Iron Eyes, no. 1 (4 page)

Now Dan Hardy
was being prepared for burial.

Now his mind
was gone and they would have to fend for themselves as well as they
could.

The black
clouds that drifted over Rio Drago started to unleash rain that
made the cactus sing, and the two weathered men finished their
task.

The horses were
ready.

Heading inside
the small cantina that still had the stains of their brother’s
blood on its whitewashed walls, the two men purchased their
supplies.

Three bottles
of tequila and a bag of salt each would have to do until they
reached a town that sold rotgut rye. The two bowls of chilli and
kiln-baked bread filled their bellies long enough for them to get
back to their horses.

‘
Where we headed?’ Whit asked, finishing his bread as he pulled
himself up into the saddle by the saddle-horn.

Tom Hardy
dragged himself up into his own saddle, after forcing the tequila
bottles into his saddle-bags. His frustration showed as he gathered
up the loose reins and pulled the horse away from the rail.

‘
We are after the creep who killed our brother, Whit,’ he
snarled, spitting the remnants of animal bone from between his
sparse teeth. ‘Remember?’

Whit shrugged
and took a long swig from his bottle, shaking his head violently as
the strong liquor reached his brain. The journey did not take
long.

‘
We are after Iron Eyes,’ Whit grinned as he allowed his nag to
turn away from the hitching-rail and join his awaiting
brother.

‘
Right,’ Tom agreed as he twisted his neck in order to relieve
the pain that still hammered inside his head. No matter how hard he
tried, the combination of cheap liquor and rotten grub took its
toll upon his demeanour. He felt like hell and he was
angry.

The brainless
Whit sat as he dribbled the burning tequila from his dry lips.

‘
That’s right. Ain’t it, Tom?’ he gushed. ‘I is right, ain’t
I?’

Tom Hardy
nodded and then shook his head in frustration at his dim-witted
brother, not that he was ever going to be mistaken for a genius
himself

The two riders
rode out of the small Latin township and faithfully followed the
route that the feeble law officer had pointed out.

They had
revenge in their hearts but little else.

These were two
men who would try and catch up with the man who was heading to El
Paso to collect his blood money

What neither
man knew was that the man they chased was the most evil and
dangerous man they could ever hope to meet. Not that any normal man
would wish to catch up with Iron Eyes and his pair of Navy
Colts.

The two
remaining Hardy brothers were neither normal nor were they too
smart. They were the body of the chicken after the axe had removed
the head of the bird. They were the two lesser Hardy brothers and
their brain had been removed.

Dan Hardy was
dead.

Whit and Tom
Hardy were heading after his executioner with plenty of liquor in
not only their saddle-bags but their guts too.

They would
chase their brother’s killer for no better reason than they were
going to make him pay

As the dust
rose behind their horses’ hooves, the remaining hours of their
futile lives were beginning to run out. Like sand through a pail
with a hole in its bottom, the end was getting closer with every
stride their mounts took.

Smarter men
would have reasoned the odds and quit their riding after a known
killer like Iron Eyes. The trouble with dumb folks is that they
follow the beats of their hearts, rather than the messages from
their heads, because the messages in their brains usually are not
worth listening to.

They were
heading toward hell.

There would be
no prisoners taken.

Only death
would end this quest for revenge.

Unfortunately,
death had ridden on Iron Eyes’ shoulder for many a long while.

It was late
afternoon before the rifle-woman allowed the gaunt Iron Eyes to
dismount from his Indian pony

The sun was
setting below the far-away hills that marked the Texas side of the
wide river.

It was still
unbelievably hot, and the sweat had soaked through both their
shirts. Now every detail of her fine-formed breasts could be seen
by the sharp-eyed bounty-hunter.

He had
continued bleeding from the hole in his ear for over an hour, and
his shoulder was stained with his own blood.

She watched as
he bent down to pick up the tin plate she had indicated. He helped
himself to a slice of burned bacon and sat down upon the hard
ground. It tasted good, he thought, as he chewed the meat and
watched her with squinting eyes.

Whoever she
was, she was good.

She had done
something no other living person had ever managed to do. She had
taken a chunk out of him.

Iron Eyes
respected her for the attitude she displayed toward him. It was
like his own.

Merciless.

She walked
around him and never once allowed the long rifle barrel to wander
off its chosen target, his head.

‘
Who’re you chasing?’ she asked as she finally stopped pacing
through the soft sand.

‘
Nobody,’ he replied, with the black-and-pink meat sticking to
his uneven teeth.

‘
You look like a hunter of men,’ she said, sitting down on a
large boulder opposite him.

‘
I am.’

‘
So who’re you after?’

‘
Nobody at the moment.’ He pushed the remaining lump of bacon
into his mouth and chewed. It was the first solid food he had eaten
for several days, apart from hard tack.

‘
So you’re a bounty-hunter?’ She reached down and picked up the
black tin mug full of coffee. ‘That is an evil trade.’

‘
Suits my character,’ he sneered, picking his teeth with his
fingernails.

‘
You good at it?’

‘
The best there ever was,’ he bragged.

‘
You are the best?’ She gave a belly laugh. ‘How come I got the
drop on you then?’

He shrugged. It
was a shrug that disguised his anger.

‘
You got lucky.’

‘
No, my friend.’ She sipped her coffee.
‘You
got lucky.’

‘
Me?’

‘
I didn’t kill you. That’s damn lucky’

He nodded as he
dropped the plate on to the sand. His mood was changing. He was no
longer angry at having a chunk of his ear blown away.

Now he wanted
to know more about this woman who sat before him.

‘
What do they call you‘?’ he asked.

‘
What does it matter?’

‘
I like to know who the hell shoots me.’ Iron Eyes felt the
stinging ease up on the side of his head. The blood was finally
clotting on his wound.

‘
They call me Jane.’ She tossed the sentence away like a child
would toss away its favourite rag-doll. Her eyes looked at him with
the look of a woman who was interested in something she had
captured. His long coat and hair were not what she had become used
to seeing in the past few years of her life. He looked as if he
were the sort of man who held up trains in dime novels. Her
curiosity about this painfully thin man was the only reason she had
not killed him.

For some reason
she wanted to know more about this creature, who looked as if he
belonged in some graveyard rather than out here upon the
plains.

‘
Jane what?’

‘
Jane is enough,’ she growled.

He accepted
that he was not getting any further with that line of questioning,
and decided to alter his approach.

‘
Where you headed?’

‘
West.’

‘
What the hell do you wanna go there for?’ he asked, as he
cautiously touched the scab upon his ear. ‘There ain’t nothing in
that direction except Indians and Mexicans.’

‘
Suits me.’ She finished her coffee and got to her
feet.

Iron Eyes rose
to his full height, which was only barely taller than her. He
studied her body She was thinner than any woman he had ever
seen.

She was also
the first female he had ever seen wearing men’s clothes. He liked
what he was looking at.

‘
What you thinking?’ She glared at him, with the rifle still
balanced in her hands.

‘
Nothing.’ He blew out heavily, trying to clear his brain of
the thoughts that had raced through him. Thoughts that sent the
skin on his thin neck tingling. She had a body that he would gladly
kill for. That was strange for Iron Eyes, as he had never once
before been tempted by a female. She was somehow
different.

Very
different.

‘
What do they call you, Mr Bounty-hunter?’

‘
Iron Eyes,’ he drawled. ‘Just Iron Eyes.’

For the first
time since they had run into each other, her face went pale, as if
suddenly shocked.

The name meant
something to her, but what? She looked him up and down carefully
for what seemed an eternity, before lowering the rifle.

‘
Iron Eyes?’ She repeated his words.

‘
Yep.’ He felt very uneasy by this creature and her sudden
mood-swing. The hostility had vanished.

Yet it had been
replaced by something totally alien to this ruthless man’s
knowledge.

‘
I heard about you.’ Her eyes darted at him briefly, before
turning away once more. Anything good?’

‘
Depends on your point of view.’

Iron Eyes
looked at the lowered rifle, and then stepped closer to the slim
lady with the emotionless face.

‘
You ain’t aiming that iron at me anymore,’ he said, resting
his knuckles upon his bony hips.

She nodded and
moved away from him. She seemed deep in thought as she paced
through the soft sand.

Finally she
stopped, and turned her attention to the raging waters of the
swollen river as it roared past them with an unceasing fury.

‘
Yesterday that river was about six inches deep.’

Iron Eyes
closed in on her.

‘
That when you crossed?’

‘
Yeah, that’s when I crossed.’ she replied.

She could feel
his breath upon her neck as he stopped at her side and hovered,
like a bee watching a flower. Ready to take the pollen. Finally she
turned and gazed into his cold eyes.

‘
What you looking at?’

Iron Eyes did
not answer. He just continued staring at her, with hunger in his
face. The hunger of a man who had never before seen something that
whetted his appetite.

Dawn came
silently and a new day arrived with the usual burning sun and
blinding light.

Somehow the
tall, thin man with the two Navy Colts tucked into his pants belt
had managed to sleep for several hours.

Iron Eyes had
stayed near the wagon into which she had climbed the previous
evening, but never once moved closer.

Jane had
worried him.

She had
confused him.

She had shot a
chunk of his left ear off and lived to tell the tale.

Now he stood
watching the raging waters rolling past their campsite, wondering
what he should do next. All thoughts of just saddling up his pony
and riding away had left his mind. He kept casting a silent glance
at the wagon, wondering when she would step out into the morning
sunshine.

The money he
was owed in El Paso no longer seemed important to the hard man. Yet
he could not understand why. His thin fingers touched the edge of
his ear, and he winced at the stinging pain that met him as he
found the scabbed wound.

A woman had
blown a piece of his ear off and she still lived and breathed. He
accepted the fact.

Iron Eyes had
once shot the head off a man for bumping into him in a saloon and
causing him to spill his beer. He knelt down and cupped the fresh
water in his hands, and tossed it over his face and head. This was
not an action that was based upon wishing to become clean but a
desire to try and wake up.

He stood once
more as the water ran down his hair and face on to his shirt. He
rubbed his smooth chin and wondered why he had never had a growth
of whiskers like other men folk. He felt that he must have been
part Indian never to have developed hair on his narrow face. Having
only a scant recall of his mother and absolutely no knowledge of
who his father might have been, it was a distinct possibility.

He dragged his
long legs through the sand to the pony who had remained tied to a
wheel of the wagon all night. He looked at the pinto and then the
large nearby oxen.

How did a girl
manage to handle such a team?

Horses were
tough enough, but the oxen were monsters in comparison to even the
largest horses he had ever encountered.

Where was she
heading or where was she running from?

He checked his
two Navy Colts and then put them back into his belt, before
wondering why he was hanging around this place with this strange
woman.

If the river’s
level had dropped during the night, he might have saddled the pony
and ridden away. He might have, but even he doubted it.

This female
named Jane had made him curious enough to alter his plans, if only
briefly

He kept
thinking of the reward money, waiting for him across the wide Rio
Grande, and how he would normally not let anything slow his
progress at collecting it. Yet, for the first time in many years,
he felt as if there was no hurry.

The money would
still be there even if he took another couple of days to reach El
Paso. He had killed his way across many territories and was tired
of all the blood.

It was time to
let the blood on his hands dry before killing any more.

Iron Eyes
turned and watched as the canvas flap was opened and a long,
blue-denim-clad leg poked out. The rest of Jane’s slim body
followed, and she came to ground next to the dripping
bounty-hunter, in her hands a towel and some feminine objects like
a brush and soap.

‘
Morning,’ she said in her usual one-tone voice.

He acknowledged
her with a slight movement of his head, and then continued to tend
to his pinto.

‘
You fall in the river?’ she asked, with something that might
have been regarded as a smile upon any other female’s face but
hers.

‘
What’s your meaning?’ he asked.

Her hand
touched his dripping hair.

Iron Eyes
shrugged, and leaned over to his saddle-bags. He emptied some oats
on to the sand, and watched as the pony started to consume them
quickly, before aiming his gaze at her.

‘
Where you heading?’ There was an innocence in his question
that ill suited him.

‘
A gal gotta do what a gal gotta do,’ she snapped as she headed
down to the water’s edge.

Iron Eyes
watched her as she did what she had to do. She never once tried to
hide herself away from his burning eyes. She seemed either unaware
of his watching or cared little for his attention.

Iron Eyes
wanted her.

Like a dog
wants a bitch.

There was
nothing romantic in his feelings. He was not sweet on her. He was
no female-starved cowboy hitting town with only one thought on his
mind. He wanted her for reasons that were totally alien to him.

Without any
feelings of guilt, he kept watching her as she did what she had to
do. His face strained at the sight of something that he had never
before witnessed.

The tall
bounty-hunter found it a magnetic draw for his hard eyes.

Rubbing his
neck, he finally turned away, long after he should have done so.
Strangely, she seemed to have no concern about his watching her
every action.

It was as if
she were trying to tempt him into acting like a man with blood
flowing through his veins rather than staining his clothes and
boots.

It was a chance
that was even slimmer than his starved body.

She pulled up
her britches, and then returned back to the long, dark figure in
the long, dark coat. Although he held his chin on his chest and his
long wet hair covered his face, she could see his every expression
written in his every sinew.

As she brushed
past him, the aroma of soap filled his nostrils and made him look
up as she tossed the towel and things into the back of the wagon
once more.

Iron Eyes
grabbed at her slim arm and breathed heavily as he looked at her
eyes which were staring back at him. The mutual mind-reading lasted
several seconds before he felt his grip loosen.

‘
What?’ she asked.

Iron Eyes
released his grip and her arm fell from his fingers to her side. He
gritted his teeth and grunted in a confused state, before rubbing
his nose with his sleeve.

‘
Nothing,’ he muttered.

‘
You still figuring on heading for El Paso?’ she asked
firmly.

‘
Yep,’ he replied, feeling as if he had just lost a fight that
he did not know he had been involved in. ‘Guess so.’

She pointed at
the still-rolling waves that were lashing even more furiously than
the previous day

‘
You got a long ride south then, Mr Iron Eyes.’

‘
How far south?’ He placed his attention on the raging river
and focused his keen eyes.

A long ways
south.’ The female seemed to know a lot more about the Rio Grande
than her bounty-hunting companion. ‘Maybe a hundred miles before
this swell widens out to a point where we can get across.’

A hundred
miles?’ Iron Eyes felt like shooting the damn river again just for
being there. A hundred miles? You’re sure of that?’

‘
Nope.’ She spat at the ground. ‘But it’s a fair
guess.’

Iron Eyes
rubbed the back of his filthy neck and just growled at the thought
of his money sitting in El Paso and him stuck on the wrong side of
the widest, wildest river in hell. The sun burned down on them as
they faced each other.

‘
You wanted to join me last night, didn’t you?’ she said in a
blunt tone.

He seemed to
agree without opening his mouth.

‘
Then why didn’t you?’ Her question hit him hard between his
cold, steel-coloured eyes.

‘
You already shot off one of my ears for doing nothing,’ He
answered quietly. ‘I wasn’t gonna risk you shooting off anything
valuable.’

She heaved her
chest up and kept him firmly fixed in her sights.

‘
That was before I knew who you was.’

‘
What difference does that make?’ Iron Eyes’ face had a sudden
look of curiosity etched across it.

There was no
answer to his question, just the glimmer of a hint that he might
not have been rejected as quickly as he had assumed.

‘
Where you heading with this rig?’ Iron Eyes tried to change
the subject that he was clearly finding hard to resolve.

Jane was silent
for the longest time before answering the bounty-hunter.

‘
South?’ For the first time she witnessed what could only be
described as a faint smile cross his lips as he sucked her words
into his soul.

‘
You figure on joining me on my trip, Jane?’ He somehow managed
to spit his words out.

She grabbed a
pan off its hook on the side of the wagon, and headed for the ashes
of her campfire.

He watched her
every step with an interest that was unusual for him. Kneeling
down, she placed the pan on to the sand before gazing up at his
face.

‘
If you get some kindling I’ll fix us some grub.’

Iron Eyes gazed
down at her, and found himself obeying her orders willingly.