Iron Eyes, no. 1 (9 page)

Dwan José Valdez was sitting alone beside the large fountain
that drew fresh spring-water from deep below the
hacienda
and allowed it
to cascade into the ornate raised trough. He ran his hand through
the cool, crystal-clear water as the tall, strangely attractive
Jane walked toward him. Looking up from his thoughts the mature man
nodded at her as she approached.

‘
I must have overslept.’ She said as if she had provided an
excuse for her waking up so late in the day.

Valdez knew the
truth. He had drugged her wine as he had done with Iron Eyes. He
did not want her rising before the lean bounty-hunter, and possibly
preventing the man from going after the bandits who had captured
his darling Maria.

He knew that it
was a terrible thing to do to a fellow human being, but his moral
ethics could never compete with his duty as a parent. Iron Eyes was
Valdez’s only hope.

‘
You drank much wine last night, my dear.’ He
grinned.

‘
I did?’ Jane sat next to him and rubbed the tight muscles in
her neck. ‘I can’t recall.’

‘
It was a party’ Valdez shrugged. ‘You had travelled far and
were entitled to enjoy yourself?

She agreed. ‘It
was enjoyable.’

Valdez felt
guilty but decided not to enlighten her too soon about what was
occurring. Iron Eyes had been gone for several hours now, and with
every second that passed drew closer to his destination.

‘
Is Iron Eyes still asleep in his room?’ she enquired
innocently.

Valdez took
hold of her hand and looked at the hard skin upon its palm. This
was a woman who worked. Worked hard.

‘
Iron Eyes is not here,’ he said softly. As he had finished his
short sentence he could feel the reaction in her hand. Suddenly it
was tense. He held on to it and smoothed it tenderly, until he
could see she had relaxed from the shock that her strange companion
had left the
hacienda.

‘
Where has he gone, Dwan José?’ She stared hard at
him.

‘
To the mountains,’ he reluctantly replied, trying not to look
her straight in the eyes.

She looked
puzzled. ‘Why would he go there?’

‘
For me,’ Valdez sighed. ‘He went there for me.’

‘
But why?’ Jane could not get the fog out of her brain as she
tried to concentrate.

‘
Iron Eyes is a very brave man who has agreed to do a very
important job for me, my dealt.’ The elderly man stood and focused
on the trickling water that spurted from the top of his fine
fountain.

‘
You say he is brave?’ Jane looked up at the man with eyes that
begged answers.

‘
I am not man enough to do what has to be done,’ Valdez said
quietly ‘Iron Eyes is. He has the heart of a lion.’

‘
What sort of danger is he riding into?’ She grabbed at his
sleeve, causing him to turn and look at her. ‘And why is he risking
himself for you?’

‘
He is trying to save my daughter’s life. She was kidnapped by
bandits ten days ago.’ Valdez found his voice drying up, and was
forced to cup his hands under the flowing water and
drink.

‘
Iron Eyes is going up against a gang of bandits?’ She felt a
pain in her stomach. It was a pain caused by sudden
anxiety.

‘
Exactly. As I said, he is a very brave man.’

‘
You have so many men here, why ask him?’

Jane stood next
to the man, who was visibly shaking.

‘
I have many
vaqueros
here, Jane.’ Valdez bowed his head before looking
through his eyebrows at her. ‘Iron Eyes is not a mere
vaquero,
he is a hunter
of men.’

She looked
puzzled once more.

Valdez
continued. ‘He is my daughter’s only hope.’

Jane suddenly
looked very, very angry. ‘You used Iron Eyes to save your daughter?
He’s going up against a gang of bandits who will probably cut him
down before he gets close to them.’

‘
Have faith, my dear,’ Valdez pleaded softly ‘Faith? In what?’
She was glowing red with fury as she clenched her fists and struck
Valdez upon his shoulder.

‘
Faith in the man you love,’ Dwan José replied.

‘
How dare you say that?’

‘
Look at yourself; my dear,’ Valdez sighed. ‘Iron Eyes is a
hunter. He has captured your heart, has he not?’

The tall female
strolled away from him in silence as he brooded with his thoughts.
Guilt crept over him once more as he realized that he might have
sent Iron Eyes to his death. Casting an eye at Jane, Dwan José
Valdez watched as she ascended the tiled steps. Taking another
drink of water, he crossed himself and said a silent prayer.

Whit Hardy sat looking at the
hacienda
with a mixture of envy and
distaste. Why would anyone want such a large house? His brother Tom
was standing at his horse’s head, pouring the last of his precious
canteen water into his Stetson for the tired horse to
drink.

Tom had been
silent for a long time now. Whatever thoughts were passing through
his brain, he was keeping them private.

Whit slid off
his saddle on to the soft ground and copied his brother’s actions.
The horse could have his fill of the water as long as he still had
some tequila left in his last bottle, Whit thought.

Tom Hardy
watched as his kid brother watered the nag and drank the blinding
clear liquor at the same time. He knew that it was his tequila Whit
gulped, but he no longer gave a damn.

Sober or drunk, the situation was the same to Tom. They had
run out of supplies and water, and the only place they could get
fresh provisions was the
hacienda
before them. The
hacienda
that the tracks of their
prey Iron Eyes led right into.

It was not the
way he had planned it. The Apache had screwed everything into the
ground. They had confused the elder Hardy brother and made him make
errors.

He was starting
to doubt himself even more than usual.

‘
The tracks lead straight into that place,’ Tom said, looking
at the white-washed
hacienda
.

Sweat ran down
his face as he spoke, and he knew that he had to make a decision
soon. Very soon, or they would have no chance of surviving.

‘
You reckon he’s in there, Tom?’ Whit asked, in his usual
slurred way.

‘
Could be,’ Tom answered as his horse finished the water,
allowing him to return the Stetson on to his head.

‘
It don’t figure.’ Whit shook his hat free of the last few
drops of water.

‘
What?’

‘
Why did he turn back from the river?’ Whit knew that it seemed
very out of character for the bounty hunter to be heading to the
place he had to collect his reward, then change direction and ride
into the desert. Everything he had ever heard about the strange
Iron Eyes said that he would not have done this, yet he
had.

‘
I wish I knew.’

‘
He was heading for El Paso to collect his reward money.’ Whit
watched his exhausted horse licking the ground for further droplets
of water. ‘Then he turns and heads here. Why?’

‘
Maybe he had no choice,’ Tom pondered.

‘
What you mean?’ Whit scratched his head. ‘This is the famous
Iron Eyes I’m talking about, Tom.’

‘
What about all these horse and wagon tracks?’ Tom pointed at
the churned-up soil. ‘He might have been forced to go with these
people.’

‘
You reckon they are soldiers?’ Whit Hardy became skittish at
the thought of an army ‘Could be. There is a hell of a lot of
them.’ Tom mounted again and watched as his younger brother
followed suit.

‘
So what we gonna do?’ Whit looked at the remains of his
bottle, and replaced the cork before sliding the glass into his
shirt. ‘What we gonna do?’

‘
Ride in.’ Tom rubbed his face.

‘
Ride into that place?’ Whit stood in his stirrups and pointed
at the white building, his face twisted in horror at the thought of
entering. It felt too much like suicide.

‘
We gotta ride in, boy’ Tom snapped angrily. His temper was not
aimed at his brother but at himself for getting them into this
situation.

‘
Why?’ Whit continued to look troubled.

‘
We gotta get water, ain’t we?’ Tom spurred his horse forward
and looked over his shoulder at Whit following. ‘We gotta get grub,
ain’t we? Come on.’

‘
This is crazy Tom,’ Whit protested.

‘
Not as crazy as dying of thirst,’ Tom snarled again. ‘I seen
folks that died of thirst, and it ain’t a nice sight.’

‘
But what if Iron Eyes is in there?’ Whit knew that the
bounty-hunter would recognize them from the wanted posters they
shared with their late brother Dan. ‘He’ll kill us on
sight.’

‘
We have to take our chances.’

‘
Why?’

‘
We might live long enough to kill him, Whit.’ Tom rubbed his
grumbling guts as he rode. ‘Besides, I am so hungry that the
thought of getting shot don’t worry me at all.’

The two
horsemen rode slowly. Very slowly indeed. This was a journey that
neither of them wanted to make, but both knew that they had no
option.

The sun was low, and there was a chill in the air. As they
rode they could see men at the
hacienda
lighting torches at the
arched gateway.

Then they could
hear the excited shouting within the courtyard.

They had been
spotted.

Both men’s hearts sank as they witnessed the dozen or
so
vaqueros
riding
to meet them. The elegant riders in their wide sombreros were soon
close enough that the Hardy brothers could see the sweat upon their
darkly tanned faces.

Tom reined his
mount to a halt first, sending a cloud of trail-dust into the still
air. Whit pulled up his nag at his brother’s side with the
terrified expression of a sand fox cornered by a puma upon his
face.

His eyes flashed from one
vaquero
to another as Valdez’s men
rode nearer and nearer.

‘
Easy, boy!’ Tom yelled at his brother, who was fumbling for
his .45. ‘Leave your iron in its holster, unless you want us both
killed here and now.’

Whit somehow
complied, and sat on his horse, gripping his saddle-horn in sheer
terror. ‘I don’t like this, Tom,’ he wailed.

‘
Neither do I, Whit.’

They were soon surrounded by the
vaqueros
and looking down the barrels
of numerous pistols.

Whit gave his
brother a long, hard glare. ‘I reckon this was not one of your best
ideas, Tom.’

‘
Shut the hell up, boy,’ Tom Hardy snapped. He had a feeling
that for once his kid brother might just be right.

Darkness had
arrived exactly on cue. Leaving the black stallion tied up to a
dead white tree-stump,

Iron Eyes had
entered the mountain range on foot, carrying his Winchester over
his back on a leather strap. Bats swooped around his head and their
high-pitched squeaking filled his ears. The half moon overhead gave
him ample light to see and not be seen, as he moved up and over the
rounded rock formations which looked as if they had fallen off the
moon itself. Storm clouds in the distance seemed to be heading in
the direction of the mountain range, and lightning flashes lit up
the far-off prairie.

Iron Eyes hoped
that the storm would catch up with him before he caught up with the
bandits.

The confusion
of a violent storm never hurt his chances.

This was no
normal place, he thought. This was a place of danger. His nostrils
filled with the aroma of distant humans. Humans always left a smell
on the air, wherever they dwelled. It was the stench of dirt. Human
dirt.

Iron Eyes
pulled out both his loaded Navy Colts and gripped them firmly, as
his long legs took him up across the tops of the rocks.

Higher and
higher he climbed. He had the agility of a puma as he hopped from
one huge boulder to the next.

It was as if he
had some in-built ability to be drawn to whomever he was pursuing.
Below him, the canyon floor wound into many forks. Some gaining
altitude whilst others stayed almost level.

These were the
dried-up remains of ancient riverbeds. Climbing above these sandy
trails and using the rocks to cross the great distances of the vast
mountain range, Iron Eyes knew that he would have more chance of
spotting the bandits before they spotted him.

The shadows
were interlocking amid the rounded rocky peaks that seemed to go on
forever.

Iron Eyes used
every one of those shadows to move further into the heart of the
mountains.

Suddenly, he
saw the lone sentry ahead of him.

A fat, small
man with a battered sombrero sitting upon a large rock, wrapped in
a thick blanket. Between his legs he held his trusty rifle.

Iron Eyes
pushed both his guns into his belt and drew out a long, thin
stiletto from inside his left boot. The sharp blade fitted neatly
between his broken teeth as he crept on all fours up the smooth
rock-face, toward the seated sentry.

It was almost
as if he were a phantom. Iron Eyes could move without making a
single noise.

This was an art
that he had perfected over a dozen or more years of his grisly
trade.

Iron Eyes was
suddenly behind the sentry. Removing the blade from his mouth, he
swiftly drove it deeply into the man’s heart, with enough force to
break several ribs. He screwed the blade around as if gutting a
fish, before pulling the blood-soaked stiletto from the man’s body.
The fat man’s life had ended silently Iron Eyes wiped the blade on
the dead man’s blanket, before sliding it back into his boot. Then
he continued his quest as if nothing had happened.

Deeper and
deeper he penetrated the mountain fortress. Then he could hear them
as well as smell them.

Crouching down,
Iron Eyes edged forward over the rocks and boulders until he was at
a point several hundred feet above the camp.

For a moment he
just lay upon his flat stomach staring down at the scene below his
vantage point.

A blazing fire
set between the small group of wooden shacks illuminated the entire
area. It was like a miniature town. The wine must have been
flowing, he thought, as he watched the revelry below him. None of
the people he watched seemed able to walk properly. They were
staggering from one depraved activity to another.

Staring about
the opposite rock-faces he looked for more sentries. There were
none.

Iron Eyes
focused hard on the scene below him as he started his gradual
descent through the rocks and dark shadows. The thunder seemed to
be getting closer, as he could smell the freshness in the air he
breathed. He knew that the storm was heading toward the bandits’
camp. Iron Eyes prayed that he would have time to reach the canyon
floor before the storm arrived. There was nothing worse than trying
to climb down a rock-face that was lashed with rain.

He did not
relish the thought of losing his footing and sliding down two
hundred feet of solid rock.

Although dark,
the moonlight made everything appear blue. Only the bandits’
campfire contained any true colours. Iron Eyes moved like a big cat
toward the dozens of people who were totally unaware of his
approaching.

Every few
minutes the sky lit up with the flashing of nature’s electricity.
The sound of rumbling thunder grew louder as it started to echo
around the canyon walls. Yet none of the bandits or their women
seemed to give a damn. They just carried on with their
festivities.

The descent
took over thirty minutes, but the bounty-hunter knew he had to move
slowly, using every shadow as a shield. He was hopelessly
outnumbered yet this only increased his determination to complete
his task.

Iron Eyes had
tasted blood once this evening, and knew that he wanted more.
Killing human vermin was the only thing that he was any good at. He
knew that it was an evil trade, but to him it was totally
justified.

Some folks
could only be cured by death. After dying, they never repeated
their mistakes.

The floor of
the canyon was flat, as if pressed by an unseen, giant hand. As he
reached it, Iron Eyes slid behind a large boulder and sat in the
black shadow, getting his wind back.

Behind him he
could hear the noise of drunken bandits and their women having a
good time.

That sort of
happiness had always eluded the bounty-hunter. For him, nothing was
that simple.

As he sat in
the dark shadows he checked his guns once more.

Across the way,
a crude corral held over two dozen horses of various types. Some
looked good and others scrawny very much like the bandits
themselves.

Another flash
and a deafening explosion of thunder shook the entire area around
him.

Then the dark
clouds drifted over the roof of the canyon and blocked out the
moonlight. The raindrops that followed were warm and sparse. Using
the additional darkness to his advantage, Iron Eyes rose to his
feet and ran silently toward the shack on the outermost edge of the
camp. Then the rain became heavier and cooler.

As the rain hit
the large campfire it began to hiss like an outraged diamond-back,
sending plumes of smoke around the area. None of this seemed to
have any effect on the bandits or their women as they continued to
enjoy their drunken orgy.

The tall
bounty-hunter moved silently behind the coarse shacks, staring into
the open doorways and windows as he passed. He had never witnessed
such open displays of` uninhibited carnal activities before. It was
as if he had fallen into a Tombstone whorehouse.

Yet nothing he
saw had the slightest effect upon him. It was as if he had never
had such feelings himself. There was nothing in his heart except
death.

His was a black
soul. Void of humanity.

Still holding
his pistols tightly in his bony hands, he found the shack that he
had sought for several minutes. Staring through the small hole that
pretended to be a window, he spied a small, huddled form cowering
like a whipped dog in a corner. At first he thought she was just
another of the camp women. Then the terrible truth dawned upon
him.

This was Maria
Valdez.

This tortured
creature was the daughter of Dwan José.

Iron Eyes
leaned back into the shadows as his heart raced. It was not that he
had never seen cruelty before. He was guilty of inflicting it upon
others in his time himself. Yet not like this.

Crawling
through the sand, he moved around the shack to get a better look at
the crowd.

The rain was
now sweeping across the dancing, drinking souls, who stayed close
to their huge fire.

Logs were being
tossed on to its red heart, keeping its flames well nourished. The
yellow light that flickered lit up the men and women. Iron Eyes
studied each and every male face that he could see. He had the
wanted poster image in his mind, and was searching the many faces
for a match.

Then he saw the
man that he had been hunting.

The Snake was
drinking his fill, and grabbing every female that came close enough
to his strong hands.

The gold tooth
glinted in the light of the fire as the rain fell around the
canyon. Steam rose off the gathering as they continued their
revelry

Iron Eyes
gritted his teeth as he moved back to the small window. Getting to
his feet, he removed his long coat and rifle before dropping them
silently to the ground. Then he pushed one of his Navy Colts into
his belt, whilst retaining the other in his left hand. He used his
long legs to step up into the window, and fell silently into the
dark, stinking shack.

Maria’s sobbing
sent cold chills through his spine as he crouched below the window.
His eyes darted from the doorway to the girl and then back again.
Slowly, he moved toward her.