Chapter 1
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.
The wind died down abruptly.
‘Seven-Fingers Buchanan. I might have guessed it’d be
you.’
The gunslinger’s smile was fierce and hinted at how much he
detested the use of his nickname. Castor Buchanan’s career as a
gunfighter had effectively ended the day he had fought with Shane.
His right hand was a ruin. Only the ring and little fingers
remained, attached to a mangled stump at the end of his wrist. He
could shoot with his left, but not with anything approaching the
skill he had possessed with his right and he was no better these
days than any hotshot cowboy.
The loss had shattered his already fragile sanity and Shane saw
that the look of madness in his eyes was not nearly as well
constrained as it had once been. Men had used to say that he was as
evil as the Devil himself. Now he looked the part as
well.
He stared straight past Noonan to fix upon Shane and a feral grin
spread across his lips.
‘Do we have a deal here or what?’ Noonan snapped.
‘What’s your hurry?’ Buchanan answered casually. His voice was a
low, smooth growl. Many women had been seduced by that voice, only
to discover soon after that Buchanan was no gentleman.
‘You can see I’ve brought Ennis.’ Noonan said. ‘I want to see my
money.’
Buchanan shrugged. ‘Sure. Follow me. Alone,’ he added when Jim
Walters made to accompany them.
Noonan dismounted and walked with Buchanan to where the horses were
roped. He opened one of the panniers and looked inside. The Dalton
brothers watched their marksmen counterparts suspiciously, unaware
of the extra man hidden on the ridge.
Hooper kept his revolver pressed tightly to the side of Shane’s
head.
After a long and tense wait, Noonan closed the box and untied the
horse’s reins. ‘Bring Ennis across!’ he shouted.
‘You heard him.’ Hooper said. He rode close alongside Shane as they
started out toward the distant figures. Shane had dreaded this
moment. The heat of the sun beat down on him relentlessly and he
was conscious that every man had a gun pointed in his
direction.
‘That’s far enough.’ Hooper growled.
Shane drew on the reins with his bound hands and they stopped and
waited until Noonan was level with them. A few paces behind him,
Jim Walters fidgeted nervously with his shotgun.
‘I’ll be handing you over now, Shane.’ Noonan said. ‘Thank you.
You’ve made me a very rich man.’
Shane said nothing. He sat patiently while Noonan escorted the
horse and its precious cargo safely into his own ranks. Only then
did Hooper let up the gun from the side of Shane’s head, then turn
and ride away.
Leaving Shane alone with his worst enemy.