The Wrath of Iron Eyes (An Iron Eyes Western #5) (12 page)

Iron Eyes pulled the velvet material
together so that his eyes could no longer look at her body. No
longer see her soft pale skin and imagine things that could never
be.

‘
Are you OK, Miss
Rosie?’

She nodded.

‘
He did things to me but I
think you arrived just in the nick of time. Is he dead?’

‘
Not yet, Miss Rosie. But
it’s only a matter of time.’

‘
Time?’ She tilted her head
and stared at him with the beautiful blue eyes that he knew could
not see him.

‘
I’ll catch him and then
he’ll be with his friends in Hell.’

Just then the wounded Sheriff Tom Hardin
staggered into the cave, clutching his lower left arm.

‘
She’s safe!’ the sheriff
cried out joyfully.

‘
She is.’ Iron Eyes led her
to the side of the lawman and stared down at the blood-soaked
shirt-sleeve. ‘Are you OK?’

‘
Just winged, that’s all,’
Hardin replied.

The bounty hunter reached down into his
pockets and found enough bullets to reload his Navy Colts. He
looked at the tunnel that Malverez had disappeared into and
wondered where it led.

‘
One of the varmints ran
into there.’ He pointed. ‘Where do you figure it leads,
Sheriff?’

‘Maybe nowhere. He could be
hiding
in
there waiting for us to leave,’ Hardin suggested, placing a
comforting arm around Rosie’s shoulder.

‘
Or there could be a tunnel
leading back up to the top of the falls, Sheriff,’ Iron Eyes said
urgently.

‘That’s where them
hombres
left their horses,’
Tom Hardin agreed. ‘It would make sense for him to try and get back
to their mounts.’

Iron Eyes tucked both his guns into his belt
and started out of the cave.

‘
Look after her,
Sheriff.’

‘
Where ya headed?’ Hardin
asked.

‘
After the bandit,’ he
replied. ‘Stay here until I get back.’

Iron Eyes started out of the cave when the
sound of Rosie Smith’s voice filled his ears.

‘
I love you, Iron
Eyes.’

The bounty hunter turned his head and looked
back at her but did not reply. He had a bandit named Malverez to
catch.

Black Ben Tucker nursed the deep gash in his
side and helped the tall limping bounty hunter to the top of the
narrow twisting trail. Iron Eyes held on to one of his trusty
pistols and paused for breath as the wounded train-robber rested
his back against a sturdy boulder. They had made their way up from
the foot of the falls in good time, but it felt to the two injured
men as if they had climbed a mountain.

Tucker panted heavily. ‘This is loco.’ ‘You
think everything’s loco.’ Iron Eyes ran his fingers through his
hair and tried to collect his thoughts. Even now the poison from
the Apache arrow still haunted him.

‘
You sure that there’s a
tunnel leading up here, Iron Eyes?’ Tucker asked. Iron Eyes was
squinting directly in the direction of the sun.

‘
Nope,’ Iron Eyes replied
honestly. He grabbed hold of the shorter man’s arm and pulled
Tucker along after him. They were headed back towards the wagon and
horses.

‘
Then why are we in such a
hurry?’

Iron Eyes shrugged.

‘’
Cause
if I am right and the bandit called Malverez has
made his way up here, he’ll either run our horses off or just shoot
them so that we can’t follow.’

‘
You make it sound logical
but I’m bushed and hurting.’

‘
Hush up.’ Iron Eyes
dragged his companion after him along the edge of the steep cliff
towards where they had left their horses.

Black Ben trailed the long-legged man
through the thick undergrowth and noticed that Iron Eyes was hardly
limping any longer.

‘
What the hell are you made
of, Iron Eyes?’ Black Ben Tucker asked as they reached the clearing
where the six bandit horses had been tethered.

Iron
Eyes did not reply. He just forced
the train-robber down on to his knees and cocked the hammer of his
pistol. He knew that something was wrong.

‘
What’s the matter, Iron
Eyes?’ Tucker asked.

Iron Eyes remained standing. He placed his
left hand on top of Black Ben’s Stetson and forced it down until he
stopped talking.

‘
Hush up,’ Iron Eyes
ordered as he stood trying to work out where the bandit
was.

Black Ben Tucker pushed his hat up off his
head until he too could see the horses that were standing in a line
fifty feet away from them.

‘
Wait,’ Tucker said quietly
as he counted the horses. ‘I thought that there were six horses
there. Now there are only five.’

‘
At least you can count.
Stay there and cover me.’ Iron Eyes made his way forward with his
gun held firmly in his hand.

The tall man edged his way
deeper
into
the brush. He could smell the bandit was close. Just how close was
something he would have to find out the hard way.

Then he heard it.

The sound of a gun hammer being primed into
position.

Iron Eyes stopped walking and gazed into the
thick green bushes which surrounded him completely. Malverez was
nearby and waiting for even a half-chance at shooting the tall lean
figure who had invaded his world and destroyed his well-laid plans.
He wanted nothing more than to kill him.

Neither man would be satisfied with anything
less than the total destruction of the other.

Iron Eyes pulled his other Navy Colt from
his belt and cocked its hammer. His screwed-up eyes searched the
area for even a hint of where Malverez was. He had hurt the young
female down in the cave and that was something that could never be
forgiven.

Now he had two guns ready and
able
to stop
this evil creature from continuing his reign of terror.

He stepped forward slowly with his bony
hands gripping his gun handles. He knew that Malverez was close
enough to spit at and was holding his horse in check. But the
nervous animal was breathing heavily, giving the hunter a direction
in which to aim his pointed mule-ear boots.

Then he felt the venom of the lethal lead as
it blasted at him. Branches were blown off the trees all around him
but he did not pause even for a second.

Malverez had to be a lot more accurate than
that if he wanted to stop Iron Eyes. For he now had the scent of
his prey in his nostrils and nothing could stop him from continuing
to hunt him down.

Nothing except death itself. But for the man
who was like a living ghost, it was doubtful whether even death
could stop him.

‘You better run away, gringo,’
Malverez’s voice called out from deep in
the dense brush. ‘I will surely kill
you if you do not.’

Iron Eyes heard the footsteps coming from
behind him. To his sensitive ears, it sounded like an approaching
carthorse. He knew that it was Black Ben Tucker.

‘
You OK, Iron
Eyes?’

‘
I told you to stay where
you were,’ Iron Eyes responded angrily.

‘
You might need my help,’
Tucker said.

Iron Eyes shook his head.

‘
I read your Wanted poster,
Black Ben. It said that you were a real good train-robber but there
was nothing about you being a good shot.’

‘
There wasn’t? Hell!’ Black
Ben looked almost hurt.

‘
Are you?’ Iron Eyes
gritted his teeth and studied the brush to their right. Even though
it was only a hundred feet away, it was dried and withered. The
spray of the waterfall did not seem to touch that place.

A place where the kindling was
brittle
and
cracked beneath the feet of anyone who walked over it. The way that
Malverez was doing right now.

Quickly Iron Eyes took three steps forward
with Black Ben at his side. He fired both guns at once and then
pulled back the hammers of his Navy Colts again and waited for the
gun smoke to drift away from the clearing.

‘
Who you shooting at?’
Black Ben asked.

Before Iron Eyes could answer the question
he felt the heat of two more bullets cutting past him and then saw
the train-robber being knocked off his feet. The sound of the
gunfire echoed all around the tall bounty hunter.

Iron Eyes dropped down next to the man who
had saved his life a mere dozen or so hours earlier. A man whom he
had trailed with the intention of killing for the bounty on his
head. A man whom he had grown to like.

The bounty hunter rammed one of
his guns into his pocket and stared down at the large hole in the
middle of
the wide-eyed train robber.

Black Ben was finished and both men knew
it.

‘
You’re hurt bad, Black
Ben.’

‘
I figured that out myself,
Iron Eyes.’

‘
You didn’t answer my
question, Black Ben.’

‘
What question was that?’
Tucker tried to lift his head up from the grass but failed. He
stared into the face of the man whom he had grown to
respect.

‘
Are you a good shot?’ Iron
Eyes pulled the blood-soaked shirt-front over the gaping hole in
the man’s midriff.

‘
Nope.’ Tucker forced a
smile. ‘Never could get the hang of hitting things with a
gun.’

Iron Eyes patted the shoulder of the
train-robber.

‘
Stay here. I’m gonna kill
that bastard Malverez.’

Black Ben Tucker coughed and
tasted the blood in his mouth. He watched Iron Eyes run back and
untie the reins of one of the bandit horses. The bounty hunter sank
his spurs into
the unsuspecting mount and thundered straight at the
dried-up thicket.

Both his guns were blasting.

‘
I ain’t going nowhere,’
Tucker mumbled to himself.

As the wide-eyed horse crashed through the
wall of dry branches, Iron Eyes hauled his reins up to his chest
and stared angrily out at the white sand to the south. He could see
the dust rising off the hoofs of the bandit leader’s mount as it
sped deeper into the barren Mexican wasteland.

Without a second thought, the bounty hunter
thrashed both sides of the horse with the ends of the long reins
and forced the animal on.

Iron Eyes stood in the stirrups and
thundered across the dried brush and out on to the sand at a pace
that no other rider could have managed to urge from the bandit
horse. His razor-sharp spurs jabbed deep into the flesh of the
mount until it gathered pace and was racing at full speed.

With
every stride that the horse beneath
him made, Iron Eyes could see Malverez getting closer.

He was gaining on the bandit with every beat
of his heart and knew that it was only a matter of time before he
was within range. Malverez was going to have to pay dearly for the
violation of Rosie Smith and the gunning down of Black Ben Tucker,
he thought.

But unlike that of any of the other men he
had hunted over the years, this was not going to be a swift neat
killing that he would unleash.

Iron Eyes wanted to make this man
suffer.

He would extract his own brand of justice
slowly.

The horse galloped faster and faster after
the fleeing Mexican bandit as if trying to get away from the
vicious spurs of the determined bounty hunter.

Yet there was no escaping them.

Iron Eyes drove them deep into the animal,
knowing that this was the only way he would ever catch up with
Malverez.

As both riders climbed the soft sandy rise
that led to the desert, Iron Eyes aimed and fired one of his Navy
Colts.

Malverez’s horse collapsed suddenly, sending
its rider flying over its head into the sand.

Iron Eyes continued to force his mount up
the steep soft incline until he reached the grounded bandit. The
bounty hunter aimed the nose of the skittish mount straight at
Malverez as he tried desperately to rise to his feet. Iron Eyes
pulled his left boot from its stirrup and leapt from his saddle on
top of the stunned man.

Even Malverez had never seen such an
unholy-looking adversary before. With his long black hair flowing
behind the collar of his trail-coat and his bloodstained face with
eyes the color of bullets, the bandit suddenly realized that this
was one gringo he should never have encountered.

Iron Eyes felt the hot lead of
the bandit’s pistol as it fired at him. The bullets
had torn through
the skin beneath his arm but that did not stop him. He crashed down
on to the man heavily and smashed a fist into the unshaven
jaw.

Malverez fell back into the soft white sand
and tried to fire again. Iron Eyes squeezed the trigger of his
right-hand Navy Colt and watched as half the bandit’s hand was
blown off.

The desert was filled with the screams of
the bandit as he vainly tried to reach his other gun with his left
hand.

Once again, Iron Eyes blasted at the other
hand with his trusty Colt. Fingers flew off in all directions as
Malverez yelled out in agony.

Iron Eyes heard none of the pitiful pleas
for mercy. There was no mercy in the soul of the bounty hunter as
he felt his own blood trickling down from beneath his arm.

He was about to fire again when an arrow
landed at his feet and made Iron Eyes look up towards the top of a
nearby sandy dune a hundred yards away.