Blood of Iron Eyes (4 page)

The rope tightened once more as the horse pulled.

Iron Eyes realized what was happening and got to his feet. He started to run back towards the façade when he felt the boards beneath his boots move. The bounty hunter stopped and saw a gap appear between the saloon wall and the balcony. The entire length creaked and swayed.

Iron Eyes was still thirty feet from the open window that he had used to step out on to the balcony, but there were a few closed ones next to him.

The sound of lumber breaking under the strain of being pulled away from the wall was so loud that, for a brief moment, Iron Eyes had not been able to hear the guns below him. Nails flew like daggers in all directions. Iron Eyes tried to steady himself as the boards beneath his boots began to fall away. He could see the boardwalk through the gaps as planks fell to the ground.

There was no time to waste. Iron Eyes had to act and act fast.

As Riley’s horse eventually managed to drag the corner upright away, the bounty hunter leapt for the nearest window.

The guns in his outstretched hands shattered the panes as his thin body followed them through the window frame. Iron Eyes landed heavily in a bedroom amid a million slivers of glass. He steadied himself and then spotted a six-inch piece of broken glass sticking out of his leg. He pulled it out and tossed it aside.

With blood pouring from the jagged gash, he staggered to his feet and glanced out of the window just as the entire balcony disintegrated and collapsed. A cloud of dust billowed up from the street.

‘This is gettin’ darn painful!’ Iron Eyes snarled under his breath. He limped across the room, opened the door and then ignoring his own pain, rushed into the corridor.

The sound of gunfire was no quieter even in the centre of the building. Yet Iron Eyes ignored it and forged on. Somehow the bleeding figure moved like quicksilver along the carpeted corridor until he found the staircase which led down into the heart of the saloon.

He had left a trail of blood in his wake.

Iron Eyes walked down the dark stairwell and paused behind the door. He could still hear the shooting echoing inside the Spinning Wheel from the street. He pushed the door open with the barrels of his guns and narrowed his eyes.

The bartender was still hiding behind the mahogany bar counter. Except for him, the huge room was empty. Riley and his men were still firing their guns at shadows in the smoke and dust.

Iron Eyes walked from the door and behind the bar. He stopped above the shaking bartender.

‘Give me my bottle, Ted Cooper!’ Iron Eyes demanded.

Cooper did as commanded and gave the bottle
of rye to the bleeding figure. He watched in stunned awe as the bounty hunter raised the whiskey above his head and poured its fiery contents over his face and then the wound in his leg.

‘That’s gotta hurt!’ Cooper exclaimed.

Iron Eyes nodded, then took a long swallow from the bottle’s neck. He exhaled heavily and placed the bottle down on the counter.

‘Got any cigars?’

The bartender raised both eyebrows and picked a box off the shelves next to him. He opened its lid and picked one out for the injured man beside him.

Iron Eyes accepted the cigar and bit off its tip. He placed it between his teeth and straightened up. His eyes were still not seeing clearly. He heard the match being struck and allowed the bartender to light his cigar for him.

‘Thanks,
amigo
!’ the bounty hunter said through a cloud of smoke.

‘What ya gonna do?’ Cooper asked.

‘Reckon I’m either gonna die or I might get lucky!’

Cooper stood up beside the taller man. He stared at the gruesome face, which had blood
trailing
from untold cuts around the eyes.

‘There’s too many of them!’ the bartender said firmly.

‘There usually are!’ Iron Eyes sighed as he
sucked more smoke into his lungs. ‘They killed my horse! I’ve gotta stay here now and try and finish the rest of them critters off!’

‘I got me a horse out back, Iron Eyes!’ Cooper said. ‘You can have it if’n ya wants! Well?’

‘I ain’t the sort to hightail it!’ The bounty hunter’s bleeding eyes stared through the windows at the wreckage of the balcony, which was piled up high outside the front of the virtually empty saloon. He knew that he still had some time left before any of his attackers would be able to get inside the Spinning Wheel, but he had to make a decision soon. Time was running out quickly.

‘Ya ain’t gotta chance against all of them boys!’ Cooper insisted. ‘They’re scum!’

Iron Eyes took another long swallow of the whiskey and then drew in smoke from the cigar. He flashed his eyes at the man beside him. A man who was showing concern.

‘Fontaine owes me a thousand bucks, Ted! I ain’t gonna ride out of this town without it!’

‘I’ve got a small shack on the outskirts of town,’ Cooper said. ‘You can hole up there until dark. There’s iodine and bandages there. You could fix up that leg. I finish work at seven tonight. I’ll come and let ya know what’s happening! What ya reckon?’

‘I ain’t sure why ya want to help me,’ Iron Eyes muttered in a low tone. ‘Most folks won’t come
within spittin’ distance of me. How come ya want to help me?’

‘Maybe I’m just sick of Fontaine and his vermin.’ Cooper shrugged. ‘Ya might be an ugly critter but ya a damn sight more honest than them killers out there! Maybe you can bring some justice to Hope!’

Iron Eyes nodded and grabbed a handful of the cigars.

‘OK! What kinda horse ya got out back?’

‘He ain’t much to look at, Iron Eyes. Just an old chestnut with grey whiskers on his chin, but he can still gallop.’

Iron Eyes slid the bottle into one of his deep pockets.

‘OK!’

Cooper led the bleeding man out of the rear of the large building to the horse. He pointed to where his shack was situated at the town’s edge and told him to let the old horse take him there. It knew the route by heart.

Iron Eyes slapped the reins across the shoulders of the animal and hung on tight. Cooper had been correct. The chestnut could still gallop. It also knew the shortest way through the back lanes to the bartender’s small shack.

The sight which greeted Brewster Fontaine was not what he had either expected or could have
imagined
possible. This was carnage. He pulled back on his reins and stopped the buggy a few dozen yards away from the pile of blood-soaked bodies which blocked the main street. The sun had already started to do its worst and the stench of death filled the main street.

Fontaine could not disguise his horror as he stepped down on to the ground and tried to understand what had occurred. He had given orders for his men to stop the bounty hunter from entering the bank and getting his reward money. There should have been only one body lying on the sand. It should have been Iron Eyes’ carcass attracting flies in the hot mid-morning sun, not so many of his hired guns.

The pale face of the bank-manager stared out from in front of the solid building where Fontaine
kept all his money. The man looked in shock and seemed unable to know what to do. He was
shaking
as he walked towards Fontaine.

‘Sh … should I open up the bank, sir?’ the banker asked.

‘That’s what I pay you to do, Sloane,’ Fontaine said. His hands waved the terrified employee away. ‘Open up and do your job!’

The man scurried away.

Again Fontaine looked at his rotting hired guns. So many men that it chilled him. He bit his lower lip and tried to hide his revulsion as he watched Frank Riley, Keno and a few of his surviving men approaching him.

He turned and looked at the twisted pile of wood which cluttered the front of the saloon.

‘Did ya get Iron Eyes, Riley?’ Fontaine asked as the men reached the buggy. ‘Tell me that he’s lying over there with them bodies!’

‘He got away!’ Riley managed to say. ‘That
critter
just ain’t human like us, boss! We had him cornered and he just up and vanished!’

‘What?’ Fontaine gasped. ‘Do you say that Iron Eyes got away? He escaped? How?’

‘Yep, boss.’ Riley nodded. ‘He just disappeared.’

‘Like a damned ghost!’ Keno added. ‘They say that he ain’t no living man, don’t they? I reckon it’s true. He’s a ghost!’

Fontaine rolled his eyes and started to walk slowly towards the saloon.

‘Ghosts don’t kill folks, Keno! Iron Eyes might be many things but he ain’t no ghost!’

‘But he vanished, boss.’ Riley pushed his hat back off his furrowed brow as he trailed the tall, handsome Fontaine. ‘We searched everywhere for him and didn’t find no trace of the varmint.’

The businessman sighed loudly and pointed at the bodies.

‘How many of our men did he kill?’

‘Twenty-three,’ Riley replied quietly.

Fontaine shook his head. ‘Twenty-three? That bag of bones killed twenty-three of the best guns in the territory?’

‘We killed his horse!’ Keno pointed at the body of Iron Eyes’ mount.

‘Damn shame that Iron Eyes wasn’t sitting on the animal when you shot the worthless nag, ain’t it?’ Fontaine screamed. ‘You might have
accidentally
managed to shoot him as well!’

The gunslingers walking beside the
businessman
went silent as they drew closer to the Spinning Wheel. They trailed Fontaine as he walked up to the front of the saloon and paused before the wreckage of the balcony strewn the length of the building.

The town was now awake and the street was filled with curious onlookers. This was the first time that any of the honest hard-working residents of Hope had seen Fontaine’s grip on power
challenged
.

‘Get them nosy bastards off the boardwalks, Riley!’ Fontaine ordered his men. ‘I don’t want to have them gloating at my expense.’

Riley ushered his remaining men towards the crowd of interested townsfolk and started to force them off the streets and into the buildings, where their muted laughter might not reach Fontaine’s ears.

Fontaine stepped cautiously up on to the loose planks of wood piled up outside the Spinning Wheels entrance and studied them carefully. Then he saw something which drew his attention. He bent down and touched one of the planks. A smiled etched his face.

‘What ya found there, boss?’ Keno asked as he rested a boot on the edge of the boardwalk.

Fontaine straightened up and showed the tips of his fingers to the gunman.

‘Look at it, Keno! Look at it! What do you see?’

‘Blood?’ Keno answered.

‘Exactly!’ Fontaine smiled. ‘Blood! Ghosts don’t bleed, do they? One of you useless bastards managed to hit his target!’

The rest of the gunmen gathered around their boss and stared at his crimson fingertips.

‘This is the blood of Iron Eyes!’ Fontaine announced. ‘The blood of Iron Eyes!’

Blood covered the earthen floor where the wounded Iron Eyes had spent the previous hour. The bartender’s humble shack was less than twelve feet square and had more holes in its roof than there were in the tails of Iron Eyes’ coat. It had a small stove set in the corner with a stack which went up through the roof. The bounty hunter had spent every second he had been inside the shack feeding the stove with kindling until its blackened belly was red-hot. The stove’s heat was unwelcome during the hottest part of the day but Iron Eyes knew it was necessary. The wounded man had lost too much blood and he had to stop the bleeding leg-wound quickly.

Iron Eyes stared at the fire and the poker which was buried in its flames. The metal rod glowed like a branding-iron.

It was ready.

He had already dosed a whole bottle of iodine
on to the deep bloody gash in his thigh through the hole he had ripped in his pants’ leg. It had stung like a million hornet stings, but Iron Eyes knew there was a far worse pain to come. One that he had experienced many times before during his violent lifetime.

Iron Eyes removed his twisted cigar butt from his teeth and threw it into the flames. He then replaced it with one of his bullets. He gripped the brass casing firmly with his sharp teeth and then wrapped sacking around his right hand to protect it from the heat of the smoking poker.

Iron Eyes cautiously gripped the end of the poker and then withdrew its length from the stove’s open door.

The tip of the poker was glowing red-hot.

Without a second’s hesitation Iron Eyes pressed it against the bleeding gash in his leg. It hissed like a viper. Smoke rose up into the air. The smell of burning flesh filled his flared nostrils. He bit down on the bullet with all his might and reeled away from the stove.

Pain ripped through his entire body.

The bounty hunter dropped the poker and
staggered
to the bed set against the opposite wall. His lean body fell on to its sheets.

Iron Eyes inhaled through his nostrils and rocked back and forth until he no longer felt the urge to scream out. He was still aware that the shack’s walls were too thick for him to draw the
attention of anyone that might be hunting him.

His heart pounded inside his chest like an Apache war drum as he fought the agonizing torture that he had inflicted upon himself.

He spat the bullet at the dirt floor.

Iron Eyes had lost a lot of blood yet somehow he had managed to retain consciousness. He forced himself to rise until he was upright and sitting with his long legs draped over the edge of the bed. He stared at his smouldering flesh visible through the torn hole in his pants’ leg.

His skin had been crudely melted.

But the bleeding had stopped.

The weary bounty hunter gazed at the small
solitary
window covered in shredded sackcloth. Sunlight filtered through it into the shack. The day was still young but he was once again unable to do anything except wait for his strength to return. He knew that he was in trouble.

Big trouble.

Iron Eyes dragged the bottle of whiskey off the floor and lifted its neck to his lips. He did not lower it until he had consumed its entire contents. Then he dropped it on to the earth at his feet.

His fingers found one of the cigars that Ted Cooper had given him. He placed it between his teeth. He chewed on its end and tried to control his breathing as his heart began to slow down to somewhere close to normal.

The cuts on his face had already scabbed and
the dried blood felt like a mask covering his flesh. Sweat dripped from the limp strands of hair which hung before his unblinking eyes.

He rested his back against the wooden wall and stared at the still-smoking poker resting on the dirt floor where he had dropped it. He pulled both his guns from his coat pockets, cocked their hammers and set them to either side of him a few inches from his hands. It was a ritual he had practised countless times before in divers places.

His Navy Colts were always within reach of his bony fingers, even when he slept.

Any onlooker would have found it impossible to tell whether he was asleep or awake because the infamous bounty hunter never closed his
bullet-coloured
eyes. He just remained perfectly still propped against the wall.

He would remain motionless until his honed instincts warned him that someone was close.

Only then would Iron Eyes move again.