Iron Eyes, no. 1 (13 page)

The ghost of a
man took the key and then moved to the stairs that lay to his
right. Halfway up the steep, carpeted incline, he paused long
enough to turn and utter a few words down to the bleeding man.
‘Better get a doc to look at that, mister.’

The clerk
waited until Iron Eyes had made the landing of the first floor
before doing just that.

The sheriff was
making his way down to the telegraph office slowly when he noticed
the hotel clerk running like a scalded cat in the direction of the
doctor’s house. The lawman had been around for longer than even he
liked to remember and knew that if he was to get close to the next
election he had to stay away from the stranger. That was no normal
bounty hunter in the hotel, he thought. That was no normal man.

Deputy Sheriff
Jim George knew that if he were to keep the killing in Tombstone
down to a minimum, he had to play this situation by ear. It was not
the way he had learned to do his job when he pinned a star on his
chest for the first time twenty years earlier, but that was the way
he was going to play this. Sometimes a man has to do what tastes
bad, just in order to remain whole and without any additional
ventilation holes.

Tombstone’s
mature lawman had been around for too long and had seen his share
of gunmen passing through, but this tall man who resembled a
skeleton with skin was something very different to George’s
experienced eyes. The thought that this bounty hunter might just
decide to start giving other Tombstone residents a closer look and
claiming further rewards sent a cold chill down the man’s spine.
This was a town that welcomed the folks that other respectable
towns rejected. There had to be at least a dozen wanted souls
within the town limits at any one time.

‘
Jim.’ Clancy Green the telegraph operator greeted the
pale-faced man as he entered the small wooden office.

‘
Clancy.’ George returned the greeting and dragged a chair
across the dusty floor before resting his bones in it. ‘I want you
to send me a couple of wires.’

A couple of
wires?’ The telegraph man started to smile as he considered the
fact that he was about to double the weekly average of wires sent
from his small office in one single day ‘How come you want to send
two wires?’

‘
I got me a bounty hunter who is claiming a reward on somebody
he just blowed apart in the saloon,’ George started. ‘The other
wire is more of an enquiry’

‘
Enquiry?’ Greene’s face started to have an air of curiosity
written across it as he sat down next to the seldom used telegraph
equipment. ‘What sort of enquiries you thinking of making,
Jim?’

Jim George
waved his wrinkled hand over the equipment on the desk and smiled.
‘Just get me a few scraps of paper and a pencil, Clancy. I gotta
find out where the county sheriff is ’cause I might just require
his help.’

‘
Something must be brewing, Jim,’ Clancy pulled his pencil from
behind his ear and handed it across to the worried man.

‘
I got a feeling something is brewing, and it ain’t tea.’ Jim
George licked the end of the pencil before looking down at the
scrap of paper before him. Sweat trickled down from under the rim
of his Stetson.

Evening came
suddenly over Tombstone as the sounds of the howling wind swept
across from the surrounding hills determinedly up onto the treeless
plateau where the fast growing town lay defiantly The curious
figure of Iron Eyes slept in his hotel room with his two Navy Colts
at either side of him. The man lay fully dressed upon the bed linen
propped up by four pillows. His only concession to normality was to
remove two long, vicious spurs from his mule-ear boots. The boots
had stayed upon his feet though. The long coat hung on a hook that
was crudely nailed to a chunk of wood on the wall next to the
window. Before retiring, Iron Eyes had moved the large bed so that
it faced the door before sliding the bolt across. Sleep came easily
to the trail weary man who had made a profession out of hunting
humans in the manner usually reserved for animals.

Iron Eyes had
made the long ride from Texas up to the windy climate that had
spawned Tombstone in the heart of cattle land. The surrounding
hills were rich with silver and when men are getting rich by
digging ore they require the basics of life. Food, whiskey women
and tools, in various orders of preference. This was a troubled
land where the mixture of so many differing sorts had lit many
fuses that could blow up at any time. Iron Eyes’ instincts had
brought him here because that was where he knew Frank Carter had
headed. Here there were many of his sort.

Killers felt
safe within the town limits of the fledgling Tombstone.

It had been a
long hard ride that had tested the grit of the bounty hunter to its
very limits. Iron Eyes had ridden into Dodge City in Kansas a month
earlier and after shooting up the town a mite was directed to the
distant Tombstone.

Nearly 750
miles across hard range had slowed the relentless Iron Eyes.
Sagebrush as high as a horse’s breastbone made progress slow but he
had continued. Any sane man would have quit for an easier victim,
but Iron Eyes lacked a grip on a normal man’s sanity. To him, he
had started to pursue his chosen prey and that drove him on like a
hound when the scent of a raccoon gets into its nostrils. Quitting
would never even dawn on the long lethal creature who slept
peacefully in the soft hotel bed. Dreams never visited his slumber
as he usually slept with open eyes. Dreams were for those with
imagination, Iron Eyes had none.

Nightmares
often came into the heart of his mind, but he did not require sleep
for their visitation.

The rapping
upon the door brought him out of the deep sleep suddenly. His hand
gripped the two Navy Colts as his eyelids opened just wide enough
to study the door that faced him. Without uttering a word he rose
and stepped onto the board flooring silently. Iron Eyes then stood
and moved to the door cautiously as any man would who had lived so
close to death as he had done. The years of living like an animal
had honed his attitudes and shaped his every lungful of air. He had
lost most of his humanity over the years of dishing out his special
form of justice, if there had been any humanity dwelling in his
soul at all. The bounty hunter leaned against the door and pressed
his head at its faded paintwork as he listened. The firm knocking
came again. It was not the knock of a man’s knuckles; it sounded
far too gentle to the trained hunter.

‘
You in there?’ The voice was feminine to a degree although it
had a strength to its tones that intrigued him. Females seldom, if
ever, visited the strange, gaunt man to offer their favours, as
they would to less terrifying figures, so Iron Eyes was
intrigued.

‘
Who is it?’ Iron Eyes asked carefully. He did not want to end
up as dead as Frank Carter by finding the man had a lover with a
gun and a grudge.

‘
Open the door,’ the voice demanded powerfully.

Iron Eyes
stuffed one of his pistols into his belt whilst cooking the hammer
back on the other.

Whoever this
female was she had a power in her voice that fired the strange
man’s fancy to such a degree that he slid the bolt and opened the
door.

The female who
stood before him lacked anything in the way of looks that might
appeal to the average man, however long they had been in the
saddle. She was a mere five feet in height in her high-heeled
riding boots and had black hair cut shorter than most men. Her
complexion was dark and ruddy and seemed closer to chewed leather
than female flesh. Her clothing bore signs of wear that few
garments ever reached and her britches were made of shiny leather
that had been stitched up more than `once. Apart from her bosom
that strained unaided against the thick cotton shirt she looked
like a man. Her face showed signs that she had been hit on the nose
more than once and when she spoke Iron Eyes could see gaps where
teeth used to dwell. She seemed to resemble a prize fighter more
than anything else the tall man could think of He had seen many odd
people in his days, but she was the most unusual critter he had
ever come close to. Yet for all that he felt an affinity with her
because she, like himself, was an outsider.

The woman
walked in calmly and looked him up and down. ‘What they call you?’
she demanded.

‘
Iron Eyes,’ the lean man replied, as he circled her trying to
make out whether or not she was what she appeared to be. ‘Who the
hell are you?’

The belly laugh
that roared out from her small body via her larger than average
mouth took the grim-faced man by surprise, as he stepped back
clutching his Navy Colt. ‘My name is Squirrel Tooth Annie,’ she
boomed, showing the tooth that was in the centre of her mouth and
far longer than it ought to have been.

Iron Eyes used
his free hand to rub his eyes as he watched the woman as she sat
down upon his bed and bounced as if testing the springs.

‘
Squirrel Tooth Annie?’

She boomed
another loud laugh that seemed to bounce off all four walls before
hitting his ears. ‘I heard of you, Iron Eyes. They say that you are
one hell of a bastard. Is it true?’

The bounty
hunter moved silently across the room and sat on the sill of the
window before lowering his gun. ‘I guess it is. What difference
does that make to you?’

‘
None. You heard of me'?’ she asked, in a voice that seemed to
have too much volume for someone of her size. ‘Ever heard of old
Squirrel Tooth Annie?’

Iron Eyes
shrugged as if uncertain. ‘What the hell do you want of me,
Squirrel Tooth Annie?’

Annie raised
her index finger and pointed at him. ‘You sure you ain’t heard tell
of me?’

‘
You a town crier?’ He had not intended to be humorous as it
was not in his nature, but she laughed again and almost split his
head with the sheer noise of her cackling.

As quickly as
she had started to laugh, she ceased and then with a face that was
as straight as any seen at a prayer meeting started to move towards
him. For the first time in a long while the hardened bounty hunter
found himself feeling uneasy He still had his gun cocked but she
was unarmed. Yet, as she edged closer to him with her small steps,
sweat started to trickle down the back of his neck.

‘
I seen what you done to old Frank Carter.’

Annie stood
staring into his grey, dead eyes. ‘I can use a varmint like
you.’

Iron Eyes
uncocked his Navy Colt and slid it into his belt over his hip. ‘I
ain’t for hire. I’m a bounty hunter, nothing else.’

‘
You’re damn good with them Colts, Iron Eyes.’

She grinned as
best her sparse teeth would permit. ‘You’ll do for me.’

‘
Do what exactly?’

She started to
boom again. It was like being in a room with a thundercloud that
just would not go away.