Chapter 5
The Babson ranch was a fair spread with a
two-storey house, half a dozen sheds and two bunkhouses. George
Babson had worked fifteen years to build it into what it was, and
he would lose it all in just a single night of violence.
Shane and Buchanan had left their horses among the trees on the far
side of the rise and proceeded the rest of the way on foot. It was
a dark and moonless night and they moved silently across the low
ground, communicating solely through a system of coded whistles
which, when heard from a distance, sounded like nothing more
ominous than the wind.
Babson had posted guards. Two men walked solitary patrols and a
third sat on a rocking chair on the front porch, a shotgun cradled
in his lap. Babson’s money had bought him loyalty, but not quality.
The man on the porch was asleep and the other two had fallen into
routine, as bored men were prone to do.
Shane and Buchanan dropped to a crouch in the tall grasses and
Buchanan signalled that he would cut around back. Shane whistled
agreement and remained where he was while Buchanan scrambled off
into the darkness. The next time they met, Benedict Hunte would be
dead and they would be enemies again. Shane looked forward to it.
He had come to recognise Buchanan as a man whose skills were equal
to his own, and he was eager to test himself against him in
combat.
A period of time passed in which the guards walked two circuits of
their patrol, each time treading exactly the same path. By the time
Buchanan gave the signal that he was in position, Shane had planned
his attack. He crept quietly to a shack near the edge of the ranch
and waited in the darkness. Soon enough, one of the guards walked
past him. He was a young man, not yet old enough to grow a proper
beard. He did not see Shane but searched in his pockets and drew
out a cheroot. Shane struck him from behind while he was trying to
light it, clubbing him across the back of the head with the butt of
his revolver and knocking him unconscious.
The man had a belt revolver holstered by his side and Shane took it
from him. He left him where he lay and stepped out boldly from
behind the shack. He was of a different height and build to the
unconscious guard but, from a distance and concealed in the dark,
he doubted that anyone watching from the house would know any
better. He crossed to the first of the two bunkhouses, drew a gun
in each hand and then kicked down the door.
He was inside and shooting before anyone had time to respond. Two
men died instantly in their beds, while three more had time to
scramble for their weapons. Shane fired like a machine, thumbing
back the hammers of both guns and pulling the trigger in a
murderous rhythm of death. The flash of exploding cartridges
illuminated the room in fractured bursts.
One man drew a gun and fired in return. Shane flattened himself
against a wall, discarded a spent revolver and drew another, with
which he shot the man in the head.
Outside, men had begun shouting in alarm. A series of shots rang
out from somewhere on the opposite side of the ranch as Buchanan
began his half of the attack. Women began to scream.
Shane looted the dead of their guns. His own guns were Colts and
though they were fine and accurate weapons they were slow to reload
and he did not have the time. He stepped outside with his purloined
weapons, aimed one and fired at the man on the porch. He was awake,
and ducked as the shot blew splinters from the doorframe beside
him. Shane fired with his second gun and this time he did not miss.
The man fell dead.
The door of the second bunkhouse suddenly burst open and a gang of
men emerged, their guns blazing. Shane dropped to the ground and
rolled sideways, shooting on the move. The men were gunned down.
Others jumped over their bodies and scattered among the other
buildings for cover. Shane was quickly caught in a crossfire and
forced into shelter behind a log pile.
He discarded his empty guns and drew fresh ones. Thinking that he
was empty, a pair of men rushed him and he gunned them down. He
pirouetted, coat tails billowing, and fired two shots in opposite
directions, killing two more.
Kicking down a door, he skirted through one building and came out
the other side, catching a gunman by surprise. He shot another
through the bunkhouse window and the slaughter was
complete.
He tossed aside a pair of smoking guns and advanced toward the
ranch house.
A man shot at him from an upstairs window and the bullet whipped
past Shane’s ear. He retaliated with a lethal hail of bullets and a
moment later the window exploded, the gunman toppling out to land
on the hard earth below. Shane stepped up to the front porch and
relieved the dead sentry of his shotgun.
There was mayhem inside. Shane kicked through the door, then
stepped back immediately. A shot from within ripped the doorframe
into splinters. Shane thrust the barrel of the shotgun around the
door and fired. As he stepped inside, an elderly man and a boy of
fifteen were both picking themselves up from behind cover. Shane
emptied the shotgun into the old man’s chest then tossed it aside,
drew a revolver and shot the boy. He stole a fresh gun from the
dead, stepped over the bodies and followed the sound of fighting
deeper into the house.
Buchanan had taken the fight to the upper floor. Shots rang out
above and a man’s voice was shouting for the women to take the
children and run. As Shane reached the stairs, the pretty young
wife of Babson’s eldest son came rushing down. She was dressed in
her nightclothes and dragged a four-year old child by the
hand.
Shane did not even think about what he was doing. He levelled his
gun and shot them both. He did it so quickly, so instinctively,
that it was not until afterwards that he realised what he had done.
He stopped in mid-stride, looked down at the woman, saw the look of
shock upon her face. The boy looked peaceful, as if he was only
sleeping.
‘You bastard! They did nothing to you.’ George Babson himself stood
at the top of the stairs. Shane shot him, then shot him twice more
as he fell. He stepped aside as the body tumbled down the
stairs.
The sounds of gunfire elsewhere in the house had come to an end and
the battle was over. Shane reloaded his guns and went to find
Buchanan.
The smell of gunsmoke lingering in the cell
made Shane think that he had not woken from his dream and that he
was still back in the ranch house. He sat bolt upright on his bunk,
suddenly alert and it was only then that his sense of reality came
back to him. Damn, but the dream had been vivid! It lingered so
fresh inside his mind that his ears still rang with the sound of
gunfire and his guilt burned in the depths of his heart.
Guilt. It was a stranger to him. He had felt it for the first time
that night at the ranch and it had left an indelible mark on him,
one that had set in motion a chain of events that had brought him.
. .
Here.
The sunlight slanted in through the barred windows, casting
diagonal lines of shadow across the far wall. The air was hot and
stuffy and laden with dust. Slowly, Shane stretched, easing the
pain in his joints and back. A few old scars troubled him with
aches. He crossed to the window for some fresh air and looked out
upon the alley.
Today, he thought. He wondered if it would happen today, if killing
Devlin would be all it would take to plunge him back into the
nightmare that he had barely escaped from before. He looked up at
the sky and tried to calculate what time it was. His fight was
scheduled for five-thirty that afternoon and he estimated that it
was currently sometime around seven. That gave him ten hours. After
that he was not really sure what would become of him.
He sat and brooded. Some time later, the door to the sheriff’s
office opened and Buchanan arrived with his breakfast. He was in a
rare good mood and called out in a sing-song voice as he entered:
‘Wakey wakey, rise and shine!’
He slid the tray of hash browns, sausage and egg through a grate in
the bottom of the cell door. ‘Tournament begins in two hours,
Shane. Are you raring to go?’
Shane said nothing but stared glumly at his meal. He had no
appetite that morning and could not bring himself to drink, even
though he was thirsty.
‘Somebody’s got their grumpy-head on this morning.’ Buchanan
chided. ‘I’ve got something that’ll cheer you up.’ He reached
behind his back and produced a newspaper that he had tucked into
the waistband of his woollen pants. ‘One of Nathaniel’s men rode in
with it last night,’ he explained and tossed it through the bars.
‘Read it,’ he said. The jokiness had suddenly gone from his
voice.
The newspaper was a copy of the Carson Daily Gazette, dated a week
ago. The main headline immediately caught Shane’s eye. ‘Shane Ennis
Killed,’ it proclaimed. Beneath it was a photograph of a dead man
propped up in his coffin, flanked on either side by the men who had
shot him. One of them had his arm in a sling.
The article claimed that Shane Ennis had been killed in a shoot out
with three local men, who had recognised him while drinking in a
saloon. Attempting to perform their civic duty and arrest the known
criminal, they had approached him, whereupon he had drawn a gun and
commenced firing. He had shot one man in the arm but, vastly
out-gunned, he had been shot dead in retaliation.
Shane put the newspaper down and looked across at Buchanan, who was
grinning like a loon. ‘How does it feel to be a dead man, Shane?’
He was clearly enjoying himself. ‘I think it’s a good likeness,
don’t you?’
The dead man did indeed bear a striking resemblance to Shane. He
was the right height and build and had similar white hair. The
grainy quality of the photograph made it even harder to tell that
he was not the real Shane Ennis.
Shane had prayed for years that something like this would happen.
Every bounty hunter that had ever sought for him now thought that
he was dead. He was a free man again. It was a kick a teeth that
such good fortune had happened now, when it was too late for him to
make good of it.
Buchanan smiled to see the anguish written on his face. ‘You should
have killed me when you had the chance.’ Buchanan told
him.
Shane did not answer. He sat and stared at the article. I should
have killed you a long time ago, he thought to himself.
He had found Buchanan at the end of the hall,
standing over the bodies of two of Babson’s men and grinning like a
madman. His face was splashed with blood, none of it his own.
‘Shit, was that fun or what?’
Shane said nothing. Killing the woman and her child had dampened
his enthusiasm for the night’s proceedings and he wanted to be done
and gone from the place as soon as possible so that he could put it
out of his mind. He had never killed a child before and could not
understand why he had done it this time.
He became aware that Buchanan had asked him a question.
‘Did you get him?’ Buchanan repeated.
‘Who?’
‘Hunte. Who do you fucking think?’
Shane shook his head. ‘No.’ He didn’t think so.
Buchanan was jaunty. ‘Well, let’s go find him then, shall
we?’
They searched the upper floor room by room. In one, they found
Babson’s youngest daughter. She had tried to hide herself under her
bed but Buchanan heard her whimpering and dragged her out. He
slapped her across the face. ‘Where is he?’ he shouted. ‘Where’s
Hunte?’
The girl was too hysterical to answer. Buchanan subdued her with a
punch that knocked her senseless, then tied her up. They did not
find Hunte, but in one room further down the hall they discovered
an open window and a rope of knotted sheets that hung to the ground
below. Clothes were scattered from an open case and it was clear
that Benedict Hunte had made a hurried escape.
‘Well that’s just fucking great!’ Buchanan swore
violently.
Shane shared his sentiment but did not voice it. He thought of the
dead woman and her child again. It was doubly unprofessional of him
to have killed them but let his intended target get away. ‘We’ll
find him,’ he promised resolutely.
They picked up Hunte’s trail outside. He had run to the corral,
where he had opened the gate and panicked the horses so that most
of them had fled. Hunte had presumably taken one of them but the
confusion of tracks was so great that they would have to wait until
daylight to make sense of them.
Shane turned to face Buchanan, his hand straying towards his gun.
The need for an alliance between them was ended now that Babson’s
men were gone.
‘Fuck it!’ Buchanan said. ‘I ain’t in the mood.’
Shane could have shot him anyway but it would have been an empty
victory. Some day in the future he knew that their paths would
cross again, and when that time came they would fight each other on
equal footing. How else could they learn for certain which of them
was the better man?
Until then, they went their separate ways. Buchanan stalked back
into the ranch house and soon the Babson girl began to scream.
Shane blanked the sounds from his mind and walked away. As he left
the ranch, he passed the sentry that he had knocked unconscious.
The boy was awake and rising to his feet. Shane coldly shot him
through the head without breaking his stride.
Sunlight streamed through the boarded-up
windows of the house that Kip Kutcher had claimed as his own. It
pierced the gloom in beams that were heavy with dust and lighted on
him as he struggled into his pants.
‘Do you think there’ll be any action on the side?’ he
asked.
His girlfriend lay half-wrapped in the tangle of their bedroll, her
tanned skin glistening with sweat. Her hair was bedraggled and lay
half across her face and shoulders in sleepy disarray. ‘There must
be,’ she mumbled. ‘Why wouldn’t there be?’
‘I don’t know. Most of the people here seem kinda stiff.’ Kip
answered. He had tried to get a game of cards going the other day
but no one had been interested. The invigilators were strictly
business and the other contestants hadn’t wanted anything to do
with him. Only the Canadian, Daniel Blaine, had been willing to
speak with him and he had expressed no desire to play against a
card shark.
‘They just don’t now how to have a good time is their problem.’
Madison said. She wriggled one arm free of the bedroll and lifted
it above her head, stretching languorously and arching her back
with a moan. She ended the stretch by rolling onto her side, facing
Kip and studying him with heavy-lidded eyes.
Kip was just nineteen years old, a stringy, handsome youth with a
mop of yellow-brown hair that flopped down over his brow. His ribs
showed through the skin of his chest and his arms were skinny, but
he was impressive in so many other ways. He picked up a shirt from
the debris that constituted his unpacking, shook it to rid it of
any insects that had crawled in during the night, and put it
on.
‘Just remember what I told you,’ the girl warned him. ‘Freeman is
good. He’s killed more than eighty men.’
‘But I bet he isn’t as fast as me.’
She smiled. ‘No, he isn’t. No one is.’
‘Then we’re cool. Hey, do you want to hear something really
wild?’
‘What?’
‘I overheard some of the invigilators talking yesterday. You know
Colonel Hartshorne put up a reward for whoever could bring Shane
Ennis to him? Well, Buchanan killed the men who found him and
brought it all back here.’
The girl raised herself up onto her elbows, suddenly wide-awake.
‘What, all of it?’
‘That’s right, and I bet you can’t guess how much it was.
Twenty-thousand dollars, can you imagine that? Just for one
man.’
Madison was amazed.
‘I’m wondering if maybe they’ll add it to the prize money.’ Kip
said. ‘I wonder how much that’ll make it.’
‘They still haven’t said?’ Madison asked.
Kip shook his head. ‘Not yet. But there’s got to be something.
Being ranked as one of the Fastest Guns is all nice and fancy and
everything, but you can’t have a tournament and not have prize
money. What’d be the point?’
The girl smiled. ‘What would you do with the money if you won?’ she
asked.
Kip walked over and crouched beside her. ‘Baby, I’d spend it all on
you.’
‘Mmm, good answer,’ she said, and pulled him to her.