by Rory Black
‘Who the hell are they?’ he muttered as he placed a hand on the tree and steadied himself.
Suddenly both horsemen opened fire with their repeating rifles. The ground was kicked up as Carter and Simmons tried to find their target again. Plumes of dust filled the air as the scent of acrid gunsmoke filled his flared nostrils.
Iron Eyes ducked as bullets hit the trunk and sent bark cascading over him. He dropped on to one knee as the mounted Simmons and Carter continued to fire their rifles at him.
The startled bounty hunter pulled both his Navy Colts from his waist band and cocked their hammers in turn. He winced as riveting pain cut through his lean frame like a lightning strike. He had forgotten about the savage wound in his shoulder until this very moment.
He bent over and sucked in air.
Bullets tore up the ground all around him. Iron Eyes stared at the droplets of blood as they constantly dripped from his shoulder on to the sun-bleached ground. He gritted his teeth and then opened one eye and glared at the pair of riders.
‘I ain’t dead just yet,’ he snarled defiantly. ‘But you are.’
Then faster than spit he raised both hands and squeezed the triggers of his guns. Two rods of lethal lead spewed from the barrels of his weapons in deafening unison and carved through the sunshine.
He heard the sickening noise of one of the horses as both bullets caught the animal in its chest. Moses Carter felt the stricken horse buckle beneath him just before he flew over its head and crashed into the ground. Simmons hauled rein beside his companion and threw himself from his saddle. As Carter fought to get back off the ground, Simmons cranked the lever of his Winchester and levelled it at the infamous bounty hunter.
Simmons fired.
The fiery flame emerged from the Winchester barrel and hit the tail of Iron Eyes’ trailing blood-stained dust coat. The bounty hunter blasted another shot at the men and then staggered backwards. Simmons unleashed a torrent of bullets at Iron Eyes as the bounty hunter miraculously tripped back to the trees. No swarm of crazed hornets could have sounded more fevered as the bullets cut through the dry mountain air.
The tall, scarred bounty hunter only just managed to get behind the sturdy trunk of a tree when the deadly bullets peppered its trunk.
Chunks of bark and burning sawdust exploded all around the weary figure as his thumbs dragged back on his gun hammers again. As the rifle fire momentarily stopped as Simmons was forced to reload, Iron Eyes fired blindly back along the trail road.
Yet neither side could see the other through the dense choking cloud of gunsmoke. Iron Eyes panted like a world-weary hound as his fingers pulled the spent bullet casings from the smoking chambers of one of his guns.
‘I’m starting to get mighty angry with them bastards,’ he whispered as he pushed his hand into his pocket and pulled out fresh ammunition.
Crouched behind the body of the dead horse Simmons reloaded his rifle with fresh bullets from his gun belt and pushed them into the rifle’s magazine. Carter rubbed the blood from his face and crawled to his side. The stunned bounty hunter had smashed his nose into the unforgiving ground when he was thrown over the head of his stricken horse. Somehow he still had hold of his rifle as he crouched beside Simmons.
‘What happened?’ he asked as teeth fell from his bleeding mouth on to his shirt.
‘Quit moaning and get shooting, Moses,’ Simmons riled as his fingers searched for more bullets in his belt loops. ‘We gotta kill that critter before he adds us to his tally of notches.’
‘Reckon you’re right, Chet,’ Carter looked at his partner and cranked his rifle’s mechanism. The injured bounty hunter started firing in Iron Eyes’ direction. ‘That varmint done killed my horse.’
Iron Eyes heard the remark above the sound of the Winchester’s repeated blasts and chuckled to himself as he rested his bony spine against the tree trunk.
‘Soon I’m gonna kill you too,’ he hissed.
Simmons jerked the hand guard and sent a spent casing flying over his shoulder as he raised his rifle to his shoulder and looked along the gun sights.
‘Don’t go fretting none, you can have my nag once we’ve sent Iron Eyes to Hell, Moses,’ Simmons drawled and fired his Winchester.
With blood dripping from his busted nose Carter lowered his rifle and looked at his partner. ‘You’re giving me your horse? How come?’
‘I’m gonna be riding that tall golden horse yonder, Moses,’ Simmons said confidently. ‘Once we kill Iron Eyes, that is.’
Iron Eyes suddenly emerged from his place of cover and fanned his hammer. Two shots raced through the air and narrowly missed the bounty hunters sending them reeling backwards. With chunks of leather and sawdust covering them, they clambered behind the body of the dead horse and peeked over the saddle. Iron Eyes was gone again. Simmons clenched a fist and thumped the saddle. He then fired over the belly of the stricken horse to where gunsmoke still hung in the air.
There was no reply.
Simmons and Carter looked at one another. Neither could conceal their confusion. Both men remained trapped next to the dead horse for another five minutes. In all that time there were no replies to their shots. Finally Carter pulled blood clots from his broken nose and rubbed it on his pants leg.
‘The bastard is playing with us, Chet,’ he announced.
‘Maybe he’s running low on ammunition,’ Simmons ventured as he cranked the Winchester’s mechanism again. ‘He might even be dead. I know that I hit him back there. I seen his scrawny hide buckle.’
Carter knelt in the horse’s blood and peered over the saddle to where the shots had been coming from. He glanced at his partner and chewed on his gloved knuckle.
‘He might be dead just like you reckoned, Chet,’ he shrugged. ‘It’s hard to tell with Iron Eyes though. He looked dead when he was buying that whiskey back at Broken Spur.’
Simmons grinned and gripped his rifle. ‘If he ain’t dead now he sure will be, partner.’
‘What you gonna do, Chet?’
Simmons started to nod to himself as he pulled out his pocket watch and studied its dial. ‘In another five minutes I’m gonna rush him with my rifle spitting lead, Moses. I intend killing that varmint right now.’
Carter shrugged and again wiped his nose. It was starting to dawn on the bloody bounty hunter that trying to kill the infamous Iron Eyes was not such a good idea after all.
CHAPTER FIVE
The distant sound of the shots echoed around the stagecoach as it travelled the perilous mountain road between the avenue of endless trees. Squirrel Sally pulled back on the hefty reins, then pressed her bare foot down on the brake pole and looked all around her. Yet there was no hint of where the shots had come from apart from the fact that they appeared to have emanated far behind the battered vehicle. The six horses started to slow as the feisty female knelt on the driver’s board, looked over the roof and squinted through the brilliant sunshine in a vain attempt at finding answers to the burning questions which gnawed at her craw.
‘Now who in tarnation is having themselves a war all the way out here?’ she muttered to herself as the stagecoach continued to gradually slow. ‘Them shots I heard earlier was a whole heap closer. If I didn’t know better I’d swear that I’ve driven this buggy into a hillbilly war.’
The normally calm youngster shivered as doubts started to creep into her mind. For the first time since she had set out from Mexico, Sally doubted the wisdom of her journey.
‘Maybe it wasn’t smart for me to tease old Iron Eyes like I done,’ she sighed quietly as her beautiful eyes searched the surrounding terrain for possible danger. ‘I got me a feeling that I ought to have stayed back at that fancy hacienda.’
The trail road, which had been wide enough for two wagons to pass one another a mile earlier, was now narrowing. She looked around her stationary stagecoach and toyed with the long leathers nervously before looping them around the brake pole.
The tree canopies were interlocked above her head and bathed the area in an
eerie light better suited to night time rather than the middle of morning.
‘For all I know Iron Eyes ain’t within a hundred miles of here,’ she told herself as she reached down into the driver’s box, picked up a whiskey bottle and removed its cork. She took a swing, shuddered and then returned the cork to the neck of the bottle. The hard liquor did not make her feel any braver but, true to her nature, she refused to admit to herself that she was frightened.
But she was scared. Really scared.
Sally wiped her mouth on her tattered sleeve and then vainly attempted to pull the weathered shirt over her heaving bosom. She tutted and shook her head. No amount of adjustment seemed to work. Flesh that she managed to conceal simply enabled another part of her shapely form to escape.
‘My chests are getting bigger,’ she muttered to herself and then thought about Iron Eyes and smiled. ‘I figure it’s coz I’m betrothed. I ain’t never seen a flat-chested married woman.’
Then she heard more shots as they echoed across the tops of the countless trees that were too close. With her trusty Winchester in her petite hands, she got to her feet and carefully walked across the top of the stagecoach. The sound of the gunfire was still ringing in her ears as she reached the rear of the vehicle.
Sally cranked the rifle guard and cocked the weapon. Her heart was pounding hard and fast inside her chest. She placed her left foot on the metal luggage rail that trimmed the stagecoach rooftop. The cold steel felt good against her skin as she studied the trail behind the long vehicle.
‘Damn it all,’ she cursed. ‘How come there ain’t nothing to be seen but a whole lot to be heard?’
The steel rims of the stagecoach’s wheels skidded across the rough road as the snorting horses nervously moved between the traces. Sally steadied herself and then turned around and walked back to the seat. She stepped down and then sat again as the nervous team kept fighting their restraints.
‘Quit that, you dumb gluepots,’ she growled before resting the rifle across her lap and unlooping the reins from the brake pole. ‘My ass is sore enough sitting on this damn plank without you making it worse.’
The ears of the horses sensed that the tiny female was not her usual perky self. Their ears pricked up as she began to pull back on the lengths of leathers in her hands and serenade them with whistles. Expertly, Sally managed to get the stagecoach to reverse until the trail was wide enough for her to attempt to turn it.
After more than ten minutes the stagecoach was facing in the opposite direction. Sally rested both her feet on the lip of the driver’s board and exhaled deeply. The action had exhausted her but she knew that there was no point in trying keep going along this ever-narrowing trail road. A solitary rider might be able to navigate a route through the forest but not the stagecoach.
Although Sally was unaware of the fact that the road had originally been carved out by loggers to make it easier for them to load their wagons with freshly felled trees, she knew that whoever had created this road had abandoned it long ago. The forest had reclaimed the higher part of the trail and in time would also envelop the rest of it.
Sally realized that she had to return down the steep hillside and hope that she did not encounter the men who were firing their weaponry. Her blue eyes glanced to her right at the severe drop that started about three feet from the rough road.
Her tongue licked her dry lips.
‘That’s a mighty big drop,’ she gulped. ‘Reckon I’d best try and keep this crate on the road otherwise I’m gonna be playing a harp.’
The team were even less happy than she was. They had disturbed sharp thorns of bramble bushes and vines as Sally had carefully managed to turn the stagecoach around. The thorny vines cut into their flesh.
‘Easy, boys,’ Sally spat before placing her pipe between her lips and then striking a match and placing it over the corncob bowl. She puffed until smoke billowed from her mouth and then blew at the match’s flame. The journey down the mountainside was going to take a long time and she knew it. It was one she did not care to start but as with all inevitable things she knew it was unavoidable. ‘This is all Iron Eyes’ fault. I wouldn’t even be here if that scrawny galoot had paid me some attention back at the hacienda. Damn it all, don’t he know that we is almost married?’
She glanced down at the leather sack in the driver’s box and gave a satisfied chuckle. The rough leather bag gave no clue as to its contents, but she knew what she had. She had the one hundred golden eagles that belonged to Iron Eyes. For a moment she forgot about the fact that her flight had been violently stopped and she was being forced to retrace her tracks. Sally slapped her thigh and laughed out loud.
‘That scrawny old scarecrow is gonna be mighty angry knowing I got his money,’ she laughed and picked up the bag. She shook it against her ear. The sound of the golden coins trapped within the leather bag filled her with glee. ‘Serves him right. It don’t pay to ignore your betrothed. I figure this has taught him a lesson he ain’t gonna forget in a hurry.’
Like a seasoned stagecoach driver, Sally released the brake and started to tease the hefty reins. Slowly but surely the horses started to walk. The sound of their chains rang out in the gloom as the long vehicle up began the descent.
Wisps of dust drifted from the wheel rims as they skimmed the edge of the mountain trail and drifted in the thin air over the trees. Squirrel Sally was well aware that one mistake could send her and her stagecoach crashing off the mountain road and into the tree-covered abyss.
‘Keep going, boys,’ Sally told the team as she tapped the long leathers on to the horses’ backs, ‘Nice and easy.’
Few grown men could have handled the six horses so skilfully yet with every step they took, Sally felt her heart quicken its pace. It took all her strength to keep the horses from charging downhill but she knew that was a recipe for disaster. She had to maintain a steady speed along the road as the stagecoach’s wheels went within inches of the very edge of the deadly drop.
As the long vehicle slowly negotiated the perilous pathway downward, Sally continued to puff feverishly on her pipe and stare like a ravenous hawk through her loose golden curls at the horses. The last thing she wanted was for one of the team to veer too far to the very rim of the road. One false step could bring disaster and cause the entire six horses to fall to their deaths and take her and the coach with them.
‘Keep moving, boys,’ she urged in a voice intended to calm the powerful horses, ‘That’s it, nice and easy.’
CHAPTER SIX
Acrid grey gunsmoke drifted from the rifle barrels of the bounty hunters as they waited for the gaunt Iron Eyes to show himself and return fire, yet after more than five minutes had passed without any sign of their wounded prey Simmons and Carter began to get nervous. Carter crawled through the blood-covered ground to where Simmons knelt beside the saddle of the upturned horse.
‘Where is he, Chet?’ Carter frantically asked his partner as he placed his rifle barrel on the neck of the stricken horse. ‘Where in tarnation has that Iron Eyes gone?’
‘I figure he’s behind that undergrowth riddled with bullet holes, Moses,’ Simmons said as his fingers pulled the last of the bullets in his belt and slid them into the rifle’s magazine.
‘You still gonna charge him?’
‘I’m thinking about it.’
Carter was soaked in his own gore as he rested his shoulder against the saddle. ‘This was a mistake. We should have let Iron Eyes be. I’m telling you, Chet. We should ride out and leave him.’
Without taking his eyes off the dense undergrowth, Simmons hissed a reply and curled his finger around his rifle trigger. ‘I reckon he’s still there, Moses. He’s wounded and probably hurt too bad to move. We’ve fired enough bullets into that brush to kill a grizzly bear. I reckon we’ve done for the varmint.’
Carter blasted another volley of lead into the place where they had last seen the infamous bounty hunter and then began pulling the last of his bullets from his belt and ramming them into
the Winchester. He shook his head and moved closer to his companion.
‘This is Iron Eyes we’re hunting, Chet,’ he drawled. ‘He ain’t no normal critter. Even wounded he’s still the most dangerous varmint we’ve ever tackled.’
Simmons kept staring at the sun-baked trees. ‘He’s just a man like we are, Moses. He ain’t nothing more. We wounded him and he’s either suffering or winging it to Hell.’
Carter looked at the rest of the trees around them and started to shake his head again. He was scared and unable to hide the fact.
‘I reckon he’s moving around behind them trees waiting to get us in his gun sights,’ he blurted out as his eyes darted at each of them in turn. ‘I’ve heard about him. Iron Eyes ain’t no normal man like us. They say he can’t be killed ‘coz he’s already dead.’
‘That’s foolish talk, Moses,’ Simmons shook his head as he concentrated on the place he had last caught sight of the emaciated bounty hunter. ‘All men can die. Iron Eyes ain’t no different to the rest of us. He’s just a whole lot uglier than most, that’s all. Quit fretting.’
Carter wanted to believe his fellow back-shooter but every second that passed seemed to make his fears grow. He looked at the high-shouldered palomino stallion that had not moved an inch from where they had first seen it. He rubbed the sweat from his whiskered mouth and exhaled.
Simmons looked at his partner, ‘What’s eating at you, Moses? You look plumb weird.’
Carter nodded in agreement as he pointed the barrel of his Winchester at the palomino standing twenty feet from where they had last seen Iron Eyes.
‘That big golden horse ain’t feared of shooting, Chet,’ he noted. ‘With all the gun play you’d think it would have run off for cover, but it just stands there.’
Simmons looked at the horse. ‘Yeah, that is kinda strange. Most nags would have high-tailed as soon as the shooting started, but that big fella ain’t even troubled by all the noise. I’m gonna enjoy owning that big fella.’