Free A Lust For Lead by Robert Davis Page A

more than his fair share of women, but he had never found reason to shoot a child. He was not altogether convinced that he’d had a reason this time either. Quick hands were something that every gunfighter was fast to develop if he wanted to survive, but however quick the hands the eye was always faster and Shane had known who his targets were before he had pulled the trigger.
He had known and he had still done it and he did not know why. It was almost as if, for a brief moment, somebody else had been in control of his body and that bothered him because it made him wonder if he was going mad.
He pondered heavily on these thoughts while he rode and by midday he arrived at the town of Wainsford.
His appearance earned him suspicious looks as he rode into town. A mother hastily dragged her children indoors out of his way and a shop sign in the window of the general store was hastily flipped over to read ‘closed’. Shane drew up outside a fine-looking hotel and he hitched his horse beside it and went inside. A bell, situated above the door, rang to announce his arrival and a man called out from one of the other rooms, asking him to be patient. ‘I’ll be with you in a minute.’
Shane was not feeling patient and tracked the voice to its source: a middle-aged man dressed in a floral-print apron, who was spring-cleaning. He looked embarrassed to have been discovered and hastily shed the apron, casting it aside. ‘Belongs to the wife,’ he muttered. ‘We’re dining with the vicar tonight; I didn’t want to get my clothes dirty. You must want a room real bad, mister.’
‘A man came into town recently. Did you see him?’
‘You a friend of his?’ The hotelier clearly did not believe he was.
‘I want to know where he is.’
The look in Shane’s eyes and the tone of his voice convinced him to answer. ‘He’s across the street in the marshal’s office. Marshal Fletcher come by and arrested him just a half-hour ago. If you’re looking for a bounty, mister, I guess you’re too late.’ He gave a nervous laugh which Shane silenced with a glare. Hunte getting himself arrested was a complication he could have well done without.
‘This Marshal Fletcher, he got a deputy?’
‘He’s got two. Alan Grant and young Ben. They’re more than capable of taking care of things, mister.’
Shane cursed silently to himself. Killing lawmen always meant trouble and if there were three of them then that made matters even worse. He left the hotelier to his spring cleaning and stepped outside.
Word of him had spread across town and the marshal was waiting for him as he walked out the door. With him was a young man who held a 12-guage shotgun, which he pointed right at Shane’s chest.
‘Howdy,’ the marshal said amicably. He was an elderly man with wiry grey hair and a moustache like a steel brush. He was thin but had the sort of lean physique that suggested he was still a force to be reckoned with. ‘You know, I didn’t believe it at first when I heard that Shane Ennis was in town but now I see it with my own eyes. What you doing here son?’
Shane declined to answer. ‘Am I under arrest?’ he asked.
‘No, you’re not. Ben here is just my insurance. You’ve got a nasty reputation Mister Ennis and my old bones ain’t what they used to be. Now I believe I asked you a question.’
‘I’m looking for someone.’
‘And who might that be?’
‘Just someone.’
The old lawman sighed wearily. He knew that Shane had come into town looking for Hunte. Shane was a professional gun for hire and Hunte was a man with a high price on his head; it didn’t take a suspicious mind to put two and two together. Fletcher was out-matched but he managed to look cool. ‘So what’s this someone look like?’ he asked. ‘It could be that maybe I’ve seen him around.’
‘I’d like to tell you, marshal, but to tell you the truth I haven’t seen him.’
‘That might make it hard for you to find him.’
‘Hard.’ Shane agreed. ‘But not