A Lust For Lead by Robert Davis

sleeping.
‘You bastard! They did nothing to you.’ George Babson himself stood at the top of the stairs. Shane shot him, then shot him twice more as he fell. He stepped aside as the body tumbled down the stairs.
The sounds of gunfire elsewhere in the house had come to an end and the battle was over. Shane reloaded his guns and went to find Buchanan.
    The smell of gunsmoke lingering in the cell made Shane think that he had not woken from his dream and that he was still back in the ranch house. He sat bolt upright on his bunk, suddenly alert and it was only then that his sense of reality came back to him. Damn, but the dream had been vivid! It lingered so fresh inside his mind that his ears still rang with the sound of gunfire and his guilt burned in the depths of his heart.
Guilt. It was a stranger to him. He had felt it for the first time that night at the ranch and it had left an indelible mark on him, one that had set in motion a chain of events that had brought him. . .
Here.
The sunlight slanted in through the barred windows, casting diagonal lines of shadow across the far wall. The air was hot and stuffy and laden with dust. Slowly, Shane stretched, easing the pain in his joints and back. A few old scars troubled him with aches. He crossed to the window for some fresh air and looked out upon the alley.
Today, he thought. He wondered if it would happen today, if killing Devlin would be all it would take to plunge him back into the nightmare that he had barely escaped from before. He looked up at the sky and tried to calculate what time it was. His fight was scheduled for five-thirty that afternoon and he estimated that it was currently sometime around seven. That gave him ten hours. After that he was not really sure what would become of him.
He sat and brooded. Some time later, the door to the sheriff’s office opened and Buchanan arrived with his breakfast. He was in a rare good mood and called out in a sing-song voice as he entered: ‘Wakey wakey, rise and shine!’
He slid the tray of hash browns, sausage and egg through a grate in the bottom of the cell door. ‘Tournament begins in two hours, Shane. Are you raring to go?’
Shane said nothing but stared glumly at his meal. He had no appetite that morning and could not bring himself to drink, even though he was thirsty.
‘Somebody’s got their grumpy-head on this morning.’ Buchanan chided. ‘I’ve got something that’ll cheer you up.’ He reached behind his back and produced a newspaper that he had tucked into the waistband of his woollen pants. ‘One of Nathaniel’s men rode in with it last night,’ he explained and tossed it through the bars. ‘Read it,’ he said. The jokiness had suddenly gone from his voice.
The newspaper was a copy of the Carson Daily Gazette, dated a week ago. The main headline immediately caught Shane’s eye. ‘Shane Ennis Killed,’ it proclaimed. Beneath it was a photograph of a dead man propped up in his coffin, flanked on either side by the men who had shot him. One of them had his arm in a sling.
The article claimed that Shane Ennis had been killed in a shoot out with three local men, who had recognised him while drinking in a saloon. Attempting to perform their civic duty and arrest the known criminal, they had approached him, whereupon he had drawn a gun and commenced firing. He had shot one man in the arm but, vastly out-gunned, he had been shot dead in retaliation.
Shane put the newspaper down and looked across at Buchanan, who was grinning like a loon. ‘How does it feel to be a dead man, Shane?’ He was clearly enjoying himself. ‘I think it’s a good likeness, don’t you?’
The dead man did indeed bear a striking resemblance to Shane. He was the right height and build and had similar white hair. The grainy quality of the photograph made it even harder to tell that he was not the real Shane Ennis.
Shane had prayed for years that something like this would happen. Every bounty hunter that had ever sought for