Sheriff Harper stood in the front doorway of his office, glanced up at the fading sky and drew the silver watch from his pocket. He turned around.
“Well, Wainwright,” the law officer called out, “I reckon your time has come.”
Luke drew on his cigarette and watched as Harper crossed to his desk and pulled out a drawer. Harper picked up the key ring and stalked over to the cell door.
“Sheriff,” Wainwright whispered hoarsely, “I didn’t kill Jacob King!”
“I’m just a badge-toter, Wainwright,” Harper said. “The trial’s over and I have to do my duty.”
He fitted the key into the lock and stood back.
“Don’t give me any trouble,” the sheriff warned him, resting one hand on his gun butt.
He kicked the cell door open.
“It’s a short walk to the hanging tree,” Harper said. “I reckon you know where it is.”
Luke moved out of his cell, and with Sheriff Harper right behind him, he walked falteringly to the door. He knew that escape was impossible. There were a hundred towners out there who’d gladly gun down the man they believed had killed Jacob King.
The condemned man headed outside into the dying day. He held his head high.
Townsfolk lined the boardwalk, men who’d emerged from the saloon and women pausing on their way home to cook an evening meal for their families. Luke could see the hatred on their faces as he walked slowly up the center of the street. But it was subdued hatred now. The fire that the lynch-talk had kindled had long since gone out. This execution would be a cold, sober affair.
He passed the undertaker’s parlor. His coffin would be the one already dragged onto the boardwalk. In just a few minutes they’d cut his lifeless body from the rope and dump him into a plain pine box. There wouldn’t be many mourners at his funeral.
The crowd was following him now.
The street stretched like a ribbon ahead of him, and right at the end was the lonely tree with a noose dangling darkly against the blood-red of sunset.
“Keep walking,” Harper prompted him.
Luke swallowed. All hope was gone now. He glimpsed King’s widow rounding the corner, and for a long moment Celia stared at him. Then she deliberately turned her face away from him and the rig wheeled ahead of him towards the hanging tree. He saw Celia’s neighbor, Miles Coventry, follow the rig with two of his men. Luke recognized the blocky figure of Glover and the little ranny with a patch over his eye, Parkinson. He found himself wondering where Gowrie was.
The solitary old tree loomed closer, and gradually the shapes around the dangling rope resolved themselves into people. He saw Rupert Mortimer, standing to attention like a soldier, and beside him, the town’s preacher, Dugan. Gathered behind them were those who’d decided to watch the spectacle. Like buzzards, they stood around, silent witnesses to ‘justice’.
Luke Wainwright halted beside the rope. His eyes glanced upwards at the noose. Someone was sobbing, and he knew it would be Kathleen, but he didn’t look around.
Rupert Mortimer stepped up to him.
He had a pair of handcuffs in his hands, and Luke was passive while they were snapped on him. A trembling little deputy led a horse under the tree.
“Mount up, Wainwright.” Mortimer motioned to him.
The hangman helped him into the saddle, then climbed onto a barrel and dropped the noose neatly around the prisoner’s neck. Eager hands got hold of the other end of the rope.
“Pastor,” Mortimer nodded to Dugan.
The preacher looked gravely up at Luke.
“Luke Wainwright,” he said gravely, “it wouldn’t be right to go into eternity with this last, biggest sin of yours unconfessed—and without penitence being shown.”
The fibers of the rope bit into his neck, but nevertheless, Luke Wainwright managed to wrench his head downwards.
“Sure, I’ve been one helluva sinner in my time, Preacher,” Luke rasped. “I’ve lied, I’ve gambled, I’ve been drunk, and I’ve been with loose women—”
“Yes,” the pastor noted carefully.
“But, Preacher,” Wainwright said loudly, “killing Jacob King ain’t one of my sins! I’m innocent!”
Dugan’s frown deepened.
“Now, Luke,” he said urgently. “I understand how you feel. You resent society because you’re about to die, but remember this—in a few moments you’ll be facing your Maker. There’s no reason for you to lie any longer. Why not confess your sin now? I promise you’ll feel better for it.”
There was a long silence, then Luke Wainwright fixed his burning eyes on the preacher.
“Didn’t you hear me, Dugan? I didn’t kill Mr. King!”
Dugan turned his head.
“I’ve never struck a man like this,” he said, addressing the murmuring crowd. “Always, in my experience, a guilty man confesses in the terrible moment before he goes to meet his God …”
Miles Coventry exchanged a furtive glance with the black-dressed widow perched on the seat of her rig.
“... always.”
The towners were uneasy. They had expected a blurted-out admission of guilt. Those who knew Luke Wainwright better than others told themselves that this was no hardened outlaw who’d lived a life of murder and robbery. Sure, he’d murdered Mr. King, a vicious crime, but they’d come here to hear him admit to his wrongdoing. The people began to whisper to each other.
“Luke ...” Dugan pleaded, “think again.”
“Pastor,” Miles Coventry spoke up above the rippling murmurs. “Why don’t you quit trying to convert him and say a prayer. This town wants to get on with the hanging!”
“This town, Coventry—or you?”
The voice from the edge of the crowd was like a whip crack.
The towners turned around, plunged into silence as they saw the dark-garbed rider silhouetted against the blazing sunset.
“You heard me, Coventry,” the rider challenged. “Why are you so all-fired anxious to get on with the hanging?”
Miles Coventry’s face was ashen, drained of blood, as he stared at the shadow hovering on the verge of the crowd.
“My God!” the rancher whispered. “It’s Shane Preston!”
Standing alone, Sheriff Harper looked like he’d seen a ghost.
“Figured I was dead, didn’t you, Coventry?” Shane Preston prodded Snowfire through the crowd. “After all, Coventry, your men did leave me for dead.”
Shane rode to within a few yards of the Diamond C owner.
He nodded grimly. “Real nice horse you’re riding, Coventry. An appaloosa, ain’t it?”
Miles Coventry was speechless in the stillness.
“Come to think of it,” Shane drawled, “fresh evidence has come to light that an appaloosa was seen at Jacob King’s killing. A man riding an appaloosa was seen heading away from King’s body before Luke Wainwright arrived.”
“What in hell are you talking about?” Miles Coventry croaked.
Shane glanced around at the gaping faces of the towners.
“Before you hang Luke Wainwright and make one terrible mistake, I reckon there’s something you oughta know,” the gunfighter told them. “I’ve evidence to show that a man riding an appaloosa killed Jacob King and that Gowrie and his crew were waiting around to frame the first passerby—who happened to be Luke Wainwright.”
“What evidence?” Coventry rapped out, perspiration breaking out on his face.
“Never mind where the evidence came from,” Shane went on relentlessly. “But I’d like you folks to consider this. After hearing about the appaloosa, I happened to ride out to the Rolling Wheel spread. There I saw the horse Coventry is riding, and when I started snooping around, Gowrie and his men decided I was getting too close to the truth and took me out and shot me. Now ask yourselves this question. If they had nothing to hide, why did they want to get rid of me?”
Celia King stood up in her carriage, a whip clutched in her fist.
“Don’t listen to him!” She turned to Mortimer. “You know your duty! Hang him high!”
The hangman raised his hand to slap the horse’s rump.
The old gun hawk had positioned himself strategically behind the hanging tree, and now he leaned sideways in his saddle and pointed the rifle at Rupert Mortimer. The hangman went very pale.
“Ma’am,” Shane looked hard at the widow. “For a woman who’s lost her husband, you seem a mite anxious to hang someone who mightn’t be guilty. I figured that if you’re the lovin’ widow you make out to be, then you’d be pleased if this man was spared and the real murderer was unmasked—even if it turned out to be that man who sniffs around you like a bee near honey—Miles Coventry!”
The hand which held the whip was trembling as every eye looked up at Celia King.
“Mind you,” Shane pressed on, “maybe you ain’t the loving widow you want us to believe you are—maybe you ain’t anything like the lady you pretend to be!”
The widow was quivering with rage.
“What the hell are you getting at?” she screeched in a most unladylike manner.
“Ever heard of the ‘kept woman of Carson’?” Shane quoted the saloon girl, Sherry Greves.
Fury boiled up in Celia King.
“You filthy sidewinder!” the widow screamed hysterically. Shaking with anger, she pointed her whip at the bewildered sheriff. “Harper! You know your duty, damn you! Hang Wainwright now and run these foul-mouthed gunfighters out of town! Better still—kill them!”
Harper hesitated.
“What the hell do you think Miles is paying you for?” she shrieked out in a fit of unthinking rage. “Hang Wainwright now!”
Celia’s hysterical outburst froze him. Suddenly, in a terrible moment of time, his true loyalties were unmasked before the stunned town. Panic-stricken, Charles Harper knew he had no choice. The town was seeing him in his true colors, and there was but one course of action he could take. He had to go along with Coventry, whose chalk-white face and burning eyes blazed mute support for the widow’s desperate command.
The sheriff glanced frantically at the horse beneath the old hanging tree. He only had to lunge forward and punch the animal and it would surge forward, leaving Wainwright to dance on air. With a choking cry, Harper leaped sideways—and Jonah’s rifle thundered from the shadows of the hanging tree. The bullet smashed high into the lawman’s chest, and Charles Harper was blown backwards into the shocked crowd of towners. Coventry grated a command to his men.
Claw-like hands swooped for guns as the townsfolk fled like rabbits. Mortimer plunged away from the hanging tree, arms outstretched as pandemonium broke loose. Jonah prodded old Tessie forward, and as the terrified towners scampered past him, he slashed his long knife across the rope above Luke Wainwright’s neck.
Glover’s six-gun belched in his hand and the bullet furrowed into the hanging tree. Crouched low in the saddle, Shane swept out his gun. Coventry’s appaloosa was rearing in panic, but Shane aimed at the stumpy rider alongside him. The gunfighter’s bullet cracked open Glover’s skull and the cowhand lurched sideways as blood gushed down his face. A woman screamed as the bloodied specter rode three paces before spiraling down into the sodden mud.
Raking lead ripped across the street.
Wainwright urged his horse away from the tree, and Parkinson sat saddle, emptying his gun. It was Jonah’s rifle which snarled again from the tree and Parkinson caught the slug in his hip. The Diamond C rider whimpered like a whipped dog and the old gunslinger’s next bullet lifted him clean out of the saddle and plastered him into the mud.
The appaloosa finally threw its rider.
Sprawled in the mud, Miles Coventry clambered to his feet and started running down the street. Relentlessly, Shane drove his palomino after him. The big rancher plunged between the twin doors of the livery stable and disappeared inside.
Shane eased himself painfully out of the saddle and fitted a fresh shell into his gun.
Suddenly, there was a wild skidding of wheels and the petrified whicker of a horse as Celia lashed at the sorrel pulling her rig.
She flogged the animal furiously and the rig gathered speed, swaying past the tie-rails, wheels throwing mud into the faces of the onlookers. Spurred on by terror, she raised the whip again, but all at once a lone woman ran onto the street in front of the Ace of Diamonds.
Celia tried to steer her rig away but the wheels slithered in the softness.
A gun boomed.
The widow threw back her arms and swiveled around on the rocking rig. The gun bucked a second time. Celia dropped the whip and dived into the sodden street. The horse and rig tore past her, and King’s wanton widow lay dead in the mud, a bundle of tangled petticoats.
Sherry Greves tossed the gun away and stalked back into the Ace of Diamonds.
Shane edged to the doors of the stable.
“Coventry!” The gunfighter’s harsh voice rang out over the silent town.
“I can hear you,” came the muffled reply.
“The game’s up, Coventry,” Shane Preston snapped. “Sheriff Harper’s wounded bad but he’s still alive, and I can see from here that he’s talking plenty. He’s telling the folks of this town the whole story, Coventry, so you might as well toss down your gun and come out with your hands high.”
“So I can go to the hanging tree?” Miles Coventry sneered from inside the livery stable.
“That’s up to the judge, but this time it won’t be a trial that’s rigged—it’ll be a fair trial, Coventry.”
“You know damn well that ain’t my kind of trial!” the rancher yelled.
Shane glanced upwards.
There was a ladder leading to the long aperture fronting the livery. It was the opening to the hayloft above the stables, and Shane could see the bales ready to be tipped down onto a buyer’s buckboard.
He walked awkwardly to the foot of the ladder and eased himself onto the bottom rung.
Jonah rode towards him, reining in outside the livery.
“If he comes out the doors, kill him,” Shane Preston whispered tersely.
The oldster knew that to plead with his sidekick would be a waste of time. Despite his condition Shane was going to climb into the loft regardless.
Shane hauled himself up, and as the towners gathered on the opposite boardwalk, a deep hush fell over Destiny Creek. To the west, the last veins of sundown were fading into the oncoming darkness. All over town, lamps were being lit.
Shane reached the top of the ladder, and as agony raced through him, he climbed past a hay-bale into the loft. For a long moment, he lay in the straw, and clutching his six-gun, he began to edge further into the loft. He slithered like a snake to where the edge of the loft looked down over the livery stable floor.
Below him, the hay and the stalls were a sea of darkness.
Shane lay there, letting his eyes grow accustomed to the gloom, and gradually he made out the long line of stalls holding over a dozen horses. He peered down right under the loft. There was another row of stalls down there. Between the two rows was a passage holding hay and some pitchforks leaning against a wooden post. He could see the eyes of the horses now, and a big chestnut pawed the ground in the far corner. He looked down to where the twin doors were parted by a thin slit. Miles Coventry was concealed somewhere in the grayness, waiting with his gun for Shane to burst in through those doors.
All was silent until he heard the jingle of spurs.
The sound came from near the doors. Shane’s piercing eyes focused on the vague outline of a crouching man.
The gunfighter slowly leveled his six-gun over the edge of the loft. Lying flat on his stomach, he took careful aim at the shadow and uttered but one word:
“Coventry!”
Mouthing a curse, the shadow leaped upright.
Shane pressed the trigger and his six-gun drummed out a message of death. The bullet whined across the livery stable and Shane heard a dull, sickly thud beneath him. Miles Coventry pitched forward and his gun clattered away over the wooden floor. The doors exploded open and Jonah stood there, gun raised.
Miles Coventry died with his eyes wide open.
“I know you have to ride on.”
Kathleen wrapped the bandage over the wound which by now was fast healing.
She trailed her fingers up over his chest to the other bullet wound in his shoulder. This one didn’t even need any bandage, and in two weeks’ time, all that would remain would be an ugly scar.
“Thanks for looking after me and Jonah,” the tall gunfighter said. “And you’re right, Kathleen—I have to ride on.”
Shane shrugged into his shirt and she watched him wistfully as he did up the buttons.
“You know,” she said, crossing to the window and looking out at Jonah Jones as he saddled their horses ready for the trail ahead, “there was a time when I thought that maybe you’d stay.”
“You did?”
He reached for his black Stetson.
“It was in that room in town,” Kathleen said in a small voice.
He looked at her levelly, and for a brief second there was a gentleness in his eyes.
“I seem to recall how you figured that there could be no future for us,” Shane reminded her.
“I said that before we—before we—” Her voice died away and she realized that right now her eyes were misty. She began to wrap up some linen bandages and replace them in the drawer. “Shane—at that time I did tell myself that maybe you’d stay.”
“And then?”
“Then when you rode in here wounded,” Kathleen Wainwright whispered, “and I cut the bullet out, you became delirious and I—I kept you warm.”
He raised his eyebrows. “Pity I wasn’t in a condition to enjoy it,” he remarked wryly.
“Men say a lot of things when they’re delirious, Shane,” Kathleen said, closing the drawer. “Words just spill out. Some of them I couldn’t understand, but there was one I heard real plain and you said it when you held me.”
Shane strapped on his gun rig. “What was it?” he asked her casually.
Kathleen watched him tug the belt through the buckle and take out his gun to check it.
“You spoke your wife’s name—Grace.”
The gunfighter thought over what she had said. Then he slipped the gun back into its holster. He walked to the door and headed out into the passage.
“I knew when I heard you say her name that no one could ever take her place,” Kathleen concluded.
Shane opened the door to the porch. She stood there beside him, and the tall man slipped an arm around her waist. Kathleen looked up at him expectantly and Shane kissed her on the lips.
“Shane,” she said, accompanying him as he strode outside to where Jonah was waiting impatiently, “someday you’ll find that man you’re hunting, and when that happens and you kill him, you might want to settle down. I’ll always be here, Shane. I want you to know that.”
He smiled at her but said nothing. On their way out, Shane and Jonah passed Luke Wainwright working on the fence that Shane hadn’t quite completed, accepted his words of gratitude and then urged their mounts into a fast run. Too soon, for Kathleen, they had gone from sight and she reluctantly returned inside.
It was sundown when the two gunfighters finally halted and made camp by a gushing creek. They built a fire and Jonah fried some bacon that Kathleen had packed for them, and the old-timer was frowning by the time he got around to scooping Shane’s portion from the pan.
“She was a good-looker, sure enough,” the old gun hawk remarked.
“Who?” Shane asked innocently.
“Damn it! The nurse, of course!”
Shane attacked his bacon and beans with relish.
“So?”
“So, she’d taken a shine to you,” Jonah Jones mumbled as he munched his food.
“Could be,” Shane said.
“You know damn well she had!” the old man snorted. “Heck! You get all the luck!”
“What do you mean?”
“My godfathers! I got a bullet in me, and probably I was as delirious as hell! But I’d no nurse to keep me warm like you had!”
“Pass the coffee, Jonah,” Shane grinned.
Muttering to himself, the oldster swirled the coffee pot and handed it across.
“Jonah,” Shane said seriously, “where was our last forwarding address?”
Jonah Jones rolled a cigarette. “Santiago Creek,” he replied.
“Then we head there,” Shane Preston told him. “We’ll get some early shut-eye and ride out at first light.”
“You figure there could be another chore waiting for us?” Jonah queried.
“Another chore and maybe Scarface,” Shane said.
Jonah lit his cigarette and leaned back on his upturned saddle. He was telling himself that even though he’d been Shane’s trail partner for three years, he still didn’t really know the man. But then, who could really get to know this strange gunfighter, who lived only to kill the man with a scar, this legend who rode the lonely trails always hoping for the last showdown? Who could ever hope to get close to such a man?
“Yeah.” Jonah drew on his cigarette. “Maybe Scarface.”