Chapter 7
Shane had returned to the Babson ranch at first
light the following morning, his arrival scaring crows into flight
as he led his horse through the stink of the battleground. His mind
cold to the events of the night before, he knelt outside the open
gate of the corral and examined the hoof marks that were left
there.
Benedict Hunte had fled westwards. He was no great horseman and in
his panic he had exhausted his mount in the first hour of riding.
Thereafter he had been forced to travel slowly and by midday Shane
had caught up with him enough that the chase looked certain to be
over before nightfall.
Shane was glad. He was eager to get the job done and put the events
of the previous night behind him. The murder of the Babson woman
and her child still haunted him, sitting badly on a conscience he
had not known he had until he had woken that morning.
It was the senselessness of the incident that bothered him the
most. Shane had never killed a child before. He had shot over a
hundred men and more than his fair share of women, but he had never
found reason to shoot a child. He was not altogether convinced that
he’d had a reason this time either. Quick hands were something that
every gunfighter was fast to develop if he wanted to survive, but
however quick the hands the eye was always faster and Shane had
known who his targets were before he had pulled the
trigger.
He had known and he had still done it and he did not know why. It
was almost as if, for a brief moment, somebody else had been in
control of his body and that bothered him because it made him
wonder if he was going mad.
He pondered heavily on these thoughts while he rode and by midday
he arrived at the town of Wainsford.
His appearance earned him suspicious looks as he rode into town. A
mother hastily dragged her children indoors out of his way and a
shop sign in the window of the general store was hastily flipped
over to read ‘closed’. Shane drew up outside a fine-looking hotel
and he hitched his horse beside it and went inside. A bell,
situated above the door, rang to announce his arrival and a man
called out from one of the other rooms, asking him to be patient.
‘I’ll be with you in a minute.’
Shane was not feeling patient and tracked the voice to its source:
a middle-aged man dressed in a floral-print apron, who was
spring-cleaning. He looked embarrassed to have been discovered and
hastily shed the apron, casting it aside. ‘Belongs to the wife,’ he
muttered. ‘We’re dining with the vicar tonight; I didn’t want to
get my clothes dirty. You must want a room real bad,
mister.’
‘A man came into town recently. Did you see him?’
‘You a friend of his?’ The hotelier clearly did not believe he
was.
‘I want to know where he is.’
The look in Shane’s eyes and the tone of his voice convinced him to
answer. ‘He’s across the street in the marshal’s office. Marshal
Fletcher come by and arrested him just a half-hour ago. If you’re
looking for a bounty, mister, I guess you’re too late.’ He gave a
nervous laugh which Shane silenced with a glare. Hunte getting
himself arrested was a complication he could have well done
without.
‘This Marshal Fletcher, he got a deputy?’
‘He’s got two. Alan Grant and young Ben. They’re more than capable
of taking care of things, mister.’
Shane cursed silently to himself. Killing lawmen always meant
trouble and if there were three of them then that made matters even
worse. He left the hotelier to his spring cleaning and stepped
outside.
Word of him had spread across town and the marshal was waiting for
him as he walked out the door. With him was a young man who held a
12-guage shotgun, which he pointed right at Shane’s
chest.
‘Howdy,’ the marshal said amicably. He was an elderly man with wiry
grey hair and a moustache like a steel brush. He was thin but had
the sort of lean physique that suggested he was still a force to be
reckoned with. ‘You know, I didn’t believe it at first when I heard
that Shane Ennis was in town but now I see it with my own eyes.
What you doing here son?’
Shane declined to answer. ‘Am I under arrest?’ he asked.
‘No, you’re not. Ben here is just my insurance. You’ve got a nasty
reputation Mister Ennis and my old bones ain’t what they used to
be. Now I believe I asked you a question.’
‘I’m looking for someone.’
‘And who might that be?’
‘Just someone.’
The old lawman sighed wearily. He knew that Shane had come into
town looking for Hunte. Shane was a professional gun for hire and
Hunte was a man with a high price on his head; it didn’t take a
suspicious mind to put two and two together. Fletcher was
out-matched but he managed to look cool. ‘So what’s this someone
look like?’ he asked. ‘It could be that maybe I’ve seen him
around.’
‘I’d like to tell you, marshal, but to tell you the truth I haven’t
seen him.’
‘That might make it hard for you to find him.’
‘Hard.’ Shane agreed. ‘But not impossible. I got a pretty good idea
I know where he is.’
‘You fixing to cause trouble in my town?’ Fletcher asked.
Shane looked him levelly in the eyes. ‘Not if I can help it,’ he
said.
The marshal nodded, understanding him perfectly. ‘Well then,’ he
said. ‘In that case I’ll leave you to go about your business. Oh
there is one thing: Benedict Hunte rode into town a little while
ago and I understand there’s quite a price on his head. I’ve got
him locked up in the jailhouse and there’s some federal marshals
coming to pick him up in a couple of days. Until they get here
though, me and the boys are likely to be a little nervous so I’d
stay out of our way if I were you. I’m not threatening you, you
understand; I’m just saying. A man like you has a reputation and we
don’t want any misunderstandings around here now do we?’
Shane smiled slightly, admiring the old man’s nerve. ‘No, we
wouldn’t want that at all.’
‘So everything’s clear?’
‘Perfectly.’
‘Well, good day to you then.’
Shane tipped his hat to them and watched as they retreated back
toward the jailhouse. He had hoped to have been able to intimidate
them into giving him Hunte without any trouble, but it seemed as
though things were going to be a little more complicated than
that.
He swore quietly to himself. Hunte was becoming more trouble than
he was worth.
The stroke of noon was the Gunfighter’s Hour.
It was sacred to the Fastest Guns and Shane thought it curious that
no match was fought to honour it. Instead, the contest between Luke
Ferris and the woman, Vendetta, took place, like every other match,
at half-past the hour.
Vendetta was the woman that evil men feared. Ten years ago, her
husband had been murdered by a gang of outlaws led a famous
gunfighter named Michael Brett. The local sheriff had been
powerless to do anything about it, being too scared and too
underpaid to risk his neck over something as trivial as justice,
and so Mary Elizabeth Becker had learned to handle a gun, changed
her name to Vendetta, and sought her own retribution.
It had been bloody and dangerous. Vendetta had pursued her enemies
relentlessly and only Michael Brett had managed to elude her. In
1881 he had competed in the first tournament at Covenant, from
which he had never returned. Since then she had wandered the
continent, fighting for others that the law was powerless to
protect and championing the causes of those too weak to fight for
themselves.
Shane had it on good authority that Michael Brett had been one of
the six men who had won the first tournament and was willing to bet
that Vendetta had come to Covenant to complete her revenge. To do
that, however, she would need to win.
She squared-off against her opponent with a look of tough
determination smouldering in her eyes. Luke Ferris was a handsome
man in his late twenties whose deceptively laconic nature concealed
a vicious talent for murder. He wore no gunbelt but simply had his
gun tucked into the waistline of his pants. It was a .44-40 calibre
Remington with an inch-long brass spur protruding from the handle
for use in close-combat. With it, Ferris had killed close to
three-dozen men. He was a notorious train and coach robber, wanted
dead or alive in Nevada, Utah, Texas and Oklahoma. He stood with
his left shoulder slouched, hands idle, the stub of a cigar hanging
from the corner of his lips.
When Nathaniel called it, both fighters burst into an explosion of
speed. Their hands reached instantly for their guns, flicked back
the hammers and drew.
Two gunshots rang out almost simultaneously, thundering through the
silent streets of town. Vendetta’s hat was blown from her head and
fell, spinning, into the dust behind her. As it landed, a sudden
hush closed upon the crossroads as if a smothering fist had
tightened, choking all further sounds.
Then there was a heavy thump as a body hit the ground.
Luke Ferris had been the quicker of the two by
a mere fraction of a second but his haste had proven costly. He had
fired high and his shot had missed the top of Vendetta’s skull by
just an inch and a half. Vendetta had been more accurate. Her shot
had found its mark and split Luke’s heart in two, separating the
left and right ventricles before cleaving through his shoulder
blade in an explosion of blood and shattered bone.
She stooped now, retrieved her hat and dusted it down before
putting it back on and tilting it to shield her eyes from the sun.
She then walked calmly from the street.
The other contestants dispersed and did not return to the
crossroads until the fourth match was due to begin. The renegade
Apache, Nanache, took his place on the crossroads opposite the
Canadian, Daniel Blaine, and stared at his opponent with
hate-filled eyes.
Nanache had served in the US Army as a scout during the Geronimo
Campaign. He had been promised ten ponies and his freedom in
exchange for his services, but when Geronimo surrendered the US
Government had broken its word and sentenced ‘friendly’ Apaches
like Nanache to share Geronimo’s exile in Florida. Nanache had
escaped from the prison train and become an outlaw rather than
suffer that fate. His bitterness at being betrayed after years
spent fighting his own kinsmen had turned into a deadly hatred for
the US Government and its people, and over the following years he
had built a name for himself as a ruthless killer of men, women and
children. He was known to torture his victims slowly to death, to
cover them in pitch and set them on fire or stake them out in the
sun for the buzzards to eat alive. The Federal Government had
issued a thousand dollar reward for his capture, dead or alive, but
so far he had killed every bounty hunter who had ever searched for
him.
He wore his old US Army jacket as a mark of spite, decorating it
with kachinas made from beads and feathers and horse’s hair. At his
side, he wore a seven-inch bone-handled knife and a Colt 1873
Single Action revolver.
Blaine was an enormous man with a thick chest and hairy arms. He
stood ramrod-straight, his feet planted a shoulder’s width apart
and his knees slightly bent. He was a competition marksman by
profession and a murderer by habit. His gun was custom-made to his
own specifications and was based on a Remington 1875 revolver,
rechambered to take a .50 calibre cartridge and fitted with an
Alvan Clarke telescopic sight above the barrel. With its
monstrously powerful cartridge and five times magnification, he
boasted that it was lethal at ranges of up to a hundred
yards.
Nanache fingered the grisly necklace of finger bones that hung
around his throat.
‘That’s a pretty rosary you have there.’ Blaine told him. ‘But
praying to your heathen gods won’t save you.’
Nanache regarded him coldly. ‘Every one of these bones is the
trigger finger of a gunfighter I have killed. This one,’ he said,
stroking one of the small, yellowed bones. ‘Was fast on the draw.
Whereas this one,’ he said, stroking another. ‘Came from a man who
shot well. Now I shoot well and I am fast on the draw. Not only
have I taken their bones, I have taken their skills as well. When
this is over I will take your finger and your famous marksmanship
and I will go into the second round better than I am
today.’
Blaine did not know whether to take his boasts seriously or not. He
curled his lip. ‘First you’ll have to beat me, chief.’
The two contestants glanced sideways as Nathaniel came to the edge
of the porch and called for their attention. They tensed. Blaine
shook his fingers to loosen them and heighten his responsiveness.
Nanache checked his footing.
Nathaniel raised his voice. ‘You may fire when ready.’
It was over in seconds. Nanache’s shot hit Blaine hit in the neck.
The bullet clipped off the underside of his jawbone and ricocheted
into his spine. His head jerked sideways, blood spurting from his
mouth as fragments of his shattered jaw ripped through his tongue
and into his pallet.
He rotated slowly on the spot, hand still rising to bring his heavy
revolver to bear.
Nanache fired again and this time Blaine hit the ground. He
twitched once, then lay still. The invigilators moved forward to
collect his body but Nanache waved them back. He holstered his gun
and walked over to Blaine’s body, where he knelt and drew his
knife. Prising the gun from Blaine’s tightly clenched hand, he
straightened the man’s trigger finger and carefully cut it off at
the root.
‘You may take him now,’ he told the invigilators, and stepped aside
to let them carry him away.