The Spirit of Iron Eyes (2 page)

Debris showered over the bounty
hunter as another volley of bullets passed within inches of the
tall man
’s
head.

Iron Eyes dropped on to one knee and
returned fire as more shots rang out from the direction of the
saloon.

Looking up, he saw at least a dozen gunmen
fanning their gun hammers as they gave cover to the notorious
Diamond Back Jones.

Iron Eyes rolled over and over back towards
the alley as the ground all around him was churned up by the deadly
bullets which sought his emaciated frame.

He returned fire and watched one of the
gunmen drop lifelessly into the sand.

More shots echoed around Dry Gulch. They
ricocheted off the wall behind him sending clouds of choking dust
covering the kneeling man.

Iron Eyes rubbed his face and squinted. He
saw as Diamond Back was given a fresh mount and galloped off beyond
the firing gunmen.

‘
Damn!’ Iron Eyes cursed as he fired back again at the
men.

One man twisted on his high
heels and fell under the hoofs of the tethered mounts as one of
Iron Eyes
’
bullets hit him squarely in the chest. Then another man strode out
of the saloon with a double-barreled shotgun in his
hands.

Before Iron Eyes could cock the hammers of
his guns again, he saw the long barrels blast out in his direction.
A massive chunk of whitewashed adobe was severed from the side wall
of the building above him.

It fell heavily on top of the
bounty hunter
’s head.

Iron Eyes felt a crippling pain inside his
skull as the heavy debris forced his face into the dust.

For a split second, everything went black in
the mind of the prostrate figure. He then heard the muffled sound
of boots behind him in the alley.

Somehow he managed to turn on to his side
and stare at the alley.

His blurred eyes tried to focus. Then he saw
two men rushing at him with their guns cocked and ready.

The men started to fire at the stunned
figure. The deafening noise and blinding flashes of gunfire ripped
through the alley and blasted at the ground next to him.

Iron Eyes
’ left hand plucked one of the
Navy Colts off the ground and aimed at them.

With all his strength he dragged back the
hammer with his thumb and then squeezed its trigger. He repeated
the action three times more until he was convinced that the gunmen
were either dead or wounded.

Then bullets rained down on the
bounty hunter again from the saloon. He felt blood trickling down
from his hairline as one of the gunmen
’s shots burned through his
hair.

Iron Eyes rolled over again and faced what
was left of his attackers.

There were about eight of them as far as his
dazed eyes could tell. Yet Iron Eyes knew that he was hurt and not
hitting his targets. The figures were swaying and blurred.

‘
Get
him, boys!’ A voice rang out as more shots came searching for the
bounty hunter.

Iron Eyes knew that Jones must
have paid these men to buy him time. Time the outlaw needed to get
away. Time to put a lot of distance between
himself and the legendary
hunter of men.

He raised himself up on to his knees and
aimed the barrels of his deadly guns at the men. Yet he could not
tell if his eyes were lying to him. It was like looking through a
heat haze even worse than the one which already filled the streets
of Dry Gulch.

As each of the gunmen fired, Iron Eyes fired
at the sound their pistols were making.

He saw men spinning and falling as his
bullets slowly began to find their targets.

Then he saw the man with the shotgun
again.

Iron Eyes blasted at the man with both Navy
Colts.

The shotgun went flying into
the air as the man was hit off his feet. A spray of blood
splattered across the saloon
’s whitewashed frontage.

‘
Who
is that
hombre?’
one of the gunmen screamed out from across the
street.

‘
Diamond Back said he was a bounty hunter!’ another voice
answered from beside the line of skittish mounts.

‘
A
bounty hunter? He ain’t even human!’ another man yelled.

‘
Damn
right I ain’t!’ Iron Eyes snorted under his breath as he opened the
chambers of his red-hot guns.

Iron Eyes emptied the spent
shells from his guns, then filled their chambers with bullets from
his deep pockets. As he slid the last of the bullets into the Navy
Colts, he rose to his full height and
spat the twisted cigar from his
lips.

‘
Ready
or not, I’m comin’,’ Iron Eyes shouted as he walked towards the
startled onlookers.

There was an astonished gasp from the men
who faced him.

With blood streaming down his
grotesque face he fired both weapons in unison. The long tails of
his coat flapped violently as the gunmen
’s shots missed his painfully thin
body and tore at the weathered bloodstained fabric.

Shot after shot spewed from the barrels of
his Navy .36s as the bounty hunter advanced on his attackers. His
flared nostrils could smell their terror.

With every step of his long legs, Iron Eyes
saw the men buckle as his deadly bullets tore into them.

By the time the dazed gaunt figure reached
the line of terrified horses outside the saloon, Iron Eyes knew
that he had killed them all.

There was blood everywhere across the bright
dust. It traced between the twisted bodies that lay all around him.
His eyes narrowed and stared at the dust that hung on the hot air,
marking the trail left by the fleeing Diamond Back Jones.

Iron Eyes tucked one pistol into his belt,
leaned against the saddle of one of the horses and then looked up
at the saloon and the frightened faces in the darkness.

He produced a golden eagle from
one of his pockets and tossed it into the saloon
’s dark interior.

‘
Whiskey!’ Iron Eyes growled as blood dripped from his limp
hair. ‘Somebody better get me a few bottles of whiskey! I got me an
outlaw to trail and kill.’

The blazing heat was as merciless as the
rider who forced his exhausted pony through it. Standing in his
stirrups, the horseman continued to whip his long reins across the
shoulders of the pitiful animal beneath him. The tails of his long
bloodstained coat flapped over the cantle of his saddle as his long
black hair moved up and down on his back like the wings of a bat
seeking the sanctuary of a distant cave.

The chase had started again.

The blood had dried on his scalp an hour
earlier but Iron Eyes had already forgotten the wound which had
almost cost him his life in Dry Gulch far behind him.

He had a crumpled wanted poster buried in
his deep coat pocket, amid countless loose bullets. The bounty
hunter had trailed his prey for nearly a week before he had reached
Dry Gulch.

Somehow Diamond Back Jones had managed to
escape.

Now Iron Eyes was forced again to trail his
prey. He could see nothing except the tracks on the prairie floor
before his exhausted pony.

Mile after mile he had followed the outlaw
until he had reached this remote inhospitable place. Yet Iron Eyes
did not seem to notice that the land itself was now becoming as
much an enemy as the unseen rider far ahead of him.

The hoof-tracks led straight on
across the blindingly bright terrain.
They were luring him like bait and he
knew it. Yet he would not stop following Jones. Not now. Not after
he had been so close to collecting the price on his head back in
Dry Gulch.

The sight before him would have terrified
any normal man, but not this deadly creature. He feared
nothing.

The bullet-
colored eyes had never lit upon
anything which gave them reason to doubt his own deadly ability
with his matched pair of Navy Colts. For death had ridden on his
shoulder for his entire life and he knew that there was a time for
all things to die. He would accept his own fate when it came, but
not give his enemies an easy target.

Apache war smoke drifted up from beyond the
distant sea of sagebrush. It twisted into the cloudless blue sky
and hung there for knowing eyes to read its dark ominous
message.

Iron Eyes could not read the message in the
smoke but knew it had to be about either Jones or himself.

The sun-baked prairie was one
place where the
notorious bounty hunter did not want to get cornered by
anyone, especially the Apaches who ruled this seemingly barren
land. Iron Eyes wondered why the outlaw had headed straight into
such a dangerous place at all.

Iron Eyes drew in his reins, stared up at
the smoke and squinted hard into the distance. He ran his long bony
fingers through his lank matted hair and growled angrily.

Whatever the smoke said, he knew it had
something to do with his being in the middle of Apache land. The
Indians had spotted him following the trail left by the outlaw from
the sand cliffs which edged the entire prairie.

He reached back to one of his saddle-bag
satchels and flicked the metal fastening open. He dragged out a
full bottle of whiskey and raised its neck to his razor sharp
teeth.

Iron Eyes pulled the cork from the black
glass and spat it at the sandy ground. The aroma of the cheap
liquor filled his nostrils a second before he curled his scarred
lips around the bottle neck.

He swallowed hard, then lowered it and
sighed heavily.

His thin neck turned as his keen eyes
studied every inch of the horizon which surrounded him.

Then he saw them.

There were two other plumes of
black war smoke behind him. One to the east and the other to the
west. It became obvious to the gaunt skeletal figure that the
Indians ahead had been warned
of his intrusion into Apache territory by the
smoke signals far behind him.

They had spotted him hours earlier and by
now, Iron Eyes suspected that probably every one of the tribe knew
that the man known to them as the living ghost was almost within
range of their rifles and bows.

Iron Eyes hated the Apache even more than he
hated most living creatures. They were brave. Too brave. In all his
many encounters with their various peoples, he had always been
badly injured whenever they ran into one another.

He had killed many men in his time and a lot
of them had been Indians. But he only hunted and killed white men
for the price on their heads. The Apache were different. They
usually attacked him and that annoyed the tall rider.

There was no profit in killing anyone for
free.

The bounty hunter adjusted the two lethal
pistols whose grips jutted from his belt above the buckle. As
always, they were loaded and ready for action.

The cold eyes glanced again at the war smoke
ahead of him as he sipped at the whiskey thoughtfully.

He started to wonder how many Apache were
out there beyond the sagebrush.

A hunting party?

Somehow he doubted it. Every
ounce of his being told him that there were far more Apaches ahead
of him than he had ever had the misfortune
of meeting before.

He searched amongst the bullets in his coat
pocket and pulled out the grubby poster and stared at it hard. The
crude photographic image was not clear enough to be certain, but
Iron Eyes began to wonder if Diamond Back Jones might not be part
Indian himself.

Could that be why the deadly outlaw had led
the bounty hunter here?

Was Diamond Back actually an Apache?

The thought nagged at the tall man.

Was he now the hunted and no longer the
hunter?

Had Diamond Back Jones turned the tables on
him?

Iron Eyes stepped off the pony and continued
taking mouthfuls of whiskey as he walked around his lathered-up
mount. No matter how much liquor he swallowed, he could not rid his
mouth of the bitter taste that lingered.

He knew that there was no safe way out of
this land.

Iron Eyes had been drawn into a well-laid
trap.

From the sandy ridge the outlaw focused his
binoculars on Iron Eyes far below on the prairie floor. Diamond
Back Jones stood amid the hundred or more Apache braves watching
the solitary figure who was standing beside the pitiful pony,
drinking his whiskey. He lowered the glasses and glanced across at
the stone-faced Apache chief Conchowata.

‘
Iron
Eyes!’ Diamond Back Jones said in an almost triumphant way. ‘I told
you that I would bring the evil one here, great chief. Didn’t
I?’

‘
You
did, my brother,’ Conchowata agreed. ‘You have fulfilled your
promise to your people. When you went to learn the ways of the
white eyes, I thought they would destroy you as they have destroyed
everything Apache. But I was wrong.’

‘
He
looks a little confused.’ The smile that had graced Jones’s face
for more than an hour grew wider with every passing
heartbeat.

‘
The
one known as Iron Eyes must be mighty scared!’ the chief grunted
forcefully.

‘
I
don’t think Iron Eyes has ever been scared in his whole life,
Conchowata,’ Diamond Back Jones said as he handed the binoculars to
the painted Apache chieftain. Take a closer look at his face
through them glasses.’