Chapter 13
The dawn rose over Wainsford, drawing back the
shadows and exposing the effect of the night’s crimes. Like a rape
victim, the town was huddled in shock. Its population cowered,
hiding behind closed doors while the men who had brought death and
terror to its streets held the jailhouse in siege.
Shane stepped from his hotel and took a deep breath before he
crossed the road. He had scarcely slept at all that night for he
had been plagued by nightmares in which his guns had compelled him
to kill over and over again; but to look at him, nobody would ever
have known. He kept his inner turmoil locked away behind the
implacable surface of his cold, dark eyes and he walked with the
confident knowledge that, one way or another, the siege would end
today.
The bounty hunters had gathered in a semi-circle around the
jailhouse. They parted so that Shane could pass, then closed in
again behind him. He felt the presence of their guns at his back,
scratching at his paranoia, but again he was confident. Buchanan
would not let any other man kill him. He wanted to prove himself
against Shane too badly to let anybody else spoil the opportunity
and so, for the time being, Shane could trust him like a
brother.
The jailhouse stood quiet and subdued before him. The morning sun
revealed the bullet marks in the door and the dark stain of Ben’s
blood from the night before. Shane was aware that his approach was
being watched from inside and that the men in there were more
likely to shoot him than listen to what he had to say but he forced
himself to appear calm. To show any kind of fear right now would
invite disaster.
‘Are you in there Fletcher?’
The sound of a gun being cocked was his first reply.
‘Back off Ennis! I ought to shoot you where you stand.’
‘I’m not here to fight with you, Fletcher. I came here to make
peace.’
‘Why you cocksucking son-of-a-whore! You come here and say you’ll
talk peace with me after what you murderers did last
night?’
‘What happened last night was unfortunate, Fletcher. I didn’t have
any part in it.’
‘Bullshit!’
‘You have my word.’ Shane called back. He did not consider that he
was lying as such, since it was true that he had not actually taken
part in any of the night’s misdoings despite his role in
engineering them. ‘There are a lot of dangerous men in town. I took
care of a few of them yesterday. I guess I must have missed
some.’
‘Why don’t you stick that gun of yours in your own mouth and pull
the trigger? You won’t miss then!’
‘You’re wasting your time Fletcher. Your federal marshal’s aren’t
coming. Federal marshals have got better things to do than get
themselves killed over a piece of shit like Hunte. There’s nobody
here wants him alive but you. Give it up. If you come out now I
swear to you that no one else will get hurt.’
Fletcher couldn’t find the words to express what he thought of
Shane’s offer and silence was his only answer. Shane sighed.
‘You’re not the marshal any more, Fletcher. I am. I got a signed
writ here and I’ve been authorised to remove you from my jailhouse
with force if necessary. I’d rather it didn’t come to
that.’
‘You can take that writ and stick it, Ennis!’ Fletcher shouted
back. ‘That piece of paper’s not worth spit, nor the men who signed
it.’
Shane was beginning to lose his patience. The idea of just killing
Fletcher was getting to feel more and more welcome all the time.
His hand stroked the butt of his revolver.
He was distracted by a sudden shout from one of his men. The bounty
hunter was pointing and Shane turned to see a band of five horsemen
riding into town. They were wild-looking men. Three of them looked
like half-blooded Apaches. They had long black hair that was
decorated with feathers and beads. The other two were white, and
one of them – the leader judging by his bearing – was built like a
blacksmith’s anvil.
Shane swore beneath his breath. He recognised the leader. Though he
had never met him face to face, he knew of his reputation. He was
an Arizona Ranger, which meant that Shane’s predictions had been
wrong.
The federal marshals had come to town and they had come looking for
a fight.
Shane watched a dust devil spiral along the
road before dissipating in a shower of grit. He did not feel the
breeze that had caused it. The air was heavy and stale and hot as
the fires of Hell.
‘I need a drink,’ he said.
‘So?’ Buchanan asked.
‘So are you going to get one for me?’
‘Do I look like your fucking servant?’
Shane gave him a shrug and turned away. ‘It’s not like you’re good
for anything else.’ It was the sort of comment that Buchanan could
not simply let pass.
‘What the fuck is that supposed to mean?’ he said, loud enough that
the closest invigilators turned to see what was
happening.
‘Nothing.’ Shane replied. ‘Except that I notice you aren’t
competing in this tournament.’
He had expected this to be a sore point with Buchanan, and he was
right. ‘I could compete if I wanted too.’
‘But you’re not.’
‘If you’ve got something to say to me then you say it.’ Buchanan
said, rising to his feet.
Shane rose also and turned to face him directly. They were more or
less of an equal height, although Buchanan was bulkier by about
twenty pounds of muscle. The invigilators started to get nervous.
Rifles were cocked and, irritably, Buchanan waved them to stand
down.
‘Say it!’ he said fiercely.
But Shane turned away, saying nothing.
‘Yeah, I thought as much.’ Buchanan said, his voice rancorous with
disgust. ‘Get out of my sight! You don’t fucking deserve to compete
in this tournament, you yellow-bellied bastard.’
Shane slouched away, looking defeated. A few of the invigilators
jeered at him but their taunts fell on deaf ears. Shane didn’t care
what they thought of him. Refusing to carry a gun for the last six
years, he had walked away from more fights than he could remember.
It didn’t mean anything to him. And besides, he had gotten
precisely the response from Buchanan that he had wanted.
He crossed the street to O’Malley’s without anybody trying to stop
him and pushed through the butterfly-wing doors. It was dark inside
but the shade offered no relief from the suffocating midday heat.
Shane had not come to O’Malley’s to drink, however. He walked
straight through the building and out the back door, making good
his escape before Buchanan thought of sending someone to keep an
eye on him.
The back door led into an empty side street and Shane felt a thrill
of excitement. He had been kept a prisoner of somebody or other for
the past month or so and this new-found freedom felt good, even if
he knew it was only temporary. It gave him a taste for more and
deepened his resolve to escape from Covenant before the tournament
ended.
Keeping to the backstreets and alleys, he avoided the patrolling
invigilators and made his way by a circuitous route to the
bathhouse, approaching it from the rear. His way was barred by a
tall wooden fence but it was in poor enough condition that he was
able to pull down a few planks to make a gap big enough for him to
step through.
As he had suspected, the bathhouse was in use.
He had gambled on this. Yesterday when Vendetta had returned to the
street to watch Nanache and Daniel Blaine fight, he had noticed
that her hair had been wet. He had thought little of it at the
time, but the observation had been noted and he had recalled it
just a few minutes ago and recognised its significance.
Vendetta was a hard woman but she did not revel in the act of
killing the way most of the other contestants did. It was
distasteful to her, something that she saved for when it was
necessary, and Shane suspected that she had had a bath yesterday
after killing Luke Ferris, maybe to try and wash away the guilt
from her soul.
That being the case, it made sense that she would do it again
having just killed Nanache. Shane approached the open
doorway.
The tread of his footsteps must have given him away, for he heard
the familiar sound of a gun being cocked as he drew near. Vendetta
called out from within. ‘That’s far enough.’
Deliberately ignoring her, Shane walked cautiously inside. He found
her sitting in one of the tubs, her legs drawn up against her chest
to preserve her modesty.
Shane motioned to the gun she was holding. ‘You know, if you shoot
me with that thing you’ll be breaking one of Nathaniel’s
rules.’
‘Get lost.’
‘No need to get mad. I only came for a bath. I wasn’t expecting to
find anyone else here.’
‘Well, as you can see, I’m here.’ Vendetta told him. She let the
obvious gender difference hang unspoken between them but Shane
chose to ignore it. Sauntering into the room, he took off his hat
and waistcoat and set them down on the floor next to the tub beside
her. ‘It is hot today, isn’t it?’ he said, pointedly ignoring the
gun that she kept trained on him.
She let out an irritable sigh. ‘Get out, Ennis.’
‘Why? I count three tubs. You’re only taking up one of
them’
‘Goddammit!’ she swore. ‘Shouldn’t you be on a leash?’
‘Yeah, but I got loose.’
‘So go bug somebody else.’
‘Maybe I will. After I’ve had my bath.’
She had left some water on the hearth and Shane emptied it into his
chosen tub, then went outside to draw some more. When he returned,
Vendetta had evidently resigned herself to the fact that he was not
going to leave. She had set her gun down on the floor on the side
of her tub furthest away from him and had resumed washing herself,
acting as if he wasn’t there.
Shane mirrored her disinterest, going about the process of warming
the water and filling his bath as if he was alone but, out of the
corner of his eye, he kept a careful watch on her. Although it had
not been his intention to, he found himself looking at her body.
She was too hard for any man to call her pretty, but without her
clothes on there was no denying that she was a woman, and a woman
with a very fine pair of legs, Shane noted. Her wet skin glistened
like honey in the golden light.
When his bath was ready, he unselfconsciously stripped off his
clothes, climbed into the tub and began to wash. ‘I know why you’re
here,’ he said conversationally.
She frowned. ‘Is that supposed to impress me?’
Shane did not expect her to want to listen to what he had to say,
but the fact that she was naked gave her little choice in the
matter. It would take her a good couple of minutes to dry herself
and get dressed before she could walk out on him, and that was all
the time he needed.
‘You’re not good enough to win this tournament,’ he told her. ‘You
got lucky yesterday and you barely made it through today. Tomorrow
you’ll probably go up against Chastity, or me; and you haven’t got
a chance of beating either of us.’
‘I can kill you,’ she asserted.
He shrugged half-heartedly. ‘It’s been a while since I fired
properly,’ he admitted. ‘And I’m not as good as I was so I’ll give
you the benefit of the doubt. But as for that little girl, I have
never seen anyone who could shoot as good as her.’
Just as he had suspected she might, Vendetta got out of the tub and
began drying herself. She pretended not to hear him as he
continued: ‘You entered this tournament to find your husband’s
murderer but it’s not going to do you any good. You won’t even see
Brett unless you win, and there’s no way that’s going to
happen.’
‘Save it, Ennis. You’re not going to scare me off.’
‘I’m not trying to.’
She turned her back on him and tugged on her pants.
‘You know, it might not matter anyway,’ he said. ‘Maybe you’ve
figured it out yourself. Nathaniel’s not being completely honest
with us about this tournament. I don’t know what he’s up to but he
sure as Hell isn’t working for the Fastest Guns.’
‘They would have killed us all by now if he wasn’t.’ Vendetta said,
putting on her shirt.
‘That’s true. Which makes me wonder what they’re up to.’
Vendetta finished getting dressed. She strapped on her gun belt and
pulled her hair back in a tight ponytail. ‘Save it for somebody who
gives a shit,’ she said.
‘If you don’t want to believe me . . .’ Shane began, but he was
talking to himself; she had already gone.
He settled back in the tub and closed his eyes to think. The hook
had been baited. Now all he had to do was wait to see if she
bit.
The gunfight could scarcely have been called as
much.
The federal marshals galloped into Wainsford in close order and
fought as a team, whereas Shane’s bounty hunters had no love for
one another and fought as individuals. They were cut down and Shane
stood in the midst of them, not moving, not even reaching for his
gun. Bullets whipped past him, heading in both directions, some
passing so close that they snatched at his hair. It took all of his
self-control not to draw his guns, for he knew that the safest way
to survive this battle was not to make a target of himself. He
stood in the eye of the tornado, ignored and unscathed.
It was all over in less than forty-five seconds. Castor Buchanan
and two others turned tail and fled and three of the marshals went
after them. The other two shot the bounty hunters who remained and
then advanced on Shane.
Their leader stared down at him from his saddle, his brow creased
in an ugly frown. ‘Draw your gun, mister.’
Shane met his gaze and held it. He was impressed when the man
refused to look away. ‘I’m not going to do that, sir.’
‘Why you no good yellow bastard, I said draw your goddamn
gun!’
Shane did not so much as move. ‘If you’ll let me prove it, I have a
writ in my pocket that will identify me as the marshal of this
town.’
‘And I suppose those boys were your deputies?’
‘That’s right.’
‘And you were just standing around outside of your own jailhouse,
enjoying the morning air?’
It was at that point that Fletcher called out from inside. ‘Don’t
listen to a word that man says. He’s Shane Ennis.’
‘I know who he is. Do you know who I am, Ennis?’
‘I do.’ Shane replied. The big marshal was Lyndon Appleby. He was
captain of the special Desert Cadre of the Arizona Rangers and he
was just as famous as Shane was notorious; a real American
legend.
He had been born in Ohio in 1839 and at the age of eight he had run
away from home to seek his fortune. He had drifted for a time as a
vagrant and a scavenger before winding up at a horse ranch at the
age of twelve, where he had learned to break wild mustangs. He had
fought for the Union when war broke out and had distinguished
himself at Racoon Ford but, so the story went, Appleby had grown
weary of fighting his countrymen and, after the war, he had set out
to the Frontier. There he had befriended the Apache and had lived
with them for several years, learning their ways and sharing his
knowledge with them in return. He had tried to settle a peace with
them but had failed and, despairing of the wars that had broken
out, he had walked away. He had become a bounty hunter, a sheriff
and eventually a recluse, vanishing into the desert after the death
of his wife, in which isolation he had remained until the US
Cavalry had sent men to find him in 1879, to enlist him in the
search for the renegade Apache chief, Victorio.
Appleby had made a permanent return to civilisation after that. He
had joined the Arizona Rangers and founded the elite Desert Cadre:
a group of men trained in the arts of desert tracking and survival.
He was a man whose stature befitted his legend. He was tall and
muscular; so strong that it was said he had once killed a man with
a single punch to the head. His massive fists were too big to
handle normal guns and so, in place of revolvers, he carried two
sawn-off shotguns that had been specially modified to suit him.
They were devastating weapons. Not as accurate or precise as a
revolver, they relied on deadly brute force, spitting out a blast
of 12-gauge buckshot that was instant death to anyone within
fifteen yards. Appleby didn’t even need to aim; the spread of
buckshot was so wide as it left the muzzle that he had only to
point the gun in vaguely the right direction to guarantee a kill
and, because of this, he was greatly feared and respected even by
professional gunfighters like Shane. Appleby was no gunslinger but
he was able to stand on equal footing with all but the
best.
Shane had never met him face-to-face before, although he had often
wondered what would happen if he did. He could feel his gun
scratching at the back of his mind, begging him to draw the bastard
down, but he resisted the temptation. Appleby already had his gun
drawn and he was just itching for a reason to kill Shane.
‘You boys turned up in just the nick of time.’ Fletcher called
out.
‘Telegram said you had Hunte.’ Appleby replied.
‘I do.’
Appleby dismounted and approached the jailhouse while his sergeant
relieved Shane of his weapons and shackled his hands behind his
back. ‘You’re making a mistake.’ Shane said.
‘That’s right, I am.’ Appleby agreed, not looking back at him. ‘I’m
letting you live.’
He left Shane under guard while he went inside the jailhouse. Shane
waited. A crowd began to form in the street, given courage by the
marshals’ arrival, and several came forward to tell the sergeant
what had happened over the last few days. Shane noticed several of
the town councilmen in the crowd but they deliberately avoided his
eyes. Already they were disavowing any involvement with
him.
After a short while, the marshals who had gone after Buchanan
returned. They had killed one of the men who had tried to escape
with him, but Buchanan had gotten away.
‘Looks like your partner’s run off without you,’ one of the men
remarked, but Shane kept his silence.
Eventually, Appleby came back from the jailhouse and began issuing
curt orders. The councilman, Boyd, stepped forward to speak with
him but Appleby dismissed him briskly. He was not planning on
staying in Wainsford long. There were other bounty hunters closing
in and he wanted to be gone before they could catch up with
him.
Shane was taken into the jailhouse. The building was dark because
of the barricades that covered the windows and it smelled ripe.
Four men had spent the last few days holed-up inside, eating out of
cans and shitting in a bucket, but that was only the start of the
smell. The worst of it emanated from the body rolled up in a
blanket in one corner of the room.
Fletcher glared at Shane accusingly. ‘You’re gonna answer for what
you’ve done,’ he promised.
‘I told you, I didn’t have anything to do with that.’
‘Bullshit.’
‘I’d hang him if I were you.’ Appleby said. ‘Or put a bullet in his
head.’
‘No. He’ll stand trial.’ Fletcher said adamantly. ‘I’ll take him to
Rosebridge.’
‘You’d be better off taking him to New Mexico.’ Appleby suggested.
‘There’s a ten-thousand dollar reward for him there and he’ll hang
for sure.’
They dragged Shane over to the cell. It was a metal cage set
against the back wall and in it was the man that Shane had come to
kill.
Benedict Hunte was a disappointingly ordinary-looking man in his
mid-forties. He had thin brown hair and small eyes that darted
nervously. He recoiled as Alan Grant unlocked the cell. ‘Please,
you can’t take me back,’ he cried. ‘They’ll kill me.’
‘They’ll kill you just as happily if you stay here.’ Appleby said.
There was not a trace of sympathy in his voice. He grabbed Hunte by
the scruff of the neck and hauled him out of the cell.
‘But I don’t want to go!’ Hunte protested.
He might as well have argued with an earthquake or a tornado. Like
both of them, Lyndon Appleby was a force of nature. Nothing on
earth could stop him once he set himself in motion.
Shane was thrown into the cell in Hunte’s place and the door was
slammed shut on him. Alan Grant took great pleasure in turning the
key. ‘You’ll regret this,’ Shane promised.
‘You’ll regret it more,’ Grant said in return and he walked away,
leaving Shane helpless to do anything but watch as Benedict Hunte
was taken outside and put on a horse. Once again, he had slipped
through Shane’s fingers, but it was not over yet.
Shane was still alive and he still had a plan to fall back on.