by Rory Black
Suddenly the blood of both bounty hunters froze as they heard the haunting sound of spurs jangling behind them. They glanced at each other as a long dark shadow crept up between then and covered the dead horse they were huddled behind.
Then the shadow stopped moving and the spurs ceased ringing its deathly tune. Both Simmons and Carter tried to swallow, but fear had tightened its invisible noose around their throats. Their gloved hands gripped their rifles as they heard the distinctive sound of gun hammers being locked into position behind their backbones.
Simmons mouthed at Carter. ‘Turn when I turn and start blasting.’
Moses Carter gave a single nod of his head.
Faster than the blink of an eye, they swung on their knees and faced the tall figure with their rifles levelled. Yet they paused as the reality of the horrific apparition filled them with total dread. Iron Eyes stood like something that had just crawled from their worst nightmares and towered over them. His mutilated face bore evidence of every battle he had fought and no longer resembled anything they had ever set eyes upon before. Flesh had been stitched together crudely or allowed to mend unaided. Whatever Iron Eyes had once looked like was now a distant memory. His long limp black hair hung on his wide shoulders cradling the devilish image that the two men were staring up at in terror.
Although they had heard the descriptive stories about the mysterious ghost-like bounty hunter, neither could believe what they were looking at.
Nothing on the face of the earth should have looked the way that Iron Eyes looked. Nothing alive should have even come close to the way the emaciated bounty hunter appeared. Iron Eyes lowered his head and stared into his adversaries’ eyes and recognized the shocked expressions etched upon them. He had seen it many times before.
‘You had your chance,’ he growled in his deep raspy voice.
Yellowish flames exploded from both barrels of his Navy Colts. The rods of death cut through the dry air and hit both kneeling men in their chests. There was no emotion in their dispatch. Iron Eyes calmly stared at the gore-splattered bounty hunters and spat at them. Both men rocked on their knees as their rifles slipped from their hands a fraction of a heartbeat before they fell on to their faces at his boots.
‘You should have fired,’ Iron Eyes poked his smoking gun barrels into his waist band behind his belt buckle and then lifted their heads in turn to study their features. Whoever these men were, he did not recognize them. They did not resemble any of the wanted poster images on the crumpled posters in his pockets. ‘Damn it all. Whoever these hombres were they ain’t got bounty on them. I hate wasting lead on worthless back-shooters. There ain’t no profit in it.’
Iron Eyes straightened up to his full height and removed the wide-brimmed sombrero from head to reveal his tortured features. The sun felt good as it burned into his face whilst his eyes darted to his painful shoulder. The padding of his dust coat was hanging from where the bullet had torn through it and grazed him. He glanced down at his hand poking from the sleeve of his coat and flexed his long fingers. Blood still dripped from his claw-like digits.
The sight of his own blood riled Iron Eyes. He furiously grabbed both bodies and viciously turned them over on to their backs. Within seconds he had riffled every pocket in search of any money they were carrying.
As his long skinny legs strode back to where his horse awaited its master, Iron Eyes counted the money. Two hundred and fifty-three dollars was the tally.
‘At least it wasn’t a total loss,’ he grunted before folding the bills and pushing them into his vest pocket. As his mind wondered who they were, he snatched the long leathers hanging from the palomino’s bridle and grabbed the stallion’s mane. ‘I reckon they were just two dumb road agents figuring on stealing every penny they could get their hands on from anyone passing along this trail road.’
Iron Eyes hung the sombrero from his saddlehorn and then raised his leg and poked the boot into the stirrup. He stared through the sickening heat haze at the dead men and shook his head.
‘Reckon you boys didn’t know that Squirrel Sally had already robbed me,’ he snarled and touched his brow in mocking salute. ‘Thank you kindly for the donation, brothers. I’ll be thinking about you the next time I buy me some whiskey.’
He mounted and collected his reins in his hands and abruptly turned the horse. As he pondered the trail that snaked up through the overwhelming trees, his thoughts returned to the hapless bounty hunters.
‘What the hell were they doing all the way out here?’ he sighed and poked a cigar between his teeth. He then scratched a match across the silver horn of his saddle and raised it to the tip of the twisted weed between his teeth. ‘And why were they shooting at me? If I was gonna ambush anyone I’d do it closer to a saloon. This country ain’t fit for man or beast.’
Smoke filled his lungs as he tossed the dead match at the equally dead bounty hunters. The pain in his shoulder still burned like a wildfire but he did not have time to waste tending his wound. He still had to find Squirrel Sally and get his golden eagles out of her feminine clutches.
Iron Eyes was about to spur when more distant shots rang out from up in the depths of the forest. He raised his deathly head and stared through the strands of his long limp hair. His eyes narrowed as he focused. He frowned.
‘Looks like we still ain’t on our lonesome, horse,’ he hissed and slapped the tail of his reins across the palomino’s shoulders. The powerful stallion responded and started to trot along the trail. As the palomino began to find more speed, Iron Eyes replaced the spent bullets from his guns with fresh ones from his deep coat pockets in readiness for the next varmints to try their luck and stop his progress. With the mangled cigar gripped between his teeth, Iron Eyes was well aware that whoever had fired the shots he had heard were probably far more dangerous than the bodies behind him.
They were still alive.
‘Not for long.’ He smirked to himself. ‘Not for long.’
CHAPTER SEVEN
Like something that had just crawled from the fiery bowels of Hell, the battle-scarred bounty hunter continued to drive the muscular mount ever onward. There was fire in his eyes as well as his belly. Something was driving him on after the tiny stagecoach driver and it had nothing to do with the small fortune in golden coins that she had intercepted before Iron Eyes had returned to Don Jose Fernandez’s magnificent hacienda.
Although the gaunt horseman did not recognize the feelings that fuelled his quest, Iron Eyes was certain that he had to catch up with Squirrel Sally before something bad happened to her. At first he had attempted to dismiss the fateful thoughts that hung over him like an executioner’s axe, yet no matter how hard he tried, Iron Eyes could not shake off the dread which haunted him.
Although Squirrel Sally did not realise it, she was a very good-looking young female who had a knack of attracting the wrong sort of attention. Iron Eyes felt that she was vulnerable to the depraved desires of most who set eyes upon her. This mixed with the fact that she was alone in a perilous land that harboured many unseen dangers from not only the varied wildlife but also the two-legged type.
As he spurred his powerful stallion on, Iron Eyes had completely forgotten why he had originally started out after her. Now he was driven by the uncontrollable thoughts which he was unable to shake off.
All the bounty hunter knew for sure was that he had to catch up with the stubborn Squirrel before fate dealt her a lethal hand of aces and eights – the death hand made famous by being the fateful cards Wild Bill Hickok had been holding when killed in Deadwood.
The Grim Reaper had many guises and Iron Eyes knew that every one of them was deadly. His feelings for Squirrel Sally out-weighed any consideration for his own safety. Every fibre of his being told him that he had to locate the female he normally tried to flee.
He whipped and spurred his mount along the lower trail relentlessly as blood continued to stream down from the deep graze on his shoulder. Yet Iron Eyes ignored the savage injury and the pain that would have felled a less
er man. The infamous bounty hunter had only one thought in his mind and that was to catch up with the besotted Squirrel Sally before she became just another notch on the Grim Reaper’s long list of casualties.
The golden horse obeyed every demand its master made of it and ploughed down through a dense gully of flesh-ripping brambles until its hoofs located solid ground again.
Yet if Iron Eyes had been his usual self, he might have realized that he was far from alone in the forested trail. The two men he had killed were now far behind him lying beneath a sun nearly as merciless as himself, but there were other men in the forest. Men who, like himself, feared nothing. Men who had good reason to hate and kill those who invaded their last refuge.
Iron Eyes rode along the ever-narrowing trail and stared unblinking at what lay ahead. As his blood-stained spurs continued to urge the exhausted stallion on, he was totally unaware that a dozen sets of eyes were following his every movement. Just as they had done since he had first entered the uncharted forest.
Yet his observers were not what he had even imagined existed in this remote part of the territory. Had Iron Eyes been more aware of what surrounded him, he might have spotted them as they silently kept pace with him.
Sat astride their small colourful ponies, the small hunting party of Kiowa warriors had watched his every move from the cover of the countless trees and virtually impenetrable undergrowth. Their sharp eyesight had witnessed many men enter the forest over the years, but the sight of Iron Eyes was different.
He was the living nightmare they had heard about from their elders. A creature which barely resembled a real man any longer and had become almost mythical in the telling and retelling of his encounters with other tribes.
Unknown to Iron Eyes, the twelve highly-painted horsemen had been out hunting fresh game to take back to their encampment deep in the uncharted wilderness when they had first become aware of the bounty hunter riding along the trail road. The warriors had been tracking deer to feed their young and old when they had spotted the grotesque Iron Eyes.
They had used the cover of the dense forest to secretly keep pace with the haunting figure as he spurred on toward the fork in the trail where the Kiowa had already spotted Simmons and Carter lying in wait.
The bushwhacking crossfire had not worked.
As the gunsmoke cleared, the collection of braves had watched as Simmons and Carter had chased the wounded creature along the lower trail road with rifles blazing. The warriors had remained hidden from view as the bounty hunters bore down on their hideous prey.
Their suspicions of who was the rider of the magnificent palomino stallion were confirmed when, after being cut down by the back-shooter’s repeating rifles, Iron Eyes somehow rose like a phoenix and dished out his own brand of merciless retribution.
Only one creature was capable of achieving that feat in the minds of the Kiowa braves. They knew him by many names and descriptions, but the stories that had probably been created by the Apaches and had spread like a cancer throughout most of the other nomadic tribes referred to him mainly as the dead man who refused to die.
The spirit of a thousand lost souls could not die because he did not know that he was no longer living. The vivid description of Iron Eyes had seemed far-fetched even to the isolated Kiowa but when they had set eyes on the phantom on horseback, they realized that it was an understatement.
As the Kiowa had watched him from the dense undergrowth they began to believe all the stories they had been fed by their elders around their campfires. It was then they each knew that the tales they had heard were actually true.
Iron Eyes really existed.
Since the logging companies had deemed that it was unprofitable to continue logging in such a remote place and abandoned the huge forest, most people had considered the tree-covered hills devoid of life apart from bears and mountain lions. Yet nothing could have been further from the truth. Several hundred of what was left of the famed Kiowa people had travelled north from their ancestral homeland and replaced the loggers in the wilderness. Yet unlike the long-departed lumberjacks, the Kiowa did not cut down swaths of trees for money.
They had blended into the terrain unnoticed.
As untold numbers of wagon trains had ventured deeper into Kiowa territory, looking for greener pastures and their own brand of paradise, the Indians had deserted what had become known as the Kiowa trail and found a more peaceful place to try and exist. The forested mountains offered them a second chance at surviving amid the relentless onslaught of invaders and they had grasped it.
They knew only too well that this might be their last chance. The secluded mountainous region had provided them with a place where they could live peacefully unhindered by the continuous onslaught of thousands of settlers.
Until the sun had risen that very morning, few men had travelled through the forest due to its remoteness. Those that did venture up into the wilderness had no inkling that the thousands of acres of trees which flanked them had become the adopted home of the Kiowa.
Yet all that suddenly changed when they had spotted Iron Eyes, for unlike other travellers who entered the remote hills, they could not ignore his presence.
It was said that the gaunt bounty hunter was the enemy of all native tribes. Tales of his mindless bloodlust and brutal slayings of untold numbers of Indians were rife in the stories which the twelve Kiowa had been weaned upon.
In truth Iron Eyes had rarely killed anyone if they were not wanted dead or alive. There was no profit in it. Yet the stories had fuelled countless warriors to try their luck and attack him anyway over the years.
It had become a mark of honour.
A lethal ritual built upon a sandy foundation.
The braves would normally have remained secreted and chosen to allow the stranger safe passage rather than risk drawing attention to themselves, but they had soon realized that there was something eerily familiar about the horseman upon the golden stallion.
When they became convinced that the lean emaciated man with long black hair was Iron Eyes, they knew that they could not ignore him.
They believed that the bounty hunter had the blood of countless Indians on his bony hands. This atrocity had to be avenged even if it cost them their own lives.
As with all senseless wars, however large or small, honour and revenge was the vital spark which ignited its fuse and set off a chain reaction that often could not be halted until it was far too late. Just like so many other tribes, the Kiowa had been fed a staple diet of grotesque exaggeration concerning Iron Eyes around their campfires.
With every telling, the tales grew taller and further from the truth. What every tribe failed to understand was that the strange bounty hunter was also hated by white men.
In the eyes of most men, Iron Eyes was neither white nor was he an Indian of any recognizable tribe. His hair was long and black and hung across his wide shoulders just as their hair did. Yet his unholy features did not resemble any known Indian. He was a misfit, a creature that did not belong in either camp, and his mutilated features only added to his misfortune. For men of all colours tend to fear and kill anything which is different to themselves.
The legend that had grown around the fearsome bounty hunter bore no relation to the facts and all most Indians knew about him was that Iron Eyes was said to be a living ghost.
He was a monstrous mistake that could only be fixed by extinction. Just like so many others, the Kiowa believed that he was an evil spirit that they had to try and destroy before he destroyed them.
The twelve highly-painted horsemen used their unequalled knowledge of the tree-covered hills to not only remain level with the large palomino stallion but to get ahead of it.
Iron Eyes did not know it, but once again he was being stalked by yet another band of highly-skilled hunters. Just like the Apache, Cheyenne and numerous other tribes before them, the Kiowa had decided to undertake the impossible task of claiming the scalp of the man who it was said could never be killed.
Th
e Kiowa hunting party had decided to forget the forest deer they had been tracking and concentrated on a very different game.
Iron Eyes was a prize that they simply could not turn their backs upon. Although they realized that to face the infamous bounty hunter was to face death itself, none of the twelve horsemen could do anything but succumb to the promise of immortality it offered.
The warriors knew that killing Iron Eyes was more than just claiming the scalp of an ordinary white man. Killing Iron Eyes would make them legends not only amongst their fellow Indians but also in the hearts of the hated white intruders who had driven them from their ancestral homes.
The Kiowa used every shadow at their disposal.
As the powerful stallion obeyed its master’s spurs, the warriors tracked its every stride upon their unshod ponies through the trees.
Iron Eyes had only one thought on his mind and that was to find Squirrel Sally and force her back to civilization while there was still time.
Yet as the palomino stretched its sturdy legs and ate up the ground beneath its horseshoes, time was swiftly running out.
The horrific Iron Eyes pressed on at pace.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Deep in the heart of the untamed forest several abandoned log cabins remained standing long after the loggers had gone. Most of them had fallen victim to the elements and were uninhabitable but one had somehow managed to withstand the severe seasons and had been found by the three outlaws known simply as the Denver gang.
Jody Denver, Dan Vance and Bill McGee had ridden a long way from their last brutal job back in Senora. There had been six of them when they had ridden into the prosperous cattle town with their eye on the town’s bank. Only Denver, McGee and Vance had managed to survive intact after the shooting had stopped.
Jody Denver had always prided himself on his careful planning and yet the robbery had gone badly wrong. To lose three men was bad enough, but also to lose half the loot they had managed to take from the bank’s vault was even worse.