Blood of Iron Eyes (5 page)

It was a shuffling noise outside the shack which alerted Iron Eyes that someone was close and getting closer. Within a split second his bony hands had grabbed at both the matched pair of guns and drawn them on to his lap. His eyes darted to the door and stared. It was the stare an eagle would use when watching its grounded prey from a high thermal. It was focused and as sharp as a straight razor.

The sound grew closer.

It was that of feet.

Someone was coming towards the shack.

Iron Eyes went to move but agonizing pain tore through his weary body like the blade of a Bowie knife. He fell backwards until his spine was once more resting against the wooden wall of the shack. The bounty hunter felt helpless. He glanced at the Navy Colts in his hands. The last thing he ought to do was fire his guns. That would bring what was left
of Fontaine’s men down on him like vultures on a fresh carcass, he shrewdly thought.

If anyone were to enter the shack, the sensible thing he should do was dispose of the critter quietly. Either with the grip of one of his guns or anything else that was heavy enough to crush a skull.

Yet Iron Eyes was as stiff as a board and soaked in his own sweat. He was feverish. He only had the guns.

His mind raced.

Ted Cooper had told him that he finished work at the saloon at seven. The sun was still high outside the shack, its fiery light still visible through the sacking drapes. It was still only half-way through the afternoon, he calculated. No later than three or four. Whoever it was coming toward the shack, it was not the friendly bartender.

The feet were definitely getting closer.

Who was it?

Iron Eyes strained to hear.

His fevered mind knew that the footsteps were not that of a young person. They were the feet of someone either old or lame. They slid across the hard ground instead of lifting between steps. The bounty hunter gritted his teeth and felt the cigar fall from his mouth on to his shirt.

He had bitten right through it just as he had almost done with the bullet-casing earlier.

This was a new experience for Iron Eyes. He had
never been unable to get to his feet before.

He did not like the experience.

Sweat dripped from his matted hair.

Iron Eyes tried to move again, and failed.

He was stiff. Every sinew in his lean body seemed to have locked up and refused to respond. His leg no longer hurt, yet he knew that it was the cause of all his problems. Maybe he had not managed to get all the glass out of the wound before he put the red-hot poker on to his torn flesh.

Could that have been why he was feverish?

Iron Eyes licked his dry lips and listened to the noise which grew louder to his trained hunting instincts. How many thousands of animals had he heard move towards him over the years as he lay in deadly wait?

Yet he had been agile then, unlike now.

Now he was stuck like a crippled deer caught in a trap.

Pain burned through him. It seemed to be moving around his body like a wave.

More sweat dripped from his head. He was confused. The last time he had felt this way he had been bitten by a rattler. The leg throbbed. He glanced at the wound. It was hideous. His only consolation was that the bleeding had stopped. His eyes glanced at the earthen floor. He knew that it had soaked up at least a quarter of his blood before he had managed to seal the deep wound.

The trapped man blew the long, wet hair off his
face and continued to stare at the door. He raised both guns and trained them at the ill-fitting shack door. His hands started to shake as if unable to cope with the lightweight weapons in his grip.

Iron Eyes was even more confused.

What was happening to him?

His eyes darted down at the shaking guns in his hands.

What was happening to him? his brain asked again and again.

Then he heard a voice.

It was a woman’s voice. An old woman’s voice.

‘Teddy? Are ya in there, son?’

The door started to be pushed inward. Iron Eyes lowered the guns which had started to feel like lead weights. He rested them on his lap and waited.

‘Teddy? I seen the smoke. What ya doin’ home so early?’

She was tiny. Less than five feet in height. At least six inches less. Her frame was buckled as so may old women’s frames were when they reached a certain age. Her hair was white like snow and her face weathered by at least seventy years of
existence
. A shawl covered her shoulders and she carried a small basket in her left hand.

At first she did not seem to notice that the man on her son’s bed was not her son. She slid one foot ahead of another until she reached half-way into the shack. Then she stopped and looked at Iron Eyes.

The bounty hunter could see that the pupils of both her eyes were white. She was half-blind.

‘That ain’t you is it, Teddy?’ she asked feebly.

‘I’m his friend,’ Iron Eyes said in a low drawl.

Her head tilted. Iron Eyes could see that she was vainly straining to see who had spoken to her. Her feet shuffled a little as she tried to maintain her balance. It was like looking at a toddler who had just learned how to remain upright, he thought.

Life, if lived long enough, turns full circle.

‘Teddy never said that anyone was comin’ here, mister,’ she said before carefully making her way to the only chair in the small structure. ‘I thought that it was strange. Teddy never comes home early. Them folks who own the saloon keep him workin’ all hours for a pittance.’

‘Does Fontaine own the saloon?’ Iron Eyes asked.

‘Reckon so, young ’un. He owns everythin’. Damn crook.’ She lowered her ancient frame down on to the chair and gave out a sigh of relief. ‘Who are ya, boy?’

‘My names Iron Eyes.’

‘Injun?’

‘Nope.’

‘Damn Injuns killed my brother.’ She sighed.

‘Folks around here don’t seem to like Fontaine, do they?’

She smiled. It was a beautiful smile. Her looks had long since faded into history and her teeth
were worn down, but the bounty hunter could still see what she had once been. A spark still burned in her spirited frame.

‘Ain’t it no wonder? That man came in here and just took over. His sort always do. I’ve seen his kind many times over the years. They just come in and steal everythin’, Iron Eyes.’

Iron Eyes went to sit forward but pain forced him to remain exactly where he was. He gave out a gasp.

‘Ya hurt, ain’t ya?’ she said firmly.

‘Yep!’ Iron Eyes admitted. ‘I had me a run-in with a lot of Fontaine’s hired guns, ma’am.’

‘They shoot ya?’ She seemed concerned.

‘No, ma’am. But they sure tried.’

‘What’s wrong with ya then?’ Her head kept moving as her eyes vainly attempted to see.

‘I had to throw myself through a window.’ Iron Eyes sighed as he gently rubbed his leg. ‘It was closed at the time. I managed to get a chunk of the glass in my leg.’

‘Ya need a doctor?’

‘Nope. I tended myself, ma’am.’ Iron Eyes felt hot. Hotter than he should have felt. Sweat had soaked every stitch of his clothing. ‘I just got me a real strange feelin’. I’ve got a fever, I reckon. Must have bin the glass. Must have bin dirty or
somethin
’.’

The old woman rose carefully. She opened up the basket and looked inside it. She tutted and
then squinted at him.

‘Ya needs mould,’ she said. ‘Mouldy cheese or bread or the likes. Mould can break a fever. Don’t know how or why, but it does.’

‘Mould? Ain’t that poison?’ the bounty hunter queried. ‘I don’t wanna eat nothin’ that’s
poisonous
, ma’am. Thanks all the same.’

She shuffled toward the door.

‘Don’t ya go arguin’ with old Bessie Cooper, boy. My ma always said that mould could break a fever. Ya don’t wanna go callin’ my ma a liar, do ya?’

‘I’m too tuckered to argue, ma’am.’

‘Good! I might be old but I can still look after myself!’ She muttered. ‘Stay there! I’ll make ya better!’

‘Where ya goin’?’ Iron Eyes asked.

‘To get some mouldy bread from my larder! she replied. ‘My shacks only a few yards from here! You stay put! Right! That’s an order!’

Iron Eyes watched as she went back out into the sunlight. He rested the back of his head against the wooden wall and exhaled.

‘OK, Bessie Cooper. I reckon you’d win if we tussled.’

The afternoon sun was falling across the fertile grassland range on its daily descent to signal to the multitude of creatures below its fiery orb that night was only an hour or so away. The swaying grass which belied the arid deserts that dominated most of the vast territory continued to feed the thousands of steers as it had done since the first pioneers discovered this Eden, in a territory that some claimed had been created by the Satan himself. Red sheets of cloud whispers hung across the blue sky as the blazing sun headed earthward the same way it had done since time began. The buildings of Hope seemed bathed in a crimson paint that only the devil would have chosen from his fiery palette.

The innocent men and women who lived within the boundaries of the sun-bleached town felt that it might be an omen. They had already seen the stranger battle against Brewster Fontaine’s men in
deadly combat. For the first time they had witnessed someone actually getting the better of Fontaine’s army of hired gunmen.

In a few minutes Iron Eyes had proved that Fontaine was not invincible. The residents of Hope at last had a glimmer of that precious emotion coursing through their veins again. The name of the town had long been an irony.

Now it was real and Fontaine was not oblivious to the fact.

The last thing he wanted was a mutiny amongst the people he had controlled for so many years. He was worried and it showed across his handsome carved features.

He had to assert his power over them once again, and do it fast. There was no room for complacency. He was well aware that the hundreds of honest men living in the town and its neighbours outnumbered his deadly army. If they rediscovered the courage of which he had brutally stripped them, no amount of hired killers could stop them.

Fontaine sat amid twenty of his gunmen in the very centre of the Spinning Wheel. A handful of townspeople whom he did not employ fringed the walls, downing their beer and whiskey.

The Hope businessman ensured that the table where he brooded was surrounded by his men. He had his back well covered should anyone suddenly get ambitious.

Then it happened. 

One of the drinkers suddenly got loud. That was always a bad sign in any drinking- or
gambling-hole
. For some folks get deaf when they have consumed too much liquor. They also get a false sense of their own worth.

‘Ya ain’t lookin’ so big now, Fontaine!’ the drunken man screamed out across the saloon. ‘That scarecrow whooped ya ass real good! Ya lost a lotta men this afternoon, boy! Reckon ya gonna lose a lot more!’

The hired guns all turned and stared at the man who had risen to his feet and was swaying like a blade of long grass out on the range. He had a gunbelt strapped around his middle and his right hand rested on the grip of a gun he had long since lost the ability to use.

‘What’ll we do, boss?’ one of the standing men called Big Harry asked.

Fontaine stared at the whiskey bottle which had less than three fingers of liquor remaining inside its clear moulded glass shape. Riley was to his left and Keno to his right.

‘Shut his mouth up!’ Fontaine replied without bothering to look at Big Harry.

The large gunman led the rest of the gunmen towards the shouting man.

‘Stay back, ya bastards!’ the drunken man shouted. ‘I’ll kill ya all if ya don’t!’

‘Easy, old-timer!’ Big Harry said as he and his fellow gun hands continued to close in on the irate 
man. ‘Ya liquored up and ain’t in no fit state to kill no one!’

‘Shut the hell up, Hyram!’ one of the other seated men nervously said to the swaying man. ‘Sit down before ya gets yaself killed! These boys get paid to kill the likes of us, and ya ain’t no gunslinger! Sit down!’

‘I ain’t feared of no trail trash like this bunch, Joe!’ the man slurred. ‘I killed me a lotta critters like them in the old days! That scarecrow showed us how to kill these lily-livered bastards this
afternoon
! It ain’t hard! Ya just draws and shoots!’

Then he decided to demonstrate. It was to be his last mistake in a life of many similar errors.

The drunken man hauled his gun from its holster and clawed with his thumb at the hammer. It had been a long time since he had attempted to do anything so foolhardy. The gun had not seen a drop of gun-oil in a decade. Its hammer was rigid with rust, as was its trigger.

That meant nothing to Fontaine’s henchmen.

Big Harry drew and blasted a hole through the man named Hyram’s midriff. Guts and blood
splattered
all over the wall behind the drunken man. Then the rest of the gunmen copied the deadly action. The acrid aroma of gunsmoke choked the seated onlookers. The deafening roar of gunfire shook the saloon’s interior.

Before the body hit the floor another dozen bullets had torn him to shreds. The remaining 
men sat drinking around the corpse and stared in disbelief at the ferocity of the attack. They kept their hands on the tables before them so that the gunslingers would not turn their venom on them as well.

‘What’ll we do with this, boss?’ Big Harry asked through the clouds of gunsmoke that swirled around the saloon as he pointed at the body.

‘Throw it out front with the rest of the garbage, Harry,’ Fontaine muttered. ‘The undertaker will take care of it!’

Big Harry touched the brim of his hat and waved at the closest four of the gunmen. The
quartet
of gunmen grabbed the blood-soaked body by its arms and feet and carried it across the floor towards the swing-doors. A trail of blood marked their route over the sawdust.

They unceremoniously tossed what was left of the drunk’s body out on to the sand between the hitching-rails. The horses shied away from the smell and sight of death. Only their leather reins secured to the rails prevented them from
galloping
away in terror.

The henchmen walked back into the Spinning Wheel and resumed their places around their paymaster.

Fontaine looked to either side of him at Keno and Riley and cleared his throat. They continued to talk and drink. ‘Remind me, what do I pay you boys for?’

‘Killin’ folks!’ Riley answered.

‘Then why didn’t ya get up and kill that drunk?’ Fontaine hissed like a snake.

‘What drunk?’ Riley joked.

Keno leaned forward and rested both elbows on the table. He glanced at Fontaine hard.

‘What’s wrong, boss? We lost men before and ya didn’t get yaself all worked up then! What’s
different
?’

‘Where could Iron Eyes have gone?’ Fontaine asked for the hundredth time. ‘Men can’t just disappear like that into thin air! Where did Iron Eyes go?’

Riley held the thimble glass in his left hand and gazed at the amber liquid in it. He downed the whiskey and then placed the glass back down on to the table.

‘We’ll get the varmint!’ he slurred. ‘Ain’t no way that he’ll manage to get out of this town without one of the boys noticing, boss. I sent Clem to call in every one of our boys from around the range. They’ll be here before midnight!’

Keno poured himself and Riley another drink from the bottle.

‘Frank’s right, boss. Iron Eyes must be wounded ’coz ya found his blood out there on the
boardwalk
. I figure he’s curled up underneath one of them boardwalks waiting to die!’

Fontaine sighed.

‘That’s the liquor talking, Keno! Iron Eyes might
be wounded but his sort don’t just curl up and wait to die! His sort tries to take as many folks as he can with him to hell! Nope, I reckon that bounty hunter is hiding to get the drop on the rest of us!’

Riley glanced at his boss.

‘I’ve got the rest of the boys huntin’ that bastard! If he’s anywhere in Hope they’ll find him, boss! Stop frettin’!’

‘I ain’t frettin’, Riley!’ Fontaine snarled. ‘I’m just not used to havin’ someone loose in town that’s as good as he is with his guns! He’s already slaughtered almost a third of my men! He could strike at any time at any place! I don’t cotton to folks that hit what they’re aimin’ at, Riley! He might aim his guns at me!’

‘Maybe ya should have paid him the bounty money,’ Keno suggested. ‘He sure got worked up when he realized that ya wasn’t gonna let him get his hands on that reward money!’

‘Iron Eyes must be loco!’ Riley growled. ‘No sane
hombre
would have gone up against so many guns! Yep! Iron Eyes must be plumb loco!’

Walt Jason, another of Fontaine’s hired guns, walked through the swing-doors of the saloon and ambled across the sawdust towards Fontaine’s table. The young gunslinger pulled out a
telegraph
message from his vest-pocket and handed it to his boss.

‘The telegraph operator gave me this for ya, boss!’ Jason said, gazing around at the blood which 
covered the floor and wall.

Fontaine unfolded the paper and read the brief message. His eyes widened as he absorbed the words.

‘Damn it all! If I ain’t got enough troubles! Now this!’

‘What’s wrong, boss?’ Keno asked.

‘Looks like we got us company headed this way!’ Fontaine said in a heavy voice. ‘A certain Herbert Carmichael has been sent here from Washington to try and steal our territory out from under us. He wants to turn old Arizona into another state! If that happens I’ll be ruined!’

The faces of the two gunmen seated on either side of Fontaine suddenly went pale. Every hired gun who roamed the territories knew what would happen once statehood took over.

‘We can’t allow that critter to pull the rug out from under us, boss!’ Keno said urgently.

‘We have to stop him!’ Riley added.

‘I know!’ Fontaine agreed. ‘The trouble is that Carmichael has himself a military escort. Anything we do will be reported back East. It might ricochet in our faces if we just kill them. The government might decide to send in a hundred times as many troopers with another Carmichael! There has to be another way!’

‘What can we do?’ Keno asked. ‘I reckon we just ought to kill them all and see what happens!’

‘Keno’s right, boss!’ Riley nodded. 

‘We have to kill him and his escort in a way that will make them Eastern dudes think that this is one territory that’s just too wild to be tamed just yet!’ Fontaine replied. ‘But how are we going to do that?’

‘What if we ambush him and make it look like it’s Injuns on the warpath?’ Riley suggested. ‘If we got all the boys together and dressed up like redskins, we could attack them! Them Easterners don’t cotton to Injuns!’

‘That might work!’ Fontaine nodded in
agreement
. ‘They might swallow that one if we did it right! They ain’t to know that there ain’t an Indian within fifty miles of here! We kill just enough of them to make them turn tail and run! That way the news will get back East fast! They might just think that Arizona is still too wild to become a state!’

‘It might work!’ Keno shrugged.

‘What about Iron Eyes?’ Riley asked Fontaine. ‘We ain’t caught him yet, boss!’

‘Iron Eyes can wait!’ Fontaine stood and threw the telegraph message at the floor. ‘First we have to bushwhack this Carmichael critter!’

Fontaine led his men out of the saloon to where their horses were tied to the hitching-rails. Ted Cooper polished a beer-glass and silently watched from behind the bar counter as the deadly hired killers mounted their horses and rode in the
direction
of Fontaine’s house.

He had heard every word. 

Whoever this Carmichael was, the bartender thought, he was in trouble. Real big trouble.

The wall clock started to chime across the room. His eyes glanced at it and saw that it was seven. Slim Parker, his relief bartender entered the Spinning Wheel.

‘Howdy, Ted!’ Parker said as he started to unwrap his white apron. ‘Reckon ya ready to go home, huh?’

Cooper removed his apron, then picked up his coat from under the counter. He slipped it on.

‘Yeah! It’s bin a real strange day, Slim!’ Cooper said.

Parker paused and looked at the bloody sawdust and the human debris covering the wall behind the quiet drinkers.

‘Who got shot?’

‘Hyram!’ Cooper shrugged. ‘He got himself liquored up and Fontaine had his boys shut him up permanent!’

‘I’d better get a bucket of soapy water and wash this mess down before it starts to stink the saloon out!’ Slim Parker sighed.

‘See ya!’ Cooper patted the shoulder of his pal and headed for the rear door leading to the back alleys which stretched from one end of Hope to the other. He entered the shadows and glanced up at the red sky. He started walking. He knew the alleys would take him back to his small shack and the guest he had sent there hours earlier. He was 
also thankful that he had brushed away all evidence of the bleeding bounty hunter’s
departure
. If any of Fontaine’s men had spotted the trail of blood they would have followed.

With every step Cooper wondered if Iron Eyes could possibly still be alive. The pitifully thin bounty hunter had been pumping blood the last time he had seen him. The bartender knew that unless the flow of blood had been stopped, there was no chance of Iron Eyes having survived since he had last seen him.

Was it possible for him to have survived this long?

No normal human being could have, yet was the monstrous Iron Eyes actually human? He appeared more like a monster than anything created in his Maker’s image!

Cooper quickened his pace. He recalled the horrific face of the bounty hunter. Iron Eyes had looked more dead than alive even before he had been wounded.

The high fences shielded Cooper from prying eyes, just as they had hidden the strange rider when he galloped away from the back of the saloon.

Cooper knew it would soon be dark.

It could not come too soon for the nervous bartender.