears. Shane didn’t care what they thought of him. Refusing to carry a gun for the last six years, he had walked away from more fights than he could remember. It didn’t mean anything to him. And besides, he had gotten precisely the response from Buchanan that he had wanted.
He crossed the street to O’Malley’s without anybody trying to stop him and pushed through the butterfly-wing doors. It was dark inside but the shade offered no relief from the suffocating midday heat. Shane had not come to O’Malley’s to drink, however. He walked straight through the building and out the back door, making good his escape before Buchanan thought of sending someone to keep an eye on him.
The back door led into an empty side street and Shane felt a thrill of excitement. He had been kept a prisoner of somebody or other for the past month or so and this new-found freedom felt good, even if he knew it was only temporary. It gave him a taste for more and deepened his resolve to escape from Covenant before the tournament ended.
Keeping to the backstreets and alleys, he avoided the patrolling invigilators and made his way by a circuitous route to the bathhouse, approaching it from the rear. His way was barred by a tall wooden fence but it was in poor enough condition that he was able to pull down a few planks to make a gap big enough for him to step through.
As he had suspected, the bathhouse was in use.
He had gambled on this. Yesterday when Vendetta had returned to the street to watch Nanache and Daniel Blaine fight, he had noticed that her hair had been wet. He had thought little of it at the time, but the observation had been noted and he had recalled it just a few minutes ago and recognised its significance.
Vendetta was a hard woman but she did not revel in the act of killing the way most of the other contestants did. It was distasteful to her, something that she saved for when it was necessary, and Shane suspected that she had had a bath yesterday after killing Luke Ferris, maybe to try and wash away the guilt from her soul.
That being the case, it made sense that she would do it again having just killed Nanache. Shane approached the open doorway.
The tread of his footsteps must have given him away, for he heard the familiar sound of a gun being cocked as he drew near. Vendetta called out from within. ‘That’s far enough.’
Deliberately ignoring her, Shane walked cautiously inside. He found her sitting in one of the tubs, her legs drawn up against her chest to preserve her modesty.
Shane motioned to the gun she was holding. ‘You know, if you shoot me with that thing you’ll be breaking one of Nathaniel’s rules.’
‘Get lost.’
‘No need to get mad. I only came for a bath. I wasn’t expecting to find anyone else here.’
‘Well, as you can see, I’m here.’ Vendetta told him. She let the obvious gender difference hang unspoken between them but Shane chose to ignore it. Sauntering into the room, he took off his hat and waistcoat and set them down on the floor next to the tub beside her. ‘It is hot today, isn’t it?’ he said, pointedly ignoring the gun that she kept trained on him.
She let out an irritable sigh. ‘Get out, Ennis.’
‘Why? I count three tubs. You’re only taking up one of them’
‘Goddammit!’ she swore. ‘Shouldn’t you be on a leash?’
‘Yeah, but I got loose.’
‘So go bug somebody else.’
‘Maybe I will. After I’ve had my bath.’
She had left some water on the hearth and Shane emptied it into his chosen tub, then went outside to draw some more. When he returned, Vendetta had evidently resigned herself to the fact that he was not going to leave. She had set her gun down on the floor on the side of her tub furthest away from him and had resumed washing herself, acting as if he wasn’t there.
Shane mirrored her disinterest, going about the process of warming the water and filling his bath as if he was alone but, out of the corner of his eye, he kept a careful watch on her. Although it had not been his intention to, he found himself looking at her body. She was too hard for any man to call her pretty, but without her clothes on there was no denying that she was a woman, and a woman with a very fine pair of legs, Shane noted. Her wet skin glistened like honey in the golden light.
When his bath was ready, he unselfconsciously stripped off his clothes, climbed into the tub and began to wash. ‘I know why you’re here,’ he said conversationally.
She frowned. ‘Is that supposed to impress me?’
Shane did not expect her to want to listen to what he had to say, but the fact that she was naked gave her little choice in the matter. It would take her a good couple of minutes to dry herself and get dressed before she could walk out on him, and that was all the time he needed.
‘You’re not good enough to win this tournament,’ he told her. ‘You got lucky yesterday and you barely made it through today. Tomorrow you’ll probably go up against Chastity, or me; and you haven’t got a chance of beating either of us.’
‘I can kill you,’ she asserted.
He shrugged half-heartedly. ‘It’s been a while since I fired properly,’ he admitted. ‘And I’m not as good as I was so I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt. But as for that little girl, I have never seen anyone who could shoot as good as her.’
Just as he had suspected she might, Vendetta got out of the tub and began drying herself. She pretended not to hear him as he continued: ‘You entered this tournament to find your husband’s murderer but it’s not going to do you any good. You won’t even see Brett unless you win, and there’s no way that’s going to happen.’
‘Save it, Ennis. You’re not going to scare me off.’
‘I’m not trying to.’
She turned her back on him and tugged on her pants.
‘You know, it might not matter anyway,’ he said. ‘Maybe you’ve figured it out yourself. Nathaniel’s not being completely honest with us about this tournament. I don’t know what he’s up to but he sure as Hell isn’t working for the Fastest Guns.’
‘They would have killed us all by now if he wasn’t.’ Vendetta said, putting on her shirt.
‘That’s true. Which makes me wonder what they’re up to.’
Vendetta finished getting dressed. She strapped on her gun belt and pulled her hair back in a tight ponytail. ‘Save it for somebody who gives a shit,’ she said.
‘If you don’t want to believe me . . .’ Shane began, but he was talking to himself; she had already gone.
He settled back in the tub and closed his eyes to think. The hook had been baited. Now all he had to do was wait to see if she bit.

The gunfight could scarcely have been called as much.
The federal marshals galloped into Wainsford in close order and fought as a team, whereas Shane’s bounty hunters had no love for one another and fought as individuals. They were cut down and Shane stood in the midst of them, not moving, not even reaching for his gun. Bullets whipped past him, heading in both directions, some passing so close that they snatched at his hair. It took all of his self-control not to draw his guns, for he knew that the safest way to survive this battle was not to make a target of himself. He stood in the eye of the tornado, ignored and unscathed.
It was all over in less than forty-five seconds. Castor Buchanan and two others turned tail and fled and three of the marshals went after them. The other two shot the bounty hunters who remained and then advanced on Shane.
Their leader stared down at him from his saddle, his brow creased in an ugly frown. ‘Draw your gun, mister.’
Shane met his gaze and held it. He was impressed when the man refused to look away. ‘I’m not going to do that, sir.’
‘Why you no good yellow bastard, I said draw your goddamn gun!’
Shane did not so much as move. ‘If you’ll let me prove it, I have a writ in my pocket that will identify me as the marshal of this town.’
‘And I suppose those boys were your deputies?’
‘That’s right.’
‘And you were just standing around outside of your own jailhouse, enjoying the morning air?’
It was at that point that Fletcher called out from inside. ‘Don’t listen to a word that man says. He’s Shane Ennis.’
‘I know who he is. Do you know who I am, Ennis?’
‘I do.’ Shane replied. The big marshal was Lyndon Appleby. He was captain of the special Desert Cadre of the Arizona Rangers and he was just as famous as Shane was notorious; a real American legend.
He had been born in Ohio in 1839 and at the age of eight he had run away from home to seek his fortune. He had drifted for a time as a vagrant and a scavenger before winding up at a horse ranch at the age of twelve, where he had learned to break wild mustangs. He had fought for the Union when war broke out and had distinguished himself at Racoon Ford but, so the story went, Appleby had grown weary of fighting his countrymen and, after the war, he had set out to the Frontier. There he had befriended the Apache and had lived with them for several years, learning their ways and sharing his knowledge with them in return. He had tried to settle a peace with them but had failed and, despairing of the wars that had broken out, he had walked away. He had become a bounty hunter, a sheriff and eventually a recluse, vanishing into the desert after the death of his wife, in which isolation he had remained until the US Cavalry had sent men to find him in 1879, to enlist him in the search for the renegade Apache chief, Victorio.
Appleby had made a permanent return to civilisation after that. He had joined the Arizona Rangers and founded the elite Desert Cadre: a group of men trained in the arts of desert tracking and survival. He was a man whose stature befitted his legend. He was tall and muscular; so strong that it was said he had once killed a man with a single punch to the head. His massive fists were too big to handle normal guns and so, in place of revolvers, he carried two sawn-off shotguns that had been specially modified to suit him. They were devastating weapons. Not as accurate or precise as a revolver, they relied on deadly brute force, spitting out a blast of 12-gauge buckshot that was instant death to anyone within fifteen yards. Appleby didn’t even need to aim; the spread of buckshot was so wide as it left the muzzle that he had only to point the gun in vaguely the right direction to guarantee a kill and, because of this, he was greatly feared and respected even by professional gunfighters like Shane. Appleby was no gunslinger but he was able to stand on equal footing with all but the best.
Shane had never met him face-to-face before, although he had often wondered what would happen if he did. He could feel his gun scratching at the back of his mind, begging him to draw the bastard down, but he resisted the temptation. Appleby already had his gun drawn and he was just itching for a reason to kill Shane.
‘You boys turned up in just the nick of time.’ Fletcher called out.
‘Telegram said you had Hunte.’ Appleby replied.
‘I do.’
Appleby dismounted and approached the jailhouse while his sergeant relieved Shane of his weapons and shackled his hands behind his back. ‘You’re making a mistake.’ Shane said.
‘That’s right, I am.’ Appleby agreed, not looking back at him. ‘I’m letting you live.’
He left Shane under guard while he went inside the jailhouse. Shane waited. A crowd began to form in the street, given courage by the marshals’ arrival, and several came forward to tell the sergeant what had happened over the last few days. Shane noticed several of the town councilmen in the crowd but they deliberately avoided his eyes. Already they were disavowing any involvement with him.
After a short while, the marshals who had gone after Buchanan returned. They had killed one of the men who had tried to escape with him, but Buchanan had gotten away.
‘Looks like your partner’s run off without you,’ one of the men remarked, but Shane kept his silence.
Eventually, Appleby came back from the jailhouse and began issuing curt orders. The councilman, Boyd, stepped forward to speak with him but Appleby dismissed him briskly. He was not planning on staying in Wainsford long. There were other bounty hunters closing in and he wanted to be gone before they could catch up with him.
Shane was taken into the jailhouse. The building was dark because of the barricades that covered the windows and it smelled ripe. Four men had spent the last few days holed-up inside, eating out of cans and shitting in a bucket, but that was only the start of the smell. The worst of it emanated from the body rolled up in a blanket in one corner of the room.
Fletcher glared at Shane accusingly. ‘You’re gonna answer for what you’ve done,’ he promised.
‘I told you, I didn’t have anything to do with that.’
‘Bullshit.’
‘I’d hang him if I were you.’ Appleby said. ‘Or put a bullet in his head.’
‘No. He’ll stand trial.’ Fletcher said adamantly. ‘I’ll take him to Rosebridge.’
‘You’d be better off taking him to New Mexico.’ Appleby suggested. ‘There’s a ten-thousand dollar reward for him there and he’ll hang for sure.’
They dragged Shane over to the cell. It was a metal cage set against the back wall and in it was the man that Shane had come to kill.
Benedict Hunte was a disappointingly ordinary-looking man in his mid-forties. He had thin brown hair and small eyes that darted nervously. He recoiled as Alan Grant unlocked the cell. ‘Please, you can’t take me back,’ he cried. ‘They’ll kill me.’
‘They’ll kill you just as happily if you stay here.’ Appleby said. There was not a trace of sympathy in his voice. He grabbed Hunte by the scruff of the neck and hauled him out of the cell.
‘But I don’t want to go!’ Hunte protested.
He might as well have argued with an earthquake or a tornado. Like both of them, Lyndon Appleby was a force of nature. Nothing on earth could stop him once he set himself in motion.
Shane was thrown into the cell in Hunte’s place and the door was slammed shut on him. Alan Grant took great pleasure in turning the key. ‘You’ll regret this,’ Shane promised.
‘You’ll regret it more,’ Grant said in return and he walked away, leaving Shane helpless to do anything but watch as Benedict Hunte was taken outside and put on a horse. Once again, he had slipped through Shane’s fingers, but it was not over yet.
Shane was still alive and he still had a plan to fall back on.