Chapter 15

Ben’s funeral was conducted on the same day that Lyndon Appleby and his marshals took Hunte away. The whole town turned out for a ceremony that included both Ben and his parents, each buried side-by-side in a dusty plot outside of town. Shane attended, his hands shackled in front of him and Fletcher and Grant solemn figures on either side. Behind them at the lych gate their horses were saddled with bags for the long journey to the state line. Fletcher was through with Wainsford and he and Grant were taking Shane with them. They were taking Appleby’s advice and turning him in for the ten-thousand dollar reward.
The ceremony was a bitter, guilt-ridden thing. The preacher choked on his words and the townsfolk stood with their heads bowed. When it was over, Fletcher raised his head from prayer and wiped his eyes. Solemnly, he turned and pushed Shane toward the horses. Townsfolk who had gathered to pay their respects offered Fletcher their condolences as he passed and scowled at Shane. A few spat at him but most still feared him too much to give him any cause to remember them. It was as they drew near to the lych gate that the lawyer, Boyd, pushed his way free of the crowd and caught Fletcher by the sleeve.
‘August, wait! Let’s not be hasty. I know what happened was unpleasant but we had to think of the town.’
‘The only thing you were thinking of was the money in your pocket.’ Fletcher tugged his arm free and marched on toward the horses, pushing Shane ahead of him. ‘How much did they offer you?’
‘I’m sure I don’t know what you mean.’ Boyd insisted.
Fletcher shook his head, unable to voice his disgust. They reached the horses and Alan Grant kept Shane covered with a shotgun while he mounted.
‘I know you feel that you’ve been betrayed.’ Boyd said.
‘Could that be because I was betrayed?’ Fletcher replied testily.
Boyd pretended not to have heard him. ‘We want you to stay on as marshal. We’ll increase your wages to forty dollars a month.’
Fletcher mounted his horse.
‘Fifty then.’ Boyd said urgently. ‘Think of the town, August. They’ll be no one here to keep the law.’
Fletcher slowly turned to face him. ‘I don’t think you understand me, Boyd. I don’t fucking care.’ He raised his voice so that everyone could hear. ‘This whole town can go to Hell,’ he said, and steered his horse away.
Boyd still wouldn’t accept defeat. ‘Sixty then!’ he called after them, but his words fell on deaf ears. Fletcher wasn’t coming back.
They rode until nightfall. Fletcher was in a dark mood and said nothing the whole journey. His silence worked well for Shane, who rode with his head bowed and his brain working, a constant eye on Grant.
Up until now, Alan Grant had been a name without a face. Shane had heard him spoken of about town and had learned that he had been marshal before Fletcher. His wife had left him suddenly for a travelling salesman and, heartbroken, Grant had turned to the bottle and damn near drank himself to death. Fletcher had hauled him off the street and gotten him to sober up, but that had only been a couple of weeks ago and Grant’s cravings still gnawed at him with obvious ill-effect. He sweated profusely, was clumsy and lethargic and sometimes looked on the verge of passing out. His hands shook so badly that Shane didn’t think he could shoot further than ten or fifteen yards and have any guarantee of hitting what he aimed at. His friendship with Fletcher seemed about the only thing that kept him going and, in Shane’s eyes, that dependence made him exploitable.
Shane drew up his plans as they rode and plotted the means by which he would win back his freedom and finish the job he was being paid to perform.
That night, as they sat around the campfire in silence, Shane turned to Fletcher and spoke. ‘Hanging me won’t change what happened last night.’
His words were met with a long and uncomfortable pause before Fletcher answered. ‘You’re right, it won’t. But it’s no less than you deserve.’
‘What happened to Ben and his parent’s was none of my doing.’
‘And you really expect me to believe that?’
Shane shrugged. ‘I could have killed you the day we met if that was how I wanted it.’
Fletcher had nothing to say to that. He knew that there was some measure of truth to Shane’s words. Wood popped on the fire, throwing up sparks that spiralled into the air on an updraft.
‘Buchanan’s the man you want; not me.’ Shane said.
‘You could have stopped him.’ Fletcher said accusingly.
‘Maybe. But I didn’t.’ Shane spoke plainly. His own feelings on the subject were irrelevant; all that mattered was Fletcher’s reaction. ‘You can curse me all you want but my not stopping him doesn’t change the fact that it was him that done it, not me. If you want justice, Fletcher, you’ve got the wrong man.’
‘I’ll settle things with Buchanan in due course.’
Shane let out a short, cruel laugh. ‘I doubt that. You’re a stubborn old mule Fletcher, but you’re no match for a man like Buchanan. He’d do you like he did Ben’s parents.’ He paused for a moment to let the thought sink in. ‘I could kill him though,’ he added softly, almost as an afterthought.
Shane and Fletcher’s eyes met over the campfire and the two men stared at each other, neither saying a word. There was a reckoning in that meeting of eyes, a judgement that passed between them, and Grant did not like that it happened at all. ‘Don’t listen to him, August. He’s just trying to save his worthless hide.’
‘Buchanan and I have unfinished business to resolve.’ Shane said. ‘I want him dead just as much as you do.’
Grant told him to shut up, but Shane ignored him. ‘If you want justice for what happened to Ben; I’m the only man who can give it to you,’ he said.
‘I said: shut up!’ Grant drew his revolver and pointed it at Shane. The way his hands were shaking it wouldn’t take much for him to accidentally pull the trigger. Shane forced himself to look unafraid and turned to Fletcher.
Fletcher sighed. ‘Put the gun away, Alan.’
Grant reluctantly did as he was told, muttering to himself as he fumbled the revolver back into its holster. Fletcher got slowly to his feet and took a few steps away from the fire, his eyes distant as he stared across the plains. ‘I’m almost tempted to take you up on your offer,’ he told Shane. ‘But I’m not that stupid. I know if I set you loose you’ll only go after Hunte.’
‘So what if I do?’ Shane asked. ‘Buchanan’ll be going after him too. I find one; the other won’t be far away.’
‘I won’t let you kill him, Ennis.’
‘No, I don’t suppose you will.’ Shane said, his voice quiet. ‘But I guess we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.’
Fletcher turned to face him but said nothing at all. Standing there like that, Shane thought he looked older than he had seemed before, older, broken and frail. As little as a few days ago, August Fletcher would never have agreed to what Shane was offering him.
But a lot had happened since then.

The butterfly-wing doors of O’Malley’s swung on rusty hinges and Buchanan strode in, his boots clumping heavily on the wooden floor. He had Shane’s gun belt draped over his arm and held the lacquered mahogany box that contained Shane’s gun.
‘Is it that time already?’ Shane asked.
‘Like you haven’t been counting the seconds.’ Buchanan replied. He tossed the gun belt onto Shane’s table. ‘You been drinking alone?’ The way he said it made Shane think he knew that Vendetta had joined him.
‘I might as well have been,’ he replied, and slowly got to his feet. He fastened the gun belt around his waist. ‘Did you sort out that problem with the missing body?’
‘It’s dealt with.’ The lie was transparent. Sensing a little friction, Shane decided to press further.
‘What did Nathaniel have to say about it?’ he asked.
‘That’s none of your business.’
‘It must be hard not being able to sense them for yourself any more. Are you sure than Nathaniel’s telling you the whole story?’
He could see by the look on Buchanan’s face that it was something that had been preying on his mind. ‘That’ll all change soon,’ he said adamantly, and he set the mahogany box down on the table. Shane felt a shiver of excitement run through his body and immediately resented it, but he longed to open the box and hold his gun again. It awoke a yearning in him that reached deep into his soul, exerting such a power over his emotions that it filled him with self-disgust.
‘What can you sense, Shane?’ Buchanan asked. He tried to make it sound tough but even growling his words like a dog couldn’t hide the raw need with which he wanted to hear the answer, like a lovelorn teenager asking to know a beautiful girl’s name.
Shane cleared his thoughts and opened up his senses. He shivered as he felt a scratching at his soul. It was as if somebody had reached a spectral hand into his body and was plucking at his nerves as at the strings of a guitar. The melody they played was sweet but the song was vile.
‘They’re all around us,’ he said. ‘Watching. Waiting.’
He shook his head and broke the spell. His skin felt clammy but whether from disgust or desire Shane could not properly be sure. He tried to blank the thoughts from his mind as he reached for the box.
The gun inside had been cleaned and oiled again since yesterday and was as smooth and beautiful as a woman’s naked thigh. Its smell rose up at him, sultry like musk and poisonously seductive. Shane took it into his hands and holstered it quickly, not wanting to hold onto it for any longer than he had to, not right now while his senses were still raw from the Fastest Guns’ touch. He did not trust himself.
The room seemed too close. He walked to the door and stepped out onto the boardwalk, breathing deeply to ground himself. Outside, the invigilators were taking up their positions in preparation for the impending match. Their black hats and three-quarter length coats made them look like crows as they hunched on the rooftops and noisily cocked their rifles.
Buchanan walked him to his spot on the crossroads. It was hot and dusty and Shane tasted grit in the back of his throat. Buchanan gave him his bullet. ‘Try not to waste it now,’ he said.
The significance of his comment did not occur to Shane until after Buchanan had gone and he turned to face his opponent. In this round he had been matched against Valentino Rodrigues, the man who had fought against the Gentleman.
Given a fully-loaded gun Shane would have felt confident that he could defeat him without difficulty, but only having a single bullet changed things. It left him with no margin for error. If he fired and Rodrigues ducked out of the way again, Shane would not get a second chance to hit him.
His safest option was to sacrifice the initiative and let Rodrigues act first, then try to counteract him before he fired, but that would require perfect timing. Act too quickly and he might waste his one and only shot. Act too slowly and he might never get a chance to fire. Rodrigues knew this as clearly as Shane, and he knew that it gave him a slight advantage. He looked confident as he strutted out onto the crossroads and found his mark. He stretched his fingers like a pianist about to play a concerto and tipped his hat to Shane and smiled charmingly. Shane nodded in return. It was the last gesture by which he acknowledged the man as a fellow human being. From that moment onwards, Shane stopped seeing him as a person and viewed him solely as a threat, a danger that had to be eliminated. It drained the colours from his point of view and heightened his senses to a sharper level.
By objectifying him, Shane transformed Rodrigues into a set of probabilities. The set of his stance dictated the possible ways in which he could jump, dive or roll before firing his shot. Rodrigues was ambidextrous and wore a gun on each hip. Against the Gentleman he had drawn with his right hand and fired a .44-40 Remington but, equally, he could draw with his left and use his .38 revolver instead; a gun that was lighter and fractionally quicker to draw.
Shane looked into his eyes and tried to read his intentions, but Rodrigues had a solid poker face and he kept his thoughts locked up tight. His eyes revealed nothing.
The boardwalk creaked under Nathaniel’s boots as he moved to the edge of the porch and made ready to give the call.
In only a few more seconds, the fight would begin. Shane twitched his fingers impatiently and tried to predict what Rodrigues would do. He believed he had it narrowed down to about three possibilities. It was just a matter of picking the right one.
He heard the silence around them deepen as the crowd tensed and figured that had to mean that Nathaniel had opened his mouth to speak.
There was no more time to think. No more time to doubt.
‘Draw!’ Nathaniel shouted, and Shane drew and fired.

The shot hit Rodrigues high in the throat and burst through his larynx. It struck against the pillar of his spine and shattered the vertebrae a couple of inches beneath the base of his skull, cutting the spinal cord. His body went limp on the spot and he coiled up on the ground like a piece of rope, having never even had a chance to move.
Shane had guessed his intentions just a split second before Nathaniel had called the shot. It seemed obvious now in hindsight. Gambling that Shane would expect him to dodge one way or another, Rodrigues had counted on him to hesitate and had gone straight for the draw. He had stood right where he was and just reached for his gun, hoping to move fast enough that he could catch Shane while he was still waiting to see which way he’d move.
It was clever and it had nearly worked. Shane felt proud of how easily he had out-witted Rodrigues and beaten him to the draw. His blood surged powerfully through his veins and he felt strong, invincible even! The sense of power that raced through him was electrifying. He wished that the gun had more bullets. Then he would show everyone in Covenant what a force he was to be reckoned with.
He forced himself to put the gun back in its holster. His hand moved slowly, reluctantly. The sensation of having the gun in his hand lingered afterwards like the memory of a parting kiss. It left him yearning for more and it frightened him; the feeling was so overpoweringly intense.
Not trusting himself, he unbuckled the gun belt and tossed it to Buchanan.
‘You made that look easy.’ Buchanan said.
It had been easy, Shane thought. Too easy. Valentino Rodrigues had been good enough to make a name for himself as a professional gunfighter, and he had been good enough to kill the Gentleman, albeit with some simple trickery, but he had never been good enough to meet the Fastest Guns’ high standards.
Shane thought it about later in the quiet solitude of his cell. He was now absolutely certain that the tournament was Nathaniel’s idea and that it was being held without the Fastest Guns’ involvement. If that were the case though, he could not understand why they were allowing it to continue.
It did not make sense. The Fastest Guns were notoriously intolerant of allowing anybody into Covenant. Shane could only assume that Nathaniel had to be controlling them in some way or, at the very least, that he had found some way of appeasing them, and that was a thought that made him nervous. He did not know a great deal about the occult but what he did know came from having seen it face-to-face. Shane had looked into the very mouth of Hell and no man came away from an experience like that without learning something of the black arts. If Nathaniel had appeased the Fastest Guns then it was probably the opening step toward some sort of bargaining ritual, but Shane could not understand what Nathaniel expected to receive from such a deal. More importantly, how did he expect to get away with it? The Fastest Guns were not some ancient line of demons that could be held in service. They were newly-formed and so young that Hell’s aristocracy had not yet bothered to even look their way. Such demons could not be bound. Only a fool would dare such a thing.
Shane felt that he was missing something, some vital piece of information that would make sense of it all but whatever it was it eluded him no matter how he tried looking at things. It bothered him that he couldn’t work it out and he was still sat in determined contemplation when Buchanan came for him a few hours later.
The meeting at O’Malley’s that night was little more than a formality. With only four contestants left alive, everybody knew what the pairings for the semi-final would be. Vendetta was paired against Chastity, leaving Tom Freeman to face Shane. Nathaniel avoided the Gunfighter’s Hour again and the first match was set to take place at eleven and the last match to take place at one.
About the only thing that was unexpected was Chastity’s presence at the meeting, accompanied by her new nanny. Madison was dressed like a lady in an ill-fitting dress and quarter-length jacket. Her bodice had a high collar that covered most of her throat and she had piled her hair up in a way that made her look quite respectable. Shane was amazed by the transformation. It seemed as if Nathaniel had successfully tamed her.
The meeting broke up soon after the placings had been read and Buchanan returned Shane to his cell and locked him in. It was getting late and as the darkness settled the town began its eerie night-song, the creaking and groaning of every house and ruin softening gradually into melody. Perhaps lulled by the noise, Shane drifted into a light sleep and his dreams carried him back in time.

They had journeyed north the next morning, changing course to pursue Lyndon Appleby in the hope that by finding him they would find Buchanan. Grant was not happy about it. He dropped back until he and Fletcher were side-by-side, with Shane several metres in front and out of earshot. ‘He’ll kill us the first chance he gets,’ he said.
‘More than likely.’ Fletcher agreed with him.
‘Then why don’t we just take him in? He’s worth ten-thousand dollars.’
‘I don’t care about the money; I’m thinking about Ben.’
‘Ben’s dead, August. And it’s that bastard there that killed him.’
‘He had a part in it, I’m sure.’ Fletcher said. ‘But it was Buchanan who killed Ben’s folks.’
‘He and Shane were working together.’ Grant reminded him. ‘You can’t trust a goddamned word he says.’
‘I trust him when he says he’ll kill Buchanan. And that’s all I need him to do.’
‘And what about Hunte?’
‘He’s Appleby’s problem now.’ Fletcher said bleakly. ‘He don’t need our protection any more.’
They picked up the trail at San Alejo. Appleby and his men had passed through town earlier that morning and had been followed soon after by Castor Buchanan and another man who rode with him. Buchanan was likely to be the least of Appleby’s worries however. Rumour had it that there were more bounty hunters coming down from the north, at least twenty of them if the town’s telegrapher was to be believed.
‘They’ve got every watering hole, ford and mountain pass staked out between here and Sisko,’ he told them enthusiastically. ‘Ain’t no way Appleby’s getting by them without a fight.’
Shane disagreed. ‘He’ll slip past them like a ghost,’ he said, and he drew Fletcher’s attention to a map on the wall. Between San Alejo and Sisko lay a broad expanse of uncharted desert. ‘That’s exactly the sort of country Appleby’s used to. That’s where he’ll go. He’ll get off the trails and go deep into the wasteland. No one’ll find him out there.’
He was surprised to find that there was actually a small measure of comfort in the thought of Appleby getting away from him. Hunte had brought him nothing but trouble and it was tempting to think that all his problems might go away if he simply turned his back on pursuing the man. He quickly squashed the idea. His head was so full of doubts that he was finding it hard enough to think as it was, and he needed to stay focussed if he was going to escape from Fletcher.
Fletcher gave a shrug. ‘Then I guess that’s where we’re heading,’ he said, stabbing his finger at the featureless part of the map.
They stocked up on water and provisions and headed out into the desert, ignoring every warning from the locals not to. Fletcher kept Shane’s hands locked in cuffs. Shane argued to be set free, but Fletcher couldn’t be swayed.
‘You know, when we find Buchanan I won’t be much use to you with my hands in chains.’ Shane said.
‘If we find Buchanan, I’ll set you loose. But not until then.’
‘And if he catches us by surprise? We’ll all be dead before you can set me free.’
‘And what about your death makes you think I give a shit?’ Fletcher replied harshly.
They rode for two days. Just as Shane had reckoned, Appleby had gone into the deepest, most inhospitable part of the desert, and the going got harder every hour. Scorching heat and the dry, arid land made every drop of water precious.
On the afternoon of the second day out, they stopped at a cool water spring and ran into trouble. A small gang of cattle herders from a ranch nearby had decided that the lure of Hunte’s bounty was too strong to resist and had packed in their jobs and gone looking for him. As misfortune had it, they arrived at the spring while Fletcher and Shane were filling their water skins, and Grant did not see them coming until it was too late.
There were four of them: two young men and two seasoned hands in their mid-forties. They must have mistaken them for Appleby’s men and spotted the cuffs on Shane’s wrists and thought he was Hunte. They started shooting as they rode in.
Shane darted to one side and splashed through the waters of the spring to reach a pile of boulders on the opposite side. The men were armed with revolvers and didn’t have much more than a basic level of skill. Their bullets chipped flakes of stone off the boulders as he dived for cover.
Grant let off a blast of his scattergun but failed to hit anybody. The noise it made gave them something to think about though, and they dismounted and moved to take cover.
Shane was cut off from his companions, and unarmed. He wrestled with his cuffs but they were too tight to slip out of and the locks were too strong to break. The cowboys closed in. They divided themselves into two teams. One group kept Grant and Fletcher pinned down while the others moved into position to catch them in a crossfire. One of the young men circled around towards where Shane was hiding. Shane got into a niche among the rocks and waited, listening to the tread of his footsteps as he came nearer. He picked up a rock and tensed himself.
He struck the moment the boy came into sight, uncoiling from the side of the boulder and smashing the rock down hard against the boy’s wrist. The boy howled and dropped his revolver. Shane hooked the rock into the side of his jaw and he went down to the ground.
One of the other cowboys saw it happen and came running over. Shane quickly dropped the rock and went to retrieve the revolver but suddenly found his legs pulled out from under him. He had failed to knock the young man unconscious and the boy now wrestled into position on top of him and swung a punch at Shane’s face. Shane weathered the blow against his forearm and tried to reach for the gun, but it was too far away. He rolled onto his back and fended off another couple of punches.
He knew that he didn’t have much time before the other man arrived. A few more seconds at most. Ducking between the boy’s punches, he threw his wrists up around the boy’s head and pulled him down close to control him. The boy was stronger than him and fought violently, but Shane wrapped the chain of his cuffs around his neck and used it to choke him, cutting off the flow of blood to his brain. The boy got weaker and slipped unconscious.
Shane heard footsteps closing in. He released the boy and scrambled for the revolver, reaching it just as the second man came into sight. Shane fired and blew off the top of his head, then turned the gun on the young man and shot him as well.
He felt less vulnerable now that he had a loaded gun in his hands, even if he was still cuffed. He checked the ammunition and reloaded, using spares from the young man’s belt. On the other side of the spring, he could see that the last two cowboys were working their way towards Fletcher. There was no sign of Grant and Shane hoped he was dead.
He ducked out from behind the boulders and fired, shooting down one of the two men. Fletcher got the other.
As the last echoes of the fight died down, Fletcher turned towards Shane and saw the gun in his hand. ‘Put it down.’ Fletcher said sharply, and pointed his gun at him as a warning.
Up until then, Shane had not even considered killing Fletcher but now something flipped inside of him. It was like it had been back at the Babson ranch. He felt as if his mind was pushed aside and that something else seized control of his body.
He fought it. The muscles in his arms bunched with the strain as he tried to keep himself from raising his gun. He felt a surge of conflicting emotions run riot through his skull: hatred, anger, joy and ecstasy. Somehow he was able to centre himself and push it all away. He breathed deeply until he felt in control of himself once more, but it took so much effort that he did not see Grant creep up on him from behind. The butt of Grant’s shotgun struck him in the side of the head and Shane sank to his knees before the ground rushed up and punched him.