Chapter 19
Buchanan came to collect Shane shortly before
it was time for him to fight. Shane had practiced until the motion
of drawing and shooting felt as natural as it had used to feel, but
that wasn’t the only way in which he felt different. The coldness
in his heart had spread too. It had crawled into his arms and legs
and left him feeling like a man made of steel, cast by the same
processes that had forged his revolver.
It was the way he had used to feel six years ago. That didn’t seem
so very long ago any more.
Buchanan noticed how he was different and couldn’t resist
mentioning it but Shane ignored him. Better to maintain the
appearance that he had resigned himself to his fate and let
Buchanan think that he was beaten than to open his mouth and risk
alerting him to the fact that he still had one surviving hope of
escape.
He just prayed that Vendetta had passed on his message and that
Madison had been receptive to it.
The sun was high overhead when he stepped out of the courthouse. It
blazed in the sky like a witness to the coming bout. Tom Freeman
was waiting for him on the porch.
‘I always wanted to fight against you,’ he said.
Shane looked down at the ground, ignoring him, but Freeman was
persistent. ‘I hear you’ve been practicing,’ he said. ‘That’s good.
I want to fight you at your best.’
‘No.’ Shane said quietly. ‘You really don’t want that.’
The dust swirled up on a sluggish breeze and drifted over the
crossroads. Shane took one side and Freeman took the other. The
town felt more desolate than it had the other day. There was hardly
anybody left to watch them any more. All of the other contestants
were dead except for Chastity, and only the invigilators remained,
watching from their rooftop eyries with wary suspicion, waiting to
lend their own guns to the killing if needed.
Shane drew his revolver and took the single bullet that Buchanan
gave him. He loaded it like an opium addict shooting a needle into
his vein. It hit him with a rush.
In that instant, he wished he had more bullets.
He wished that he could kill everyone in town.
And, in a voice that was getting quieter and quieter with every
passing moment, he wished that he was somewhere else, far away from
here. Somewhere where he could be free of the gun’s malevolent
influence and his abhorrent obsession with it.
He shook his head to clear his thoughts. The gun’s mind remained
like a layer of scum on the surface of a stagnant pond. Shane took
a deep breath and sank beneath it. It surged from the depths of his
soul like vomit, terrifying in its intensity, but as it stole over
him and smothered his identity with its embrace, it soothed him
like a gentle lover and coaxed away his fears. He felt a cool peace
come over him, a calm self-assurity: a sense that he was now
complete.
He looked into Tom Freeman’s eyes and saw in his expression that
the same process was happening inside his mind as well.
Nathaniel stepped up to the edge of the porch in preparation to
signal the draw. Shane became absolutely still, his muscles poised
like a spring about to uncoil. He heard his heart beating. Its
steady rhythm sounded like the distant beating of a drum.
All other sounds faded away, except one.
Nathaniel’s voice. ‘Draw!’
Tom Freeman was fast. He was halfway to firing when Shane’s bullet
took him through the side of the head. At a speed of almost 900
feet-per-second the 250 grain bullet smashed through his skull,
deforming on impact so that, by the time it entered the soft tissue
of his brain, it was tumbling end over end in a storm of shattered
skull fragments, pulping everything that it struck. Freeman’s
momentum caused him to turn a half-revolution before he hit the
ground. Dead.
Shane slowly lowered his smoking gun and shed
its poisonous influence from his thoughts like a spider shedding
its skin. It departed reluctantly, or maybe it was simply that he
found it harder to be parted from it this time and yearned for it
to stay. He shivered, in equal parts from fear and
excitement.
How many more times can I do this? he wondered. How many more times
before I can’t give it up?
Buchanan strode up to him, clapping his hands together in applause.
‘Now that is the Shane Ennis that I remember.’
Shane gave him a cold look and started back towards the courthouse
without waiting to be led there. Buchanan held out a hand to stop
him. ‘Aren’t you forgetting something?’
Shane still wore the gun belt about his waist, the revolver
sheathed in its holster. He had not given it a second’s thought. He
had become comfortable wearing it again and, removing it, he
understood why Chastity cried so hard when her gun was taken away
from her. It was like having his skeleton ripped from his living
flesh.
Buchanan saw the murderous look in his eyes and nervously backed
away from him. He summoned over two of the invigilators and they
escorted Shane back to his cell. Nathaniel came to visit him once
he was locked up and congratulated Shane on his victory.
‘Buchanan always assured me that you would make it this far,’ he
said. ‘I confess that I did not believe him but here you have
proven me wrong. Well done, that is not something that happens
often.’
‘Save it for someone who cares.’ Shane muttered sulkily.
The smug look vanished from Nathaniel’s face. ‘You’ll face Chastity
tomorrow,’ he said.
‘Tell me something I don’t already know.’
‘At twelve noon.’ Nathaniel told him.
The Gunfighter’s Hour. Shane had guessed it would be then. The
tournament was finally coming to an end and its secrets would soon
be revealed.
‘Tomorrow,’ he echoed dumbly. ‘Twelve noon.’
If he had not escaped by then, he never would.
The storm had been building for some time,
massing its energy until the air seemed heavy with it, tensed to
the point of bursting. When it finally chose to erupt, it did so
with apocalyptic violence, as if it was the storm that would end
the world. Winds of more than a hundred miles an hour stripped the
desert like a scythe, choking the landscape in a cloud of razor
sharp sand and airborne debris.
Shane would have kept on running had it not been for that storm. He
would have kept on running and maybe, in the end, Castor Buchanan
would have stopped chasing him. Maybe. It was academic now because
the storm had put Shane’s back against the wall and trapped him,
and now Castor Buchanan had caught up with him.
The walls of the boarding house shook under the onslaught of the
ravenous wind. Every eye in the place was watching him, waiting to
see what he would do. Buchanan stood outside, bellowing over the
roar of the wind, calling him out.
‘You’d best go out there, son,’ one of the old timers said. ‘I
don’t think he’s going to go away.’
Shane wasn’t listening. He was afraid, but it wasn’t Buchanan that
scared him. He should have known from the beginning that he could
not simply walk away from the Fastest Guns. He was too far gone for
that. Two weeks had passed since Spinster’s Peak and he had still
not laid down his guns. Instead, he had found more and more reason
to use them. He had killed without provocation. The influence that
they held over him was growing and he could scarcely think any more
without their thoughts intruding on him. He had barely slept in
days.
He knew that if he fought Buchanan and won that everything he was
would be consumed by his guns. The man he was would cease to exist,
and he did not like to think of what they would make him become.
And yet his heart cried out for it, tearing his soul in
two.
Buchanan’s voice roared from outside. ‘Hunte’s dead, Shane! Let’s
finish this.’
There was no escape. Buchanan could not go to Covenant until he had
proven himself, and neither could Shane. Bowing to the inevitable,
Shane wrapped a scarf around his face. He turned his collar up
high, drew the brim of his hat down low to shield his face and went
to the door. He had to put his shoulder to it in order to push it
open against the force of the wind.
Outside, he was met immediately by a stinging blast of sand. The
small town was lucky in that it was only catching the edge of the
storm; its full fury raged in the heart of the desert, where it
could sometimes be glimpsed through a gap in the sandstorm as a
towering pillar of black dust that reached from land to sky. Its
noise was tremendous. In addition to the howling of the wind there
were the sounds of the town straining against its foundations: the
creaking of poorly constructed homes; the whip-crack of tarpaulin
roofs half torn away in the wind; and the singing of wires in the
scaffold above the main pit.
Shane bowed his head and forced his reluctant feet to bear him onto
the road. Buchanan was waiting for him. He turned and walked slowly
down the high street, and Shane followed him to the edge of
town.
They stood with ten paces between them, their hands poised above
their revolvers, the wind casting sheets of black sand between
them.
Shane felt as though he had already been beaten. He was certain
that he could kill Buchanan; he felt no doubt about that at all. It
was his destiny to become one of the Fastest Guns and it filled him
with a righteous fire that stirred his spirit.
But Shane did not trust his feelings. He believed in his thoughts.
The war between his heart and his mind had ended, and it seemed
that his mind had lost.
A dust cloud blew between them and Shane reached instinctively for
his gun, knowing that Buchanan would do the same. He drew and
fired, expecting to be damned. But in the last moment he found the
strength to resist.
The bullet that was meant for Buchanan’s heart tore through his
fingers instead.
Shane woke from his memories, hearing footsteps
outside his cell. He rose slowly, not daring to get his hopes up in
case they were for nothing, and crossed to the window.
Madison and Chastity stood in the alley outside. Madison looked
nervous and glanced repeatedly towards the street, afraid that
somebody would see her. Shane’s sudden appearance at the window
startled her and she recoiled with a gasp, only to be brought up
short when Chastity refused to follow her. The little girl stared
up at Shane with what looked like wonder, her eyes focussed and
oddly intense.
‘Shit!’ Madison exclaimed. ‘You scared me.’
‘You got my message?’
‘Yes.’ She looked down at Chastity, who still stared fixedly at
Shane. ‘What’s the matter, honey?’ Madison asked her.
‘She recognises her own kind when she sees one.’ Shane
muttered.
Madison glanced sharply at him. He was surprised to see that she
understood his meaning. He guessed that Nathaniel had been
educating her. How accurate Nathaniel’s information had been, and
how much of it had been shared with her, Shane was curious to know.
The more ignorant she was, the easier it would be for him to
manipulate her.
‘I want to get out of this town tonight,’ he told her. ‘How about
you?’
‘I’ve got no reason to want to stay,’ she agreed. ‘What’s your
plan?’
‘First I need you to get me out of this cell. Buchanan keeps a key
around his neck and acts like it’s the only one there is. That’s
bullshit. Nathaniel’s the sort who’d want to have one as well.
Think you could get it for me?’
‘If I can’t, I’ll take Buchanan’s.’
‘Go after Nathaniel’s.’ Shane told her firmly. He did not rate her
chances of tackling Buchanan. ‘Bring it to me here after it gets
dark tonight,’ he said. ‘And bring food and water for the three of
us.’
‘Three of us?’
‘Chastity as well,’ he said.
‘Okay.’ She was secretly relieved that he wanted to take Chastity.
Despite the circumstances under which they had met, Madison had
grown quite protective of the little girl. Like her, she was
trapped in Nathaniel’s service and that had forged a bond of sorts
between them, at least so far as Madison was concerned. She did not
want to leave her behind to what Nathaniel had in store for her. ‘I
have a condition,’ she added.
‘What?’
‘Nathaniel’s money; the bounty he put out for your capture. I know
where he’s keeping it. I want half of it. You can have the other
half if you want.’
Shane frowned at her. ‘Getting out of here is going to be hard
enough as it is,’ he started.
‘It isn’t guarded,’ she said quickly. ‘Nathaniel keeps it in a
locked room on the ground floor of the Grande. I’ve got a pretty
good idea where he keeps the key.’
Shane was not interested in going after the money. They would have
problems enough to contend with without adding to their burdens,
but he needed Madison’s help if he was to get out of his cell and
so he nodded his head. ‘Okay,’ he said. ‘But get me out of my cell
first. We’ll get the money together.’
‘Sure.’ Madison cast a hurried glance back towards the end of the
alley. ‘I’d better get going. I told Nathaniel I was taking
Chastity for a walk but he’ll get suspicious if I’m gone too long.
I’ll be back later.’
‘Be careful,’ Shane warned, and watched as she hurried away. He was
not happy placing his trust in her; she did not seem like the sort
of person who could be relied upon, but he presently had no other
choice. She was the only ally he had.
As soon as she had served her purpose, however, he decided that he
would kill her.