The Wrath of Iron Eyes (An Iron Eyes Western #5) (2 page)

The burning eyes of the tall
thin figure did not blink once as Iron Eyes raised
both pistols until
they were aiming straight at Ben Drake’s head.

‘
Ben Drake?’

‘
I could be. Who the hell
are you, stranger?’ Drake asked meekly.

‘
The man who is gonna kill
you, Drake,’ came the low-pitched reply. ‘They call me Iron
Eyes.’

‘
Iron Eyes?’ Drake’s voice
repeated the name in total disbelief. He knew of the bounty hunter
who, it was said, could not be killed because he was already dead.
‘Why do you want to kill little ol’ me?’

‘
Why not?’ Iron Eyes
replied. ‘You’re a horse-thief and wanted dead or
alive.’

‘
That don’t mean ya have to
kill me, Iron Eyes.’ Drake tried to clear his throat of the dryness
that suddenly filled it. ‘I could walk with you to the sheriff’s
office. You’ll still get the reward money.’

Iron Eyes had already noticed that Drake’s
left hand was out of sight beneath the round card-table.

‘
I don’t work that way,
Drake.’

‘
That’s a crying shame,’
the horse-thief said. ‘For you!’

Ben Drake squeezed the trigger of the
Remington that he had concealed in his left hand beneath the table.
A bullet ripped through the wooden surface, sending splinters
showering over the bounty hunter. The deadly lead ball skimmed the
bounty hunter’s temple. Iron Eyes felt blood tracing down his
face.

Without a second’s hesitation, both barrels
of the matched Navy Colts blasted their lethal reply. What was left
of the outlaw’s head splattered over the wall behind the chair as
the body fell on to the sawdust-covered floor.

Iron Eyes turned and faced the crowd. With
blood covering half his face, he now looked even more horrific than
usual.

‘
Can one of you bring me a
bottle of rye?’ he said, pushing his guns back into his
belt.

The nervous bartender grabbed a bottle from
the shelving beside the long mirror and cautiously walked to the
tall bounty hunter. He handed him the whiskey.

‘
This OK?’

‘
It’ll do.’ Iron Eyes
accepted the bottle and pulled the cork with his small razor-sharp
teeth. He spat it away and then poured the fiery liquid over the
bleeding gash on his temple. There was no sign that the strong
liquor hurt the emotionless figure as it seared into the wound.
Standing to his full imposing height, Iron Eyes drank what was left
of the whiskey and then handed the empty bottle back to the nervous
barkeep.

‘
How much do I owe you?’
Iron Eyes asked, running his long fingers through his limp hair,
revealing a face which had been victim to many battles.

‘
Nothing, friend,’ came the
quiet reply. ‘It’s on the house.’

‘
Much obliged.’ Iron Eyes
nodded.

‘
Did I hear right? Are you
Iron Eyes?’

‘
Yep. Why?’
Iron Eyes picked up a cigar from what was left of the card-table
and placed it between his teeth. The bartender struck a match
and
lit the cigar. Iron Eyes inhaled deeply and savored the
strong smoke that filled his lungs.

‘
No reason.’ The bartender
swallowed hard. He had heard of the infamous bounty hunter but
until now had thought the tales of the man who seemed more dead
than alive were all made up. The sight before him was far more
frightening than any of the stories he had heard told across his
bar over the years.

Iron Eyes leaned over and grabbed the left
foot of Ben Drake. He dragged the bleeding body through the sawdust
down the length of the saloon.

The stunned, silent patrons watched the
smoke trailing from the mouth of Iron Eyes as he dragged his prey
out of the saloon.

Sheriff Tom Hardin had studied
the strange bounty hunter for more than an hour as he waited
patiently for the wire to arrive with confirmation from El Paso
that would allow him to pay out the
one thousand dollar reward money. With
little remaining of Ben Drake’s face and head, the sheriff had to
verify the horse-thief s identity with the customers of the Blue
Garter saloon.

That had been easy but the delay of waiting
for El Paso to sanction the payment of the bounty seemed to take
what was left of the night. Every second had felt like a lifetime
to the balding law officer as he had waited with the ghostlike Iron
Eyes in his drag office.

What unnerved the sheriff was
that Iron Eyes just sat with the grips of his Navy Colts jutting
from his belt. It was hard to tell if the man was asleep or
awake for his eyes
never fully closed. The eerie glare was haunting.

After an hour of nearly total silence, Iron
Eyes had said little more than a half-dozen words. Each one had
been barely audible and had merely responded to questions in the
most economical fashion.

‘
You ought to get yourself
a room in the hotel and rest up, Iron Eyes,’ Hardin suggested. ‘I
figure that you ain’t slept in a few days by the look of
you.’

The eyes that were the color of lead shot
darted a glance across the room at the sheriff.

‘
I don’t intend staying in
this godforsaken town a second longer than it takes to get me my
bounty,’ Iron Eyes growled.

‘
The hotel rooms have got
nice soft beds and for a few bucks extra you can get room service.’
The sheriff raised both his eyebrows. ‘If you get my
drift?’

Iron Eyes shook his head.

‘
I ain’t
hungry.’

‘
That ain’t
exactly what I was getting
at.’ Hardin sighed heavily. He wondered
what kind of man Iron Eyes was, if he were a man at all. He had
seen corpses that looked more alive than this infamous hunter of
men. ‘And there’s the matter of you buying a new horse.’

‘
I got me a
horse.’

‘
You have?’ Hardin was
confused.

‘
I got me a
nice
dapple-gray courtesy of Ben Drake.’ Iron Eyes turned his
head and stared at the office door as if he instinctively knew it
would soon open.

The sound of footsteps running along the
boardwalk echoed inside the sheriff’s small office a few seconds
before the door swung open. Joe Baker the telegraph man rushed in,
crossed the room and handed a scrap of paper to the rotund lawman.
Hardin searched his pockets vainly for his spectacles and then
looked at the telegraph man.

‘
What’s it say, Joe?’
Hardin asked tiredly.

‘
You’re supposed to read it
yourself,’ Baker said.

‘
If I knew where my gold
rims were, I would,’ Hardin snapped at the man. ‘You already know
what’s in it, anyway. Read it to me.’

Joe Baker cleared his throat when he caught
sight of the figure of Iron Eyes seated near the large window,
staring out at the rising sun.

‘
It just says to pay the
bounty, Tom.’

Iron Eyes stood and walked across the dismal
office and leaned over the desk where Tom Hardin was sitting.

‘
Give me the money and I’ll
be going, Sheriff.’

Hardin felt his blood run cold when he
stared up into the grim features of the man who still had dried
blood covering half his face. Never in all his days had he set eyes
upon a man who looked so ravished by life itself.

‘
I don’t keep any money
here. We’ll have to wait for the bank to open up, Iron Eyes,’ he
informed the bounty hunter.

‘
How long will that be,
Sheriff?’ Iron Eyes whispered into the ear of the
lawman.

‘
The bank opens at ten.’
Hardin felt sweat trickling down the side of his face as terror
filled his overweight body.

Iron Eyes looked up at the wall
clock. It was nearly
five-thirty-six. His ice-cold stare returned to
the seated man.

‘
I ain’t waiting for
another four or five hours.’ There was something in the sheer tone
of the voice that told the lawman he had better act and act
quickly.

The sheriff gulped and rose slowly to his
feet. He brushed past the telegraph man and then lifted his Stetson
from the hat rack and placed it on his balding head. He turned the
door-handle and signaled for both men to follow him out into the
street.

They did.

The morning was cold after the storm of the
previous night. The sun had yet to spread its warmth over the
isolated town as its light snaked through the still-wet
streets.

Iron Eyes watched the telegraph
man make his way back to the office at the end of the main street
as he trailed the
sheriff down a side street where the wooden houses had
front gardens and picket fences. These were buildings of character
and had obviously cost more than the rest of the dwellings in
Cripple Creek put together.

‘
Where we headed, Sheriff?’
Iron Eyes asked Hardin, who had paused outside the largest of the
houses.

‘
This is the banker’s
house,’ Hardin replied nodding, at the well-appointed structure
which proved it paid to have money. Or at least access to other
folks’ money.

Iron Eyes leaned on the whitewashed fence
and stared hard at the house. There was no sign of life.

‘
You figure this critter is
honest, Sheriff?’ Iron Eyes asked raising an eyebrow.

Hardin shrugged and pushed the gate
open.

‘
Hell, he’s a damn banker.
They’re all crooks, ain’t they?’

Sheriff Hardin knocked on the
solid wooden door for several fruitless minutes without being able
to raise any
of the house’s occupants. Iron Eyes pulled one of his Navy
Colts from his belt and cocked its hammer.

‘
What you doing, Iron
Eyes?’ Hardin asked.

The bounty hunter raised the pistol and
aimed at the second-floor window.

‘
Waking the bastard up,
Sheriff. Just waking the bastard up.’

The single shot shattered the windowpane of
the banker’s bedroom and the deafening noise echoed around the
streets of Cripple Creek for several minutes.

‘
What the hell is going on
down there?’ Jed Smith, the banker, screamed through the shattered
window. ‘You better get out of here or I’ll send for the
sheriff.’

‘
This is the sheriff, Jed,’
Hardin called back.

‘
Are you drunk?’

‘
I want you to open up the
bank, Jed. We got to pay this gentleman some reward money,’ the
sheriff shouted up at the window.

‘
I open at ten, Sheriff,’
Smith yelled back.

‘
I’d
appreciate it if you’d open early
today, Jed.’ Hardin tried to appear
calm but
his
eyes were fixed on the bounty hunter and the Navy Colt he held in
his hand.

‘
Why should I?’

Faster than the sheriff could blink, Iron
Eyes fanned his gun hammer several times and blasted every
remaining pane of glass from the bedroom window. There was a long
silence before the shaking voice of Jed Smith piped up again. ‘I’ll
be right down, Tom.’

Hardin walked back to the bounty hunter and
watched as the tall figure emptied the spent shells from his gun
and replaced them with bullets from his deep coat-pockets. When the
gun was loaded he pushed it back into his belt.

‘
You got his attention OK,
Iron Eyes.’ Hardin smiled broadly.

‘
I hate bankers. There
ought to be Wanted posters out on the whole pack of them,’ Iron
Eyes growled. ‘Dead or alive.’

Tom Hardin nodded. He actually agreed with
Iron Eyes’ blunt statement.

Iron Eyes had long known that it took a
certain type of woman to look at his face without being racked with
fear or revulsion. Even whores who were used to lying to their
potential customers could not pretend that the sheer sight of his
scarred face did not frighten them. In his entire life the infamous
hunter had only encountered two females who seemed capable of
looking straight at him and accepting what they saw. One had left
without warning and the other had given her life to save his
own.

It was with these memories that the tall
bounty hunter stared in disbelief at the beautiful daughter of the
banker as she walked arm in arm with her father along the quiet
street ahead of the sheriff and himself.

Iron Eyes had been standing at
the
gate
when she had left the house and walked straight past him. She had
looked straight at him without batting her long lashes.

The bounty hunter was intrigued.

He found it impossible to fathom how such a
delicate young creature who had obviously been raised in the lap of
luxury could have shown no emotions at all when looking at him.

Iron Eyes had seen hardened gun-fighters
turn their heads away from him rather than look for more than a few
fleeting moments at his face.

Yet she seemed to be completely oblivious to
the fact that Iron Eyes’ face was unlike that of other men and that
she ought to be frightened or sickened by it. Either that or she
saw something within him that others failed to perceive.

The gaunt bounty hunter trailed
the trio of respectable people to the bank and watched as Jed Smith
unlocked the solid wooden doors with a massive brass
key. Unlike any
other building within the boundaries of Cripple Creek, the bank was
constructed from stone blocks and had barred windows. It had been
built to withstand even the most determined of attacks and looked
as if its defenses had never been breached.