The Ghost of Iron Eyes (An Iron Eyes Western Book 8) (11 page)

Like the portents of doom,
the sound of the painted horsemen echoed across the vast
desert.

Colonel
Caufield Cotter raised an arm,
pulled back on his reins and stopped his powerful white charger.
The rest of the Rangers emulated their leader. Cotter swung the
horse around and stared off at the distant horizon.

Dust rose heavenward from
the unseen riders.

There was nowhere to
go.

The haunting sound of Apache
voices rang out over the seasoned horseman as he steadied his
skittish mount. Even the magnificent charger knew that they had
ridden down the throat of a monster. It had yet to close its jaws
and consume them, but time was running out fast.

Damn fast.

Lieutenant Newton kneed his
horse to walk around the charger as he too surveyed the scene.
Sweat traced its way down his face from the tight hatband of his
Stetson. He could not believe the speed at which they had found
themselves in trouble.

‘
Look
at that darn dust, Colonel!’ Newton gasped in disbelief. ‘There
must be hundreds of them by the looks of it. They got us trapped
here.’

Cotter steadied his
mount.

‘
That’s how it looks, Theo. But I’ve learned over the years
that looks can be a tad deceptive.’

‘
What
ya mean, sir?’ Newton asked.

‘
I
mean that if them Apaches had as big a bunch of warriors as they’d
like us to believe, they’d have come in shooting by now. Or would
they?’

The young officer tried to
understand.

‘
But
the dust, sir. Look at it. It goes all the way around us. Must be a
mile or so of riders.’

Caulfield
Cotter nodded.

‘
The
dust does go all the way around us, son, but a couple of dozen
ponies could kick up a lot of dust in the hands of expert riders.
And Apaches are damn good horsemen.’

Newton allowed his mount to
close the distance between himself and the silver-haired
colonel.

‘
You
figure that there ain’t as many Apaches out there as we
think?’

‘
Yep.
I think that they’re trying to frighten us off this
desert.’

Newton rubbed the sweat off
his face with the gloved palm of his right hand.

‘
They’ve succeeded,’ he admitted. ‘We ought to get out of
here as fast as we can. Either head back to Apache Wells or on to
Waco.’

Cotter looked along his line of
riders to the vulnerable chuck wagon. He knew that he had to do
everything he could to protect these men. One error of
judgment would mean
the loss of many lives. He knew that the Texas Rangers could ill
afford to lose any more of their number. Whatever decision he was
about to make, it had to be the correct one.

‘
The
safest route out of this mess is to turn the men around and retrace
our tracks, Theo.’

Newton loosened his
collar.

‘
Are
you sure?’

Colonel
Cotter
’s
hooded eyes glanced at the sweating man nearest him.

‘
No,
I’m not sure. But it seems to me that we have to turn tail and run.
There ain’t no shame in retreating from trouble when the lives of
so many men are involved. We didn’t come here to fight
Apaches.’

‘
But
the dust is just as thick back there.’ Newton pointed back to where
they had left their tracks in the almost virginal sand. ‘For all we
know, there are more Apaches behind us than in front of
us.’

‘
I
know.’ Cotter adjusted the reins in his hands and stood in his
stirrups. He pressed the white charger to pace back to the rest of
their troop. ‘But we know the lie of the land back there. We have
no idea what awaits us in Devil’s Canyon. I think there’s just a
chance that these Apaches might let us turn tail.’

Newton eased his horse
around.

‘
But
what’s gotten into these Apaches? For years they ain’t caused us
much trouble and now it seems that they’re on the warpath again.
Why?’

‘
A
couple of months back I got some messages that certain white men
have been stirring up the Apaches. Giving them whiskey and rifles
to drive out settlers and the like.’

‘
But
why would white folks do that?’

Cotter gritted his
teeth.

‘
Profit, son. With the settlers gone, the land is cheap.
There’s always men who’ll do anything to get their grubby hands on
cheap land.’

Then the two officers caught
fleeting glimpses of Apache riders ahead of them as they broke
through the dust and taunted the stationary troop before galloping
back into the drifting dust-clouds.

‘
Tell
the men we’re turning around and getting out of here as fast as
these horses will allow.’ Cotter instructed. ‘Whoever it was in
Devil’s Canyon is probably beyond anyone’s help now!’

‘
I’ll
inform the men.’ Newton saluted, swung his horse around and
spurred.

Cotter touched the brim of his
hat and watched as his young companion drove his mount back along
the line of
Rangers. Then he followed.

With every step the powerful
charger took, the colonel wondered whether he was right. He had
fought so many battles with the original inhabitants of the Lone
Star state in the past and he knew that they never did what you
expected them to do.

Every one had been a bloody
battle that had eventually driven the proud Indians away from the
more fertile parts of Texas and into the desolate wastelands in
which only Apaches seemed capable of existing.

Yet even then they were not
defeated.

Would this be yet another
pointless battle, Cotter silently asked himself.

Or would the howling unseen
Apaches allow them to make a dignified exit?

Caufield Cotter had been at
the heart of so many fights in his time that he had lost all
stomach for reliving the horrors of another.

His mind drifted back over the
decades to the Texas Rangers who, unlike himself, had never lived
to see
their
hair turn white or hear their bones creak with age.

He was a lone survivor of a
bygone age. Had his time to join his fallen comrades come at
last?

The Texas Rangers turned
their mounts and the heavily laden chuck wagon. The colonel rode
along the line of worried horsemen without once looking at any of
their faces.

He had seen so many dead
Texas Rangers in his long lifetime that he knew it was inevitable
that soon he would be doing so again.

Without allowing his mount
to pause for even the briefest of moments, Cotter waved his right
arm as he rode past the wagon at the head of the column.

‘
Come
on, men. Ride like the wind. Don’t slow up or stop for
anything.’

The troop headed towards the
clouds of dust which marked the point from where they had started
after taking a short meal-break earlier. The closer they
got, the louder the
sound of Apache war cries became.

But the Texas Rangers rode
on defiantly. They followed the white charger and its master with
blind faith. For the brave riders knew that if there was any chance
of surviving this, the colonel would find it.

Cotter was balanced in his
stirrups as he and his troop got closer to the wall of drifting
dust. As the strong legs of his charger ate up the ground beneath
him, the colonel suddenly focused on a sight ahead of them that
chilled him.

A line of more than a
hundred Apaches sat on their ponies facing the riders with a
mixture of firearms, bows and lances gripped in their hands. An
array of shields and war bonnets glinted in the bright afternoon
sun as the Apaches continued to chant.

Cotter gritted his teeth,
hauled his pistol from its holster and cocked its hammer. He knew
that they had no option but to keep going.

He did not slow his pace and
led his
troop of men towards the painted warriors.

‘
Get
them guns ready, boys!’ he called out at the Texas Rangers behind
him. ‘Fire at will.’

Whether the riders following
him heard any of his words, he would never know. For they had also
seen and heard the phalanx of painted Indians that faced
them.

Caufield Cotter looked to
either side and felt his heart increase its pounding as he saw even
more Apaches to both his left and right. In all his days, he had
never seen so many of the fearless Indians in one place.

A dozen locomotives could
not have made the ground shake so violently as his horsemen and the
thundering wagon forged on at the line of warriors.

Then Cotter saw them
lowering their rifles and bows until they were aimed straight at
his Texas Rangers and himself.

He sat down on his saddle
and spurred hard.

‘
Fire!’ he screamed out at the top of his voice. Every one
of his men heard the command and obeyed.

The air suddenly exploded
with the deafening sound of shooting. Arrows tore through the
gunsmoke as if the Apaches were not willing to rely only on the
bullets in their automatic rifles in claiming the lives of their
enemies.

The handguns of the Rangers
were hotter than the walls of Hell itself. An arrow hit the wagon
driver in his chest. He fell off his seat and disappeared between
the traces as his team of four horses churned up the
ground.

With no driver to guide the
team, and loose reins flapping around their legs, the two lead
horses got tangled up and fell hard. The other horses crashed into
them and the wagon pitched up and rolled over on to its
side.

The Apaches to both sides of
the ensuing Texas Rangers seemed to explode into action as those
facing Cotter and his riders remained defiantly stationary. Using
their weapons as
whips the painted braves forced their ponies across the
dusty ground toward the troop.

Gunfire crisscrossed the bleak
desert until the Rangers and the Apaches slammed straight into one
another.
Within seconds the sand was covered in the blood of valiant
men. Men who were reduced to fighting hand to hand.

The fading light danced off
the honed edges of countless flashing knife-blades as both sides
found their firearms almost useless at close range. Within seconds
the Texas Rangers had emptied their sixguns into the bodies of the
Apaches and were forced to start using their pistols as
clubs.

As the horses crashed into
one another, both Apaches and Rangers fell into the churned-up
sand. Caufield Cotter drove his charger through the wall of Indian
ponies, reined in hard and turned the blood-stained
animal.

He fired his last bullet and
saw an Apache drop only yards away from him.

Cotter
then reached down for his rifle. To
his horror he saw the war bonnet of one of the Apache chiefs as the
brave broke free of the furious fighting and drove his pony
directly at him across the sand.

As his gloved hands lifted
the Winchester up and swiftly cranked its mechanism he saw the
knife cutting through the hot air.

Before he was able to lift the
cocked rifle to his shoulder and aim, Cotter felt the full impact
of the dagger in the
center of his chest. He rocked in his saddle and
managed to squeeze the trigger.

The Indian was blasted off
the back of his pony and crashed on to the sand.

Caufield Cotter then saw
more Apaches screaming through the gun-smoke towards him. He cocked
the rifle again and felt himself rock as he fired once
more.

His eyes closed as pain tore
through him. He tried to stop himself falling but a rifle bullet
ripped into his belly and lifted him up off his saddle. Cotter
fell.

He hit the sand hard but did
not feel any pain.

The colonel heard the unshod
hoofs getting closer but could do nothing.

His hooded eyes opened and
saw the screaming warriors jumping off the backs of their ponies.
They scrambled across the sand and surrounded him. Cotter saw the
bloody knives in their hands.

It was the last thing he
ever saw.

The five horsemen had waited
until sunset before they thundered out of Devil
’s Canyon and up through the
crags at the base of one of the massive flat-topped mesas and on
towards the desert. They had heard the unnerving sound of the brief
but bloody battle that had taken place to the west of their
temporary camp. Only Iron Eyes had shown little interest in the
sound of so many weapons being discharged as he had silently
consumed his first hot meal for nearly nine months. Marshal Lane
Clark and his three remaining deputies had watched the
smoke-signals until the light had faded from the vast Texan sky to
be replaced by storm-clouds. The lawmen had found it difficult to
swallow any of their food and scraped most of it on to the flames
of their small camp-fire. Iron Eyes could not understand why his
companions seemed so restless.