Chapter 3
Shane did not sleep at all that night. He lay
with his back to the hard dirt and stared up at a sky so vast that
it made his head spin with vertigo.
Covenant.
A second tournament.
The idea of it was so abhorrent that he didn’t want to accept that
it was true. But of course it’s true. Buchanan, with his perverse
knack for finding just exactly what it was that would hurt a man
had found the perfect way to avenge himself on Shane. The question
now was how had Shane not heard about it sooner?
To many, the Fastest Guns were, like Covenant, a myth. Rumour spoke
of a secret society of gunfighters who fought with each other in
ritualised duels to the death in order to prove their superiority.
Their origins dated back to the duellists of the Eighteenth Century
but it had only been recently, in the wake of the August Third
Massacre at Covenant, that the Fastest Guns had become consolidated
into a formal institution. Jacob Priestley was revered as their
posthumous messiah and Covenant was their unholy Jerusalem. In
1881, with the memory of the slaughtered still fresh in the town’s
deserted streets, the Fastest Guns had held their first tournament
and a hundred gunfighters had killed each other until only the six
best remained.
Nobody had seen or heard of those men since.
Covenant was not much further away and early the following morning,
Shane and Buchanan entered one of the many ghost towns that
surrounded it.
The town was a small cluster of buildings, half-buried in the sand.
Balls of tumbleweed rolled listlessly across the empty street,
blown on a breeze that whispered like far-off voices in the sand.
The whole place had the feel of something not quite dead.
Glancing around, Shane noted a strange uniformity in the way the
buildings all leaned on their foundations. All of them were pitched
at almost precisely the same angle towards the southeast, as if all
were straining to uproot themselves and move further away from
where Covenant lurked beyond the northwest horizon.
The ghost town was one of about a dozen that surrounded Covenant
like desiccated husks in a spider’s web. They had all been
abandoned within three years of the August Third Massacre, their
inhabitants driven out by a mixture of drought and ill-fortune.
Covenant’s curse had spread since 1879, reaching out like an
enormous hand to steal the vitality from everything it touched,
poisoning the land and bringing death and destitution.
Shane’s horse grew increasingly nervous the further they rode. She
flared her nostrils and needed constant correction; a correction
that Shane himself was reluctant to enforce. He knew exactly what
it was that she could sense around them and shared her unease.
Buchanan’s horse was unaffected, he noticed. Besides an occasional
shaking of its head or worried snort through flared nostrils, it
behaved perfectly well.
It’s had chance to grow accustomed, Shane realised. My God, he’s
not only been here before, he’s spent time here.
It seemed unthinkable. Shane had heard stories of men who had
travelled to Covenant. Mostly they were gunfighters, as he had once
been, who went there seeking the Fastest Guns. The stories always
spoke of the grisly end that befell those intruders. Shane had
never once heard of anyone going and being allowed to
leave.
But things had changed. It was late in the afternoon when Covenant
appeared on the horizon and the first thing that Shane noticed
about it – the first thing that jarred with his expectations – were
the men who guarded its perimeter. They occupied rooftop nests,
stood at balconies and upper-storey windows and were armed with
heavy-calibre, long-distance rifles.
The Fastest Guns, it seemed, had secretly increased their numbers,
though again Shane could not understand how they might have done so
without his hearing of it.
The guards issued no challenge as they drew closer; they recognised
Buchanan. Shane looked up at them as he rode by. Their eyes were
hard, the thoughts behind them clipped and professional. They
reminded Shane of the marksman who had lurked on Cantle Ridge. Each
had that same killer’s edge.
Shane was back among his own kind.
They rode into town along the wide thoroughfare known as West
Street. Covenant was a corpse of a town. Its buildings slumped on
their foundations, their dirt-encrusted walls sagging, sloughing
strips of old paint like rotting skin. Its windows had been mostly
boarded-up or smashed. Those that remained intact were coated in a
layer of hard, scabrous dirt. In places, the rooftops had caved in.
In others, whole buildings had collapsed on themselves.
The air was hot and fetid. Shane smelled gunsmoke, as if a full-on
battle had only recently been fought. Eight years on and still the
memory of August Third remained, leaking out of the town’s every
pore.
Further in, some of the buildings began to show signs of being
lived in. Wooden boards had been torn from the windows and the dirt
scrubbed from the glass, admitting light into the rooms beyond. Men
watched him suspiciously as he passed. By the hungry look in their
eyes, he judged that they were contestants, sizing him up in
preparation for the tournament. A few of them were men that he
recognised, at least by their reputations.
Shane felt as though he was watched by other eyes as well, though
he saw nothing more. The sensation made his flesh creep.
West Street met with the South Street thoroughfare at the exact
centre of town in a crossroads. The old town hall stood on one
corner, its clock tower looming over the junction like a sentinel.
The hands on its clock face had long ago rusted solid and become
stuck at the strike of noon.
Buchanan hitched his horse outside a building that had once been
the finest hotel in town, the Grande. It was a majestic building
that still clung to a faded dignity even as it slumped into decay.
The steps of its wooden porch flexed under Shane’s weight as he
followed Buchanan inside, into a lobby that had been built with the
hotel’s name in mind. Sunlight slanted through tall windows,
lighting on the tarnished frame of a chandelier and an ornate stair
that climbed the wall to a gallery overhead.
A brass bell sat on the front desk and Buchanan slapped his hand
against it repeatedly, breaking the austere silence. After a short
while, a door opened upstairs and a tall black man appeared at the
gallery. He stared down at Buchanan with a look of cold
disdain.
Grinning, Buchanan sauntered to the foot of the stairs. ‘Is your
master at home?’ he asked.
The man did not answer him but flicked a curious glance towards
Shane. The faintest suggestion of a grin twitched at the corners of
his lips. Shane did not like that grin; it had a distinctly
predatory look about it and he instantly decided that he did not
like this man. This man was dangerous.
He descended the stairs with smooth, graceful steps, seeming to
glide, the hem of a long, grey overcoat dragging on the steps
behind him. A delicate, long-fingered hand brushed against the
handrail, stirring up flakes of dust. Buchanan stepped out of his
way as he reached the ground floor, affording him space the way a
lone wolf avoids a bear. It was only when they stood side-by-side
that Shane realised just how tall the man was: he towered a full
head above Buchanan, who was himself over six feet tall.
The giant glided past Buchanan and Shane caught himself
instinctively backing away as he drew closer. ‘You must be Shane
Ennis,’ he said. His voice was soft and had a strange accent that
Shane could not identify. Shane forced himself to meet the
stranger’s gaze, and found himself staring into eyes that were as
fathomless as his own.
‘I got him.’ Buchanan said proudly.
‘So I see.’ The man turned and beckoned for them to follow him into
a dimly lit hall.
‘Have the other contestants arrived?’ Buchanan asked.
‘Ennis is the last,’ the giant replied.
‘How many have tried to kill each other already?’
‘None.’
Buchanan snorted derisively. ‘Well that’s no good. They’re supposed
to be killers, aren’t they?’
The giant stopped beside a door and gestured for Shane to pass
through. The room beyond was murky with dust. Tall windows
dominated the far walls but their surfaces were so encrusted with
years of accumulated grime that the light that shone through was
stained a dirty shade of brown. In the centre of the room was a
semi-circle of armchairs, each covered with a muslin cloth. Other
furniture – broken and mouldering – had been stacked against the
walls.
A man stood at the window, facing out through a small circle that
he had wiped clean of dirt. He turned as Shane entered the room. He
was grey-haired with tanned skin and a trimmed moustache and beard.
His boots were made of soft leather and were worn with brown
woollen pants, a white shirt and a brown waistcoat and jacket, all
expensively-tailored by the look of them. At his side was a
bone-handled Colt 1873 Single Action Army revolver, rigged for a
right-handed cross-draw. The look of the man said that he was no
stranger to the weapon, although his bearing did not indicate that
he was a gunfighter by trade. He lacked the constant wariness that
men in Shane’s former profession learned to possess. Judging by his
confidence and the authority in his stance, Shane guessed that he
was a military man, or had been once.
This was Buchanan’s employer, the man who had fronted the money to
buy Shane’s capture. Shane was slightly disappointed that he was
nobody he recognised.
‘You got him. Excellent,’ the man congratulated Buchanan. ‘Noonan
gave you no trouble?’
‘None at all.’ Buchanan answered with a smile. ‘Penn and the boys
will be along with your money shortly.’
‘Good. If there’s one thing that I appreciate, Mister Buchanan,
it’s not having to pay for the things I want. Mister Ennis!’ He
extended his hand warmly. ‘I’ve been very much looking forward to
meeting you, sir. My name is Colonel Hartshorne.’
Shane had never met him but he had heard of him by reputation.
Nathaniel Hartshorne had fought for the Union under General George
McClellan and had earned himself an unsavoury reputation for being
a butcher. During the Battle of James Point in 1861, rumour had it
that he had pressed an attack upon Confederate forces despite their
surrender, and had slaughtered an entire company of unarmed
men.
After the war he had gone on to amass a considerable fortune on the
stock market. Asked once how he picked his investments, he had
confessed that he regularly consulted with a medium and that he
cast his own horoscopes before embarking on any new
venture.
Word in occult circles was that Nathaniel was secretly a
practitioner of the black arts and that it was no medium he
consulted, but a demon instead. It was rumoured that he had found
something during the war – or that something had found him –
wandering the battlefield among the dead and the wounded. It was to
secure a deal with that something that he had led his brutal
assault at James Point, and because of that deal that he had since
become the thirteenth richest man in America.
But money wasn’t enough for Nathaniel. For the past eight years he
had invested thousands of dollars into archaeological expeditions
around the world. He had plundered tombs and ancient cities in
Egypt, Africa, Tibet and India, supposedly searching for some form
of supernatural power.
So far as Shane was aware, he had no connection to the Fastest
Guns. What he was doing in Covenant was a mystery.
Shane ignored the occultist’s proffered hand. After a moment’s
embarrassed hesitance, Nathaniel withdrew it.
‘You’ll have to excuse the means by which I brought you here,’ he
said. ‘As I’m sure you can appreciate, I very much doubted that you
would have come had I simply asked you. Won’t you take a
seat?’
Buchanan threw Shane into a chair. Dust erupted from the muslin
sheet. Shane had no sooner recovered his breath when Nathaniel
extended a glass of cognac to him. ‘Drink?’
Again, Shane refused. Nathaniel was indifferent. He sat opposite
Shane and sipped from the glass himself, savouring it before
swallowing. ‘Really, you should try to enjoy my hospitality Mister
Ennis. I’m given to understand it that comfort is something that
you cannot expect to look forward to where you’re going. You should
make the most of it now.’
‘Fuck you.’
Buchanan stepped threateningly close, his fist raised, but
Nathaniel stayed him. ‘I think that Mister Buchanan would gladly
hit you all day,’ he told Shane. ‘But then how could you be
expected to compete in the tournament?’
‘Who says I’m going to anyway?’ Shane growled.
Nathaniel held his cognac up to the light and contemplated it. He
swirled the liquid with a deft rotation of his wrist. ‘Let me
answer you with another question if you will, Mister Ennis. If I
put you on that crossroads tomorrow with a gun in your hand and set
another man opposite you, likewise armed; and if I then tell you
that man will shoot you unless you shoot him first, would you
choose to die? No, I think not. I know you, Mister Ennis. Buchanan
has told me a lot about you; the rest I can fill in for myself.
I’ve seen the things you’ve seen. I embrace them.’
He lowered the cognac to his lips and drained the glass. ‘You will
compete in this tournament, Mister Ennis. You really don’t have any
other choice.’
Shane’s eyes had grown accustomed to the Grande’s dark interior and
the sunlight blinded him as he stepped outside. He shielded his
face with one hand. Faded lettering on the wall of a building
across the street identified the place as O’Malley’s Saloon, home,
the sign boasted, to the best Irish whisky in the county. A man
stood in the open doorway, staring at Shane.
‘Know him?’ Buchanan asked.
‘No.’ Shane lied.
They unhitched their horses and Buchanan took Shane to a stable off
West Street. It was a barn-like building whose rafters were thick
with cobwebs. Some fifteen horses were already stabled there. Some
had clearly been in town longer than the others and had grown
accustomed to its atmosphere, just as Buchanan’s had. Shane again
marvelled that Covenant had tolerated a human presence for so long.
It went completely against everything that he thought he knew about
the place.
The stables were tended by an ostler with a surly disposition.
Shane got the impression that he was there to guard the horses more
than take care of them. He found his mare an empty stall by himself
and rubbed her down and brushed her. She was nervous about being
left on her own and she nuzzled him urgently.
‘Easy, girl,’ he whispered. She had been his only companion for
years and he wondered what would happen to her after he was gone.
He patted her lovingly on the flank and found her some grain to
eat. There was a hoof pick lying on a wooden block close to the
feed bags. Buchanan saw him look at it and smiled knowingly, aware
of what Shane was thinking. He also knew that Shane didn’t have the
nerve.
‘Come on,’ he said. ‘Nathaniel wants you to get cleaned
up.’
Shane left the hoof pick where it was and followed him outside.
They walked back onto West Street, where a pair of riflemen passed
them by. ‘They’re not contestants.’ Shane observed.
‘No.’ Buchanan replied. ‘Nathaniel calls them his invigilators.
They’re here to make sure everyone plays nicely.’
‘Does that include you?’
‘Hell, I always play nicely. It just depends on what kind of a game
you happen to be playing.’
He led Shane down a narrow alleyway into a yard, enclosed by
leaning walls and a ramshackle fence. At one end was a shed in
which were three tin baths and a hearth for heating water. Buchanan
showed him where there was a pump across the yard, then left him to
it.
Alone, Shane filled his bath. He could not shake the suspicion
that, even though he could not see anyone, he was being watched.
His bath water was steaming when a soft tread alerted him that he
had company. He expected it to be Buchanan, returning to taunt and
threaten him some more, but instead it was the man from O’Malley’s
Saloon. He leaned himself in the shed’s open doorway and glared at
Shane through slitted eyes. ‘I heard you’d be competing this time,’
he said. ‘I had to kill three men before I got an invite, just so I
can finally be the man to put you in your grave.’
Shane unbuttoned his shirt. ‘What’s the matter, Sullivan? You like
me so much you’ve come to watch me undress?’’
‘No, I just come to look you in the eyes, tell you I’ll be seeing
you in Hell real soon.’
Shane turned slowly away and finished undressing. ‘You’ll have to
save me a seat,’ he said. The man swore at him and left him to his
bath. It had been a good long while since Shane had bathed and the
hot water felt good against his skin. He scrubbed himself clean.
After a while, Buchanan returned with a razor and clean
clothes.
‘I heard you had a visitor.’
‘Nobody special.’
Buchanan leaned his back against the wall and grinned. ‘David
Sullivan. I heard he was looking for you a while back. You the man
that killed his brother?’
Shane didn’t answer. He had killed lots of people.
After he had washed and dressed, Shane was
taken back to the crossroads where a cell had been prepared for him
in Covenant’s jailhouse. The building was a squalid brick extension
added onto the side of the town hall and courthouse. In it, eight
years ago, Jacob Priestley had shot three prisoners through the
bars of their cells and the bullet holes remained, the mortar
surrounding them coloured brown where the dead men’s blood had
splattered. Only one of the cells had been empty on August Third,
and that was the one that Shane was now put in. Some work had been
done to strengthen it: the bars were set in fresh stone and the
lock on the door was new. Buchanan produced the key from a chain
around his neck and locked him in.
A guard was stationed in the next room and Buchanan spoke to him as
he left. ‘No visitors. Anyone wants to speak with him, you send
them to me.’
Shane walked over to the bars and tested them for strength. He was
not surprised to find that they were properly secure. If he had any
notion of escaping then he had left it far too late to put into
action now. Feeling wretched, he sat on the edge of his bunk and
put his head in his hands. He had always known that he would end up
in a situation like this. For six long years he had known it was
inevitable, but had run from it nevertheless. Now, the weight of
his fear, all his certainty, bore down on him and crushed him with
despair.
What made it worse, what really made him hate himself, was the joy
he felt deep inside: that this was where he wanted to be. That
finally he was where he belonged.
A noise outside made him cross to the window. His cell looked out
into an alleyway, down which it was possible to see out to the
front porch of the Grande on the opposite side of the street. Three
riflemen had drawn up outside the hotel. Shane recognised them as
the men from Saddle Horn Rock. Tethered in a line behind them were
five horses that had once belonged to Noonan and his men, and a
sixth that carried the money boxes containing the twenty-thousand
dollars that Nathaniel had paid for Shane’s capture.
Nathaniel’s servant met with them and Shane overheard one of them
refer to him by his name: Whisperer. He had them carry the boxes
inside, then the horses were taken away to be stabled. Shane
returned to his bunk and sat down to brood.