Blood of Iron Eyes (3 page)

Like moths being drawn to a naked flame, more of Fontaine’s henchmen gathered in the main street as Frank Riley rallied his troops. The gunslinger had received his orders from Brewster Fontaine and was executing them to the letter. Fifty-eight of the most ruthless men on Fontaine’s payroll were in town and every one of them had been gathered up and ordered to stand between the bank and the strange bounty hunter. If Iron Eyes wanted his blood-money, he would have to face each and every one of them to get it. Most ordinary men might have taken the hint and decided that it was just not worth the trouble.

But not Iron Eyes. He was not so easily
frightened
.

Riley remained mounted as the well-paid hired guns stood across the front of the bank building. Some had walked there whilst others had ridden from the furthest corners of the sprawling town of
Hope. But they had all come as commanded for fear of disobeying their paymaster.

‘Remember, boys,’ Riley shouted. ‘I don’t wanna see Iron Eyes gettin’ into the bank! Them’s my orders! He don’t get in there and he don’t get no bounty! Savvy?’

There were noises that drifted in unison from all the gunslingers’ lips as they nodded at Riley.

‘Good!’ The top gun laughed. ‘Now get ya guns out of them holsters and cock them hammers!’

Again, as one, the gunslingers all drew their guns and pulled back their hammers.

‘Can we kill him?’ a voice called out from
somewhere
in the middle of the crowd.

‘We might have to kill the bastard!’ Riley laughed. ‘He might be one of them loco folks that don’t take tellin’!’

Every one of the gunslingers gave out a loud cheer that filled the street. These were men who had tasted the thrill of killing many times and savoured its unwholesome flavour.

Riley swung his mount around and grinned at the bounty hunter’s pitiful horse tied up outside the Spinning Wheel. He knew that even if Iron Eyes did manage to escape their guns, he would not get far on that animal.

It had been ridden to exhaustion.

‘We got the back-shootin’ bastard cornered, boys!’ Riley chuckled out loud as he steadied his horse. ‘I don’t figure he’ll try to cross the street to
get his money! I got me a feelin’ Iron Eyes will run when he sets eyes on us!’

Suddenly a noise drew their attention to the balcony of the saloon. It was the sound of a window being opened up on the second floor. The hired guns watched silently as Iron Eyes stepped out on to its weathered balcony.

It was an awesome sight, which chilled even the most hardened of them. A unified gasp went through the hired gunmen.

Iron Eyes had both his Navy Colts gripped in his bony hands as he strode across to the wooden rails and gazed angrily down on them.

‘Look, Frank!’ one of the gunslingers shouted. ‘What in tarnation is that?’

‘That’s the critter we gotta stop gettin’ into the bank, ya dumb bastard!’ Riley felt his heart start pounding inside his chest. Few men could set eyes upon the gaunt bounty hunter’s scarred features without feeling totally horrified.

Iron Eyes moved behind the large wooden façade which had the name ‘Spinning Wheel Saloon’ painted upon it. He stood like a macabre statue watching the large group of men, his guns aimed down at them.

‘Ya lookin’ for me, ya fat fool?’ Iron Eyes asked from his lofty perch. ‘Ya still thinkin’ of tryin’ ya luck?’

Riley felt his mouth and throat drying.

‘Ya don’t scare me, ya freak! I’ve killed
worse-lookin
’
folks than you in my time!’

‘There ain’t nobody worse-lookin’ than me, ya liar!’ the bounty hunter drawled.

‘Ya better ride on out of Hope, Iron Eyes!’ Riley waved a hand at the man who looked down on them. ‘Ride out or we’ll kill ya for sure!’

‘Ya got a lot of guts when enough of ya gather together!’ the gaunt figure shouted down at Fontaine’s men. ‘It don’t bother me none though! I’ll kill ya all if’n that’s what it takes for me to get paid!’

Riley steadied his mount again. Unlike its master, it had horse sense and wanted to flee.

‘We bin ordered to make sure ya don’t get one red cent, Iron Eyes!’ Riley shouted. ‘It’d be best if ya just rode out of this town and kept on going until this territory is just a bad memory!’

‘Ya deaf or somethin’, Riley?’ Iron Eyes
questioned
. ‘I just told ya that I’ll kill ya all to get what I’m owed! That ain’t no threat, that’s what they call a prophecy!’

‘How ya gonna manage that, Iron Eyes?’ Riley laughed. ‘Ya only got twelve bullets in them guns! Can’t ya count? There gotta be sixty or more of us here! Fontaine got even more men around the range! Well?’

‘I count fifty-nine,’ the bounty hunter
contradicted
. ‘Don’t go frettin’ about how many bullets I got, Riley! My coat pockets are full of ammunition. I could put two shells in each of ya and still have a
few left over for ya boss!’

Riley looked at the men behind him. The smiles had long gone from their troubled faces. They were starting to get nervous of the sheer arrogance of the bounty hunter. He gritted his teeth and yelled out loud.

‘We gonna let that scarecrow bad mouth us, boys? He ain’t nothin’ but a back-shooter! His breed don’t have a chance against real gunmen!’

The men gave a reasoned grunt. None of them was willing to let the rest see his fear. Riley turned back, gathered up his reins and smiled at the man who held both his Navy Colts at hip-level, with their barrels trained down at them.

‘Ya gonna die, bounty hunter!’ Riley laughed. ‘It’ll be slow and darn painful! Well?’

Iron Eyes did not move an inch.

‘I’m tryin’ to keep my temper, Riley! The law would be on my side if I killed you all just like I did Kane! Outlaws wanted dead or alive don’t deserve no favours from me!’

‘There ain’t no law in these parts!’ Riley snarled loudly. ‘Only gun law!’

Iron Eyes stroked the hammers of his guns with his thumbs.

‘That’s my favourite sort!’

Swiftly, Riley dismounted and led his horse through the gunslingers. As he reached the narrow alley at the side of the bank he shouted out:

‘Kill him, boys! Kill him! He wants to eat lead, so fill his worthless belly!’

Every finger squeezed a trigger. No thunderclap could have sounded louder as lethal lead exploded from the barrels of the gunslingers’ guns.

A dense choking cloud of gunsmoke filled the street and shielded all view of the tall, defiant bounty hunter. Iron Eyes had felt the heat of the first few bullets as they passed within inches of his lean frame. His long loose coat tails were lifted up as hot lead tore through the seasoned fabric.

He quickly stepped backwards.

Yet Iron Eyes did not return fire.

He knew Riley had been correct when he had said that his trusty guns only held twelve bullets between them. Iron Eyes knew that he had to ensure that he did not waste any of his precious ammunition. It took time to reload, and that time might be the difference between life and death.

The thin-framed man stooped and ran unseen to the end of the long balcony. He knelt, screwed up his eyes and aimed at the men who continued to fire their deafening volleys of bullets up at the saloon’s façade.

Then he started.

One by one he picked off the gunslingers. Each one of his bullets found its target. Gunmen spun on their boot-heels before crashing into the sand. Within seconds the ground was stained crimson.

It reminded the bounty hunter of days when he
had witnessed the wholesale slaughter of the buffalo herds on the plains. The hunters would simply move downwind toward the grazing herds and then start to pick off the animals one by one. For some reason that Iron Eyes had never been able to fathom, the buffalo would see animals fall after being shot, but they remained grazing.

Just like the buffalo, the hired gunmen did not seem to grasp what was happening to them. With bodies falling, they continued to fire up to where they had last seen the bounty hunter. Not one of them realized that their chosen prey was no longer behind the saloon’s façade. They seemed
incapable
of understanding that Iron Eyes was picking them off from the corner of the balcony.

Perhaps it was because the street was filled with black acrid gunsmoke, which blinded the gunslingers’ view of their target. Maybe it was because their own weaponry was making such a deafening din that they could not hear that the shots were coming from a different direction.

Whatever the reason, Iron Eyes was not about to turn down a gift horse. He would continue picking off Fontaine’s small army with deadly accuracy. Yet with every squeeze of his triggers he kept seeing the images of the buffalo in his mind’s eye.

Unlike the rest of the gunmen gathered in the street, Riley had yet to use his own guns. He remained in the alley beside the bank and watched like a seasoned army general.

This was not the way it was meant to be. Riley glanced at the dozen or more bodies and tried to work out how one man could kill so many.

What he was witnessing confused him. With every beat of his black heart he was seeing one of his men drop lifelessly to the ground. He then realized that the shots that were felling his men were not coming from the façade. They were coming from the corner.

Riley ran to the opposite wall and frantically searched the balcony for Iron Eyes. It did not take long to spot the kneeling figure as he fired one gun after another.

Fontaine’s top gun dragged one of his .45s from its holster and cocked the hammer. He shouted a warning at his men, but none of them could hear anything above the sound of their blazing guns. Riley looked again at the bounty hunter with the smoking guns in his hands. Again Iron Eyes fired. Another of the gunslingers fell face first into the sand.

‘I’m gonna pluck ya like a Thanksgiving turkey, Iron Eyes!’ Riley spat. He raised his gun and aimed at the painfully thin target.

The gunslinger’s .45 unleashed its lead in a plume of smoke and red-hot flame. Riley fired again. He had not lived to his forty-second year for nothing. He was a good shot.

Riley dragged his other Colt and fired both weapons. He smiled in satisfaction as the wooden
rails that Iron Eyes was kneeling behind shattered and blasted splinters into the bounty hunter’s face.

Iron Eyes screwed up his eyes. No porcupine’s quills could have inflicted more blinding pain.

Riley’s next two shots came even closer to the determined bounty hunter. More hot slivers of wooden fragments hit Iron Eyes straight in the face when the hot lead smashed two more rails into mere matchsticks.

Iron Eyes fell backwards in agony and landed on his bony spine. The skin around his eyes was
bleeding
from the countless splinters embedded in his flesh.

He rolled over until he was on his knees. He dropped his weapons on to the boards of the balcony and feverishly tore the sharp wooden
fragments
from his face. Blood flowed like water over Iron Eyes’ hands and fingers as he tried to pull the slivers of wood from his flesh.

‘Now I’m damn angry, fat man!’ Iron Eyes snatched up his Navy Colts and rubbed the blood from his face across the back of his sleeve. He was looking through a swirling fog, trying desperately to see the gunman. At last his vision cleared enough for him to see Riley blasting both his guns at him from the side of the bank. Vainly Iron Eyes returned fire until the chambers of his trusty guns were empty.

Again Riley’s bullets forced the bounty hunter even further back from the edge of the balcony.
Iron Eyes snarled as his fingers searched in his deep pockets for bullets to reload his guns. He scooped out a handful, dropped them on to the boards and shook the spent casings from the
smoking
weapons.

The blood on his fingers made the bullets
slippery
as he tried to push them into the smoking chambers. It felt like an eternity before he managed to achieve this simple goal. For the first time since the gunfight had started, the bounty hunter realized that he was cornered.

Iron Eyes snapped both chambers shut and pulled the hammers back with his thumbs.

Frank Riley ran to his men and pointed to where he knew the bounty hunter was trapped. Within a few seconds every one of the hired guns was firing up at the balcony.

Burning sawdust fell like a blizzard’s snow over the crouching figure as Iron Eyes’ mind raced. There had to be a way out of this fix, he told himself. If there was, Iron Eyes had yet to figure it.

All he could do was try and avoid the lethal volley of bullets that kept him pinned down. He looked through the wooden railings to where he had left his exhausted horse. The animal was still there but it was dead. Countless shots had torn chunks out of the horse’s flesh.

‘Keep shootin’! We got the critter stuck, boys!’ Riley shouted at the thirty or so remaining hired guns. ‘He can’t go no place from there!’

Another of the gunslingers who went by the name of Keno moved to Riley’s side and tugged at the man’s sleeve.

‘How we gonna get him down from there?’

‘I got me an idea, Keno!’ Riley said. He ran to his horse and dragged the rope from its saddle horn. Riley swiftly looped it over the horn and tightened it, then led his horse through his men to one of the balcony’s four supports. He wrapped the rope around the wooden pole several times, then tied a secure knot.

‘What ya doin’ that for, Frank?’ another of the gunslingers asked as he watched the top gun mount the nervous animal.

‘If’n Iron Eyes won’t come down,’ Riley answered, ‘I figured we ought to bring him down!’

As his men fired over the dead bodies of their fellow hired guns, Riley spurred hard and forced his mount to haul at the wooden support. The rope went taut and started to vibrate. Riley spurred and spurred. The wooden pole began to crack under the strain. Then it gave and was dragged away from the boardwalk. The gunman dismounted and untied the rope. Riley threw it to Keno who then looped it around the end upright, directly beneath the corner of the balcony. Riley leapt back on to his saddle and drove his spurs into his animal’s flanks.