A Lust For Lead (16 page)

The shot hit Rodrigues high in the throat and burst through his larynx. It struck against the pillar of his spine and shattered the vertebrae a couple of inches beneath the base of his skull, cutting the spinal cord. His body went limp on the spot and he coiled up on the ground like a piece of rope, having never even had a chance to move.
Shane had guessed his intentions just a split second before Nathaniel had called the shot. It seemed obvious now in hindsight. Gambling that Shane would expect him to dodge one way or another, Rodrigues had counted on him to hesitate and had gone straight for the draw. He had stood right where he was and just reached for his gun, hoping to move fast enough that he could catch Shane while he was still waiting to see which way he’d move.
It was clever and it had nearly worked. Shane felt proud of how easily he had out-witted Rodrigues and beaten him to the draw. His blood surged powerfully through his veins and he felt strong, invincible even! The sense of power that raced through him was electrifying. He wished that the gun had more bullets. Then he would show everyone in Covenant what a force he was to be reckoned with.
He forced himself to put the gun back in its holster. His hand moved slowly, reluctantly. The sensation of having the gun in his hand lingered afterwards like the memory of a parting kiss. It left him yearning for more and it frightened him; the feeling was so overpoweringly intense.
Not trusting himself, he unbuckled the gun belt and tossed it to Buchanan.
‘You made that look easy.’ Buchanan said.
It had been easy, Shane thought. Too easy. Valentino Rodrigues had been good enough to make a name for himself as a professional gunfighter, and he had been good enough to kill the Gentleman, albeit with some simple trickery, but he had never been good enough to meet the Fastest Guns’ high standards.
Shane thought it about later in the quiet solitude of his cell. He was now absolutely certain that the tournament was Nathaniel’s idea and that it was being held without the Fastest Guns’ involvement. If that were the case though, he could not understand why they were allowing it to continue.
It did not make sense. The Fastest Guns were notoriously intolerant of allowing anybody into Covenant. Shane could only assume that Nathaniel had to be controlling them in some way or, at the very least, that he had found some way of appeasing them, and that was a thought that made him nervous. He did not know a great deal about the occult but what he did know came from having seen it face-to-face. Shane had looked into the very mouth of Hell and no man came away from an experience like that without learning something of the black arts. If Nathaniel had appeased the Fastest Guns then it was probably the opening step toward some sort of bargaining ritual, but Shane could not understand what Nathaniel expected to receive from such a deal. More importantly, how did he expect to get away with it? The Fastest Guns were not some ancient line of demons that could be held in service. They were newly-formed and so young that Hell’s aristocracy had not yet bothered to even look their way. Such demons could not be bound. Only a fool would dare such a thing.
Shane felt that he was missing something, some vital piece of information that would make sense of it all but whatever it was it eluded him no matter how he tried looking at things. It bothered him that he couldn’t work it out and he was still sat in determined contemplation when Buchanan came for him a few hours later.
The meeting at O’Malley’s that night was little more than a formality. With only four contestants left alive, everybody knew what the pairings for the semi-final would be. Vendetta was paired against Chastity, leaving Tom Freeman to face Shane. Nathaniel avoided the Gunfighter’s Hour again and the first match was set to take place at eleven and the last match to take place at one.
About the only thing that was unexpected was Chastity’s presence at the meeting, accompanied by her new nanny. Madison was dressed like a lady in an ill-fitting dress and quarter-length jacket. Her bodice had a high collar that covered most of her throat and she had piled her hair up in a way that made her look quite respectable. Shane was amazed by the transformation. It seemed as if Nathaniel had successfully tamed her.
The meeting broke up soon after the placings had been read and Buchanan returned Shane to his cell and locked him in. It was getting late and as the darkness settled the town began its eerie night-song, the creaking and groaning of every house and ruin softening gradually into melody. Perhaps lulled by the noise, Shane drifted into a light sleep and his dreams carried him back in time.

They had journeyed north the next morning, changing course to pursue Lyndon Appleby in the hope that by finding him they would find Buchanan. Grant was not happy about it. He dropped back until he and Fletcher were side-by-side, with Shane several metres in front and out of earshot. ‘He’ll kill us the first chance he gets,’ he said.
‘More than likely.’ Fletcher agreed with him.
‘Then why don’t we just take him in? He’s worth ten-thousand dollars.’
‘I don’t care about the money; I’m thinking about Ben.’
‘Ben’s dead, August. And it’s that bastard there that killed him.’
‘He had a part in it, I’m sure.’ Fletcher said. ‘But it was Buchanan who killed Ben’s folks.’
‘He and Shane were working together.’ Grant reminded him. ‘You can’t trust a goddamned word he says.’
‘I trust him when he says he’ll kill Buchanan. And that’s all I need him to do.’
‘And what about Hunte?’
‘He’s Appleby’s problem now.’ Fletcher said bleakly. ‘He don’t need our protection any more.’
They picked up the trail at San Alejo. Appleby and his men had passed through town earlier that morning and had been followed soon after by Castor Buchanan and another man who rode with him. Buchanan was likely to be the least of Appleby’s worries however. Rumour had it that there were more bounty hunters coming down from the north, at least twenty of them if the town’s telegrapher was to be believed.
‘They’ve got every watering hole, ford and mountain pass staked out between here and Sisko,’ he told them enthusiastically. ‘Ain’t no way Appleby’s getting by them without a fight.’
Shane disagreed. ‘He’ll slip past them like a ghost,’ he said, and he drew Fletcher’s attention to a map on the wall. Between San Alejo and Sisko lay a broad expanse of uncharted desert. ‘That’s exactly the sort of country Appleby’s used to. That’s where he’ll go. He’ll get off the trails and go deep into the wasteland. No one’ll find him out there.’
He was surprised to find that there was actually a small measure of comfort in the thought of Appleby getting away from him. Hunte had brought him nothing but trouble and it was tempting to think that all his problems might go away if he simply turned his back on pursuing the man. He quickly squashed the idea. His head was so full of doubts that he was finding it hard enough to think as it was, and he needed to stay focussed if he was going to escape from Fletcher.
Fletcher gave a shrug. ‘Then I guess that’s where we’re heading,’ he said, stabbing his finger at the featureless part of the map.
They stocked up on water and provisions and headed out into the desert, ignoring every warning from the locals not to. Fletcher kept Shane’s hands locked in cuffs. Shane argued to be set free, but Fletcher couldn’t be swayed.
‘You know, when we find Buchanan I won’t be much use to you with my hands in chains.’ Shane said.
‘If we find Buchanan, I’ll set you loose. But not until then.’
‘And if he catches us by surprise? We’ll all be dead before you can set me free.’
‘And what about your death makes you think I give a shit?’ Fletcher replied harshly.
They rode for two days. Just as Shane had reckoned, Appleby had gone into the deepest, most inhospitable part of the desert, and the going got harder every hour. Scorching heat and the dry, arid land made every drop of water precious.
On the afternoon of the second day out, they stopped at a cool water spring and ran into trouble. A small gang of cattle herders from a ranch nearby had decided that the lure of Hunte’s bounty was too strong to resist and had packed in their jobs and gone looking for him. As misfortune had it, they arrived at the spring while Fletcher and Shane were filling their water skins, and Grant did not see them coming until it was too late.
There were four of them: two young men and two seasoned hands in their mid-forties. They must have mistaken them for Appleby’s men and spotted the cuffs on Shane’s wrists and thought he was Hunte. They started shooting as they rode in.
Shane darted to one side and splashed through the waters of the spring to reach a pile of boulders on the opposite side. The men were armed with revolvers and didn’t have much more than a basic level of skill. Their bullets chipped flakes of stone off the boulders as he dived for cover.
Grant let off a blast of his scattergun but failed to hit anybody. The noise it made gave them something to think about though, and they dismounted and moved to take cover.
Shane was cut off from his companions, and unarmed. He wrestled with his cuffs but they were too tight to slip out of and the locks were too strong to break. The cowboys closed in. They divided themselves into two teams. One group kept Grant and Fletcher pinned down while the others moved into position to catch them in a crossfire. One of the young men circled around towards where Shane was hiding. Shane got into a niche among the rocks and waited, listening to the tread of his footsteps as he came nearer. He picked up a rock and tensed himself.
He struck the moment the boy came into sight, uncoiling from the side of the boulder and smashing the rock down hard against the boy’s wrist. The boy howled and dropped his revolver. Shane hooked the rock into the side of his jaw and he went down to the ground.
One of the other cowboys saw it happen and came running over. Shane quickly dropped the rock and went to retrieve the revolver but suddenly found his legs pulled out from under him. He had failed to knock the young man unconscious and the boy now wrestled into position on top of him and swung a punch at Shane’s face. Shane weathered the blow against his forearm and tried to reach for the gun, but it was too far away. He rolled onto his back and fended off another couple of punches.
He knew that he didn’t have much time before the other man arrived. A few more seconds at most. Ducking between the boy’s punches, he threw his wrists up around the boy’s head and pulled him down close to control him. The boy was stronger than him and fought violently, but Shane wrapped the chain of his cuffs around his neck and used it to choke him, cutting off the flow of blood to his brain. The boy got weaker and slipped unconscious.
Shane heard footsteps closing in. He released the boy and scrambled for the revolver, reaching it just as the second man came into sight. Shane fired and blew off the top of his head, then turned the gun on the young man and shot him as well.
He felt less vulnerable now that he had a loaded gun in his hands, even if he was still cuffed. He checked the ammunition and reloaded, using spares from the young man’s belt. On the other side of the spring, he could see that the last two cowboys were working their way towards Fletcher. There was no sign of Grant and Shane hoped he was dead.
He ducked out from behind the boulders and fired, shooting down one of the two men. Fletcher got the other.
As the last echoes of the fight died down, Fletcher turned towards Shane and saw the gun in his hand. ‘Put it down.’ Fletcher said sharply, and pointed his gun at him as a warning.
Up until then, Shane had not even considered killing Fletcher but now something flipped inside of him. It was like it had been back at the Babson ranch. He felt as if his mind was pushed aside and that something else seized control of his body.
He fought it. The muscles in his arms bunched with the strain as he tried to keep himself from raising his gun. He felt a surge of conflicting emotions run riot through his skull: hatred, anger, joy and ecstasy. Somehow he was able to centre himself and push it all away. He breathed deeply until he felt in control of himself once more, but it took so much effort that he did not see Grant creep up on him from behind. The butt of Grant’s shotgun struck him in the side of the head and Shane sank to his knees before the ground rushed up and punched him.

The sound of Covenant’s nightly chorus rumbled eerily through the town, its gentle rhythm surging in and out. In and out.
It was like the lapping of waves. The buildings creaked and swayed on their foundations like raptured gospel singers in a choir.
The sound crawled up West Street, past the guttering torches that burned by the side of the road and creaked its way infectiously up the steps of the porch and into the Grande hotel. The ornate chandelier in the lobby swung pendulously as the ceiling flexed slightly, and the sound rumbled on through the building.
In the great dining hall, the creaking of the ceiling prompted a shower of dust that glittered in the candlelight as it fell. Watching it settle around her, Madison felt like a bauble put in a glass dome and shaken up: a pretty thing for someone to admire. She wore her best dress – a special thing that was her own, not Bethan’s – and around her throat hung a necklace of pearls that Nathaniel had loaned her for the evening and which she suspected had been given to Bethan to wear on nights like tonight as well.
Nathaniel wore his best suit and had trimmed his moustache and smoothed back his hair. But for the naked hunger in his eyes, he looked the picture of a perfect gentleman.
Beyond the flickering circle of candlelight, the room lay in shadow and it seemed as if the two of them shared a world that was cut off from the rest of existence. The whole scene felt dreamlike, although that was possibly because Madison was a little bit drunk.
‘More wine?’ Nathaniel refilled her glass before she could answer, topping it generously to the brim. Chastity had been given into Whisperer’s care for the evening, freeing Madison to ‘indulge herself,’ as Nathaniel had put it. She was well aware of what he had meant by that and was not entirely objectionable to it. Sex was a weapon that she had often used to get what she wanted from a man. She did not make the mistake of confusing it for love.
‘I will have to congratulate Whisperer tomorrow on an excellent meal.’ Nathaniel said. ‘He really has surpassed himself considering the paucity of our supplies.’
Madison wiped her lips with a napkin. ‘It reminds me of my mom’s cooking,’ she said.
Nathaniel let her comment pass without acknowledging it. He had made it clear from the start that he was not interested in anything she had to say; all he wanted was for her to be attentive and beautiful, to laugh at his jokes and agree with his opinions. It suited Madison just fine. Although she had resigned herself to sharing Nathaniel’s bed that night, her heart was heavy with thoughts of Kip and she did not feel up to the task of maintaining a lengthy conversation. She just wanted to get the night over with as quickly as possible.
She feigned interest as he launched into another long-winded story about his travels around the world, this time telling her about Africa and the time he had spent with the boccor sorcerers of Dahomey. While he spoke, she absent-mindedly played with her wine glass, stroking her fingers up and down its stem in a deliberately suggestive manner. Nathaniel could hardly fail to notice it and, after a few minutes, he decided to cut his story short. ‘Who do you think will win the tournament?’ he asked her.
‘I don’t know,’ she mused. ‘Either Chastity or Shane, I suppose.’
‘Pick one.’
From the look in his eyes, Madison guessed that he was testing her. It was clear that he wanted her to pick Chastity and it was almost certainly in her best interests to do so, but a rebellious streak in her nature had not forgotten the way he had struck her earlier and she longed for a bit of revenge. ‘Oh, Shane Ennis then,’ she said. She kept her expression neutral.
‘You are as narrow-minded as Buchanan.’ Nathaniel muttered irritably. ‘Everybody assumes that Shane is the better fighter because of his reputation, but it is Chastity who will win this tournament, you’ll see. I will stake my reputation on it.’
He sounded very sure of himself, and Madison wondered what secrets he knew that made him so confident. There was too much about the tournament – and about Covenant itself – that did not make sense to her. It occurred to her that if she wanted answers Nathaniel was probably the best person to ask. Her curiosity overcame her caution.
‘How did Chastity get to be so good?’ she asked. ‘She doesn’t seem to be able to do anything else.’
A cruel smile twitched the corners of his mouth. ‘Your boyfriend never explained it to you?’
She shook her head.
‘Interesting.’ Nathaniel remarked. ‘I wonder if he even understood it himself.’
His implied criticism of Kip made Madison bristle, but she resisted the urge to say anything in his defence.
‘Allow me to enlighten you.’ Nathaniel continued. He drew his bone-handled revolver and held it up for her to see. ‘Have you ever fired a gun before?’ he asked.
Madison had fired plenty of guns – she liked them almost as much as she liked the men who carried them – but that wasn’t what she suspected Nathaniel wanted to hear. She politely shook her head.
‘There is a great deal of scientific method to firing a gun properly. Are you familiar with the principles of trigonometry? Let’s say that you choose to shoot a man who is standing 20 yards away. You fire your revolver but your aim is off by a couple of degrees. Every yard that the bullet travels carries it a fraction off course. By the time it has travelled 20 yards, those few degrees of error will have caused your shot to deviate far enough to the side that you miss your man completely.
‘A tiny deviation like that is all it takes to get you killed. It could be that your hand shakes a little or that you squeeze the trigger too hard and pull the weapon off target. A gunfighter learns to hold his body completely still at the moment he fires. He stands properly with his feet grounded and he grips the revolver in the most efficient manner, and squeezes the trigger with the minimum amount of force required. He even holds his breath when he fires so that the movement off his chest does not confer into his arm and lead his hand to shake.
‘To the very best gunfighters, such actions are as natural as breathing. They treat their revolver as if it is a part of their body. Some of them even say that they can hear it sometimes like a voice in the back of their mind, telling them what to do.’
Madison smirked a little, but Nathaniel was being serious. ‘It is not as stupid as it sounds,’ he said. ‘There is a belief that predates Christianity that all things – whether they are alive like you and I, or inanimate things such as a gun – possess a spirit or a soul. It is a belief that is found in every part of the world and is still practiced in some remote places. There are holy men that can communicate with these spirits. The gunfighter, Nanache, was one of them; as is Whisperer. Chastity has a similar talent. Because she has no will of her own, a spirit may enter her body and control it as if it were its own. When you confronted her this morning, the spirit of the gun she held was controlling her, riding her like a horse as Whisperer would say.’
He returned the gun to its holster. Madison stared at him, unsure what to make of what he had told her. It sounded ridiculous and if she had heard it from someone outside of Covenant she would have dismissed it as a fantasy. But there were things about Covenant that she could not explain and she found its atmosphere unsettling. Given the circumstances, she was prepared to accept that everything Nathaniel told her could easily be the truth.
‘To an extent, every man who calls himself a gunfighter invites the spirit of his gun into his body when he shoots.’ Nathaniel continued. ‘It is how the very best become that way. Guns are not like people; they do not have the freedom to choose what sort of life they will lead. A gun is built solely to kill and that is all it is good for. Such single-mindedness gives it incredible focus and skill.
‘Whether deliberately or otherwise, men have let the spirits of the gun ride them during combat for as long as there have been guns to wield. In the beginning, they were quite simple-minded but as guns have developed, so have their spirits. The recent invention of the revolver and the cartridge bullet has made them almost as clever as we are. Buchanan speaks rather poetically of it sometimes and I am given to understand that the union between man and revolver is not unlike the embracing of lovers. There are some men who even go so far as to shoot themselves out of devotion. A gun, you see, doesn’t care who it kills just so long as it kills somebody.’
He took a sip of wine to moisten his lips and Madison leaned closer towards him, eager to hear more. ‘When Jacob Priestley came to Covenant in 1879, he was inspired to do so by his guns. Priestley put a curse upon this town. What he did here went far beyond a simple massacre. He killed the town. Not simply its people, you understand, but the town itself. That’s why you’ll not find it on any map these days. Covenant is half way between Hell and Earth.’
The building creaked ominously, making Madison shiver. She fancied that there were eyes in the darkness, watching her as Nathaniel continued to explain:
‘Priestley wanted to make his union with the gun permanent. What he did to Covenant prepared the way. Killing himself was the next step. Death is not the end of existence. All those stories you were told in church about Heaven and Hell are not very far from the truth. In Hell, Priestley joined with the spirit of his guns and became a Cordite. Think of it as a kind of demon. The Cordites are the true Fastest Guns. The six men who won the first tournament joined Priestley and became Cordites too. For them it was the ultimate prize.’
Madison recalled how, in his opening speech at the start of the tournament, Nathaniel had said that recognition as one the Fastest Guns was the prize for whoever won. She had not understood what that had meant until now. It explained why there had never been any talk about prize money. The fighters had not come here for money; they had come to prove their worth in the hope of becoming a Cordite. Kip had never known that. It made her wonder how many of the others who had died in the first round had known what they were fighting for; and how many of Nathaniel’s invigilators understood it either.
‘How does something like this stay secret?’ she asked. ‘I’ve heard lots of stories about the Fastest Guns, and they never mentioned anything like this.’
‘Would you have believed it if they had?’ Nathaniel replied. ‘Men hear rumours that they do not believe or that they are too small-minded to comprehend, so they change the story into something they are more comfortable with and the truth becomes distorted. In Britain they call their smokeless powder: cordite. It is not a coincidence. The name is whispered in the minds of every man who ever builds or fires a gun, but the real truth can only be discovered by those who search for it.’
‘Like you?’ Madison asked him.
He nodded. ‘I have been a student of the occult for many years. The Cordites have something that I want and this tournament is how I am paying for it.’
Madison wanted to know but dared not ask him. He reached out and took his hand in hers. ‘All of my life I have searched for the secret of eternal life,’ he explained. ‘It is within the Cordites’ power to grant me that gift, with the added advantage that any man who is embraced by them cannot be harmed by bullets. They have a saying: he who lives by the Gun cannot die by the Gun.’
It was a saying that Madison had heard once before, years earlier, but she had never understood its significance. She felt overwhelmed by what he had told her. It was like she had lived her whole life so far in a tiny room and somebody had just opened the door, but she was not sure that she liked what lay outside.
Nathaniel patted her on the hand. ‘Everything will be alright,’ he told her. ‘You are safe so long as you are with me.’
Madison did not believe him for a second but she was grateful for his reassurances all the same. After all that he had told her, the town felt even more sinister than it had before and she was glad that she would not be spending the night alone.