Chapter 18
Benedict Hunte had become the most wanted man
in America. Word of his bounty had spread far and wide, tempting
bounty hunters and opportunists from every neighbouring state to
come look for him. The situation had gotten out of hand and the men
who had initially put the price on his head stopped offering
individual bounties and joined together to offer the sum of
fifty-thousand dollars to whoever brought them his head.
It was enough money that the more-organised groups banded together.
They eliminated the small-time competition and made allegiances
with the other large groups. They co-ordinated with one another and
scoured the desert with systematic patrols, slowly gathering the
net tighter until Appleby was cornered.
It was the morning of May tenth when the first shots rang out.
Appleby had tried to creep past them in the early hours before
dawn. His men had crept ahead in pairs and quietly assassinated the
sentries that barred his path, but one man had managed to fire off
a shot in warning before his throat had been slit and the sound had
travelled far enough to alert the others. Within two hours, every
bounty hunter in the region was closing in like sharks drawn to a
feeding frenzy and, right through the thick of them, Shane and
Buchanan rode like Death’s servants.
As individuals they were two of the most feared gunfighters alive.
As a team, they were unstoppable. Men fell on either side of them,
bleeding, screaming, and thrashing their last. The crack of gunfire
became so constant that it became as much a feature of the desert
as the rays of the morning sun and the blistering, pitiless
heat.
It was a day of bloody mayhem.
They followed Appleby by the trail of corpses he left in his wake.
He fought across nine miles and killed nearly thirty men before he
arrived at the canyons of Spinster’s Peak. It was there that he did
the unexpected and stood his ground.
Shane and Buchanan reined in and watched from a distance as the
first group of bounty hunters tried to storm the canyon he and his
men had sought refuge in. Its walls were steep-sided and his men
were dug-in behind rocks, the horses sheltered out of sight and
Hunte nowhere to be seen. The bounty hunters were cut down like an
autumn harvest.
Buchanan whistled in admiration of the slaughter. ‘Looks like
they’re jammed in there tighter than a fist up a virgin’s
arsehole,’ he said. ‘You think we can get in behind
them?’
‘Wait.’ Shane told him.
And so they waited. Several more gangs of bounty hunters assaulted
the canyon and were driven back. The bodies of the dead were left
strewn among the boulders, becoming like barriers to anyone who
mounted another assault. Before long, the bounty hunters drew back
and began scouting for other ways of getting to their prey.
Somebody must have succeeded because shots soon rang out from
deeper inside the canyon, out of sight of where Shane and Buchanan
waited.
‘Do you want to tell me what we’re killing time out here for?’
Buchanan said testily.
Shane gave him a cold smile. ‘Did you never see a prairie dog lead
a snake down one hole and then run out of another?’
‘What the fuck are you talking about?’
Shane did not answer him but rode down towards the mouth of the
canyon. There was fierce fighting going on somewhere deep inside,
but it was far enough in that it did not involve them. He hobbled
his horse and entered the canyon on foot. Despite some abrasive
words, Buchanan followed his lead.
‘We’re missing all the fun,’ he complained.
The canyon was a slaughter yard of dead men and dead horses.
Streams of blood trickled between the rocks and the smell of it
mixed with the odour of faeces, where the dead men’s bowels had
voided themselves. Shane stooped beside one man and relieved him of
his revolver, checked it and slid it into his belt. He stole a
second gun from another man.
‘Come on!’ Buchanan whined. ‘This is bullshit. And it
stinks!’
Ignoring him, Shane chose a place among the dead and lay down on
his back. He positioned himself facing into the canyon, towards the
distant sound of fighting. Buchanan made a noise of disgust but
understood his line of thinking. He found himself a spot of his own
on the opposite side of the canyon and lay down among the dead.
There were so many corpses surrounding them that it was impossible
to tell that they were not dead as well.
Shane waited. He blotted the smell from his mind and lapsed into a
concentrated state of awareness, listening to the sounds of battle
that echoed off the mountain walls. Flies, drawn to the dead, made
little distinction between him and the bodies he lay amongst and
crawled across his face to investigate his eyes, mouth and nose.
After a while, he stopped brushing them away and lay
still.
He listened to the noises that echoed from further down the canyon.
There were now several firefights going on and Shane guessed that
the bounty hunters were fighting each other. The alliance they had
formed was dissolving now that their quarry had been found. He
wondered if Appleby was even involved in the fighting any more, or
if he had slipped away in the confusion and doubled-back as Shane
suspected he might.
Shane waited patiently. It was not long before he heard the sound
of hoof beats thundering down the canyon towards him. He readied
himself, cocking the two revolvers that he held but keeping them by
his sides, imitating the dead.
Appleby and his men rounded a bend further up and slowed their pace
as they neared the mouth of the canyon. They were forced to
dismount in order to lead their horses across the treacherously
scattered mounds of dead bodies. Shane waited until they were right
beside him before he sprang the trap. His guns claimed the life of
the man nearest to him and felled two horses in quick order,
spreading chaos among the survivors. Simultaneously, Buchanan rose
up on the other side of the canyon, trapping Appleby’s men in a
crossfire. Horses reared and men shouted. Blood was
spilled.
Shane rose to his feet and struck out, using the barrel of one of
his revolvers to break a man’s jaw. He shot him with the other gun
as he fell, then shot him again with the first to make certain, all
the while pressing forward into the heart of the fray. Hunte was
his target but, before he could reach him, the man-legend that was
Lyndon Appleby stepped into his path. A fist like a sledgehammer
struck Shane across the side of the head and he was flung to the
ground. He was dazed but responded by rolling and kicking Appleby’s
rifle from his hands. He scrambled instantly to his feet and drew
another of his revolvers at the same time that Appleby reached for
his formidable sawn-off shotgun. Less than five feet separated them
and, at such close range, a blast from Appleby’s gun could not
miss.
Shane had but a moment to think on this before his instincts took
control. He fired straight from the hip, fanning the hammer with
the flat of his hand. Appleby’s ribs cracked and the bullets tore
through his heart and lungs and broke his shoulder blade on the way
out. He dropped his gun and sank to his knees but still stubbornly
reached for his second gun with his left hand. Shane emptied his
remaining shots into Appleby’s head, tossed the revolver aside and
turned to find that Benedict Hunte had taken advantage of his
protector’s sacrifice to mount his horse and gallop back into the
canyon. He had slipped through Shane’s fingers too many times
already for Shane to have him escape again. Shane seized Appleby’s
horse by the reins and leapt into the saddle. The horse reared,
trying to buck him off, but Shane held on and raked back his spurs.
He left Buchanan behind to face the rest of Appleby’s men alone and
galloped away in pursuit of Hunte.
The horse was spirited and fought Shane’s control, but it was fast
and Hunte did not have much of a head start. Shane rode up
alongside him and grabbed him by the scruff of his neck and heaved
him out of the saddle. He hit the ground with a heavy thump and
rolled several times in the dust. Shane reined in his horse and
dismounted. He reloaded his guns as he walked back to where Hunte
had fallen.
Being unhorsed did not appear to have damaged Hunte badly. He had
rolled over onto all fours and was crawling away like a pig. Shane
kicked him in the buttocks, knocking him face-first to the ground.
He screamed like a frightened woman. ‘Please! Please don’t hurt
me.’
Shane thumbed back the hammer of his Colt. ‘This won’t hurt a bit,’
he said coldly.
Hunte screamed again and began to cry. His lack of courage
disgusted Shane but it also gave him cause to hesitate.
What kind of a threat was this man to him?
It might not have concerned him in days gone by but in the light of
what had happened at the Babson ranch, it was pertinent now. Hunte
was no gunslinger who would kill Shane if he did not kill him
first. He was a weak and frightened man, stripped of all his
defences, even his pride. He was no threat, and so that begged the
further question:
What reason did Shane have to kill him?
Fifty-thousand dollars was a lot of money but it was an excuse, not
a reason. Shane suspected that his real motives for wanting to kill
Hunte had more to do with the Fastest Guns and their tournament. He
wanted to prove himself worthy of competing in it, but that was
where his thinking doubled-back on itself.
He had tasted what the Fastest Guns had to offer him and it was not
as sweet as it promised it would be. The Fastest Guns tempted him
with lies to bind him into slavery. They would use him for their
own ends, chew him up and change him into something more suiting to
their needs. He was not so enamoured with them that he could not
see that it was in his best interests not to join them. What his
head wanted and what his heart desired were completely at odds with
each other, but Shane was a man who listened to his head. He was
not by his nature a passionate man. Coldly, analytically, he
weighed his options and drew the obvious conclusion.
Though he wanted to go to Covenant, he chose not to. Slowly and
with a heavy heart, he lowered his gun and turned away.
Hunte raised his head and sniffed back his tears, startled to find
that his executioner was leaving him. He crouched where he was for
a time, fearing that it was some sort of trick, but when Shane did
not look back he rose to his feet and limped to his horse. Shane
let him go and he galloped away into the warren of
canyons.
The sound of his hoof beats had no sooner faded in one direction
than another rider came thundering up the canyon. Castor Buchanan
reined in when he saw Shane walking towards him.
‘Did you get him?’
‘No.’
‘What?’
Shane trudged past him, barely deigning to acknowledge him as they
passed. ‘He’s all yours,’ he said.
Buchanan stared at him for a moment, too stunned for words. ‘What
the hell has gotten into you?’
Shane did not answer. He did not even look back and Buchanan,
swearing in frustration, sawed on his reins and galloped on after
Hunte. Shane hoped never to see him again.
He wandered back down the canyon, stepping over the bodies of
Lyndon Appleby and his men. He felt numb, dislocated from the world
and from himself. He could not shake the belief that he had made a
fundamentally wrong decision and that the whole of reality had been
fractured somehow by his choice. It seemed to him that the sky
should be falling down around him like broken shards of glass, and
he could not reconcile himself to the fact that it was
not.
He knew that he would regret his decision in time, but at that
precise moment he could not have guessed how long it would haunt
him for, or how severely its burden would break his spirit.
There was a click as the hammer fell on an
empty chamber. Shane put the gun back in his holster and drew it
again. He did not hurry and, as his finger tightened against the
trigger, he knew that, had the gun been loaded, his aim would have
been true. Still, he was painfully aware of how much his form had
degraded in the last six years. He felt confident that he was good
enough to match Tom Freeman but against Chastity he was not so
sure.
He holstered the gun, readied himself and tried again. It was a
sign of how far he had reverted to his old self that he was taking
it all so seriously. Two days ago he would have rather died than go
up against Chastity and now here he was practicing so that he might
stand a better chance of beating her. A line had been crossed and
he was no longer a captive being forced to compete in the
tournament; he was a willing participant.
Which made it all the more important that he escape before the
final round.
He thought back to the previous afternoon, when he and Vendetta had
spoken in O’Malley’s Saloon. ‘Are you really telling me that you
can go out onto that crossroads tomorrow and kill Chastity in good
conscience, just so you can settle your score with
Brett?’
‘I guess we’ll find out,’ she had replied.
Her hesitance had betrayed her feelings on the matter. Vendetta had
been a fighter; not a murderer. Shane had known that the thought of
going up against Chastity would have placed her in a moral
quandary. It had been with this in mind that he had made his pitch:
‘What if I said I wanted to get Chastity out of here as
well?’
Vendetta had thought about it. ‘No,’ she had said. ‘You’ll say
anything to get me to do what you want me to do. I don’t believe
you give a shit about that little girl.’
She had turned to leave but he had called out to her. ‘If I left
this place tonight and took her with me, tomorrow would be the
final round. It’d just be you against Freeman. Think you could deal
with that?’
‘Nathaniel would send his men after you.’
‘Probably, but if I’m right about what he’s up to, he can’t afford
any delays. He’ll have to finish the tournament early.’
‘I don’t trust you, Ennis.’
‘You don’t have to trust me. Just pass a message on for
me.’
‘Who to?’
The door creaked open on rusty hinges revealing
yet another room that was empty except for a few relics of
abandoned furniture, all of it heavy with dust. Disappointed,
Madison quietly eased the door shut and moved on to the next
one.
She led Chastity by the hand, the girl shuffling along behind her.
Madison had given her the rag doll that she had found and the girl
carried it unthinkingly by one leg, its head dragging against the
floor. Occasionally, she sniffled or moaned unintelligibly, but
mostly she had settled down from her post-match temper tantrum and
was content to follow wherever Madison led.
They searched among the rooms of the hotel, finding echoes of its
former days wherever they went. The empty rooms were covered with
dust and piled furniture. Here and there a trinket lay, discarded
by somebody many years ago. But Madison was searching for something
more substantial than forgotten memories.
She had woken early that morning and crawled from Nathaniel’s bed
feeling wretched and miserable with herself. Their lovemaking the
night before felt like a betrayal of all that she had felt for Kip.
Better if she could have said that she had not enjoyed it, but that
was not entirely so. Nathaniel had provided her with company and
the illusion of his protection had helped to comfort her. She hated
herself for that.
Gathering her clothes around her, she had slipped quietly from his
room and returned to the attic. Whisperer had been sat there,
minding over Chastity while she slept. He had not said anything to
Madison but the look in his eyes as he rose silently to leave had
been cruel and mocking. Nathaniel’s whore, they had all but
said.
She had been too upset to find the strength to be angry. Somehow
she had managed to hold back her tears until after he had left but,
with the door closed and nobody to witness her grief she had given
in to her sorrow and wept. The emptiness inside of her had yawned
impossibly wide.
All that Nathaniel had told her the night before had left her
challenging her grasp on reality. She felt as if she was lost and,
longing for something to comfort her, she had grasped at her
memories of Kip. His loss had pained her that morning more than
ever and she had needed to feel his presence around her. Waking
Chastity, she had left the Grande and gone back to the house that
they had slept in.
She had half-feared to find all of their belongings gone. The
invigilators took whatever belonged to the contestants who died and
auctioned them among themselves but, possibly because Madison was
known as Nathaniel’s woman, they had left her stuff
alone.
Her belongings lay side by side with Kip’s, strewn messily about
the floor of the dusty old house. Madison had walked among them,
picking things up to touch them and smell Kip’s scent on them. Her
sadness had overwhelmed her and she had sniffed back
tears.
‘I’m sorry,’ she had whispered.
An angry sniff behind her had alerted her to the presence of
somebody else in the house. Turning around and pulling Chastity to
her defensively, she had been surprised to find Vendetta standing
in the doorway. The hard woman had regarded her with undisguised
contempt. ‘I have a message for you,’ she had said. ‘You were
supposed to get it last night but you sounded busy.’
Colour had flooded to Madison’s cheeks.
‘If you want to get out of this town, Shane Ennis wants to speak
with you.’
Vendetta had delivered her message without any apparent interest
and had left as soon as she was done. Madison had sat down to
ponder what she had said. She had been too stunned at first for the
words to have any meaning but gradually it had sunk in and she had
laughed out loud.
When the elation had passed, she had begun to consider things in a
colder, more practical light. Vendetta had given her hope for her
future but there were things that needed to be done in order to
make this new opportunity work for her.
She had begun by bundling together all of her stuff, together with
some of Kip’s and had crammed as much of it into her carpet bag as
she was able. In the process, she had discovered the old abandoned
rag doll that she had hugged the night after Kip had died and she
had given it to Chastity, hoping that she would like it. The girl
had shown no sign of even knowing what it was but she looked more
human with a doll in her hands and that made Madison feel safer in
her presence.
Back at the Grande, she had washed and changed clothes and had then
sat in front of a mirror and made herself up. She had covered up
the puffiness that surrounded her eyes and painted the illusion of
an afterglow onto her face. Even if she could not fool Nathaniel,
he would know that she had made an effort and that would make him
think that she was his. The more complacent he thought she was, the
easier it would be for her to work behind his back.
The trick had worked. Nathaniel had been suitably flattered by her
attentiveness when they had met for breakfast that morning and
thought absolutely nothing of leaving her alone in the hotel with
Chastity now that the day had worn on. He had business elsewhere in
town. Madison was not entirely sure what he was up to but he had
taken Whisperer and his bodyguards and gone to prepare the warding
fires, whatever that meant.
She did not care. His absence gave her the chance to explore the
hotel unobserved and she searched along the hallway, trying every
door she passed until she found what she was looking for.
A door that was locked.
Crouching, she peered through the keyhole. The room inside was
dimly lit. Sunlight broke through small gaps in the boarded
windows, casting jagged rays through the dusty air. She could just
about make out the shape of a pair of wooden panniers, each of
which she was willing to bet held ten-thousand dollars.
She smiled to herself. If Nathaniel was determined to make her his
whore then he could damn well pay for her.