by Cole Shelton
“Want to know why?” Anton Verrier shouted. “The reason’s staring you in the face, Boormann. You see, I really believe in the ‘Clarion’s’ motto.”
Linc Boormann’s eyes squinted at the sign. “‘The paper that campaigns for truth and justice.’ Sounds real nice, doesn’t it? You know what to do with that sign, boys!”
Cluny and Matt Klaus rode their horses right onto the boardwalk in front of the office. They reached up for the sign which had been nailed over the door, and their grasping fingers began to wrench at the board. There was a splintering crash and the signboard fell.
“Hear that, Verrier?” the rancher mocked. “That’s what I think of your truth and justice!”
Shane thumbed his gun.
“Now, Verrier, are you coming out before we burn this damn office to the ground—or are you gonna roast beside your printing press?”
A couple of the riders guffawed.
Shane kicked the door wide and twenty mouths gaped open as his six-shooter aimed up at Boormann’s chest.
“There’s gonna be no burning,” Shane Preston announced. “Now raise your paws and listen to me!”
“That’s the bastard!” Cluny croaked out his hatred. “Shane Preston!”
Boormann leaned forward in his saddle and a cold, mirthless smile formed over his fleshy lips as he surveyed the lone gunslinger in the doorway.
“So you’re Preston,” Boormann murmured. “My boy’s killer! Well, Preston—seems this time you’ve bitten off a mite more than you can chew! You might have that fool editor in there with you, but that makes just two of you against all of us.”
“Let’s take him now!” Sam Soames recalled the way Shane had lowered their self-esteem and humiliated them. “I want to be the one that blasts him to hell!”
“No,” Matt Klaus croaked. “Mr. Boormann wants him to hang!”
“By the way,” Shane said dryly, “while you’re all deciding which would be the best fate for me, you’d better just take a look around you.”
“Hell!” Ridge Martin’s finger quivered as he pointed to the roof. “Look up there!”
The nesters perched up high had their rifles pointed down in readiness.
“Hell—the alley!” Reb Faulkland warned, as Jonah and his nesters walked out with guns leveled.
Two barrels of steel scraped over the wooden rim of the water trough, and to complete the trap, Sawyer joined Shane in the doorway. Cain Gladis and Bromley remained in the shadows, but even they had their guns drawn and ready.
“So,” Boormann snarled. “This is a set-up! A nice cozy little set-up!”
The rancher whipped around in the saddle and fixed accusing eyes on the shaking saloonkeeper.
“No, Mr. Boormann!” Mahoney whimpered. “I swear it—I didn’t plan this—”
“All of you!” Shane snarled, taking one pace out onto the boardwalk. “We have you covered, so reach, like I told you!”
A couple of the Circle B cowhands shot their hands high into the afternoon sun. Others began to waver, especially as Jonah’s men filtered out onto the street, guns poised ready to blast.
“Wait!” Boormann’s hand had drifted away from his gun. “You’re forgetting one thing, Preston! Three of my men are deputies.”
“So?” Shane shrugged. “You’ll recall what my pard and I did to them last time.”
Cluny flashed him a look of hate.
“Well, these deputies are here on official business,” Linc Boormann smirked. “Verrier’s being arrested on a charge of libel, and, Preston, that charge of murder still stands against you!”
“You’re singing an old song, Boormann,” Shane grated. “I don’t give one damn for your three deputies.”
“But what about twenty deputies?” Boormann demanded. “All sworn in legal?”
The nester guns were still poised, ready to belch at Shane’s command, but now some of the settlers were exchanging uneasy glances.
“It’s real easy for me to arrange for you nesters to be holding guns illegally on a bunch of deputies,” Boormann purred. “In fact, I’ll arrange for it to happen right now.”
The rancher stood high in his stirrups.
“Sheriff!” he bawled out.
Boormann’s desperate summons echoed out over the town, reverberating down Main Street, penetrating the narrow lengths of Lodestone’s alleys.
“Sheriff Len Crawford!” Boormann yelled out. “Come out of your office!”
There was a long silence.
The rising wind stirred the dust on the street.
Then a lone figure emerged from a side street and stood at the corner.
Boormann smiled in triumph. “Good to see you, Len! There’s a little chore I want you to do for me!”
Sheriff Len Crawford said nothing.
“I want you to swear in all of my men as legal deputies, Len,” Linc Boormann told him. “That’s right—all of us. I want you to swear us in as your personal deputies.”
Still Crawford said nothing.
“Then you can go and get the cells ready, and we’ll have that hanging we talked about.”
“Sorry, Mr. Boormann,” said Crawford, clearly.
“What!”
“I’m real sorry,” Len Crawford apologized. “But I can’t swear in your boys.”
Boormann’s mouth worked. “What in hell are you getting at, Crawford?”
“It’s like this, Mr. Boormann,” the lawman said. “I’m not your stooge anymore!”
The owner of the Circle B stared incredulously at the man who was defying him. Then he realized that Crawford was no longer wearing a badge.
“You crazy fool!” Boormann screeched furiously. “I gave you a badge—I put you in office! I made you sheriff, my sheriff! Now—do your duty!”
Deliberately, Len Crawford turned his back on the Circle B outfit. Boormann’s hand was shivering, itching to kill as the ex-lawman began to stride back down the alley to his office.
“Boormann,” Shane drawled, “things have changed around here in Lodestone. As you see, the town’s not coming to your aid. The ‘Clarion’s’ not past naming you and your sins on the front page. And now the law’s turned against you. In other words, you just don’t call the tune anymore.”
Linc Boormann let his eyes drift slowly down Main Street. They took in the shuttered homes, the emptiness, the wall of silence. Then he stared at Shane.
Two more cowpokes raised their hands.
“No, Preston,” Linc Boormann shook his head, “nothing’s really changed around here. This town and the valley will be mine again any minute from now.” Like a whiplash, he added: “From now!”
Cluny snarled like a puma, whipping his hand downward for the gun at his hip. The six-shooter was in his grasp when Shane pulled his own trigger and the bullet lifted Cluny clean out of the saddle and plastered him into the dust of Main Street.
Circle B hands plunged for guns and simultaneously the ring of nesters opened fire. Bullets raked across the street, ripping into the Circle B bunch from all angles. Desperately, some of Boormann’s men blasted back at the nesters, but another wall of flying lead whined into the milling riders.
Sam Soames rode wildly away, six-shooter blasting, but calmly, Evan O’Reilly measured him down the sights of his rifle. The long Winchester bucked and the bullet carved into the scalp of the gunslick’s head. Soames threw back his hands in despair and he crashed to the ground. Plunging hooves pummeled him into the dust.
At least half a dozen of the regular Circle B cowhands still kept their hands high, and Jonah’s alley-brigade shepherded them away from the milling, gun-blasting bunch in the center of the street.
The nester guns were thundering now in devastating unison. Three Circle B hardcases were hammered from their saddles under this hot-lead barrage. Another rider cannoned sideways with a bullet knifing his hip. He fell from his saddle, his hands floundering in the dust. Unfortunately for this hapless rider, his boot was hooked in his stirrup, and his frantic horse dragged him up
the length of Main Street in a mad gallop.
Like baited animals, the Circle B crew turned at bay.
They came out of the swirling dust, guns snarling. One bullet shattered the remains of the office window and it caved inwards with a splintering crash. Klaus rode his mount right up onto the boardwalk, and as Sawyer leveled his gun, the ramrod fired his own. There was a choking cry from the nester and Klaus blasted him a second time. Sawyer jerked backwards and dropped into the pile of glass. Martin had joined Matt Klaus now, and the two men rode their horses right into the doorway. Crouching low, Shane fired at the yelling ramrod, and the slug smashed between his eyes. Matt Klaus died in the saddle, swaying like a crazy drunk before he finally dived headlong into the office. Ridge Martin wheeled his horse around as Verrier leveled his gun from behind the printing press. The editor’s six-shooter cracked and Martin flopped forward. In a frenzy, Ridge Martin clutched his bloodied chest with one hand and started blazing haphazardly away with his gun. Shane’s bullet bored into his heart and the gunslick was emptied from the saddle.
Outside, the cowpokes were reeling from the nester onslaught. Ed Hooper veered his horse right away. He turned in the saddle and blasted at the shadows on the roof. An aged nester caught the bullet in the leg and he tumbled forward, folding like a wet bag. Suddenly he plunged from the roof, sprawling into a startled rider and knocking him clean from his horse.
Hooper backed his horse, right into the teeth of the guns behind the water trough.
Two guns boomed. Two holes opened up in Hooper’s chest and he pitched forward and landed in the trough. Dark blood flowed into the water.
Shane ran out onto the boardwalk. A rider came at him, gun belching bullets, but another gun spoke from the alley and the cowpoke was lifted from his horse by the slug’s impact. Jonah stood there with his rifle smoking.
The tide was turning fast now. A Circle B man shot his hands high in a gesture of surrender. Mahoney, a bullet lodged in his belly, was riding around half-crazy with pain. Reb Faulkland loomed out of the dust. He made a halfhearted attempt to level his rifle at the nesters as they emerged from office and alley, but Shane coldly fired the bullet that shattered his shoulder. Faulkland screamed like a woman. He dropped his rifle and tried vainly to raise one hand. Then a ricochet found him and he slithered lifelessly into the bloodied dust.
Powder-burned but victorious, the nesters were swarming onto the street to relieve their former oppressors of their hardware. Some of the nesters carried wounds, three of their number lay dead beside the Circle B men, but there was no doubt as to who had won the day.
Shane looked around for Boormann.
In the dust-cloaked melee, he hadn’t witnessed the rancher’s fate, and now he stalked among the bodies.
“Boormann?” he asked tersely.
Jonah scratched his head. “Saw him for a moment or two, then he seemed to vanish.”
“Aw hell!” Evan O’Reilly had a facial wound and a small river of blood was streaming down his left cheek. “I saw him head down the street right in the middle of the gunfight.”
“Where was he heading?”
“Well, I was up on the roof at the time,” O’Reilly recalled. “From where I was, it looked like he was moving towards that alley the sheriff came from.”
The door inched open. First, Boormann’s gun intruded, and then the heavy frame of the rancher shoved the door wide. Linc Boormann took one step into the office, then slammed the door shut with his boot heel.
Crawford was behind his desk, seated there as if in a trance, and his glassy eyes merely stared at Boormann as the cattleman thumbed back the hammer of his six-shooter.
There was no badge on Crawford’s shirt.
The tin star of his office lay right in the center of his desk.
“Stand up!” Boormann’s hands were shaking with rage.
“What for, Mr. Boormann?” asked Sheriff Crawford innocently.
“Because I don’t like to kill a man sitting down,” the rancher snapped. “Not even a yeller belly sheriff!”
Still the lawman remained seated.
Boormann gestured at him with his gun.
“Crawford, I gave you everything. Now—I’m going to take it away.”
Crawford’s right hand strayed from his lap to where the middle drawer of his desk was open. Right inside that drawer was a Colt .45.
“Susan said I had everything except my self-respect,” the sheriff said.
His fingers began to creep into the drawer.
“Self-respect!” the rancher sneered. “What the hell would a woman like her know about self-respect? The whole town knows your wife’s a harlot!”
At first Crawford’s hand had been goaded by fear, but now fury itched to his fingers as they closed around the butt of the .45.
“Now stand up!” Boormann snarled.
“Sure,” Crawford said meekly.
He rose to his feet, at the same time whipping out the gun. But he couldn’t beat Linc Boormann’s trigger finger, and even as he tried frantically to level the .45, the rancher’s gun boomed. The bullet carved a hole high in the lawman’s chest, and with a choking cry, Len Crawford spun around and plunged over his desk. The .45 clattered away and dropped to the floor. Moaning in agony, Crawford looked up at the man who stood over him with his smoking six-shooter.
Callously, Boormann leveled his gun at the lawman’s temple.
“So long, fool!” the rancher cracked.
“Hold it!” The door behind Linc Boormann had been thrown open, and now Shane stood behind him, his black-handled six-shooter leveled at the rancher’s back. “It’s the end of the trail, Boormann, so drop your gun.”
Sweat beaded Boormann’s brow.
“Drop it?” the rancher whispered. “What for? Prison—a trial—a rope?”
“It needn’t be that way,” snapped Shane.
“What do you mean?” the rancher demanded.
“If you choose, we can play things my way.”
Slowly, Linc Boormann turned around. His face was drained of blood, death-like in its whiteness. His gun drooped from his hand.
“And what is your way, Preston?”
“Put your gun in its holster,” Shane commanded him.
Boormann knew what was going to happen, but at least this way he had a chance. A grim smile played across his lips as he let his six-shooter slither like a snake into its holster.
Shane’s eyes were hard, twin burning coals that stared bleakly at the cattleman. He moved his hand downwards and holstered his gun.
“What now?” Boormann’s voice was hoarse.
“I’ll just let you make your play,” Shane said, in a voice of doom.
Boormann hesitated, hope mingling with fear in his darting eyes. Death hovered close as time stood still in that little law office in Lodestone. Len Crawford was moaning feebly, but Shane didn’t hear him. All he could see was the bulky figure of Linc Boormann. All he could hear was his adversary’s heavy, uneven breathing.
Suddenly Boormann made his gamble.
The cattleman’s fingers fastened around the butt of his gun, and for a moment it seemed as if Shane would stand there and be gunned down. Boormann even lifted the gun clear of its leather sheath and elation exploded over his fleshy face as he whipped the six-shooter into play. But Shane’s draw was a lightning streak, and even as Boormann’s finger found the trigger, the gunfighter started firing. Explosions rocked the law office and without a sound Linc Boormann was hurled into the black jaws of eternity. His body folded and crashed onto the floor, and when Shane kicked him face-up, he saw the small, neat hole clean between his open, staring eyes, and a second hole in the rancher’s chest.
And then folks began pouring inside.
Shane stood back while Susan and the medic helped lift Len Crawford onto the sofa. The sheriff’s wife was sobbing as Doc Witherspoon sliced open the top of his shirt. Blood was oozing from a dark wound, but the sawbones hastily announced to all and sundry that the lead was lodged well
clear of Crawford’s heart and he’d survive. Susan buried her face in her husband’s hair.
“Shane—” Crawford said brokenly.
Shane turned at the door. Outside, Jonah was waiting for him with their horses.
“Yeah?”
“I—I want to thank you for what you’ve done for this town, the valley—and—and for me.”
“Easy, Len,” Doc Witherspoon murmured, mopping up the blood flow from his wound.
“There’s something I have to say, Doc,” Crawford muttered. “It’s a word of thanks—and—I’m damn well gonna say my piece.”
“You’ve said your thanks,” Shane said quietly.
“Shane,” Len Crawford winced, “this—this town mightn’t want me to stay on as—as sheriff after my past performance—but at least I’ll retire with—with my self-respect.”
“Easy—easy,” the medic counseled him.
Shane looked around at the crowd of towners and nesters.
“This town doesn’t want you to retire, Len,” Shane Preston told him. “It wants you to get well again and put back that badge where it belongs.”
Crawford forced a smile.
“You see, Len,” Shane Preston was in the doorway now, “at least you stood up to Boormann before you turned in your star. I reckon that was a start. One helluva good start you can build on.”
“Shane!” It was Susan now.
He paused. “Goodbye, ma’am.”
Their eyes met briefly.
“Thank you,” Susan Crawford said softly. “Thank you—for everything.”
Shane strode outside, but Susan didn’t even see him leave, because right then she was leaning over her husband, helping Doc Witherspoon to plug his wound.
Marcia Harding finished packing the food into Jonah’s saddlebag, and the oldster grinned in anticipation of the grub he’d sample that night when they made camp.
“I guess this is goodbye, Shane,” Marcia said, her eyes misty.
He looked down at Slim Harding’s widow, at her loveliness, at the way her sensuous lips were inviting him to unstrap his gun rig and stay there. With her.
“I never say ‘goodbye’,” he told her.
