A Lust For Lead (19 page)

It caught everyone by surprise. Nobody had expected Vendetta to cheat. She stood shakily on legs that trembled, her eyes fixed on her opponent in stunned amazement as smoke poured from the barrel of Chastity’s gun.
Even Buchanan was shocked. ‘Fucking hell,’ he breathed.
Vendetta’s hand had scarcely reached the grip of her revolver when Chastity had fired. The shot had caught her in the forehead and Vendetta blinked as a line of blood ran down into the corner of her eye. She dropped to her knees then slumped forward into the dirt.
Fearing that the invigilators would jump to the wrong conclusions, Nathaniel ran to Chastity’s side and held his hands up in the air to signal that they should all stand down. He looked from Chastity to Vendetta and back again and, as his eyes came to rest on her a second time, the girl’s face turned red and she began to scream.
She had realised that her gun was empty.
Her scream was a howl of frustrated rage and she erupted into a tantrum. Flinging the gun to the ground, she stamped her feet and snatched great handfuls of hair from her scalp. Nathaniel grabbed her to stop her from hurting herself and weathered her kicks and punches while he shouted for Madison to come and take her from him.
Watching from the relative calm of the sidelines, Shane made a quiet observation. ‘She’s gotten quicker,’ he said.
‘Ain’t she just.’ Buchanan agreed. ‘Nathaniel was right. She might afford you some competition yet.’
Madison had arrived with one of the invigilators and together they carried Chastity away to the hotel. A party of invigilators came out to drag off Vendetta’s body.
‘I was never that quick.’ Shane said heavily.
‘That’s not how I remember it.’
They said nothing for a moment then: ‘Get me my gun,’ Shane said. ‘Don’t load it, just give it to me.’
‘Why?’
‘Because I need to practice.’

Benedict Hunte had become the most wanted man in America. Word of his bounty had spread far and wide, tempting bounty hunters and opportunists from every neighbouring state to come look for him. The situation had gotten out of hand and the men who had initially put the price on his head stopped offering individual bounties and joined together to offer the sum of fifty-thousand dollars to whoever brought them his head.
It was enough money that the more-organised groups banded together. They eliminated the small-time competition and made allegiances with the other large groups. They co-ordinated with one another and scoured the desert with systematic patrols, slowly gathering the net tighter until Appleby was cornered.
It was the morning of May tenth when the first shots rang out. Appleby had tried to creep past them in the early hours before dawn. His men had crept ahead in pairs and quietly assassinated the sentries that barred his path, but one man had managed to fire off a shot in warning before his throat had been slit and the sound had travelled far enough to alert the others. Within two hours, every bounty hunter in the region was closing in like sharks drawn to a feeding frenzy and, right through the thick of them, Shane and Buchanan rode like Death’s servants.
As individuals they were two of the most feared gunfighters alive. As a team, they were unstoppable. Men fell on either side of them, bleeding, screaming, and thrashing their last. The crack of gunfire became so constant that it became as much a feature of the desert as the rays of the morning sun and the blistering, pitiless heat.
It was a day of bloody mayhem.
They followed Appleby by the trail of corpses he left in his wake. He fought across nine miles and killed nearly thirty men before he arrived at the canyons of Spinster’s Peak. It was there that he did the unexpected and stood his ground.
Shane and Buchanan reined in and watched from a distance as the first group of bounty hunters tried to storm the canyon he and his men had sought refuge in. Its walls were steep-sided and his men were dug-in behind rocks, the horses sheltered out of sight and Hunte nowhere to be seen. The bounty hunters were cut down like an autumn harvest.
Buchanan whistled in admiration of the slaughter. ‘Looks like they’re jammed in there tighter than a fist up a virgin’s arsehole,’ he said. ‘You think we can get in behind them?’
‘Wait.’ Shane told him.
And so they waited. Several more gangs of bounty hunters assaulted the canyon and were driven back. The bodies of the dead were left strewn among the boulders, becoming like barriers to anyone who mounted another assault. Before long, the bounty hunters drew back and began scouting for other ways of getting to their prey. Somebody must have succeeded because shots soon rang out from deeper inside the canyon, out of sight of where Shane and Buchanan waited.
‘Do you want to tell me what we’re killing time out here for?’ Buchanan said testily.
Shane gave him a cold smile. ‘Did you never see a prairie dog lead a snake down one hole and then run out of another?’
‘What the fuck are you talking about?’
Shane did not answer him but rode down towards the mouth of the canyon. There was fierce fighting going on somewhere deep inside, but it was far enough in that it did not involve them. He hobbled his horse and entered the canyon on foot. Despite some abrasive words, Buchanan followed his lead.
‘We’re missing all the fun,’ he complained.
The canyon was a slaughter yard of dead men and dead horses. Streams of blood trickled between the rocks and the smell of it mixed with the odour of faeces, where the dead men’s bowels had voided themselves. Shane stooped beside one man and relieved him of his revolver, checked it and slid it into his belt. He stole a second gun from another man.
‘Come on!’ Buchanan whined. ‘This is bullshit. And it stinks!’
Ignoring him, Shane chose a place among the dead and lay down on his back. He positioned himself facing into the canyon, towards the distant sound of fighting. Buchanan made a noise of disgust but understood his line of thinking. He found himself a spot of his own on the opposite side of the canyon and lay down among the dead. There were so many corpses surrounding them that it was impossible to tell that they were not dead as well.
Shane waited. He blotted the smell from his mind and lapsed into a concentrated state of awareness, listening to the sounds of battle that echoed off the mountain walls. Flies, drawn to the dead, made little distinction between him and the bodies he lay amongst and crawled across his face to investigate his eyes, mouth and nose. After a while, he stopped brushing them away and lay still.
He listened to the noises that echoed from further down the canyon. There were now several firefights going on and Shane guessed that the bounty hunters were fighting each other. The alliance they had formed was dissolving now that their quarry had been found. He wondered if Appleby was even involved in the fighting any more, or if he had slipped away in the confusion and doubled-back as Shane suspected he might.
Shane waited patiently. It was not long before he heard the sound of hoof beats thundering down the canyon towards him. He readied himself, cocking the two revolvers that he held but keeping them by his sides, imitating the dead.
Appleby and his men rounded a bend further up and slowed their pace as they neared the mouth of the canyon. They were forced to dismount in order to lead their horses across the treacherously scattered mounds of dead bodies. Shane waited until they were right beside him before he sprang the trap. His guns claimed the life of the man nearest to him and felled two horses in quick order, spreading chaos among the survivors. Simultaneously, Buchanan rose up on the other side of the canyon, trapping Appleby’s men in a crossfire. Horses reared and men shouted. Blood was spilled.
Shane rose to his feet and struck out, using the barrel of one of his revolvers to break a man’s jaw. He shot him with the other gun as he fell, then shot him again with the first to make certain, all the while pressing forward into the heart of the fray. Hunte was his target but, before he could reach him, the man-legend that was Lyndon Appleby stepped into his path. A fist like a sledgehammer struck Shane across the side of the head and he was flung to the ground. He was dazed but responded by rolling and kicking Appleby’s rifle from his hands. He scrambled instantly to his feet and drew another of his revolvers at the same time that Appleby reached for his formidable sawn-off shotgun. Less than five feet separated them and, at such close range, a blast from Appleby’s gun could not miss.
Shane had but a moment to think on this before his instincts took control. He fired straight from the hip, fanning the hammer with the flat of his hand. Appleby’s ribs cracked and the bullets tore through his heart and lungs and broke his shoulder blade on the way out. He dropped his gun and sank to his knees but still stubbornly reached for his second gun with his left hand. Shane emptied his remaining shots into Appleby’s head, tossed the revolver aside and turned to find that Benedict Hunte had taken advantage of his protector’s sacrifice to mount his horse and gallop back into the canyon. He had slipped through Shane’s fingers too many times already for Shane to have him escape again. Shane seized Appleby’s horse by the reins and leapt into the saddle. The horse reared, trying to buck him off, but Shane held on and raked back his spurs. He left Buchanan behind to face the rest of Appleby’s men alone and galloped away in pursuit of Hunte.
The horse was spirited and fought Shane’s control, but it was fast and Hunte did not have much of a head start. Shane rode up alongside him and grabbed him by the scruff of his neck and heaved him out of the saddle. He hit the ground with a heavy thump and rolled several times in the dust. Shane reined in his horse and dismounted. He reloaded his guns as he walked back to where Hunte had fallen.
Being unhorsed did not appear to have damaged Hunte badly. He had rolled over onto all fours and was crawling away like a pig. Shane kicked him in the buttocks, knocking him face-first to the ground. He screamed like a frightened woman. ‘Please! Please don’t hurt me.’
Shane thumbed back the hammer of his Colt. ‘This won’t hurt a bit,’ he said coldly.
Hunte screamed again and began to cry. His lack of courage disgusted Shane but it also gave him cause to hesitate.
What kind of a threat was this man to him?
It might not have concerned him in days gone by but in the light of what had happened at the Babson ranch, it was pertinent now. Hunte was no gunslinger who would kill Shane if he did not kill him first. He was a weak and frightened man, stripped of all his defences, even his pride. He was no threat, and so that begged the further question:
What reason did Shane have to kill him?
Fifty-thousand dollars was a lot of money but it was an excuse, not a reason. Shane suspected that his real motives for wanting to kill Hunte had more to do with the Fastest Guns and their tournament. He wanted to prove himself worthy of competing in it, but that was where his thinking doubled-back on itself.
He had tasted what the Fastest Guns had to offer him and it was not as sweet as it promised it would be. The Fastest Guns tempted him with lies to bind him into slavery. They would use him for their own ends, chew him up and change him into something more suiting to their needs. He was not so enamoured with them that he could not see that it was in his best interests not to join them. What his head wanted and what his heart desired were completely at odds with each other, but Shane was a man who listened to his head. He was not by his nature a passionate man. Coldly, analytically, he weighed his options and drew the obvious conclusion.
Though he wanted to go to Covenant, he chose not to. Slowly and with a heavy heart, he lowered his gun and turned away.
Hunte raised his head and sniffed back his tears, startled to find that his executioner was leaving him. He crouched where he was for a time, fearing that it was some sort of trick, but when Shane did not look back he rose to his feet and limped to his horse. Shane let him go and he galloped away into the warren of canyons.
The sound of his hoof beats had no sooner faded in one direction than another rider came thundering up the canyon. Castor Buchanan reined in when he saw Shane walking towards him.
‘Did you get him?’
‘No.’
‘What?’
Shane trudged past him, barely deigning to acknowledge him as they passed. ‘He’s all yours,’ he said.
Buchanan stared at him for a moment, too stunned for words. ‘What the hell has gotten into you?’
Shane did not answer. He did not even look back and Buchanan, swearing in frustration, sawed on his reins and galloped on after Hunte. Shane hoped never to see him again.
He wandered back down the canyon, stepping over the bodies of Lyndon Appleby and his men. He felt numb, dislocated from the world and from himself. He could not shake the belief that he had made a fundamentally wrong decision and that the whole of reality had been fractured somehow by his choice. It seemed to him that the sky should be falling down around him like broken shards of glass, and he could not reconcile himself to the fact that it was not.
He knew that he would regret his decision in time, but at that precise moment he could not have guessed how long it would haunt him for, or how severely its burden would break his spirit.

There was a click as the hammer fell on an empty chamber. Shane put the gun back in his holster and drew it again. He did not hurry and, as his finger tightened against the trigger, he knew that, had the gun been loaded, his aim would have been true. Still, he was painfully aware of how much his form had degraded in the last six years. He felt confident that he was good enough to match Tom Freeman but against Chastity he was not so sure.
He holstered the gun, readied himself and tried again. It was a sign of how far he had reverted to his old self that he was taking it all so seriously. Two days ago he would have rather died than go up against Chastity and now here he was practicing so that he might stand a better chance of beating her. A line had been crossed and he was no longer a captive being forced to compete in the tournament; he was a willing participant.
Which made it all the more important that he escape before the final round.
He thought back to the previous afternoon, when he and Vendetta had spoken in O’Malley’s Saloon. ‘Are you really telling me that you can go out onto that crossroads tomorrow and kill Chastity in good conscience, just so you can settle your score with Brett?’
‘I guess we’ll find out,’ she had replied.
Her hesitance had betrayed her feelings on the matter. Vendetta had been a fighter; not a murderer. Shane had known that the thought of going up against Chastity would have placed her in a moral quandary. It had been with this in mind that he had made his pitch: ‘What if I said I wanted to get Chastity out of here as well?’
Vendetta had thought about it. ‘No,’ she had said. ‘You’ll say anything to get me to do what you want me to do. I don’t believe you give a shit about that little girl.’
She had turned to leave but he had called out to her. ‘If I left this place tonight and took her with me, tomorrow would be the final round. It’d just be you against Freeman. Think you could deal with that?’
‘Nathaniel would send his men after you.’
‘Probably, but if I’m right about what he’s up to, he can’t afford any delays. He’ll have to finish the tournament early.’
‘I don’t trust you, Ennis.’
‘You don’t have to trust me. Just pass a message on for me.’
‘Who to?’