by Rory Black
A knowing smile came to her beautiful young face.
‘So that’s where you’re headed, you scrawny bastard,’ Sally whispered to herself as the horses hurtled across the eerie ground. ‘You thought you could slink away from little Squirrel but you can’t. I’m coming, Iron Eyes. Coming to get you.’
The stagecoach rattled on.
CHAPTER ONE
There had been just enough time for the tall, thin bounty hunter to water and feed the magnificent palomino stallion in the tiny Mexican settlement before he had continued on his quest to capture the elusive outlaws he had trailed across the border. The faces of the small settlement’s people watched as Iron Eyes consumed half a bottle of rye and then returned the cork to its neck. Their unblinking eyes had watched the pitifully lean man in the long, blood-stained trail coat as he moved around the tail of his mount and checked the stallion for injury.
With every step his sharp spurs rang out in the quiet array of almost identical dwellings. The setting sun had lavished a crimson hue on the stranger they fearfully watched from their hiding places. None of them had ever seen anything quite like it before. For the fiery rays of the setting sun gave Iron Eyes the appearance of being aflame.
When satisfied that the stallion had eaten and drunk its fill, the fearless bounty hunter had known it was time to continue his deadly search.
It was only when Iron Eyes had pulled his long leathers free of a hitching pole and stepped back into a stirrup that they began to breathe again.
Then the solemn silence which had greeted the bounty hunter was broken by a rasping voice Iron Eyes recognized. He turned slowly with his long leathers in his bony grip and stared through the moonlight at the bulky frame of Hogan Defoe as he strode out from the cantina toward his oldest rival. Defoe was a bounty hunter like the pitifully gaunt man he railed against. Yet Defoe had even less morals than Iron Eyes and it showed.
‘If it ain’t my old pal, Iron Eyes,’ he said as he paced out into the sand and then rested. The bulky man rested his knuckles on his hips and glared through his bushy eyebrows at the man he hated almost as much as the wanted outlaws he hunted. ‘What brings you to these parts?’
Iron Eyes did not answer the question as he looped his long leathers around the hitching pole and then walked away from the handsome palomino.
‘I asked you a damn question, scarecrow,’ Defoe yelled.
Iron Eyes stopped and stood like a deathly vision. The lantern light danced across the grips of his matched Navy Colts as they poked out from his flat stomach.
‘You talking to me, Hogan?’ he asked as he shook his long mane of black hair off his face and squinted at the troublesome man twenty feet from where he stood.
Defoe raised his left hand and jabbed angrily at the air between them. ‘You’re after Running Wolf, ain’t you?’
The gaunt bounty hunter raised an eyebrow.
‘I didn’t even know that Injun was in these parts,’ he answered as his long fingers flexed as they hovered in the air. ‘I’m hunting different game.’
There seemed to be no reason why the far larger man was so angered by the sight of the infamous Iron Eyes, yet he was. His stumpy fingers poked at the air again as he squared up to his rival.
‘You egg-sucking liar,’ Defoe screamed. ‘You can’t fool me. I know you’re after that rebel Injun and I’m gonna stop you from stealing my thunder. You always manage to steal my pickings from me but not this time. I’m gonna kill you this time, Iron Eyes.’
Iron Eyes narrowed his eyes. ‘That’ll be the day.’
There had never been any humour between the two bounty hunters and Iron Eyes had always managed to get the better of his far slower rival when it came to catching up to outlaws and killing them. It seemed that their brief and bloody encounters had weighed heavily on the muscular bounty hunter and this time he intended removing his competitor from his path.
‘I’m gonna kill you, you stinking runt,’ he vowed as his massive hand hovered above his holstered six-shooter. ‘This is the last time you’ll best me.’
Iron Eyes watched to see how far Defoe would go this time. He remained perfectly still as his disgruntled rival began to stride across the moonlit sand toward him.
‘Let’s see how fast you really are with them hog-legs of yours, you ugly bastard,’ Defoe growled as he grabbed the grip of his .45 and hauled it from its holster. ‘Go for them guns or I’ll kill you where you stand.’
It did not require a second warning for Iron Eyes to drag his guns from behind his belt buckle. As Defoe swung his large frame around and went to fan his gun hammer with the palm of his left hand, the sound of the deadly Navy Colts rang out.
Two blinding flashes of venom burst from his gun barrels as the deafening sound of the matched guns echoed all around the whitewashed adobes.
Hogan Defoe had never been shot before but recognized the impact of the two bullets which knocked him backwards. His gloved hand fanned the hammer of his Peacemaker as he felt his knees buckle. The huge bounty hunter fell to his knees in shock as the gun fell from his hand. His hooded eyes glanced at his opponent in surprise.
The sight of Iron Eyes holding his weapons as smoke trailed from their barrels baffled the large man as he rocked on his knees.
‘You beat me to the draw,’ he mumbled.
‘And I killed you, Hogan.’ Iron Eyes shook his head and pushed his smoking guns back into his waist band.
Defoe leaned back and stared at the tall emaciated figure before him. He was about to scream back at Iron Eyes when he noticed the two holes in his shirt front. Then blood began to pour through the damaged cotton bib and trail down over his rotund guts.
Iron Eyes watched as Defoe rolled on to his side.
‘I told you that I’d killed you, Hogan,’ he said as the last tune of Defoe’s deathly rattle escaped from his stricken body. ‘I told you that I weren’t hunting Running Wolf. I’m after Brook Bodine and Shep Walters.’
Iron Eyes kicked the body over on to its back. The startled expression was one he had seen many times before. He turned and walked back to his horse.
‘Reckon that dumb varmint won’t be bothering me none anymore.’ He spat angrily at the ground. ‘I hate wasting lead on bastards who ain’t worth nothing.’
His long fingers reached down, tugged the reins free of the hitching rail and looked around the street. The sound of music had ceased coming from the cantina as soon as the gunfire had rung out.
Iron Eyes grabbed the silver horn of his saddle, pushed his left mule-eared boot into his stirrup and pulled his thin frame off the ground. He looped his long right leg over the saddle and then gathered up the loose leathers. He turned the stallion away from the cantina and jabbed his sharp spurs into the flesh of the high shouldered animal.
As the palomino made its way between the cantina and another less imposing building, the sound of guitars rang out once more.
The sight of the unholy vision leaving the midst of the remote desert town filled every man, woman and child with a sense of relief. For even deep in the heart of the Mexican countryside they had all heard the stories of the gruesome figure who was reputed to be a living ghost and impossible to kill. After setting eyes upon the horrifically mutilated Iron Eyes, none of them doubted the fact.
The lifeless carcass left in his wake only confirmed the fact that Iron Eyes was no ordinary man. He had ended the existence of Hogan Defoe in the same manner that most men swatted an annoying fly.
Defoe had bugged his rival once too often and paid the ultimate price for doing so. As the sound of the stallion’s pounding hoofs grew fainter the people of the small village emerged from their hiding places.
Like locusts they quickly stripped the bulky bounty hunter of his every possession and then fed his bloody corpse to their hogs.
CHAPTER TWO
Before the deadly gunfight, Iron Eyes had purchased feed for his mount and hard liquor and cigars for himself. He filled his empty canteens from the town’s only source of w
ater and hung them from the horn of his ornate saddle.
Yet the gaunt stranger had sensed that the quiet settlement was far more dangerous than it appeared at first sight. Something deep within his soul told him that trouble was brewing even though it was not what he had expected. The notorious bounty hunter had thought that maybe he had finally managed to catch up with the pair of wanted outlaws he sought.
He had not expected the brutal Defoe to be the one to appear from the shadows and force him to demonstrate his prowess with his deadly Navy Colts.
As the night air lifted his long hair off his scarred face, Iron Eyes spurred on after the outlaws he still sought. After a few miles Iron Eyes noticed that there was a strange scent on the warm evening breeze. It was one he did not recognize.
The vast Pacific Ocean was far closer than the bounty hunter imagined. As one who had never even seen an ocean before, the strange aroma was confusing.
The further he rode, the stronger it became.
Dust flew up from the hoofs of his mount as he drove on deeper into the desert. His bullet coloured eyes stared at the marks left in the sand as he urged his palomino on. Iron Eyes doggedly followed the hoof tracks of his prey still clearly visible beneath the bright moon.
Soon Bodine and Walters would be in his gun sights.
The two outlaws had no sense of urgency in their spurs as they galloped up a sandy rise and looked back at the dusty desert behind the tails of their mounts. Brook Bodine pulled his reins up to his chest and looked back through the eerie moonlight at the relentless bounty hunter who had been trailing them since before they crossed the border. His partner swung his lathered-up horse around and looked to his cohort.
‘Do you see him, Brook?’ he asked as he struggled to keep his mount in check.
Bodine gave a nod of his head. ‘I see him OK.’
Walters drew his horse close to his equally ruthless partner and peered through the strange light. They could both see the haunting horseman thundering after the trail they had carefully left in their wake.
A cruel smile filled Walters’s face.
‘That bounty hunter’s real dumb, Brook.’ He chuckled before swinging the horse around. ‘I thought that he was said to be smart. He sure is an easy fish to hook.’
‘Iron Eyes ain’t dumb,’ Bodine argued. ‘He might be ugly and deadlier than a wounded mountain lion but he sure ain’t dumb.’
Walters shrugged. ‘He sure follows easy enough, though.’
‘That’s coz he reckons on killing us for the reward money and ain’t even thought about us leading him on a wild goose chase.’ Bodine pulled his tobacco pouch from his shirt pocket and started making a cigarette as his eyes continued to watch the dust rise from the palomino as it closed the distance on them. ‘He ain’t figured on us being paid to bring his sorrowful hide down here.’
‘I sure hope we done the right thing.’
Bodine dried the sweat from his blistered face and turned his horse around. He ran his tongue along the gummed edge of the paper and then rolled the cigarette into shape. He poked it into the corner of his mouth and then fumbled in his vest pocket and glanced at the crude instructions written upon a scrap of paper.
‘It says that we gotta ride straight on,’ the outlaw said through a cloud of smoke. ‘Everything will be waiting for us when we reach the beach.’
‘What if it ain’t waiting for us?’ the anxious Walters asked. ‘We’re dead men if it ain’t.’
‘Quit fretting, Shep,’ Bodine said before sliding the paper back into his vest pocket and pulling out a match and scratching it with his thumbnail. He cupped the faltering flame and lit the tip of the cigarette. ‘Everything will be fine. There’ll be a boat waiting for us.’
‘I sure hope you’re right.’
‘You and me both, Shep.’ Bodine gulped as his eyes focused on the determined rider coming across the desert after them. ‘I don’t hanker for running out of sand and finding out we’ve bin tricked.’
Walters looked at his partner and swallowed hard. ‘We’d better ride, Brook. That varmint is getting too damn close.’
Bodine filled his lungs with smoke and then tossed the spent cigarette at the ground. He glanced back at the awesome sight and then leaned over the neck of his exhausted horse.
‘C’mon, pard,’ he said, gripping his long leathers in his hands and nodding. ‘You’re right. That critter is getting too damn close.’
The outlaws spurred and rode on into the moonlight. Dust hung in the evening gloom as both horsemen mercilessly drove their horses toward the distant ocean.
CHAPTER THREE
The bright moon and countless stars hung over the sandy terrain like a vulture awaiting its next meal to die. A cloud of dust surrounded the moon as the stagecoach continued on toward the small town that the infamous Iron Eyes had visited a few hours earlier. Yet not realizing that she had travelled deep into Mexico as she followed the bounty hunter, Sally was confused by what faced her.
Bathed in the eerie light of the brilliant moon, the town was unlike anything Squirrel Sally had ever seen before and that troubled the feisty girl.
Reaching down into the driver’s well, she lifted a bottle of whiskey and eased its cork from the neck. She took a long swallow and then returned the stopper before dropping the clear glass vessel back down beside her Winchester.
The whiskey burned a trail down into her belly as its fumes cleared her tired head. Yet no matter how hard her beautiful eyes stared at the array of buildings, they made no sense to her. The only towns Sally had ever seen before were constructed from red brick and wood and looked nothing like those before her.
‘This ain’t like no other town I’ve ever set eyes upon before,’ Sally grumbled as she carefully rested her naked right foot on the brake pole. ‘Ain’t like nothing I knows about.’
The sight of whitewashed adobes surprised the young female as she eased back on the heavy reins and slowed the six-horse team down to a walk. Sally shook her long, dust-covered hair and stared harder at the town that faced her.
Just a dozen or so whitewashed adobes.
‘Now this ain’t normal,’ she said to herself as she pushed her corn cob pipe into the corner of her mouth and lit its bowl with a match from her torn shirt. Smoke drifted from her perfect set of teeth as she tried to work out why every building was utterly different to anything she had ever seen before.
Even the moonlight could not disguise the fact that they were all white. She raised her eyebrows until they nearly vanished under her dust-caked golden locks.
The stagecoach rattled as its chains swayed in between the traces and the exhausted horses continued on toward the small town.
Sally puffed on her pipe like a freight train as she leaned back on the driver’s seat and studied the buildings before her. To someone who had never been this far south before, the sight of anything apart from hastily constructed mining and cattle towns totally confused her. Even as the snorting team of horses headed into the solitary street, it still had not dawned on her that the trail of Iron Eyes had led her south of the border and deep into Mexico.
Mexico to Squirrel Sally was merely a name. As a girl who had never ventured off her parents’ small farm until eleven months earlier, this was totally alien.
‘Where in tarnation has that skinny galoot led me this time?’ she wondered under her breath. ‘This place ain’t even American by the looks of it.’
She kept puffing on her pipe stem until the small bowl had extinguished its ration of tobacco. Her small hand pushed her unkempt golden hair off her face as she glanced around the array of lights which spilled from various windows and open doorways.
Without even thinking, Squirrel Sally drew up the rifle from the driver’s box, cranked its mechanism and laid it across her lap. Even though she had not seen anyone yet, she could hear them. Guitars and joyful voices came washing over the sandy street before the hoofs of her lead horses.
The voices and music were also different to anything her c
loistered mind had ever heard before. No matter how hard she tried, Sally could not understand anything the singing voices were happily uttering.
‘What kinda lingo is that?’ She sighed.
Sally pushed her pipe back into her pants pocket and stared from her high vantage point. She watched as the beaded curtain swayed in the evening breeze from the building where the activity was emanating from. Most of the town’s folks were holed up inside, she guessed.
‘That’s gotta be some kind of saloon,’ Sally told herself.
A few saddle horses were tied up at various points along the thoroughfare but there was no sign of their masters. Sally curled her index finger around the rifle trigger and allowed the team to keep walking toward the noisy structure.
‘Where the heck am I?’ she wondered. ‘This sure ain’t like no place I’ve ever bin before.’
As the stagecoach approached the noisy adobe, she pressed the brake pole harder and eased back on the reins. The horses stopped and then to her utter surprise a tall figure emerged from the shadows and stood before the lead horses.
He looked up at the unusual sight of a tiny attractive female in torn, revealing trail garb and smiled. He pointed at the cantina behind his back.
‘This is a place to drink and eat, señorita,’ he said in a deep Mexican accent.
Surprised, Sally frowned at the tall figure as he moved out of the shadows and stood before the swaying beads as the cantina’s warm light cascaded over him.
She swung the Winchester and aimed its barrel at him.
The figure was unafraid. He grinned. His teeth caught the moonlight and gleamed at her.
‘Do not shoot,’ he said laughingly. ‘I am not your enemy.’
‘I don’t know what you are, fella.’ Sally frowned even harder and she kept the rifle aimed at the smiling man. ‘All I know is that you got mighty good hearing and you don’t seem to care for living.’