by Cole Shelton
“I’ll holster my gun,” Shane said in the deep hush, “then you make your play, Blake.”
“Too bad, Preston. I’m crippled as of now!”
Blake deliberately let his right hand trail to the buckle of his gun rig.
He unfastened the rig, and it slithered round his hips and finally dropped.
“I’m a prisoner,” Blake announced. “That is, Preston—unless you want to kill me in cold blood?”
Shane cocked his gun hammer. Blake was smiling, mocking him, knowing full well that the gunfighter’s code would prevent him from pulling the trigger.
“There’s a cell block over the street,” Shane said. “Walk!”
“With pleasure!” the gun-runner laughed.
Shane’s eyes narrowed to twin slits of hatred as he marched the killer to the batwings. Behind him, old Jonah was slumped in a chair trying to stem the flow of blood from his wounded shoulder. Shane reached the doors, and Damien Blake parted them ahead of him. The gunfighter prodded him onto the street into the dying sun, and with his hands high, Blake sauntered across the dust. Folks ran to open the door of the cell block and faces were pressed against the glass of the Golden Garter as they watched Shane shove the prisoner right into the center of the street.
“Hold it!” The snarl froze Shane Preston in his tracks. “Hold it right there, Preston, or I’ll blast you to hell!”
A frog-like figure straddling his dust-streaked horse was to his left, and Shane glimpsed the long shadow of a Winchester pointed at him.
“It’s been a long, hard trail, Preston!” Matt Woolrich grated. “But when my bullet’s in your head, it’ll sure be worth it!”
“Stay outa this, Woolrich,” Shane warned him. “This ain’t your fight. Let me lock this gun-runner in his cell, and then I’ll come out and we’ll talk things over.”
“Oh no,” Woolrich said bleakly. “You took my woman, and I swore I’d find you and her! Took a helluva long trail and a bit of luck when I asked some questions in Conchita, but here I am—and from all accounts, my woman is real close by.”
“That’s another matter!” Shane insisted.
“Maybe it isn’t,” Matt Woolrich said. He stared long and hard at the gunfighter’s captive. “I don’t know who you are, mister, but anyone being herded by Preston is a friend of mine. Now, step away from him—and Preston, if you so much as try anything, I’ll blast you apart!”
Damien Blake moved briskly to one side.
“Mister,” Blake addressed Woolrich, “I reckon you and me’ll get on just fine, and I’ve got enough money to make us both rich.”
“That sounds real interestin’,” Woolrich drawled. “There’s a gun for you in my saddlebag.”
Damien Blake ambled towards the rider, and the towners stared nonplussed at this bewildering turn of events.
“Now for you, Preston.” Matt Woolrich looked down the barrel of his rifle. “Let that gun drop.”
Reluctantly, Shane opened his fingers, and the notched six-shooter slid into the dust.
Damien Blake was rummaging through the saddlebag, and elation sprang to his face as his fingers gripped the butt of a gun.
“A gun-runner and a wife-beater!” Shane mocked them both. “A real holy alliance!”
“I reckon, Preston,” Woolrich sneered, “that this is the end of the trail for you.”
A shaking hand lifted the rifle from Jonah’s saddle holster and rested it across Tessie’s saddle. Abel Sorenson’s eye squinted down the sights and even as Woolrich was about to squeeze the trigger, the man in the shadows fired his gun. The bullet burned high into Matt Woolrich’s chest, lifting him clean out of the saddle. Woolrich tried to level his own gun as he groped skywards, then he flopped down and his face was buried in the dust. The preacher trembled like a spring sapling as he held the smoking rifle.
Shane dropped to where his gun had fallen. Right then, Damien Blake was holding the six-shooter he’d found in Woolrich’s bag, and with a yell of triumph, he lifted it to shoot. Shane rolled, scooping up his gun and firing in one swift movement. The bullet thudded between Blake’s eyes and the gun-runner uttered no sound as he stared at the fading sun with dead eyes, and collapsed beside Woolrich’s corpse.
Shane ran over to where Sorenson was standing, still holding the rifle.
“Thanks, Preacher,” the gunfighter said soberly, relieving him of the gun and sliding it back into Jonah’s saddle holster. “I reckon I owe you my life.”
Sorenson looked straight at him. “All of us on that wagon train owe you our lives. I was just returning a favor.”
And with that, Abel Sorenson strode away to look at possible church sites, and the tall gunfighter headed into the Golden Garter to help the wounded Jonah.
“I’ve come to say goodbye.”
Juanita, propped up against two pillows, watched as the gunfighter closed the door behind him and walked over to her bed. He sat down beside her.
“The fort doctor says you’ll be up and about in a few weeks,” Shane told her. “Same as Brett Craig. He’s going to live, too.”
“How will Brett get on when law comes to Gun Creek?” the girl asked anxiously.
“By then, he’ll be forgotten, just a small rancher somewhere west of Gun Creek. Janie told me they’ll be settling farther west.”
“Shane—” she whispered, “you—you have to leave?”
He saw the sadness in her eyes, and maybe for him, there was a sadness too.
“You know why I can’t stay,” he said quietly.
“Yes,” she nodded, “Jonah told me all about—about your wife and why you must ride until you find the man who murdered her. Scarface, isn’t it?”
“That’s the man.”
“Some day, when you find him—you’ll ride back here?” Juanita pleaded.
“Maybe.”
And looking at him, she knew that ‘maybe’ was all he could ever say. A man like Shane Preston couldn’t predict the future for himself.
She reached out her hands and pulled his face close. Shane touched her hair and her mouth found his. The girl’s full lips were soft under his.
Shane drew away from her.
“If ever I do ride back,” Shane said, “then you’ll probably be a married woman with a tribe of kids”
“And who’d have a ’breed girl who’s a widow?” Juanita challenged him.
“He’s waiting outside the door with a bunch of flowers in his hand,” the gunfighter hinted.
“Who?” she gasped.
“Abel Sorenson,” Shane stated. “Now you’re a widow and no longer married to Woolrich, he’s free to come courting. And that, Juanita, is precisely what he has in mind.”
“Oh,” she smiled.
“Juanita,” he said seriously, “Abel’s a damn fine man and he’s taken on a big chore building a church in Gun Creek. He needs a wife to support his efforts—maybe he needs you.”
Open-mouthed, she watched as Shane Preston stood up. She glanced wistfully at the strength of his shoulders, at the rugged features of his face. Shane had to move on, but he’d left something with her that time could never erase. A memory.
“Abel!” Shane called him in.
The preacher strode inside and placed the wild roses on her bedside cabinet.
“Look after her, Abel,” Shane said.
Shane Preston stalked out to where the emigrants were standing around Jonah and their two horses. The gunfighter swung into the saddle and with a word to Jonah, he set his face for the fort entrance. The oldster caught up with him halfway across the parade ground, and they rode through the gates into the beckoning wilderness. The emigrants were waving to him, but as was his usual custom, Shane Preston didn’t look back.
“I reckon,” Jonah Jones said as he fried the beef cutlet over the campfire, “that there’s one town we’ll ride well clear of in the future.”
“Gaucho?” Shane was leaning back on his saddle, smoking a last cigarette before Jonah finished cooking chow.
“Ne
xt time,” Jonah Jones claimed, “that durn sheriff will shoot first and ask questions later.”
“We’ll be heading in the opposite direction to Gaucho,” Shane said.
“Where’s Lonegan’s Well?”
“North,” Shane said, opening the letter they’d collected an hour ago in Blacksmith County, their last forwarding address. “Seems like this rancher’s having trouble with a bunch of hard cases.”
“And he’s offering us seven hundred bucks to help him out.” Jonah recalled his reading of the letter.
“A lot of money,” Shane mused. “But we’d ride there even if it was seven bucks.”
“Like hell!” Jonah Jones spluttered indignantly, turning the cutlet before it burned.
“Fact is, Jonah,” Shane said quietly, “we haven’t been north before, and it’ll be the first time we’ve ridden the country around Bearcat Mountain.”
“But—for seven bucks!”
“It’ll be my first chance to look for him north of the Snake River,” Shane Preston said, flicking the ash from his cigarette tip.
Jonah said nothing, but he looked over the leaping flames at those deep impenetrable eyes and he knew what Shane Preston was thinking. Scarface could be there, not necessarily at Lonegan’s Well, but somewhere north. For three years, they’d searched westwards, always hoping to meet the man he was hunting, but never finding him. Maybe all this time he was in the high country to the north, and maybe when they reached Lonegan’s Well, Shane would come face to face with his quarry. And then, Jonah told himself, his pard would kill for the last time. But perhaps after the job at Lonegan’s Well, they would ride away and Scarface would still be living and enjoying life. If this should happen, then Shane and Jonah would continue to hire out their guns to defend the oppressed and to earn enough money to keep riding.
Suddenly there was a strong aroma of scorched flesh.
“Great fires of hell!” Jonah Jones cursed as he looked down at the burnt offering in the pan.
“If I ever settle down,” Shane said wryly, “remind me never to hire you on as cook!”
About the Author
Roger Norris-Green was born in Brighton, UK and emigrated with his parents to Australia when he was a schoolboy. Since leaving Unley High School in South Australia, he has written 140 published westerns under 6 pen names, plus 2 under his own name.
Roger had his first western ‘Apache Crossing’ accepted by the Cleveland Publishing Company when he was a young man in his early 20s, just married, living in the Adelaide Hills. The pen name he used for his very first western was Cole Shelton. He went on to write his ‘Shane and Jonah’ series under that pen name. Many of his westerns have received ‘Best Western of the Month’ awards. Roger lives with his wife Elaine in Moonta Bay, South Australia. Although retired, he is still writing.
More on Cole Shelton
The Shane and Jonah Series by Cole Shelton
Gun Law at Hangman’s Creek
Two Guns to Apache Wells
Valley of the Lawless
The Death Riders
Wagons West of Hell
… And more to come every other month!
