The Ghost of Iron Eyes (An Iron Eyes Western Book 8) (9 page)

‘
Are
you scared, sir?’ Newton asked, rubbing the palms of his hands
together.

Caulfield
Cotter sipped at his
coffee.

‘
Only
a man who’s afraid of death understands fear. I’ve never feared it
myself because I was raised to believe that there is a better place
to go after this life ends. I do however realize that most people
are afraid of dying because they have loved ones. I have never had
that in my life. I have always been alone. I actually look forward
to dying in some ways. I imagine that one’s bones do not creak in
heaven.’

Newton stared off at the
distant smoke.

‘
By
the looks of that smoke, we’re right dab in the middle of a lot of
Apaches.’

Cotter finished his coffee and
rose to his feet. He handed the tin cup to Newton and inhaled
deeply. His hooded eyes
continued to dart from one mesa to the
next.

‘
I
heard tell that there could be a thousand or more Apaches out here
somewhere. Tribes that we have not even heard of yet as well as
those we already know.’

Theo Newton swallowed
hard.

‘
Can
you read Apache smoke, sir?’

Cotter nodded.

‘
Indeed.’

‘
What
they saying to each other?’

The wrinkled eyes of the
superior officer turned and focused on his youthful friend. He
smiled and rested a hand on his broad right shoulder.

‘
They’re not happy, son. In fact they’re rather angry that
we are crossing their land. There is some other message in the
smoke though. Something that I’m not sure of.’

‘
What
is it?’

‘
What
on earth does Iron Eyes mean, Theo?’ Cotter stroked his lower lip.
‘I’ve read that several times. Iron Eyes!’

Newton looked
confused.

‘
Beats
me, sir. I’ve never heard of anything called Iron Eyes. Maybe it
means something or someone.’

‘
Those
shots are troubling me, Theo,’ Cotter admitted with a deep frown on
his weathered face. ‘Indians as a rule do not bother with handguns.
They require too much attention in order to keep them in prime
working condition. Indians prefer rifles. The shots that came from
the direction of Devil’s Canyon were gunshots. They were not
rifle-shots.’

‘
Are
you saying that white men are over there someplace?’

Cotter nodded.

‘
Either white men or a white man. Someone is right in the
middle of a whole lot of Apaches, Theo. That troubles me
greatly.’

‘
What’ll we do, sir?’ Newton asked.

Cotter looked hard into his
eyes.

‘
We go
and investigate, Theo. If somebody is in trouble, we’ll help
him.’

‘
What
about the Apaches? This might be a trap. Them Indians might be just
luring us into a trap.’

‘
We’re
paid to take risks, son.’

‘
But

Colonel Caufield Cotter
looked back at his men before returning his attention to the tall
officer.

‘
Get
the men ready to ride for Devil’s Canyon, son. That’s an
order.’

Newton saluted and
obeyed.

What remained of Diamond
City
’s men
folk was a broken group who had still not fully accepted the fact
that nearly a tenth of their fellow citizens had already been slain
by the thirteen outlaws who had unexpectedly ridden into their
midst. What remained were the very young, the very old and those
in-between who posed little or no threat to anyone. For these men
had no knowledge of killing, unlike the outlaws who had taken over
their town. These people were just ordinary hard-working souls who
did not deserve the plague in human form that had infected their
remote settlement. As they tentatively moved around the
blood-splattered streets, trying to go about their daily tasks,
they never once took their eyes from the wide-open door of the
sun-bleached hotel.

‘
Look
at ’em, boys,’ Jardine muttered, glancing briefly out into the
bright street. ‘I never seen so many terrified folks before. The
trouble is, have we killed too many of their kin to be able ever to
turn our backs on the survivors?’

‘
It
weren’t us that done all the killin’, Henry,’ Skeet Bodine
corrected.

‘
Yeah,
I know.’ Henry Jardine knew that things had to change within the
tightly grouped gang of outlaws whom he had led to Diamond City.
For although he had guided them from one profitable bank- and
stage-robbery to another, he knew that the three Darrow brothers
had a different agenda from any of the rest of the outlaws. They
simply could not resist killing and Jardine knew that it was only a
matter of time before they turned their weaponry on him and the
rest of the outlaws.

Jardine himself was no stranger
to killing, but he had always killed for a purpose, the main one
being that he
simply wanted to cover his tracks and eliminate any
evidence of his crimes. That was why he had killed the sheriff and
allowed the telegraph worker to be maimed to stop him sending any
more messages for help to the outside world.

Jardine was well aware that
even he had fallen into the trap of self-delusion that once the
notorious bounty hunter Iron Eyes had disappeared three-quarters of
a year earlier, the odds of their never being hunted down and
brought to account had swung in his fellow
outlaws
’
favor.

But the trail behind the
gang was littered with death: death that had no rhyme nor reason.
Not even to Jardine. The Darrows had simply allowed the pleasure of
killing to overwhelm them. Now they were even dangerous to their
fellow outlaws as well as those whom they saw as their
enemies.

As the Darrows continued to
take their pleasures with the dozen or more females they had
dragged up to their rooms
above the saloon, Jardine had gathered the rest of
his men together in the hotel opposite.

Each and every one of them
knew why Jardine had called them together so abruptly. The time had
come for the Darrow brothers and the rest of the gang to go their
separate ways, but they all knew that men like Toke, Fern and Jade
were not the kind to vex. There was no reasoning with their breed.
The Darrows had relied on their expertise with their arsenal of
weaponry far too long ever to consider a simpler, less bloody
alternative.

Skeet Bodine toyed with his
guns as he stared out through the large window in the hotel foyer.
He was there to watch out for any sign of Toke, Fern or Jade Darrow
emerging from the saloon and to warn his fellow outlaws.

Jardine rested against the
large desk and stared around the faces of his band of seasoned
killers and robbers. Most could be trusted to do as they were told,
yet even a few of these outlaws
had been infected by the sheer brutality
of the Darrows.

‘
I
want you all to think about our situation here, boys,’ Jardine
started. ‘We have to get rid of Toke and his brothers.’

A nervous murmur went around
the other outlaws. They all knew what Jardine meant and yet none
seemed willing to talk about the problem.

Eventually Pop Lomax stepped
forward and rested his knuckles on his gun-grips.

‘
Henry’s right. We gotta kill them varmints before they get
us all strung up.’

Another muffled noise went
around the room.

‘
We
have to try and get rid of them one way or another,’ Cole added.
‘But how do we do it without them critters turning their guns on
us?’

Snake Billow shrugged and
glanced through the open doorway.

‘
We
could give them a share of the money we’ve got stashed in the bank.
Maybe they’d just take it and head on out of this damn
town.’

Clay Moore
laughed.

‘
I
don’t think so.’

‘
Me
neither, Clay.’ Jardine sighed heavily. ‘I figure them boys have
tasted so much blood over the last couple of months that they’ll
just draw their guns and start shootin’, even if we just mention
them leaving Diamond City.’

Doc Weatherspoon walked to
the window and looked up at the open windows above the saloon
veranda. The sound of screaming females had not eased up for more
than an hour. It was starting to get the veteran outlaw
down.

‘
There
was a day when I’d have taken on all three of those boys in a good
old fashioned shoot-out. But now I’m doubtful if any of us could
get the better of them. We could bushwhack ’em, I guess. But that
takes a lot of planning when your chosen targets are scum like the
Darrows. They know every damn trick in the book and have used every
one of them over the years. How can you trick that kinda
critter?’

‘
Ain’t
possible.’ Jonah Clayton shook his head.

‘
We
could just get our scatterguns and wait for them to come out of the
saloon, boys,’ Bodine suggested. ‘They’ll be a tad tuckered after
servicing all them females. We could just give ’em both
barrels.’

Luther Cole ran the palm of
his hand over his bald head.

‘
Skeet’s got a point. That might just work. Half a ton of
buckshot might solve our problems.’

Jardine sucked on his cigar
thoughtfully.

‘
I
don’t think so. I reckon it’d be a fair bet that they’d kill most
of us before we had time to pull back the hammers.’

Cole exhaled loudly as
frustration gnawed at his guts.

‘
Then
how are we gonna get the better of them?’

Jardine smiled
wryly.

‘
I’ve
got me an idea, Luther. What if we let the law do it for
us?’

‘
How
do ya figure we could arrange that, Henry?’ Cole asked with more
than a little curiosity in his deep voice.

‘
We
send a wire to the marshal in Waco,’ Jardine explained.

‘
Ain’t
you forgot that I chopped the telegraph worker’s fingers off?’ Cole
patted his coat pocket where he still kept the dismembered digits.
‘How can we send any messages anyplace?’

Henry Jardine looked smugly
at Cole.

‘
I
know how to handle a telegraph key, Luther. I spent me a very
profitable summer working for Eastern Union once. You can make a
lotta money if you can handle a key.’

‘
What
ya talkin’ about?’

‘
We
are thinkin’ of heading down into Waco and trying our hand at
robbing one of their juiciest banks, right?’ Jardine looked through
the smoke that trailed up from his cigar. ‘Then that’s what we do.
But we have to send a few boys down there to get an idea of the lie
of the land first. What if we send Toke and his
brothers?’

‘
And?’
Lomax scratched his beard.

‘
And
we send a wire to the law down in Waco telling them they got
uninvited guests coming their way.’ Jardine tapped the ash from his
cigar. ‘They’ll get rid of the Darrows for us.’

Red Clayton rubbed the side
of his nose with the barrel of his gun. Then he looked at
Jardine.

‘
Do
you figure that they’re dumb enough to fall for that?’

Henry Jardine pushed himself
away from the desk and dropped his cigar on the floor. He crushed
it beneath his boot and then moved forward.

‘
We’ll
soon find out. Here they come.’

The outlaws inside the hotel
foyer turned their gaze upon the three Darrow brothers as they came
triumphantly out of the saloon together. They had left the females
still crying up in their rooms.

Toke Darrow drew one of his
guns
and
fired at a group of men down the end of the street. One of the men
fell as the bullet tore through his shoulder. Toke roared with
laughter as he led his grinning siblings into the hotel. All of the
outlaws seemed to divert their eyes from the brothers, except
Jardine.

He alone felt no fear as he
walked to the smug outlaws.

‘
Me
and the rest of the gang have been talkin’ about striking at Waco,
Toke,’ Jardine said.

‘
About
time, Henry,’ Toke responded, sliding his gun back into its
holster.

‘
But
we’ve bin trying to figure which of us boys should go down there
and get the lie of the land. I was thinking that maybe Doc and
Skeet,’ Jardine lied.

‘
What
about me and my brothers?’ Toke rested against the desk and rubbed
the sweat from his features. ‘I figure we’ll be better at judging
the place than any of these old-timers.’