Iron Eyes Must Die (12 page)

Iron Eyes gritted his teeth, pulled out a
match and dragged it across the top of the desk. The flame flared.
His eyes darted around the office until he spotted a metal holder
with a few inches of white wax candle remaining on it.

‘
Quick, get that candle,’ he said.

The livery man moved across the office and
brought back the candle and its holder. Iron Eyes touched the
curled wick with the match and then blew it out. The candlelight
was dim but good enough for the bounty hunter to read the posters
he had risked his neck to find.

One by one Iron Eyes looked at the crude
photographic images, then tossed the posters away until he saw the
face of the sheriff staring up at him.

‘
Brook
Payne!’ he muttered staring at the poster. ‘Worth a pretty
penny.’

He continued to look through the rest of the
posters.

In less than five minutes Iron Eyes had
identified each of the faces of the men who had imprisoned him. He
folded up the wanted posters and pushed them into the deep left
pocket of his trail coat.

‘
Satisfied now?’ Hanney asked nervously.

‘
Yep.’
Iron Eyes nodded. He snuffed out the candle with his finger and
thumb and stood. ‘C’mon, Hanney! Now I got me the information I was
after. Now I can take on them varmints. Now them stars on their
vests are nothin’ more than targets.’

The two men walked to the side door.

Hanney paused.

‘
Did I
just see ya smilin’, Iron Eyes?’

‘
When?’

‘
Just
before ya killed that candlelight. I’m damn sure I saw a smile on
that ugly face of yours. Did I?’

‘
That
was just a few of my scars joining up.’ The bounty hunter sighed
‘C’mon.’

Iron Eyes led the older man out into the rear
yard of the office. They both knelt amid the high weeds and studied
the area carefully.

‘
What
was the tally?’ Hanney asked, his weathered hands cradling the
shotgun across his chest.

‘
Two
thousand bucks!’ Iron Eyes whispered.

‘
Is
that what these critters are worth?’

‘
Yep.
Dead or alive!’

‘
And I
figured they was all worthless trash.’ Hanney laughed.

Iron Eyes tapped his
companion
’s
shoulder and rose to head for the small wall. Just as they reached
it, the bounty hunter looked back at the bearded face illuminated
in the starlight.

‘
I’m
gonna teach them outlaws that it don’t pay to put a bounty on the
head of Iron Eyes! I’ll teach ’em. Teach ’em permanent! Now Iron
Eyes is gonna make war!’

‘
I’m
still gonna cover ya back, boy!’ Hanney said.

Iron Eyes pulled one of his Navy Colts from
his pocket and cocked its hammer.

‘
I
reckon it’s our turn to start huntin’, old-timer!’

Hanney pulled back both hammers on his
shotgun until they locked.

‘
I’m
ready, boy!’

Both men slid over the low wall and crawled
into the concealing undergrowth and headed towards the
streetlights.

The tide had turned for the wounded Iron
Eyes. He was now in control. The hunters had become the hunted. The
scent of his prey was in the flared nostrils of the most deadly
bounty hunter in the Wild West. Iron Eyes moved quickly across the
street and stopped beside a tall, painted barber-pole. Hanney
rested in the shadow cast across the boardwalk by the silent man in
the long trail coat.

‘
Where
do ya reckon they are, boy?’ Hanney asked, clutching his hefty
weapon in his strong hands.

Iron Eyes pulled a twisted half-cigar from
his bloodstained shirt-pocket and placed it between his teeth. He
struck a match and inhaled the strong smoke deeply.

‘
The
saloon!’ he answered.

Nervously,
Hanney peered around Iron Eyes’
arm at the noisy Happy Suds saloon. It was roughly sixty yards from
the barber shop. Light cascaded out from its door and windows and
spread across the street.

‘
Sounds like them outlaws still got themselves a heap of
company, Iron Eyes,’ the livery man observed.

Iron Eyes sucked on the cigar and stared
unblinkingly at the door of the saloon. To most people it would
have just sounded like a jumble of raised voices. His trained ears
could actually recognize the voices of the surviving men who had
trained their rifles on him the previous evening.

‘
There
are over a dozen of them. Maybe as many as twenty,’ he said. ‘The
three wanted men are amongst the varmints.’

‘
What’ll we do?’

‘
We
got us a lot of choices, Hanney.’ Iron Eyes sighed. ‘I could walk
in that saloon and start killin’, or I could wait out here for them
to get liquored up.’

‘
I
likes the second one best.’

Iron Eyes looked down at his companion.

‘
You
head up on to one of these verandas and wait.’

‘
But I
thought you and me was gonna face them together, boy.’ Hanney
seemed disturbed. ‘I ain’t scared.’

‘
I
know you ain’t.’ Iron Eyes nodded. ‘But it makes better sense for
you to get up high looking over me for trouble. Like ya said, to
cover my back. Right?’

Suddenly a noise made the bounty hunter turn
his head. He stared at the men who were coming out of the
saloon.

‘
Get
going, old-timer. Here they come!’

Iron Eyes watched the livery man race along
the boardwalk and climb the wooden steps which led to the veranda
of the general store. He then pulled his pair of Navy .36s out of
his deep pockets and pushed them into his belt. Both gun grips
jutted out over his belt buckle as he stared through the cigar
smoke down the street.

The lantern light glinted off the deputy
stars pinned to the chests of the three remaining well-oiled
outlaws who ventured out of the illuminated saloon. Outlaws Frank
Mayo, Lenny Olsen and Matt Cole still had more than a dozen of
their followers with them.

Each of the men held Winchesters in their
hands.

The rowdy group stepped down
from the boardwalk on to the dusty street and headed back towards
the
sheriff’s office to resume their search for the elusive
bounty hunter.

The storm that had been brewing for several
hours across the desert was now above the streets of Rio Concho.
Angry black clouds swirled over the weathered buildings as forks of
lightning rent the skies around the remote settlement. It was as if
the heavens themselves had chosen to cage the people within the
town.

As the sky lit up in a blinding
flash of terrifying force, Iron Eyes walked out from the shadows
and stood defiantly in
the middle of the street. He watched silently as
fifteen figures drew closer.

Then, one by one, the men stopped as they saw
the horrifying vision before them. None of the outlaws or their
dozen henchmen had ever seen anything quite so fearsome before.

Suddenly, the man for whom they had vainly
searched was standing less than forty feet away from them. The
lightning flashed its bright light across the grips of his guns as
he squared up to them.

The desert breeze moved the long black mane
of hair and ragged coat-tails of the bounty hunter. Nothing else
moved on the awesome figure. He was like something carved out of a
block of stone.

His disfigured face remained emotionless.

The unblinking
bullet-
colored eyes stared at the large group of men. There was a
grim warning in them as they burned across the distance between
them.

It was the warning of impending doom.

Fearfully, the
town
’s
menfolk realized what they were facing in the shape of the gruesome
bounty hunter. They backed away from the men with stars pinned to
their chests. The three outlaws cranked the levers of their rifles
and walked closer to Iron Eyes.

‘
Let’s
finish this, boys,’ Frank Mayo yelled out. ‘Old Brook should have
killed that critter when we caught him last night. Let’s kill him
and collect that outlaw bounty on his head.’

‘
He
can’t get us all.’ Larry Olsen tried to convince himself
loudly.

‘
Look
at him, boys.’ Matt Cole sniggered. ‘He’s half-dead
already!’

Like a creature from the bowels of hell, Iron
Eyes raised his hands until his bony fingers were above the grips
of his lethal guns. Slowly, he started to walk towards them.

The outlaws stopped. They were frozen with
terror.

‘
I’m
gonna kill ya all!’ Iron Eyes called out above the sound of
rumbling thunder. ‘You’re dead meat!’

Then the three outlaws realized that the
towns-people they had paid to help them had scattered in all
directions. Within a single beat of their hearts, the men found
that they were facing the infamous bounty hunter alone.

‘
The
yella bastards!’ Olsen yelled out.

‘
Get
back here!’ Mayo screamed.

‘
We
paid you cowards!’ Cole shouted.

Iron Eyes stopped.

‘
Dead
or alive!’ he spat. ‘You’re all wanted dead or alive! In my book,
that just means dead!’

The three outlaws fanned out in an attempt to
make it harder for Iron Eyes to get a bead on them. None of them
knew that it was a vain exercise.

Suddenly the barrels of each of the primed
Winchesters were swung around and aimed straight at the thin
figure.

‘
Kill
him!’ Cole yelled.

Faster than any of the outlaws
could see, Iron Eyes drew both his guns from his
belt, cocked their
hammers and squeezed their triggers. Before a single bullet left
any of the three outlaws’ rifle barrels, Iron Eyes had emptied the
chambers of his Navy Colts into them.

The men were knocked off their
feet by the sheer power of the bullets that tore through them.
Their lifeless bodies crashed heavily into the dusty ground
as
gun smoke
trailed from his hot gun barrels and drifted over the dead
outlaws.

Iron Eyes shook the spent bullets from his
Navy Colts and was about to walk towards the blood-soaked corpses
when the voice of Duke Hanney rang out above him.

‘
Look
out, boy!’

The bounty
hunter
’s
eyes darted up to the veranda where Hanney was standing with his
shotgun raised to his shoulder.

‘
Duck,
ya long-legged idiot!’ Hanney shouted.

The sound of a rifle being
cocked to his left echoed along the main street. Iron Eyes twisted
on his heels and saw one
of the townsmen aiming his Winchester straight at
him. He threw himself into the dust as a flash erupted from the
barrel of the rifle. A bullet missed his head by only an
inch.

Then a deafening blast rang out.

Two barrels of lethal buckshot
spewed down from Duke Hanney
’s shotgun. Iron Eyes watched as the rifleman was
torn apart by the venomous accuracy of the old-timer.

Blood and flesh splattered over the window
and wall of the storefront. The body staggered, then fell
lifelessly from the boardwalk.

Iron Eyes looked up at the livery man and got
to his feet.

‘
I’m
obliged,
Hanney.’

‘
I
told ya I’d cover ya back.’ Hanney nodded and reloaded the shotgun
before descending the flight of stairs down to the
street.

Iron Eyes looked around the empty street as
his bony fingers quickly reloaded his guns.

‘
I got
me a feelin’ this ain’t over yet, Hanney.’

‘
But
ya killed them all, boy.’ Hanney looked into the troubled face.
‘The rest of the townsfolk these outlaws hired won’t try nothin’
now.’

‘
It
ain’t them I’m troubled about,’ said Iron Eyes.

‘
It
ain’t?’

‘
Nope.’ Iron Eyes tucked one of his guns into his belt and
held on to the other as he stared off into the distance. ‘Like ya
said, we’ve done for them.’

The sky flashed above Rio Concho as lightning
forked down into the desert a few miles from them. Both men glanced
up at the clouds that swirled in the troubled sky. Then a deafening
thunderclap shook them and the ground beneath their feet. It was
like the sound of stampeding herd.

‘
What
ya lookin’ at, boy?’ Hanney asked curiously.

‘
I’m
lookin’ at them six riders headed this way.’ Iron Eyes spat out his
cigar and pointed his still smoking gun towards the desert.
‘Whoever they are, they’re loaded for bear!’

Iron Eyes led Duke Hanney back across the
windswept town until he reached the telegraph office. Rain had
started to fall as the rods of golden lightning drew closer to the
border town. Iron Eyes stepped up on to the boardwalk and stared at
the store frontage. The door had been kicked off its hinges by
Brook Payne and his cohorts as soon as the outlaws had arrived in
Rio Concho. The bounty hunter entered the office and stared at the
damaged equipment. He picked up an oil-lamp and lit its wick. As
the room suddenly brightened, he turned to the bearded man.