The Wrath of Iron Eyes (An Iron Eyes Western #5) (3 page)

Sheriff Hardin looked up at Iron Eyes and
noticed something in his expression that he had not seen before.
The man actually appeared to be interested in something apart from
his reward money. Iron Eyes stood silently watching the young Rosie
Smith as if she were the only person in the entire town worth
looking at.

The beautiful girl was at least eighteen
years of age and had the palest blue eyes that the bounty hunter
had ever seen. Her soft blonde hair was draped on her shoulders the
way single females always wore it. She stood motionless until her
father had pushed the door open, then accepted his arm again and
entered the interior of the large building.

‘
Young Rosie
sure is a good-looking
gal, huh, Iron Eyes?’ Hardin said to the hunter as
the pair walked into the bank side by side.

Iron Eyes said nothing. He just watched as
Jed Smith moved towards his safe and turned the dial. Rosie Smith
was seated near one of the large windows. The morning sunlight
cascaded over her and drew Iron Eyes to her like a moth to a
flame.

As Iron Eyes’ mule-ear boots approached her
over the marble floor, the sound of his spurs echoed around the
bank foyer. Her head tilted backwards and she smiled. The bounty
hunter had not seen anyone smile at him for as long as he could
remember. He stopped in his tracks.

‘
Why does my father have to
pay you, sir?’ Rosie asked innocently.

Iron Eyes seemed confused by the
question.

‘
Because I killed an
outlaw, ma’am.’

Her smile faded.

‘
You killed a man?
Why?’

‘
He tried to
kill me first.’ Iron Eyes pointed
at the still-raw gash on his temple.
‘He came damn close, too.’

‘
You must be a bounty
hunter.’

‘
Yep. That’s what I
am.’

Rosie Smith lowered her head
thought
fully. ‘It seems a very dangerous occupation.’

‘
That’s right, ma’am.’ Iron
Eyes turned and walked back to the old sheriff who was now leaning
on the mahogany bank-counter watching the paper money being counted
out.

‘
One thousand dollars
exactly, Iron Eyes,’ Hardin said.

‘
I don’t take paper money.
Make it golden eagles or silver coin,’ Iron Eyes said bluntly,
pushing the notes back at the banker whilst still looking at the
man’s daughter as she stood near the window.

‘
You want golden eagles?’
Smith asked coyly.

‘
Or silver twenty-dollar
coins.’ Iron Eyes rubbed his brow and felt the torn skin. It was
still raw and angry but no longer bleeding.

Sheriff Hardin made a pained
expression
at the banker. Smith nodded and returned to the safe with
the paper money in his hands.

‘
This won’t take long,
Rosie,’ Smith called out to his daughter.

‘
I’m
in no hurry, Father,’ she replied.

‘
Don’t you like paper
money?’ Hardin asked the tall man.

‘
Nope. It catches
fire.’

‘
But you like her, don’t
you, son?’ Hardin had a twinkle in his eye.

Iron Eyes continued to watch the beautiful
female who stared across the bank in their direction. She was
smiling again.

‘
Yep. I like her,’ he
admitted.

Iron Eyes secured the leather
laces of his saddlebags behind the cantle and then stepped into the
stirrup. His long right leg cleared the large
dapple-gray’s broad back
easily. He patted the bags and took pleasure in the sound of the
golden eagles within one of the satchels.

‘
Where you headed, Iron
Eyes?’ Sheriff Hardin asked the bounty hunter.

‘
Sanora, over the border in
Mexico,’ came the crisp reply.

‘
Why there?’

Iron Eyes pulled the neatly folded wanted
poster out of one of his deep trail-coat pockets and opened it up
until the photographic image of a man called Black Ben Tucker
stared up at him. He waved the poster at the sheriff.

‘
This bastard has an even
two thousand dollars on his head, Sheriff.’

‘
A tidy sum.’

‘
Enough to keep me in
bullets and whiskey.’ Iron Eyes sighed, forcing the poster back
into the pocket of his coat.

Sheriff Hardin leaned on the wooden upright
outside his office and wondered what drove a man like this one. Why
would anyone choose to risk everything in pursuit of the bounty
upon other men’s heads?

‘
Why do you do this,
son?’

‘
Do what?’ Iron Eyes tilted
his head and stared down at the lawman.

‘
Risk your life and get
yourself shot up.’

‘
I’m a hunter, Sheriff,’
Iron Eyes explained. ‘I’ve always been a hunter. First it was
critters and then it became outlaws. It’s what I do. I don’t do
nothing else.’

‘
But what if you get
yourself killed?’

Iron Eyes forced a smile.

‘
I once tracked a man for
three hundred miles and finally caught up with him. I killed the
varmint and then the town marshal decided he wasn’t gonna pay me
the reward money.’

‘
What did ya do?’ Hardin
looked at the repellent horseman with curiosity.

‘
I got angry.’ Iron Eyes
gathered up his reins. ‘Then I got even.’

‘
How do you know this
Tucker’s in Sanora, Iron Eyes?’ Hardin asked the bounty
hunter.

‘
I have my
spies. He’s in Sanora OK.’ Iron Eyes hauled the neck of
the
dapple-gray around and sank his spurs into its flesh. The
horse responded instantly and galloped along the now dry main
street of Cripple Creek.

The
dapple-gray felt its reins being
drawn back as its new master steered it down the quiet, well-tended
street that held the best-appointed houses in the small town, the
best of which belonged to the banker and his daughter.

Iron Eyes eased the mount to a
walk and stared at the banker’s house with a curiosity which was
totally alien to him. Two men were already repairing the
windowpanes of Jed Smith’s bedroom. One was up a ladder whilst the
other remained at the foot of it keeping it
steady. Their faces went
deathly pale as the ghostlike rider allowed his new horse to walk
slowly past the gate.

Then Iron Eyes spotted the young female who
had intrigued him earlier that morning. Rosie Smith sat on a
whitewashed swing rocking herself back and forth. She seemed
totally unaware of anything around her. She was singing quietly to
herself the way people do when afraid others might hear.

Iron Eyes eased his horse to a halt and
listened to the sweet young voice. He had not heard anything so
pure in all his long days.

Her back was to the rider but she seemed to
hear his horse’s hoofs prancing on the ground outside her garden.
She stopped singing.

Iron Eyes suddenly felt as if he had
intruded on something that was not meant for his ears.

Before the lovely Rosie Smith
had time to rise from the swing and turn in his direction, Iron
Eyes had spurred his mount and ridden at top speed away
from the quiet
scene.

Within a minute he was out on the desolate
range and headed south towards the border. Iron Eyes knew that
there was another prize for him to claim in the sleepy Mexican town
of Sanora.

But try as he might, the bounty hunter
seemed unable to keep his mind on the man known as Black Ben
Tucker. All he could think about was the golden-haired girl who had
stared at his face and shown no sign of fear or distaste.

Iron Eyes could not understand why Rosie
Smith had wasted one of her precious smiles upon his unworthy
countenance. Had he at last met the one girl who saw beyond his
scarred features and actually liked what had lain hidden from
everyone else for so very long?

Had she actually liked what she had
seen?

Iron Eyes drove the
dapple-gray on as
if trying to outride his own thoughts.

Yet even with his matted hair flapping over
the collar of his trail-coat like the wings of a bat, Iron Eyes
knew there were some things it was impossible to escape from.

One’s own imagination being one of them.

The six Mexican bandits crossed the shallow
river and stopped their lathered-up mounts beneath the canopy of a
massive Texan oak-tree. The air tasted sweeter on this side of the
border because they knew there were far richer souls here whom they
could torment with their own brand of evil.

Without even having to be told, the riders
checked that their weapons were fully loaded. Each man knew exactly
where they were headed and what they were about to do.

The self-proclaimed leader of
the ruthless gang of bandits was called simply Malverez. His
followers had new names almost every day of the week, but not the
bloodthirsty Malverez. He did not worry about who knew his true
identity because anyone who did, had
very little time left to live.

They were a motley bunch to look at and no
mistake. But that was more by design than circumstance. For they
were probably the most successful bandits to drift back and forth
across the Texas-Mexico border.

Few gave them a second look and that was
their strength. How could anyone describe people who masterfully
blended into any background?

Like the very air itself, they seemed to be
totally unseen and unnoticed.

For a decade, the bandits had
tried their hands at every known crime but it had been abduction at
which they excelled. Almost by accident the half-dozen killers had
found the one crime that appeared to offer them the highest rewards
for the least risk. They had perfected the art of allowing their
victims to bring them what they wanted by the
simple ruse of kidnapping their
offspring.

Malverez and his men had
managed to strike more than thirty times over a decade
and to extort more
than fifty thousand dollars from their victims’ loved ones. With
cold-blooded expertise the six bandits ensured they were never
identified by those they preyed upon. Without exception, they
killed everyone who had ever fallen victim to their cruel
crimes.

Without eyewitnesses, they were safe.

So they killed and killed.

It was so easy.

For these were men who did not display their
wealth, as some would have been unable to resist doing. They
remained unwashed and able to do their evil deeds unhindered by the
law on both sides of the Rio Grande.

They were, to all intents and purposes,
merely drifting Mexican vaqueros. They had yet to be branded with
their crimes.

Until they were, they were as free as the
air they breathed.

They aimed their mounts north and headed for
the town that they knew boasted a well-established bank filled to
overflowing with cattle-ranchers’ money.

But they would not rob the bank.

That was a deed that they knew would bring
the law down on them faster than they could ride back to their
Mexican hideout. They would let the banker take the money from his
safe and bring it to them himself.

He would do so willingly because he was the
father of a beautiful daughter. Such men would do anything they
were told to have their daughter returned unharmed. They could not
even imagine that they might be betrayed, for such unthinkable
things do not enter the minds of good people.

Good people blindly accept the word of
others. To even contemplate being double-crossed was something that
they could never accept as even the remotest of possibilities.

But Malverez had no such problem with
morality.

The six bandits had visited Cripple Creek
many times, finding out everything they needed to know about the
banker, in order to execute their daring plan.

Jed Smith would willingly strip
every
dollar
from his bank and bring it to them without question, just to have
his beautiful blonde daughter returned to him safely.

That was the one thing all decent souls had
in common and the bandits relied upon. They assumed everyone shared
their own code of ethics.

But Malverez and his men would not keep
their side of the bargain. They would kill the daughter and the
banker and ride away with the loot.

This was the way they always worked, the way
that Malverez and his cronies kept themselves one step ahead of the
law and the hangman’s noose.

Malverez ensured that they never left any
loose ends.

The six bandits were riding
hard for the remote border town of Cripple Creek when they spotted
the distant horseman astride the
dapple-gray. Iron Eyes held his mount in
check directly ahead of them.

Malverez raised his arm and stopped his
followers.

It was a horrific
vision that faced
the Mexican bandits on the narrow trail. The gaunt rider astride
the skittish mount bore little resemblance to other men. His long
black hair flapped on the morning breeze as his eyes narrowed and
stared coldly at the men who drew cautiously closer.

Iron Eyes pulled his
dapple-gray mount’s
head back and studied the six riders directly ahead of him along
the well-used trail. He pulled one of his Navy Colts from his belt
and cocked its hammer in readiness.