The Ghost of Iron Eyes (An Iron Eyes Western Book 8) (8 page)

Concentrate!
Concentrate!

Where were the clues? There
were always clues, he told himself. Water could not hide from those
who knew how to locate it. A green mark on a rockface or a plant
required water to survive, just like people. Lizards, snakes and
warm-blooded animals all required water.

His weary eyes darted all
around the canyon, seeking out some sign that would lead him to it.
Yet there was nothing to be found.

Not one hint as to where he
might locate the precious liquid he desired.

Iron Eyes had survived by
sucking moisture from sand for months and now even that was gone.
He had left that behind him when he had started out on this last
valiant attempt to get out of the well-named canyon.

He continued slowly onwards
over the hot sand. The shimmering heat haze blurred what lay ahead
of him. It was like looking into a bowl of thick soup.

Water!

Where was the
water?

The creatures that lived in
and around this place must have known where to find it otherwise
they would have deserted the arid landscape long ago. Even
creatures that crawled on their bellies were smart enough to know
that it did not pay to remain in a place where water did not
exist.

It was here
somewhere!

So why
couldn
’t he
find any?

Iron Eyes was reduced to
pressing his tall lean frame against the rugged rockface and
clawing his way along the canyon. His left foot moved and then,
when it was planted, he dragged the right along behind it. He felt
as if he were climbing a mountain and yet he knew the
truth.

His heart pounded against
his aching ribs far faster than it had ever done before.

Sweat ran down from his
burned and blistered forehead. It stung his eyes like a hive of
hornets and when droplets entered his mouth, his thirst grew in
intensity.

As the temperature rose, the
hot air before him became even harder to see through. The bounty
hunter began to doubt his own sanity for the umpteenth time. Was he
actually losing his mind or was the heat haze getting
worse?

He blinked hard and felt his
dry eyelids sticking together as if glued. How long could anyone
survive without water, Iron Eyes asked himself. How many more steps
were left in his thin legs?

He screwed up his eyes and
stared into the moving air that teased him. He thought that he saw
something ahead. A fleeting dark image that came and went with
every beat of his pounding heart. The last time Iron Eyes had felt
like this, it had been when the rattler had sunk its fangs into him
a lifetime ago.

The bullet-
colored eyes tried to
focus.

Was there something ahead of
him? If so, what?

If he had been able to see
what awaited him, the brave bounty hunter might have quit moving
there and then.

For Iron
Eyes
’
troubles had yet to reach their nadir.

The buzzing sound that
filled the ears of Iron Eyes was one that he instantly recognized
from all his years of roaming around the barren wastes of the West.
There was no noise quite like the sound of an arrow being released
from an Apache bowstring and cutting through the air.

Even in his confused state,
the tall lean man knew that an arrow had been fired at him. He
ducked down and saw the arrow shatter against the rocks just above
him.

‘
Apache!’ Iron Eyes growled, hauling both his guns from the
deep pockets of his weathered coat. ‘Ain’t they ever gonna leave me
be?’

Without even thinking, his
thumbs engaged the hammers until they locked into position. He
screwed up his eyes and
stared desperately into the heat haze before him.
He still could not make out the figure clearly but knew that, yet
again, one of his most hated enemies had come to try and claim his
scalp. So many other Apaches had tried to do the same thing over
the years.

They had all
failed.

As Iron Eyes lowered himself
on to the hot sand with his Navy Colts aimed straight ahead, he
knew that this time it might be a different story. For he was
drained of vital fluids and could barely managed to concentrate,
let alone fight.

‘
Show
yourself!’ the bounty hunter yelled out.

Another arrow sped out of
the swirling hot air. Its tip skimmed off the rocks sending it up
the canyon behind him.

‘
Where
are you?’ the bounty hunter muttered under his breath as he crawled
slowly forward. ‘Just give me a target to aim at.’

Then he saw
movement.

The shimmering image was fifty
feet away from him and moving from one
side of the narrow canyon to the
other. Another arrow came humming out of the haze and landed a few
inches to the left of his outstretched hand. Iron Eyes pulled his
hand back and glared at the arrow. It bore flights similar to those
that had tried so vainly to claim his life nine months earlier. He
continued to move across the sand, keeping as low as possible to
make the smallest target for the bowman.

The closer he got to the
warrior, the clearer the near-naked man became. Iron Eyes could see
the brightly painted marks on the Apache
’s torso.

It was a target that he
could not resist.

Iron Eyes gritted his teeth
and squeezed the trigger of his left gun. The fiery explosion sent
a bullet at the image but another arrow came back, less than a
heartbeat later. This time the arrow found its mark and sank into
his left shoulder. The impact jolted him hard enough for him to
drop the still-smoking Navy Colt.

‘
You
damn bastard!’ the bounty hunter screamed out, rage mingled with
the sudden unexpected pain. He groped at the sand, grabbed the gun
again and hauled its hammer back until it locked. Then he forced
himself up off the sand and began to walk straight towards his
well-hidden foe.

He fired one gun after the
other as he somehow managed to defy his pain. Only one more arrow
came back in answer. It missed. It was vintage Iron Eyes. A man who
refused to die like other men.

‘
Eat
lead!’ he repeated over and over.

Iron Eyes continued walking and
firing until both his weapons were empty. Then as the gunsmoke
cleared he saw the wounded Apache ahead of him lying against a
rockface. The heavily painted brave had taken more than one of Iron
Eyes
’
bullets squarely in his guts. Blood poured from the belly of the
warrior as he watched the ghostlike apparition approach.

‘
Iron
Eyes?’ the Apache spat in surprise. ‘But you are dead! My people
kill you many moons ago.’

Iron Eyes dropped both his
guns into the deep pockets on either side of his narrow hips, then
leaned down and dragged his Bowie knife from the neck of his right
boot.

‘
Damn
right!’ With no hint of any emotion, the tail man wrapped his
fingers around the knife-blade. He mustered every ounce of his
strength and threw it with all his force. The Indian slumped as the
knife went straight into his heart. ‘You just bin killed by a
ghost!’

Iron Eyes staggered to the
body and retrieved the gore-covered knife. He then turned his head
and looked at the arrow stuck in his shoulder. He grabbed its shaft
and ripped it from his flesh. There was no blood. It was as if he
no longer had any left to spill. He tossed it away, then something
caught his eye.

The nervous painted pony
stood a mere twenty feet from where Iron Eyes was
standing.

But it was not the animal
itself that managed to bring a smile to his cracked lips. It was
the sight of the swollen water bag that hung over the
animal
’s
neck. It drew him across the sand like a magnet. He pulled the
stopper and inhaled the scent of the fresh liquid inside the large
leather bag.

He tilted the neck of the bag
and allowed the cool water to wash over his face and into his
mouth. He drank slowly for more than a minute and then returned the
stopper to the neck of the bag. His bony hands gripped the crude
rope reins that were looped around the pony
’s head and neck.

It was a refreshed Iron Eyes
who gave the dead Indian a sideways glance. He smiled.

‘
Don’t
that take the biscuit, boy? You just saved the bacon of Iron Eyes!
I got me a feeling that they’ll never let you into Apache heaven
now.’

Little Johnny Cooper was
probably the youngest of all the Texas Rangers who had followed
Caufield Cotter from Apache Wells to this barren prairie. Standing
less than five feet from head to toe, the youngster was small by
any standards, yet his courage
equaled that of his fellow Rangers. He
claimed to be eighteen, yet few believed he had even seen his
sixteenth birthday.

Above all, he was a true
Texan and a crack shot with any weapon thrust into his hands. He
also had no concept of fear.

Johnny Cooper rose abruptly
and dropped his tin plate on the sand. There was a look of surprise
on his face as he turned to look over the heads of his seated
companions towards Theo Newton, who was near the chuck
wagon.

‘
I
heard me a whole bunch of shots, Lieutenant,’ Johnny said, pointing
to the east. ‘They was close, I reckon.’

Newton handed his plate back
to the cook, then walked along the line of resting Texas Rangers
until he was standing next to Cooper.

‘
Are
you sure, Johnny?’ Newton had not heard anything except the noise
of forks on plates and the chatter of weary men.

‘
I’m
sure, sir. Somebody was shooting a sidearm off in the distance. It
weren’t no rifle, it was a six-shooter.’

‘
Where
do you figure the shots came from exactly?’ Newton pressed, staring
off towards the distant mesas.

Johnny pointed
again.

‘
Devil’s Canyon, sir!’

‘
How
far is that from here, Johnny?’

‘
Five
miles as the crow flies, sir. Say, have you noticed that smoke over
yonder?’

‘
The
colonel says it’s nothing to worry about, Johnny,’ Newton answered
in a hushed voice. ‘It’s too far away to give us any
trouble.’

Johnny accepted the words of
his superior but then noticed the other plumes of Apache smoke
signals on other mesas. He shrugged.

‘
Reckon the colonel knows best,’ he said.

Newton patted the youngster
on the arm and continued along the line of men. He nodded at the
faces of men who looked even more tired than he himself felt. With
every step he looked up from beneath the wide brim of his Stetson
at the tops of the mesas that fringed the prairie and noted how
many more plumes of smoke had appeared in the sixty minutes since
the troop had been stopped.

Could this have anything to
do with the shots Johnny thought he had heard, Newton pondered. Or
was it just the fertile imagination of a youngster?

He could now see seven sets
of smoke signals. He was nervous and unable to conceal
it.

His courage had never been
tested like
this before. Newton had fought many battles but never once
had he felt as if he were being watched by so many enemy eyes. He
rubbed the sweat from his upper lips and tried to hide his concern.
The men, apart from Johnny, seemed aware of nothing except their
food and aching bones. He listened to their light-hearted banter
and wanted to scream at them to look up from their tin plates at
the horizon.

Yet he knew that to do so
would be to spoil what might just turn out to be the last meal any
of them would ever eat. What if the Apaches had already started to
kill others who had violated what they considered to be their
land?

His mind raced.

Newton came to Caufield
Cotter sitting on the ground beside his unsaddled white mount. He
wondered how the distinguished man could appear so calm.

‘
This
ain’t good, Colonel,’ Newton whispered as he sat down on the sand
next to Cotter. ‘Five more sets of smoke signals have started up
since I first noticed them and little Johnny reckons he heard shots
coming from Devil’s Canyon.’

Cotter continued to chew on
his bread and stare out across the almost flat ocean of
sand.

‘
I
agree with you, Theo. This is a bad situation, getting worse by the
minute. I heard those shots too.’

‘
What
are we going to do?’ Newton leaned his head closer to the
expressionless Cotter. ‘I think we’ll be up to our necks in Indians
before the day is through if we ain’t careful.’

‘
Remain calm, son,’ the colonel said forcefully. ‘I need you
to be strong like myself. The men will sense your fear if you wear
it on your sleeve. I do not care how frightened you are, you must
show these men nothing but strength. For they will be brave if they
think you are brave. This is why we are Texas Rangers. We are cut
from the same cloth that made folks like Travis and Bowie defend
the Alamo. They might have been damn scared when they saw all those
Mexicans outside the Alamo mission, but they sure did not show it
to the men they commanded. Right?’