The Wrath of Iron Eyes (An Iron Eyes Western #5) (8 page)

‘
Luckily you did burn some
of it out,’ Tucker said. ‘Look what effect the remaining poison had
on you. A full dose would have killed a fully grown
buffalo.’

Iron Eyes savored the smoke. ‘I was in a bad
way?’

‘
Your leg was real bad,’
Tucker assured him.

‘
Must have been.’ Iron Eyes
felt the calming effect of the strong smoke and felt himself
relaxing. ‘Reckon I owe you, stranger. You must have saved my
life.’

‘
Anything for a fellow
gringo.’ Tucker smiled broadly. ‘There ain’t many of us down here
in ol’ Mexico.’

Iron Eyes nodded and returned the cigar to
Tucker.

‘
I can’t remember much. I
keep seeing a girl with long yellow hair but I’m damned if I know
why. Must have been a dream.’

‘
Must have been the
poison.’ Tucker inhaled on the cigar again and then leaned his back
against the wall and looked at the cold eyes of the shaking man. ‘I
thought you was a goner. I’ve never seen anyone that far gone who
managed to live.’

‘
I recall that there are
folks who say that I’m too evil to die.’ Iron Eyes pushed himself
away from the window and limped back to the cot. He sat down and
ran his fingers through his long wet hair. ‘What’s your
name?’

‘
They call me Black Ben
Tucker.’

Iron Eyes shrugged. The name meant nothing
to him. ‘Guess I owe you my life, Black Ben Tucker.’

Black Ben smiled through the smoke that
drifted from his teeth. ‘You’d have done the same for me, I reckon.
What’s your name, mister?’

‘
Iron Eyes,’ came the
reply.

Tucker’s expression altered. He had heard of
this man and knew that he was reputed to kill without pity. This
was the bounty hunter who was feared throughout the West. A man
whom no outlaw wanted to be within a hundred miles of.

‘
How come you’re down here
in Mexico?’

Iron Eyes exhaled heavily. ‘I was hunting
something or someone, mister.’

‘
Who?’ Tucker sucked on the
tip of the cigar and watched the face of the seated bounty
hunter.

The fog that filled his mind suddenly
cleared and Iron Eyes looked up at the outlaw above him.

‘You!’ he replied quietly. ‘It
was you!
’

Tom Hardin drove his horse through the night
at a speed he had never managed to achieve before. He had checked
outside Jed Smith’s home before setting out for the border and the
country that lay beyond. The sheriff had noticed the deep tracks of
the wagon that had been used by the bandits. He had noted that the
wagon tracks went south along the trail which led to Mexico. Only
the coming of night had obscured the tracks as he had thundered
across the wide shallow river.

Hardin had not come this way for more than
five years but knew exactly the fastest route to the isolated town
of Sanora. The lawman spurred his mount on and used the moon above
him as his guide.

For a man who had become
almost
as
broad in the beam as his horse over the years of sitting behind a
desk shuffling papers, Hardin rode with a skill not found in many
younger men.

Forcing the faithful sorrel onward with all
his strength, he cleared a sandy rise and then hauled the reins to
his chest. The whitewashed buildings stood out in the moonlight
below him like the teeth of a giant.

He had made it.

He dismounted, filled his hat with water
from his canteen, and allowed the horse to drink as he checked his
old Colt .45. It was fully loaded and greased.

When the horse had finished the last drop of
the precious liquid, Hardin scooped up the Stetson and placed it
back on his head. The droplets of water on his balding scalp felt
good as he stepped back into the stirrup and hauled his bulk back
on to the saddle.

The sheriff of Cripple Creek
urged the sorrel down the sand-covered incline and rode directly at
the white
buildings with renewed vigor.

With every stride that the robust horse took
across the soft, sandy terrain, the law officer wondered whether
the bounty hunter would still be in Sanora. He had a fear that,
just as after his cold-blooded dispatch of outlaw Ben Drake back at
Cripple Creek, Iron Eyes might have headed off in search of his
next victim.

Then as the sorrel entered the
maze of white buildings and the sound of the Mexican townspeople
enjoying the slightly cooler temperature that darkness always
brought filled the air, he spotted the
dapple-gray horse tied up outside a
cantina.

Tom Hardin slowed the horse to a walk as he
approached the busy building.

Light cascaded out into the
street as he slowly got off his mount and gathered up the long
reins. He rubbed the dust from his face and tied the sorrel to the
hitching pole next to Iron Eyes’
gray.

A hundred thoughts went through the mind of
the sheriff as he pushed the beaded curtains apart and stared into
the busy cantina.

Would Iron Eyes help him find Rosie
Smith?

What if he had continued to drink whiskey at
the same rate as he had done in Cripple Creek and was now lying in
a drunken stupor?

A few steps inside the cantina answered most
of the questions that had burned their way into the mind of the
sheriff during the hours that he had spent in the saddle riding
here.

The unmistakable figure of Iron Eyes was
sitting next to Black Ben Tucker at a filthy table with a bowl of
half-eaten chili before him.

Iron Eyes looked even paler than when Hardin
had last seen him. There were corpses buried in Boot Hill that
looked more alive than the bounty hunter.

Tom Hardin removed his hat and
made
his way
through the cantina’s customers until he reached the table and then
stared down at Iron Eyes. He spotted the left leg which was covered
in iodine and crude catgut stitches.

‘
What the hell happened to
you, son?’ the sheriff asked in a tone that displayed his utter
shock at the sight before him.

Tucker looked at the sheriff and focused on
the star. He felt uneasy once more.

‘
Iron Eyes got himself into
a little trouble with a bunch of Apache’s, Sheriff.’

‘
Black Ben Tucker?’ Hardin
said the name he had read on the Wanted poster so many
times.

‘
Sit down, Sheriff,’ Iron
eyes said bluntly. ‘Join me and my friend in a little
supper.’

Hardin’s mouth fell open.

‘
Your friend? I thought you
was hunting this man’s bounty, Iron Eyes.’

Iron Eyes glanced at the train-robber and
then back at the sheriff. A smile crawled over his thin cracked
lips.

The sound of the water as it fell
unceasingly into the deep lake outside the mouth of the large cave
filled the ears of all the bandits. Normally it would have helped
them fall asleep, but not on this night.

This night it was different.

Malverez had never been so close to what
could only be described as a mutiny before. For a decade he had
controlled his followers and they had obeyed his every order
because they knew that his was a brain that calculated everything
methodically and without any hint of emotion.

He had made them a fortune but this night
there was something the bandits valued far more than the wooden
chests filled with gold and silver coins.

The bandit leader had been
lying beside the silent Rosie Smith for hours
and yet he had done nothing.
The eyes of the five other bandits had not closed since he had made
his dramatic announcement. The lighted torches illuminated every
one of the cold eyes that were trained on him.

The bandits were waiting. Waiting for their
chance.

They wanted her and Malverez had not dared
to take his own selfish pleasures for fear of turning his back on
the men whom he knew were quite as ruthless as he was himself.

Malverez knew that a knife or bullet would
find his back as soon as he showed it to them. The bandit leader
was troubled. These were five angry men who faced him. He propped
his head against the huge rolled up blankets and knew that any one
of them was more than capable of killing him without a second
thought.

Malverez lit yet another cigar
and drew the putrid smoke into his lungs. For the last hour he had
felt more and more uneasy as the bandits seemed to
edge ever
closer.

It was the middle of the night and yet none
of them was willing to succumb to the tiredness that had threatened
to overwhelm them hours earlier.

The leader of the bandits dragged his
pistols from their holsters and sucked on the long cigar. He laid
the guns on his chest and watched the eyes that flashed in the
flickering torchlight before him.

Would they actually attack him?

Malverez knew that no amount of the free
tequila he had plied them with could calm this storm. It had gone
too far. There was only one way that he might stop them now, and
that was to give them what they so desperately wanted.

He could give them the girl and it would be
over.

There was one other choice open to him
though. Malverez knew that he could still keep the beautiful prize
for himself if he pretended that he was willing to let them have
her.

But he would then have to kill them all when
they started to take their pleasure.

It was a risky course of action to take and
would probably end in disaster for all of them, he thought.
Malverez wanted this female more than any other he had ever taken
by force. She seemed different from all the rest who lay buried
beneath the sands of Mexico.

He knew that he would have to fight for
her.

The five men had ridden with him for ten
long years and yet he knew that only fear had ever kept them in
check. There was no loyalty in their ranks. Just the fear of the
weak when faced with the mighty.

Now they loomed like vultures waiting for
him to sleep. There was no way that he would ever awaken from that
sleep if he did not do something to calm them down.

Malverez touched the hair of
the female beside him and gritted what was left of his teeth. She
did not move a
muscle. The bandit did not know whether she was asleep or
just frozen with fear. He glared at the men through the smoke of
his cigar, then picked up the two matching pistols and rose to his
feet.

The five other bandits all stood up with
their hands on the grips of their own guns and faced him defiantly.
Whatever he had decided to do, they could only guess at.

Malverez flicked the ash off his cigar with
the barrel of one of his pistols and then began to laugh.

He had made up his mind.

He would try and bluff them into doing
nothing with the promise of their getting what they wanted.

‘We have had a very eventful
day,
amigos,’
Malverez joked as he slipped one gun back into its holster
and twirled the other on his index finger.

‘
We want to share this
female with you,’ Carlos grunted angrily.