by Rory Black
Whit Hardy grabbed at his brother’s sleeve.
‘What the hell do you want, boy?’ Tom shouted.
‘Let’s go.’
‘Where?’
Any place,’ Whit swigged at his bottle, ‘away from here.’
‘You scared?’ Tom looked at his brother’s face hard and long, watching the sweat pouring down from under his Stetson.
‘You bet I’m scared,’ Whit nodded.
‘I ain’t. I’m angry. Angrier than hell.’ Tom Hardy looked at the lawman again. ‘When did this Iron Eyes lit out?’
‘Some days ago, amigo.’
Tom strode out of the small building and across the street, with his brother at his heels once more.
‘What’re you thinking, Tom?’
Tom opened the door and walked into the dark, shadowy place, coming to a sudden halt at the sight before him. Whit bumped into his back as they were confronted by the true horror of the situation.
Lying naked to the waist on a slab of stone lay what was left of Dan Hardy It was a vision of what their profession held for them both in the near future. The bullet holes had been washed clean, but the sight was still more than either man had expected when they had walked into this gloomy place.
Tom was the first to leave the building, and he found the edge of a water-trough comfort for his backside. He sat there for many minutes as his younger sibling threw up the contents of his guts into the sand at the side of the white-washed building.
Vengeance is mine, the Lord said in the good book.
Tom Hardy forced himself upright once more with those words and thoughts filling his mind.
He would not wait for God to catch up with Iron Eyes, he had to do this himself
Whit finally quit being sick and staggered to the side of his brother, who had the strangest look in his eyes.
‘What’re you thinking, Tom?’
‘We are gonna do some hunting, boy,’ Tom growled.
‘What?’
‘We are gonna hunt that Iron Eyes varmint down and kill him for what he done to Dan.’ Tom Hardy started to walk again.
‘Don’t start going crazy, Tom,’ Whit pleaded as he tried to keep pace.
‘Crazy?’ Tom grunted. ‘It ain’t crazy to avenge a wrong, is it?’
Whit followed his brother into the cool cantina once again, and knew that he had more good reasons to get himself well oiled. If they were going to start tracking the man who was known throughout the West as the living ghost, he had better be real drunk in case they caught up with the critter.
Iron Eyes took no prisoners.
‘Dead or alive’ meant dead to the bounty-hunter.
Even through the haze of liquor that permanently blurred his thoughts, Whit knew they were heading into the lion’s mouth head-first by going after him.
Even Whit knew that.
So how come Tom was so darned eager to chase this killer of men and collector of rewards?
Could he want to die so badly that he would risk everything by pursuing the man in the long coat?
As they prepared to eat another bowl of chilli and biscuits as hard as stones, Whit knew that he had to stick with his brother and hope the fire would leave him before it was too late. Dan was gone, and so were their futures. Without Dan they would find it hard to rob old ladies, let alone banks.
Times were changing for the Hardys.
Whit and Tom Hardy were like two grizzly bears as they saddled up their reliable mounts.
They had sore heads and sore butts. The silence was overwhelming as the two remaining Hardy brothers gathered up their few belongings into the faded leather saddle-bags.
The two men had ridden into Rio Drago the previous afternoon, only to find their elder brother laid out upon a slab in the back of the undertaker’s office.
Even after laying the few reasonable town whores and drinking their fill of the locally distilled tequila, they were still angry They had spent almost all their money since their last job and had joined their brother to plan another. Not that they could plan anything themselves. It had always been Dan who had made all the decisions.
Dan knew how to stage a hold-up.
Dan knew from which side to enter each town, and which was the quickest route to safety after they had done their deed. Now Dan was lying upon a slab, and his only use was to allow the numerous varieties of flies to lay their eggs upon his rotting carcass.
The drink had made the pair even more angry than they originally were upon discovering Dan’s death.
Now they had hangovers which matched their moods.
The throbbing of the blood as it tried to penetrate their brains was like drums as it echoed around their skulls.
Pain had driven the two men into making the decision to find and kill Iron Eyes.
Not the pain of grief but the pain of self-infliction.
Revenge brooded in both men’s hearts as they managed to absorb the simple fact that Iron Eyes had blown their brother away for the bounty upon his unwashed head.
Having an instinctive dislike for men who made their living out of blood money, the two Hardys decided to try and catch up with the lone gunman before he reached El Paso.
It might not have been a perfect plan, as Tom and Whit were also wanted for exactly the same reasons as their late sibling, but brains never had been their strong point.
They were going to chase and catch Iron Eyes.
They were also going to shoot and kill the son of a bitch.
Neither man had half a brain between them, and had followed Dan’s lead all their lives. He said draw your guns and they drew their guns.
Dan said shoot up the town and they shot up the town.
Now Dan Hardy was being prepared for burial.
Now his mind was gone and they would have to fend for themselves as well as they could.
The black clouds that drifted over Rio Drago started to unleash rain that made the cactus sing, and the two weathered men finished their task.
The horses were ready.
Heading inside the small cantina that still had the stains of their brother’s blood on its whitewashed walls, the two men purchased their supplies.
Three bottles of tequila and a bag of salt each would have to do until they reached a town that sold rotgut rye. The two bowls of chilli and kiln-baked bread filled their bellies long enough for them to get back to their horses.
‘Where we headed?’ Whit asked, finishing his bread as he pulled himself up into the saddle by the saddle-horn.
Tom Hardy dragged himself up into his own saddle, after forcing the tequila bottles into his saddle-bags. His frustration showed as he gathered up the loose reins and pulled the horse away from the rail.
‘We are after the creep who killed our brother, Whit,’ he snarled, spitting the remnants of animal bone from between his sparse teeth. ‘Remember?’
Whit shrugged and took a long swig from his bottle, shaking his head violently as the strong liquor reached his brain. The journey did not take long.
‘We are after Iron Eyes,’ Whit grinned as he allowed his nag to turn away from the hitching-rail and join his awaiting brother.
‘Right,’ Tom agreed as he twisted his neck in order to relieve the pain that still hammered inside his head. No matter how hard he tried, the combination of cheap liquor and rotten grub took its toll upon his demeanour. He felt like hell and he was angry.
The brainless Whit sat as he dribbled the burning tequila from his dry lips.
‘That’s right. Ain’t it, Tom?’ he gushed. ‘I is right, ain’t I?’
Tom Hardy nodded and then shook his head in frustration at his dim-witted brother, not that he was ever going to be mistaken for a genius himself
The two riders rode out of the small Latin township and faithfully followed the route that the feeble law officer had pointed out.
They had revenge in their hearts but little else.
These were two men who would try and catch up with the man who was heading to El Paso to
collect his blood money
What neither man knew was that the man they chased was the most evil and dangerous man they could ever hope to meet. Not that any normal man would wish to catch up with Iron Eyes and his pair of Navy Colts.
The two remaining Hardy brothers were neither normal nor were they too smart. They were the body of the chicken after the axe had removed the head of the bird. They were the two lesser Hardy brothers and their brain had been removed.
Dan Hardy was dead.
Whit and Tom Hardy were heading after his executioner with plenty of liquor in not only their saddle-bags but their guts too.
They would chase their brother’s killer for no better reason than they were going to make him pay
As the dust rose behind their horses’ hooves, the remaining hours of their futile lives were beginning to run out. Like sand through a pail with a hole in its bottom, the end was getting closer with every stride their mounts took.
Smarter men would have reasoned the odds and quit their riding after a known killer like Iron Eyes. The trouble with dumb folks is that they follow the beats of their hearts, rather than the messages from their heads, because the messages in their brains usually are not worth listening to.
They were heading toward hell.
There would be no prisoners taken.
Only death would end this quest for revenge.
Unfortunately, death had ridden on Iron Eyes’ shoulder for many a long while.
Chapter Seven
It was late afternoon before the rifle-woman allowed the gaunt Iron Eyes to dismount from his Indian pony
The sun was setting below the far-away hills that marked the Texas side of the wide river.
It was still unbelievably hot, and the sweat had soaked through both their shirts. Now every detail of her fine-formed breasts could be seen by the sharp-eyed bounty-hunter.
He had continued bleeding from the hole in his ear for over an hour, and his shoulder was stained with his own blood.
She watched as he bent down to pick up the tin plate she had indicated. He helped himself to a slice of burned bacon and sat down upon the hard ground. It tasted good, he thought, as he chewed the meat and watched her with squinting eyes.
Whoever she was, she was good.
She had done something no other living person had ever managed to do. She had taken a chunk out of him.
Iron Eyes respected her for the attitude she displayed toward him. It was like his own.
Merciless.
She walked around him and never once allowed the long rifle barrel to wander off its chosen target, his head.
‘Who’re you chasing?’ she asked as she finally stopped pacing through the soft sand.
‘Nobody,’ he replied, with the black-and-pink meat sticking to his uneven teeth.
‘You look like a hunter of men,’ she said, sitting down on a large boulder opposite him.
‘I am.’
‘So who’re you after?’
‘Nobody at the moment.’ He pushed the remaining lump of bacon into his mouth and chewed. It was the first solid food he had eaten for several days, apart from hard tack.
‘So you’re a bounty-hunter?’ She reached down and picked up the black tin mug full of coffee. ‘That is an evil trade.’
‘Suits my character,’ he sneered, picking his teeth with his fingernails.
‘You good at it?’
‘The best there ever was,’ he bragged.
‘You are the best?’ She gave a belly laugh. ‘How come I got the drop on you then?’
He shrugged. It was a shrug that disguised his anger.
‘You got lucky.’
‘No, my friend.’ She sipped her coffee. ‘You got lucky.’
‘Me?’
‘I didn’t kill you. That’s damn lucky’
He nodded as he dropped the plate on to the sand. His mood was changing. He was no longer angry at having a chunk of his ear blown away.
Now he wanted to know more about this woman who sat before him.
‘What do they call you‘?’ he asked.
‘What does it matter?’
‘I like to know who the hell shoots me.’ Iron Eyes felt the stinging ease up on the side of his head. The blood was finally clotting on his wound.
‘They call me Jane.’ She tossed the sentence away like a child would toss away its favourite rag-doll. Her eyes looked at him with the look of a woman who was interested in something she had captured. His long coat and hair were not what she had become used to seeing in the past few years of her life. He looked as if he were the sort of man who held up trains in dime novels. Her curiosity about this painfully thin man was the only reason she had not killed him.
For some reason she wanted to know more about this creature, who looked as if he belonged in some graveyard rather than out here upon the plains.
‘Jane what?’
‘Jane is enough,’ she growled.
He accepted that he was not getting any further with that line of questioning, and decided to alter his approach.
‘Where you headed?’
‘West.’
‘What the hell do you wanna go there for?’ he asked, as he cautiously touched the scab upon his ear. ‘There ain’t nothing in that direction except Indians and Mexicans.’
‘Suits me.’ She finished her coffee and got to her feet.
Iron Eyes rose to his full height, which was only barely taller than her. He studied her body She was thinner than any woman he had ever seen.
She was also the first female he had ever seen wearing men’s clothes. He liked what he was looking at.
‘What you thinking?’ She glared at him, with the rifle still balanced in her hands.
‘Nothing.’ He blew out heavily, trying to clear his brain of the thoughts that had raced through him. Thoughts that sent the skin on his thin neck tingling. She had a body that he would gladly kill for. That was strange for Iron Eyes, as he had never once before been tempted by a female. She was somehow different.
Very different.
‘What do they call you, Mr Bounty-hunter?’
‘Iron Eyes,’ he drawled. ‘Just Iron Eyes.’
For the first time since they had run into each other, her face went pale, as if suddenly shocked.
The name meant something to her, but what? She looked him up and down carefully for what seemed an eternity, before lowering the rifle.
‘Iron Eyes?’ She repeated his words.
‘Yep.’ He felt very uneasy by this creature and her sudden mood-swing. The hostility had vanished.
Yet it had been replaced by something totally alien to this ruthless man’s knowledge.
‘I heard about you.’ Her eyes darted at him briefly, before turning away once more. Anything good?’
‘Depends on your point of view.’
Iron Eyes looked at the lowered rifle, and then stepped closer to the slim lady with the emotionless face.
‘You ain’t aiming that iron at me anymore,’ he said, resting his knuckles upon his bony hips.
She nodded and moved away from him. She seemed deep in thought as she paced through the soft sand.
Finally she stopped, and turned her attention to the raging waters of the swollen river as it roared past them with an unceasing fury.
‘Yesterday that river was about six inches deep.’
Iron Eyes closed in on her.
‘That when you crossed?’
‘Yeah, that’s when I crossed.’ she replied.
She could feel his breath upon her neck as he stopped at her side and hovered, like a bee watching a flower. Ready to take the pollen. Finally she turned and gazed into his cold eyes.
‘What you looking at?’
Iron Eyes did not answer. He just continued staring at her, with hunger in his face. The hunger of a man who had never before seen something that whetted his appetite.
Chapter Eight
Dawn came silently and a new day arrived with the usual burning sun and blinding light.<
br />
Somehow the tall, thin man with the two Navy Colts tucked into his pants belt had managed to sleep for several hours.
Iron Eyes had stayed near the wagon into which she had climbed the previous evening, but never once moved closer.
Jane had worried him.
She had confused him.
She had shot a chunk of his left ear off and lived to tell the tale.
Now he stood watching the raging waters rolling past their campsite, wondering what he should do next. All thoughts of just saddling up his pony and riding away had left his mind. He kept casting a silent glance at the wagon, wondering when she would step out into the morning sunshine.
The money he was owed in El Paso no longer seemed important to the hard man. Yet he could not understand why. His thin fingers touched the edge of his ear, and he winced at the stinging pain that met him as he found the scabbed wound.
A woman had blown a piece of his ear off and she still lived and breathed. He accepted the fact.
Iron Eyes had once shot the head off a man for bumping into him in a saloon and causing him to spill his beer. He knelt down and cupped the fresh water in his hands, and tossed it over his face and head. This was not an action that was based upon wishing to become clean but a desire to try and wake up.
He stood once more as the water ran down his hair and face on to his shirt. He rubbed his smooth chin and wondered why he had never had a growth of whiskers like other men folk. He felt that he must have been part Indian never to have developed hair on his narrow face. Having only a scant recall of his mother and absolutely no knowledge of who his father might have been, it was a distinct possibility.
He dragged his long legs through the sand to the pony who had remained tied to a wheel of the wagon all night. He looked at the pinto and then the large nearby oxen.
How did a girl manage to handle such a team?
Horses were tough enough, but the oxen were monsters in comparison to even the largest horses he had ever encountered.
Where was she heading or where was she running from?
He checked his two Navy Colts and then put them back into his belt, before wondering why he was hanging around this place with this strange woman.
If the river’s level had dropped during the night, he might have saddled the pony and ridden away. He might have, but even he doubted it.