The Fury of Iron Eyes (An Iron Eyes Western #4) (12 page)

It was the noise above them
that first alerted the Creedy brothers. They had never heard
anything quite like it before. It was a sound which defied
definition, and caused the men to look upward.

The sight that matched the
noise made little sense either to the weary minds of the outlaws.
For what seemed an eternity, they watched in awe as the black shape
seemed to float in the air above them. Even in the brilliant light
of the large moon, their eyes refused to believe what they saw. The
flapping coat tails of the bounty hunter gave the impression of a
massive, winged creature as Iron Eyes’ helpless form flew through
the air over them.

Frankie Creedy was first to
rise to his feet and draw his weapons, as the horrific vision flew
over their heads like
a gigantic bat. The outlaw began firing in terror
as the ghostly apparition disappeared into the brush below them.
For the first time since he had handled guns, Frankie had not hit
what he was aiming at.

Bob Creedy jumped up and
grabbed his brother’s right arm as the younger man fired his last
shots.

‘
Easy, Frankie,’ Bob said
whilst he raced to the edge of the slope where Iron Eyes had
disappeared.

‘
What was it?’ Frankie
screamed as his shaking hands tried to empty the spent shells from
his guns.

‘
Hush up,’ Bob ordered. He
vainly tried to see or hear anything from below them in the tangled
brush.

Somehow Treat Creedy
managed to drag his body off the cold ground and stagger to the
side of his younger brother. Even with a hole in him he was still
refusing to die.

‘I told you this place was
haunted, Frankie,’ he spluttered as blood trickled from
his mouth. ‘This
whole damn place is full of demons. That weren’t no real
critter.’

‘
Ghost?’ Frankie swallowed
hard.

‘
Or something just as
evil,’ Treat nodded.

Bob Creedy stared into the
dense undergrowth below him, as his thumb traced over his gun
hammer poking up from his right holster. He was trying to be
rational and work out what he and his brothers had just witnessed,
but there seemed to be no rational explanation that
fitted.

‘
Did you see where it went,
boys?’

Frankie seemed to drop more
bullets on to the ground than his shaking fingers managed to get
into the hot chambers of his guns when he stepped
forward.

‘
Treat’s right, Bob. It was
a ghost or something. I ain’t gonna stick around here and try to
kill things that can’t be killed.’

‘There ain’t no such animal as
a ghost, Frankie,’ Bob snapped as he felt sweat rolling freely down
his face from
beneath his hatband. ‘Treat’s fevered up. Don’t pay him no
heed.’

Treat hobbled closer to his
elder. ‘Then what was it, Bob? It weren’t no owl. Was it an eagle?
Mighty big, if it was.’

‘
I only caught a glimpse of
it, Treat,’ Bob replied.

‘
Maybe it was a flying
bear?’ Treat rubbed the blood from his chin and smiled. ‘What was
it?’

Bob Creedy turned and
looked at his brothers. They looked almost as scared as he felt.
‘Looked like a bat or an eagle to me. But like you said, it was
kinda big.’

Frankie snapped the chamber
shut on one pistol and gripped it tightly in his hand as he
holstered the other. ‘We better ride out of this damn place, Bob.
Now.’

‘
The boy’s right, Bob,’
Treat agreed.

Bob could not see anything
down below them and returned to the sides of his brothers. ‘You’re
right. Let’s ride. This place ain’t natural.’

The three Creedys had no
sooner mounted their spent horses when they heard the sound of a
rider coming down the trail they had used to reach this very
spot.

‘
Hear that?’ Frankie asked
as he drew both his guns from their holsters and cocked their
hammers.

‘
Somebody coming real fast
by the sound of it,’ Bob said as his fingers gripped around his
pistol and slid it out of its holster.

Treat Creedy had his work
cut out for him just remaining balanced on his skittish mount. All
his bloodshot eyes could do was watch the dark trail until the
rider finally appeared in the moonlight.

Silent Wolf dragged back on
the mane of his grey pony and then screamed a bone-chilling call at
the heavens above them.

The Creedys held their
horses in check as they watched the young Cheyenne before
them.

‘Not
more damn Injuns,’ Treat groaned as
he watched his brothers allow their horses to advance slightly
towards the handsome Indian.

‘
Is he alone?’ Frankie
asked Bob desperately as the thought of being attacked by an entire
war party crossed his mind.

Bob rested his gun on his
saddle horn and studied Silent Wolf carefully. ‘It’s just a kid,
Frankie. A little runt of a kid.’

Frankie began to smile as
he raised his guns. ‘Must be the left-overs from the Injuns we
killed up the mountain, Bob.’

‘
Kill him, boy,’ Bob
ordered.

Frankie did not require
telling twice. He brought both his arms up until they were at eye
level. As his sweating fingers curled around the triggers of his
weaponry, a sound came from behind them.

Something was moving down
in the brush where the ghostly apparition had vanished.

‘What was that, Bob?’ Frankie’s
voice
asked
in a pitch far higher than his usual tone.

Before Bob Creedy could
reply to his younger brother, Silent Wolf gave an ear-piercing
shriek and began to gallop straight at the three riders.

‘
The Injun, Frankie. He’s
coming at us,’ Bob yelled at his distracted brother.

Frankie turned his mount
full-circle and fired both his pistols at the charging Silent
Wolf.

The wounded grey pony
reared up on to its back legs and kicked out its hoofs in the air.
Then, as Frankie fired both his guns again, the doomed animal made
the most hideous noise and began bucking until its master was
thrown next to the edge of the sheer drop.

Silent Wolf dragged his
tomahawk from his belt as he staggered to his feet, and threw it at
the three mounted men.

As the lethal axe flew through
the cold air, a volley of bullets were blasted at the young
Cheyenne. The ground at his feet tore up as the bullets hit
the
soil,
making Silent Wolf move backwards.

It was a scream only
fatally-wounded men can make. The tomahawk hit Treat Creedy in the
centre of his face and drove his weakened body over the cantle of
his saddle, until it fell in a lifeless heap on the
ground.

‘
Treat!’ Frankie
screamed.

‘
He’s gone this time, boy,’
Bob yelled pointing at Silent Wolf. ‘Let’s get him.’

At that very moment behind
the Creedys, a disheveled figure managed to claw his way out of the
brush. Iron Eyes’ head was filled with the thunderous explosions
again. He could hear nothing except the drumming of his own
heartbeat as it pounded inside his skull.

As he staggered upright,
Iron Eyes saw the two men shooting at Silent Wolf, forcing him back
to the very rim of the ledge.

Dragging one of his Navy
Colts from his belt, Iron Eyes raised the gun and fired.

Startled, the pair of
riders drove their horses straight at Silent Wolf.

Iron Eyes could not tell
which of the riders kicked the young Cheyenne hunter as they made
their escape. All he knew for certain was that Silent Wolf had
fallen into the black abyss below and the killers had
fled.

When he reached the spot
where he had seen Silent Wolf fall, Iron Eyes clenched his fists in
fury.

‘
I’ll get them, little
hunter. I’ll make them pay,’ he vowed as he stared down at a
million trees.

As each sinew in his
battered body cursed his every movement, Iron Eyes somehow managed
to run across the moonlit clearing and grab the reins of the mount
belonging to the fallen Treat Creedy. Dragging the long leathers
into his bleeding hands, the bounty hunter pulled the animal close,
before stepping into the stirrup and mounting the horse.

This was now
personal.

Few people managed to penetrate
the
armor-like defenses of this ruthless hunter of men, but
Silent Wolf had managed it without even trying.

Hauling the reins hard to
his side, Iron Eyes thrust his long, vicious spurs into the
trail-weary mount and forced it to a gallop up the muddy rise into
the darkness of the trail.

W
ⁱ
th the keen instincts that had been honed over a
lifetime of killing for survival, Iron Eyes knew exactly which
direction his prey had taken in their attempt to escape his wrath.
Even in the blackness of a trail that he had never ridden before
Iron Eyes knew where they had headed.

Forcing the creature
beneath his spurs to find a speed that was ill-suited to such an
overgrown trail, the injured rider drove on and on.

Whoever these men were ahead of
his mount, they were already dead as far as the lethal
killing-machine was concerned. There was no escape from Iron Eyes.
No man had ever escaped the venom of the cruel rider when he
had
the
scent of the kill in his narrow nostrils. No one could find a rock
large enough to hide beneath to save their bacon when he was after
them.

Ascending the steep trail
atop the nervous mount, Iron Eyes knew he was returning to the
place where he and his companion Silent Wolf had found the bodies
of the three Cheyenne — the spot where these unknown whites had
shot at them.

Reaching the halfway point
on the dark trail, his deadly eyes spotted the outline of his own
horse standing where he had tethered it only minutes
earlier.

Dragging his reins up to
his chest, Iron Eyes paused for a mere few seconds whilst he
transferred from the Creedy horse to his own rested mount. Pulling
the razor-sharp Bowie knife from his right boot, Iron Eyes cut
through the reins at the tree branch. There was no time to untie
knots. No time for a moment’s hesitation. He had to ride on after
the vermin who had killed his young friend.

With a relatively fresh
horse beneath him, Iron Eyes had to catch up with the two unknown
riders and dispatch his own branch of vengeance upon
them.

Driving the tall horse up
the trail by whipping it with what was left of the reins and
stabbing its flesh with the spurs he always used mercilessly, Iron
Eyes began to hear the sound of horses ahead of him. For the first
time since he had staggered up out of the brush where he had landed
after flying over the heads of the Creedys, Iron Eyes could
actually hear something apart from the noises inside his
head.

Forcing his mount on, Iron
Eyes spotted the tails of the two horsemen ahead of him, as they
reached the high clearing. Within a few dozen yards of the moonlit
area, Iron Eyes threw his leg over the neck of his galloping mount
and dropped to the ground. He watched his tall horse continue on up
into the clearing, and then heard the deafening noise of
gunfire.

As the bounty hunter moved with
the
pair of
matched Navy Colts in his bony hands, he watched his mount being
cut to ribbons by the bullets of his enemies.

Continuing to the very edge
of the clearing, Iron Eyes cocked the hammers back on his pistols
until they fully locked. He had no fear within him now, for this
was the moment of judgment — the moment all skilled hunters trained
themselves to face when they had located their prey.

To a creature such as Iron
Eyes, it made no difference what the prey was. Whether it was a
rabbit to fill his belly or a man whose value had been decreed by
the law, it made no difference at all.

Reaching the moonlight, the
battle-scarred figure glanced all around the clearing with a unique
determination. He saw his fallen horse still kicking at the air as
death slowly overwhelmed it. The air was still thick with the black
gunsmoke of the two Creedy brothers’ pistols.

Iron Eyes knew that they were
scared. They had unleashed every bullet
from their two pairs of Remingtons
and Colts when his horse had ridden into the moonlight, without
even waiting to see whether it had a rider.

Gritting his small sharp
teeth, Iron Eyes knelt and studied the area before him — a place it
seemed death had claimed for its own.

For a few endless seconds
his keen vision saw nothing of the two men he sought. Only the
evidence of their lethal actions in the form of his fatally-wounded
mount and the three bodies of the Cheyenne braves.

Then he suddenly realized
that the dead Indians’ corpses were now stacked like a wall, and
not strewn apart as they had been when he and Silent Wolf had
discovered them. If the two men were anywhere at all, they were
hiding behind the hastily-constructed barricade of bodies, he
thought.