by Rory Black
Bounty hunter Iron Eyes had tracked down his prey to an hotel at Rio Concho. He quickly dispatches them and, with the hotel ablaze, drags the bodies outside. But waiting for him is Sheriff Brook Payne and his deputies with rifles trained on him. Iron Eyes is charged with murder and thrown in jail to be tried as soon as Judge Franklin Travis, better known as the Hanging Judge, arrives in town. Can Iron Eyes escape the noose?
IRON EYES MUST DIE
IRON EYES 9
By Rory Black
First published by Robert Hale Limited in 2005
Copyright © 2005, 2015 by Rory Black
First Smashwords Edition: September 2015
Names, characters and incidents in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons living or dead is purely coincidental.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information or storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the author, except where permitted by law.
Cover image © 2015 by Carl Yonder
This is a Piccadilly Publishing Book
Series Editor: Ben Bridges
Text © Piccadilly Publishing
Published by Arrangement with the Author.
Dedicated to the memory of my grandparents, Margaret and Jack George
Prologue
The three terrified riders turned and fired as their lathered-up mounts thundered into the border town of Rio Concho. It was as if the Devil himself was on their trail. In the minds of the Jardine brothers, that was closer to the truth than any of them dared admit. Clem, Jed and Saul Jardine had seen the ghostly image of the deadly hunter only a few hours earlier back on the sun-baked prairie. They had seen the ferocity of the man’s guns as he had cut down two of their gang.
It had been like fighting a ghost. None of their bullets had come close to stopping their relentless foe. Only a sudden sandstorm had saved their lives and allowed them to flee from his merciless accuracy.
But the hunter of men had not been satisfied with the two hapless outlaws he had managed to cut down. They were worth less than a hundred dollars between them.
Iron Eyes had his sights set on a far bigger prize. For the Jardine brothers were collectively worth more than $5,000 dead or alive.
As the Jardines drove their mounts through the streets of Rio Concho, Iron Eyes whipped his Indian pony feverishly until he too had entered the boundaries of the remote border town. Even with the two outlaw horses in tow, Iron Eyes knew he was gaining on the Jardine boys. The bodies of his earlier victims were tied across their saddles as the bounty hunter drove his sharp spurs into the flesh of his Indian pony again and again.
Now he was so close, the dust off the hoofs of the outlaws’ mounts was still hanging in the air as Iron Eyes rode through it with one of his Navy .36 guns blasting.
The hunter had trailed his chosen prey for hours and now he knew they had run out of steam. Now they were stopping to stand and fight.
It would be their last mistake.
His honed vision saw them leap from their saddles a hundred yards ahead of him and race into a dark side street. Iron Eyes dragged his reins up to his chest. The pony beneath him almost fell into the soft, dusty ground as the tall man dismounted in one swift, well practiced movement. He looped his reins around a hitching rail and checked that the two outlaw mounts were still secured to his saddle cantle.
A group of startled people huddled in a store doorway. They watched the heavily scarred man with long, matted hair standing below them. He looked up at them. Death was etched into his mutilated face, on to skin which appeared to have been melted. Only his eyes seemed alive as they burned like branding irons in their direction.
Iron Eyes reached down into the deep pockets of his weathered trail coat and pulled out a handful of bullets. The bounty hunter dragged both his Navy Colts from his belt, opened their chambers and pulled out all the spent shells.
He then quickly reloaded them and cocked their hammers.
The entire operation took less than a minute to execute.
‘Guard my dead ’uns!’ Iron Eyes ordered the stunned people before he moved around the tail of the exhausted mount. He raced across the busy street and up on to the boardwalk opposite. Like a wild animal, he seemed to be capable of trailing his prey by following their scent.
It was as if fear had its own smell.
He knew it well.
People gasped in horror at the hideous sight of the long-legged man’s face as he ran after his prey. They could not believe their eyes when they saw the scarred features bathed in a mixture of moon-and lantern-light. His long black mane of hair moved up and down on his shoulders. It was like the wings of a massive bat.
The moon was big and large above the mixture of whitewashed adobes and wooden structures which made up the border town. It cast down an eerie blue light.
Just as Iron Eyes reached the corner, a half-dozen shots rang out from the dark side street. The wooden upright next to him was hit by the Jardines’ bullets. Sawdust showered over the bounty hunter. He paused as even more shots came out of the blackness, seeking his lean frame.
Iron Eyes blasted back with both his guns.
Then he heard the sound of the three outlaws’ spurs. They were running again.
The bounty hunter continued after them.
Every few strides, a shot came at him out of the black shadows, yet he did not slow his pace. He just kept on running after them.
They were his!
He could smell their terror!
It was a temptation he could not resist!
He reached the end of the dark street and saw the heels of the Jardine boys as they entered the elegant hotel lobby, bathed in lantern- and candle-light opposite. Iron Eyes ran across the wide main street towards the hotel.
No nightmare could have chilled the blood and souls quite as much as did the sight which greeted the people within the high-priced Avalon Hotel as a wall clock chimed midnight.
Before the clock had finished chiming, gunfire had filled the hotel lobby. The emaciated bounty hunter had raced into the hotel a few seconds after the three surviving members of the Jardine gang with both guns blazing. Respectable hotel patrons were suddenly in the middle of a bloody war. Men and women were hit as outlaw bullets crisscrossed the large, well-furnished area. Yet it was the Jardine brothers who were shooting wildly. Iron Eyes never hit anyone accidentally.
He never wasted bullets on people who did not have a bounty on their heads. There was no profit in killing honest folks.
People scrambled desperately for the wide-open doorway as the notorious outlaws took to three different corners of the hotel lobby to make their stand against the man who had hounded their trail for weeks.
There was only one way of stopping a man like Iron Eyes from claiming the bounty he craved. They had to kill him. There was no second way.
The town of Rio Concho lay close to the border in the New Mexican territory. It had sheltered many a wanted man in its time from the law.
But Iron Eyes was not the law.
He did what few lawmen had the stomach to do. He trailed and killed those who were wanted dead or alive. Iron Eyes would not be denied by the rules which governed men with stars pinned to their shirts or vests.
Few escaped the wrath of Iron Eyes.
Fearful men and screaming women were still fleeing in all directions as they saw the fearsome figure of Iron Eyes standing in the middle of the large room trying to sense where the three men had gone.
Then shots rang out again.
A trail of blood followed the men and women out into the night air.
&nb
sp; Bullets tore into the tails of the long trail-coat of the bounty hunter as he turned. A man was kneeling behind a long three-seater couch. It was Saul Jardine.
Iron Eyes could feel the heat of the bullets as they came close to his flesh. He squeezed the triggers of both his guns and watched as stuffing exploded from the seat of the couch.
Saul rose into the air with blood covering his face. He had shown Iron Eyes too much target. The lethal bounty hunter never missed anything that he could see.
The bounty hunter fired once more with his left gun. The outlaw twisted and crashed into the carpeted floor. Blood was everywhere.
Iron Eyes held the smoking Navy Colts in his skeletal hands and moved close to the bloodstained wall beyond the body. His bullet-colored eyes darted around the large hotel lobby.
He knew that Clem and Jed were still in the hotel somewhere.
But where?
He studied the hotel lobby carefully. A wide staircase led to a balcony. Behind the desk, there was a white door with the word PRIVATE painted on it. The lobby was filled with lots of well-padded chairs of various sizes. There were at least three other doors that he could see.
The Jardines were hiding somewhere!
Somewhere close!
He could smell their fear even through the acrid aroma of the choking gun smoke.
‘You might as well give up!’ Iron Eyes shouted as his eyes continued to dart around the room looking for even a hint of movement. ‘I’ll kill you vermin just like I killed your brother.’
The room remained silent.
Gun smoke hung about four feet above the expensive bloodstained carpet.
Then he heard it.
The sound of a spur up on the balcony drew his attention. Iron Eyes moved along the wall with both his cocked guns in his hands until he had a better view.
He stared up to the landing. There was a huge green plant in a highly decorated pot. He narrowed his eyes. The long, green, pointed leaves of the plant were moving. Someone had brushed by them a minute or so earlier, he told himself.
He continued to aim his bullet-colored eyes upwards with the intensity of an eagle seeking out its prey. All he required was the sight of an inch of an outlaw’s body to come into view, and he would fire.
A mere inch!
Then Iron Eyes saw a shadow moving across the wall beyond the potted plant. He gritted his razor-sharp teeth and raised both his weapons.
Iron Eyes blasted both guns twice in rapid succession. The shots cut through the air as they sought their target. The china plant-pot shattered into a million pieces and Clem Jardine jumped up from behind it with blood pouring from his shoulder. With his guns still in his hands, the outlaw went to return fire when his left boot caught the edge of the carpet. Iron Eyes fired again and sent two bullets into the chest of the eldest of the Jardine brothers. Clem buckled and crashed down the twenty steps like a tree being felled. His guns blasted into the air as he landed heavily on the floor of the lobby.
The sound of the outlaw’s neck snapping filled the room.
‘Only one of you left!’ Iron Eyes taunted as he reloaded swiftly.
There was no reply.
Iron Eyes edged away from the wall.
‘I’m gonna kill you for sure, Jed! C’mon! Make a fight of it! You might get lucky!’
Suddenly a bullet blasted from somewhere in the large smoke-filled lobby. Iron Eyes moved quickly. The hot lead burned the skin off the bounty hunter’s cheek. An inch-long gash revealed the bone as Iron Eyes staggered in agony.
Blood suddenly erupted and poured down his face.
Instinctively, the bounty hunter fired back. The sound of shattering wood filled his ears as tables and chairs were overturned by the last outlaw, who had moved behind them. Jed Jardine had never considered himself a coward, but he had never been a fool either. He used every scrap of cover inside the lobby and fired wildly.
Bullets tore back and forth across the room until the air was black with gun smoke.
Iron Eyes dropped to his knees as chunks of the wall behind him burst apart as lethal lead hit it.
He slid one gun into his deep trail-coat pocket and used the hot barrel of the other to press against the long, bleeding gash on his cheek. He then removed a bullet from his gun and gripped the lead ball with his strong teeth. He tugged it free of its brass casing and spat it out.
Iron Eyes filled the palm of his left hand with the black powder from the bullet casing and then thrust it on to the open wound. It burned hotter than Hell itself. Then he plucked a match from his shirt-pocket and struck it with his thumbnail. He closed his eyes and put the flame on to the gunpowder-covered flesh. A flash lit up the corner he was kneeling in for a brief second.
Iron Eyes gritted his teeth and lowered his head to the floor.
Every sinew in his body tightened as he refused to allow himself to scream out and acknowledge the agonizing pain that had overwhelmed him. The bleeding had stopped but the side of his face was swollen to grotesque proportions.
The room fell into silence as both gunmen shook spent shells from their guns and slid fresh bullets into the hot chambers.
Iron Eyes dropped on to the floor and tried to see his opponent’s legs beneath either the chairs or tables. But the last of the Jardines had upturned half the furniture in the room, making it impossible.
The bounty hunter rolled silently over on his back until he was close to the lobby desk. His eyes darted to every stick of furniture trying to work out where his prey was hiding.
Again, it was impossible.
Iron Eyes then started to look at the large framed paintings that adorned the once luxurious lobby walls. Each painting was framed behind glass to protect it from the cigarette, pipe and cigar smoke which always filled such places.
Iron Eyes suddenly noticed that he could just make out a reflection in one of the larger paintings between the heavily lace-draped windows.
His eyes narrowed.
Jed Jardine was kneeling behind an upturned couch directly below a twenty-candle chandelier hanging from the highest point of the vaulted ceiling. The flames of the candles flickered as a draught entered the hotel. The bounty hunter knew that such ornate light-fittings were raised and lowered by either chains or ropes.
Iron Eyes looked around the bullet-riddled walls in search of the pulley mechanism. Then his keen vision spotted it less than ten feet away from where he lay.
It was a rope wrapped around a brass hook.
The Navy Colt was raised, aimed and fired.
A deafening noise filled the hotel. The rope severed and a haunting noise raced across the ceiling above them. Iron Eyes tilted his head and watched the startled reaction of the outlaw in the painting’s glass.
The ceiling groaned. Suddenly, the heavy chandelier fell like a lead weight. Jed Jardine looked up and then managed to move as he saw the heavy chandelier heading down towards him.
It crashed within inches of where he had been kneeling.
Lighted candles flew off in all directions. Some hit the outlaw whilst others landed on padded chairs. One hit a plush drape.
Within seconds the room was ablaze all around him.
Iron Eyes dragged his other gun from his deep coat-pocket and cocked its hammer. He stood and headed straight for the flames with both weapons aimed at the burning chair.
Jardine leapt into the air. The outlaw’s left shirtsleeve was alight. He tried to beat out the flames as his eyes spotted the horrific figure of Iron Eyes closing in on him.
Jardine started to shoot wildly, but there was no stopping Iron Eyes.
The bounty hunter squeezed the triggers of his Navy .36s. The impact of the bullets hit the fiery figure off his feet. Jardine went through the largest of the windows. Lace wrapped around the man before he hit the boardwalk and rolled into the dusty street.
It was engulfed in flames.
A stunned crowd outside the hotel watched in horror as Iron Eyes turned away from the window and walked right through the flames bac
k into the hotel. When the bruised and battered bounty hunter reappeared out of the blazing building, he was dragging the other two Jardine brothers’ bodies by the scruffs of their necks.
Every terrified eye was on Iron Eyes.
He dragged the dead outlaws up to the crowd and dropped them on the dusty ground. The hollow eyes of the tall emaciated figure looked at the frightened audience before him.
‘Find the sheriff!’ he demanded as he placed a long thin cigar between his teeth. ‘I got me some bounty here and I want paying for it now!’
The blazing hotel collapsed, sending a plume of red sparks high into the night sky behind him. Red-hot embers showered over the bounty hunter, but he did not seem to notice or care. Iron Eyes picked up a burning sliver of wood and touched it to the tip of his cigar.
‘I’ll pay a golden half-eagle for a bottle of whiskey with a fancy label on it!’ he said coldly through a cloud of smoke.
‘The law’s already here!’ a loud voice boomed out from the shadows before him.
Suddenly, the familiar sound of Winchesters being cocked into action surrounded the bounty hunter. His eyes flashed all around him. He saw five men with stars pinned to their shirts moving towards him in the flickering red light of the fire. Each rifle barrel was trained on him.
Iron Eyes felt his thin hands instinctively twitch as they hovered over his deep trail-coat pockets, where his lethal guns rested amid bullets and crumpled wanted posters. Most men who cornered him the way these men were doing, would have been dead by now.
Yet they were lawmen.
He knew that he dared not draw on this breed.
‘Get them rifles off me!’ Iron Eyes demanded.
‘Who are ya, mister?’ the sheriff growled as he rammed the barrel of his rifle into the thin middle of the wounded Iron Eyes.
‘Iron Eyes!’ came the whispered reply.
‘What kinda handle is that?’ The sheriff rammed his rifle harder into the stomach. ‘What’s ya real name, boy?’
One of the deputies tugged at the mane of long, black hair which hung over the collar of the tall man.
‘Looks like an Injun, Sheriff!’