Read The Fury of Iron Eyes (An Iron Eyes Western #4) Online
Authors: Rory Black
Tags: #bounty hunter, #pulp fiction, #wild west, #old west, #western fiction, #piccadilly publishing, #rory black, #iron eyes
The doctor stepped
backwards and studied his handiwork before picking up a pair of
long-bladed scissors and trimming the ends of the
catgut.
‘
This stitching will have
to be removed in about a week or so, otherwise it will go septic,
stranger,’ the doctor informed his silent patient.
Iron Eyes glanced up at the
elderly doctor.
‘
How do I get this fishing
line out of my head, doc?’
The doctor shrugged as he
dropped the scissors into the blood-soaked kidney dish which
matched his once-white nightgown.
‘
It will have to be removed
by a doctor, my boy.’
‘
In my line of work, I
don’t run into your sort very often.’ Iron Eyes touched the wound
again. ‘I wanna know how I can remove it myself.’
The doctor cleared his
throat as the sheriff walked around the seated man.
‘
Cut the stitches at both
ends and then carefully slide it out,’ the medical man replied. ‘If
you do it wrong, it’ll hurt really bad. I advise you try and get a
doctor to do it.’
Iron Eyes nodded. ‘I’ll try
and find a doctor to do it.’
‘
What’s eating at you,
son?’ The doctor could see the face of the seated man seemed
troubled by something. Whatever it was, it had to be important, he
thought.
‘
I can’t feel nothing,
doc,’ Iron Eyes said bluntly to the two men before him as he tapped
the wound with his fingers. ‘The whole top of my head is dead. It
has been since Dan Creedy parted my scalp with his last
shot.’
The sheriff rubbed his chin
and watched the concerned doctor stepping closer to the seated
stranger. The elderly physician stepped to the back of his patient
and then picked up the scissors again.
‘
I’m going to touch your
scalp, son. Tell me when I do so.’
Iron Eyes grunted.
‘Okay,
doc.
See if you can figure it out.’
The doctor lifted the
scissors and touched the neat stitches carefully with its closed
blades. There was no reaction from Iron Eyes as he moved the blade
along the entire length of the grotesque wound.
‘
When you gonna start, old
man?’ Iron Eyes asked.
‘
I already
started and finished, son,’ the doctor said as he dropped the
metal
scissors into the dish once again, and moved around to look
straight at the face hiding behind the limp, bloodstained mane of
hair.
‘
Well? What does it mean?’
Iron Eyes rose to his feet and felt his legs buckle again before he
managed to regain his balance.
‘
It could be that the
bullet ripped the nerves in your scalp to shreds, stranger,’ the
doctor said while watching the tall man moving around his
room.
‘
Will it return to normal?’
Iron Eyes asked as he glanced across at the two men, who were
watching him the way men watch animals in circus cages.
‘
It might be temporary and
then again it could be permanent.’
The bounty hunter still
felt giddy as he placed his hands on the back of the wooden chair
and rested.
‘
How come I feel like
there’s a fog inside my skull?’
‘
That might be due to the
fact you’ve lost an awful lot of blood, son,’ the doctor
answered.
‘
Will this be
temporary?’
The doctor
shrugged.
‘
Hopefully. I suggest you
eat as much steak as possible over the next week to try and replace
the blood you’ve lost.’
‘
Steak.’ Iron Eyes repeated
the word as he handed over a fistful of silver dollars to the
medical man.
The sheriff stepped closer
to the strange bounty hunter.
‘
I wired the authorities
for your reward money just after I brung you to the doc’s, mister.
Who exactly are you, anyways?’
‘
They call me Iron Eyes,
Sheriff.’
Suddenly the two men seemed
alarmed. It was obvious to the bounty hunter that they had heard of
him and his reputation frightened them.
‘
It will probably take
until around noon before I get permission to pay you the bounty,
Iron Eyes,’ the sheriff said dryly as he felt the spittle in his
mouth evaporating. ‘Might even take longer.’
‘
That’ll be
fine, Sheriff.’ Iron Eyes glanced at the law officer who was
still
wearing his nightshirt.
The sheriff cleared his
throat.
‘
How much do you know about
the late Dan Creedy, Iron Eyes?’
‘
Only his value.’
The doctor moved towards
both men and touched the arm of the lawman.
‘
What are you getting at,
Sheriff?’
‘
Dan Creedy has three
brothers and by what I’ve heard, they rode together,’ the sheriff
mumbled. ‘I figure they’ll be a tad upset when they hear the news.
They’ll hunt you down and get their vengeance, Iron
Eyes.’
‘
They can try.’ Iron Eyes
almost smiled.
‘
You mean that they might
be close at hand?’ the doctor asked his troubled friend. ‘They
might swoop down into Bonny and shoot up the town trying to find
out who killed their brother?’
‘
Yeah, they might have
arranged to meet up in Bonny. They ain’t gonna like finding Dan
dead.’ The lawman knew more about the Creedys than he was either
able or willing to admit.
Iron Eyes stood upright and
then began walking to the door of the dimly lit office. Resting a
hand on the door handle, he paused and looked back at the pair of
elderly men. They had shown him kindness and he found it
confusing.
‘
Quit fretting, boys. As
soon as I get my reward money, I’ll ride out of this damn town. If
n them Creedys want to trail me, let them. I’ll be waiting to
collect their rewards too.’
‘
Ain’t you even a little bit
scared of Dan’s brothers, boy?’ the sheriff asked as Iron Eyes
turned the handle and opened the door. ‘I heard tell that they’re
mighty mean.’
‘
Meaner than me?’ Iron Eyes
raised an eyebrow.
‘
Maybe,’ the sheriff
gulped.
‘
There ain’t no such
critter, Sheriff.’
Watching Iron Eyes striding out
into the dark street, both men seemed unable to take their eyes
from him as he headed back in the direction of the saloon. Both men
were aware that this
was no ordinary stranger they had within the
boundaries of Bonny. This was Iron Eyes and he had killed Dan
Creedy for the price on his head.
How
long would it take for the Creedy
brothers to arrive?
Iron Eyes had somehow
stayed awake for what remained of the blood-soaked night. Primed
with an inch-thick steak and two bottles of whiskey, the bounty
hunter seemed either unwilling or uninterested in finding a place
to sleep until dawn. He had done what he had set out to do and
killed Dan Creedy, but it had been a close call. Creedy had not
wanted to die and looked as if he truly believed he could defeat
Iron Eyes. The thought troubled the skeletal figure as he stared
into his glass, because for the first time in all his years of
hunting down outlaws, he had been seriously wounded.
The saloon had remained open
for the solitary customer, who sat at a table only a few feet away
from the bloodstained sawdust which bore evidence
to his last
conquest. The bartender snored in an easy chair as Iron Eyes
continued to pour one measure after another of the amber liquid
into his glass.
Iron Eyes cast his hollow
bullet-colored pupils around the silent saloon, and wondered how
much more blood he could have afforded to lose before he would have
joined Dan Creedy in the very bowels of Lucifer’s eternal flames.
Iron Eyes had been wounded many times before but had never bled
like that. He stared at the pool of red sawdust near the bar and
the trail which led out of the saloon.
As the sun finally rose far
off in the prairie and light washed over the small township of
Bonny, Iron Eyes continued drinking his whiskey. Whatever this new
day had in store for him, he would face it with the same contempt
he had faced all of the others.
He had eaten the steak meal as
advised by the elderly doctor but felt no better. How long did it
take for blood to
be made in a body such as his anyway? Iron Eyes had tried
to understand the old physician’s words but, to him, it did not
make any sense. How could eating grub make blood? Maybe it was
because steak was usually filled with blood and the doctor meant
that as long as he somehow consumed the red liquid, it would fill
his empty veins.
Iron Eyes rubbed his face
angrily. As the morning light entered the saloon, he noticed the
dried blood which stained the shoulders of his coat. The browning
patches stretched down his sleeves and covered most of his
clothing.
Dan Creedy’s last shot
would have killed most men, but Iron Eyes was not like other men.
Perhaps the outlaw’s words had been true and he was already dead.
Looking at the evidence of how much blood he had lost, the bounty
hunter wondered if there could possibly be any left.
The whiskey had gone down his
throat better than the tough steak. It
always went down better. If the
doctor had said that drinking vast volumes of rotgut liquor made
blood, Iron Eyes could have seen the sense in it. At least both
were liquid.
He touched the stitches and
wondered again why his scalp was still totally numb. Would it
matter if it stayed that way? It might even be an advantage in the
future should anyone break a chair over his skull.
The giddiness had not
troubled him since he had left the doctor’s house. Maybe it had
only happened because his head had been split open and once it was
sewn back together, it was a thing of the past.
Iron Eyes liked that idea. He
swallowed another glass of the whiskey and stared down again at the
sawdust before him. Dan Creedy’s body had been removed by someone
before he had returned to the saloon. He knew that: the sheriff
must have awoken the town undertaker when he had wired off
for
permission to pay the bounty money. So much blood had been
spilled on to the sawdust, and most of it had been his
own.
He could still see the
outline in the sawdust where Creedy’s lifeless body had
lain.
The sound of a rooster
echoed off the buildings around the silent saloon. Iron Eyes pushed
the plate away from him and rose to his feet. He carried the
whiskey bottle in his hand and replaced its cork into the black
glass neck before dropping it into one of his deep
pockets.
The town was still asleep
as he walked out on to the boardwalk and looked at his pitiful
horse. It was in a sorrowful state but Iron Eyes had never cared
for horses. To him, they were simply things which he rode until
they dropped, and then he simply acquired a replacement.
Finding one of his long, black
cigars amid the countless bullets in his other coat pocket, Iron
Eyes placed it between his sharp teeth and then found
a box of matches in
his shirt pocket.
The heat was already rising
off everything the blazing morning sun touched as the bounty hunter
strode across the street in the direction of the sound coming from
the noisy rooster.
Rounding the corner, Iron
Eyes spied a small fenced-off garden filled with a score of hens
pecking at the ground, and the long-necked colorful cock-bird
standing upon the henhouse. Iron Eyes walked up to the fence and
lit his cigar.
It had been a long while
since he had been so close to such a domestic creature, and the
scene that faced him seemed strange. He did not like it.
The rooster continued
crowing at the rising sun as smoke drifted from Iron Eyes’ mouth.
Faster than the blink of an eye, he drew one of his Navy Colts from
his belt, cocked its hammer and fired a single shot.
As the head of the rooster went
in a different direction to that of its body, the bounty hunter
turned and began
walking back towards the saloon. ‘That’ll teach him.’ He
smiled.
They were a
gruesome-looking bunch by anyone’s yardstick. The trio of
dust-caked riders attracted the attention of every eye along the
main street of the sprawling town of Tequila Flats as they rode
into its heart. Set a mere twenty miles south of the remote Bonny,
Tequila Flats was everything the smaller town was not and would
never be.
It had wealth, and it
showed.
Dawn had only just broken a
mere twenty minutes earlier, but the streets were teeming with more
people than the three riders had seen in over a month of riding.
Too many people, they thought. Too many curious people.
It had not been part of their
original plan to enter the boundaries of such a prosperous town
because they knew, where
there was money, there were usually far too many
law officers ready and willing to protect it. Tequila Flats
overflowed with well-armed deputies who knew how to use their
weaponry and prayed for any excuse to prove themselves to their
sheriff.
The Creedy brothers eased
their mounts through the busy streets until they located the large
livery stables at the very heart of the town. They knew coming here
was risky, but they also knew something was wrong, otherwise they
would have already met up with their brother, Dan. There had to be
a good reason for his not joining his brothers and they had to try
and find out what.
Entering Tequila Flats
might furnish the answers. It might also furnish them with coffins
if just one of the law officers recognized their dust-covered faces
and found the Wanted posters they matched.
Bob Creedy was a man of graying
appearance who seemed far older than his twenty-eight years. He
dismounted
first outside the impressive livery stable, as his brothers
carefully looked back at the curious town residents before getting
off their saddles.
Treat Creedy was very
similar in looks yet had color in his hair and skin. He was less
than a year younger than Bob, but looked at least ten years Bob’s
junior. He held on to his reins and watched the faces that observed
them with a sharpness that he had honed to a fine art, for he was
the gang’s lookout.
The youngest of the Creedys
was called Frankie, and was far shorter than any of his brothers.
He looked little more than a boy, but in truth was nearly
twenty-four years of age. He had killed a man for each of his years
with the pair of deadly Remingtons he wore hidden beneath his trail
coat. Frankie Creedy was by far the most lethal of any of them, yet
looked the epitome of sweetness and light.
The brothers handed the reins
of their mounts over to the stable man,
and then rested on the edge of a
water trough as they pondered the large, busy town around
them.
So many people, so many
eyes. Eyes which were trained only on them.
They had not wanted to ride
into this town because they knew only too well of its reputation.
This was a town that did not tolerate scum. It said so on a crudely
painted sign just before the larger sign bearing the name of the
town, on the edge of Tequila Flats.
‘I reckon we ought to stay away
from the banks,’ Bob Creedy said as he placed his pipe between his
teeth and struck a match alon
g the side of his gun grip. ‘I figure these
varmints will figure we are here to rob one of them.’
‘
Ain’t gonna be easy,’ Treat
sighed.
‘
Yeah, this whole town is
filled with banks,’ Frankie noted as he rubbed the trail dust from
his deceptively youthful features.
‘Never seen so many banks.’
Treat raised an eyebrow as he looked at Bob, who was sucking the
flame of his match
into his pipe bowl. ‘Kinda tempting.’
‘
Forget it, Treat. We ain’t
here to rob no banks,’ the older Creedy snapped as he tossed his
match away. ‘It would be suicide in this town.’
‘
Then how come we came
here?’
‘
To rest our horses and get
us some grub and provisions.’ Bob puffed on his pipe.
‘
And?’ Treat
pressed.
‘
And to try and find out
why Dan didn’t meet us at Powder River like we arranged.’ Bob
Creedy stood up again and gripped the pipe stem in his teeth as he
studied the people who were milling around in the busy
street.
‘
What can we find out
here?’ Frankie asked as he cupped water in his hands and splashed
it over his face.
‘
They got themselves a
telegraph office here and they also got a newspaper office, boys.’
Bob sucked in smoke and allowed it to filter through his teeth as
he spoke.
‘
So?’ Treat
stood.
‘How else do we find if
anything’s
happened to Dan?’ Bob replied as he carefully checked his
guns with his back to the crowd.
Frankie rubbed his face dry
on his bandanna as he eased himself up beside his brothers. He
appeared even younger with the dirt washed off his face. Almost
childlike. It was a deadly illusion.
‘
You reckon Dan might be
dead?’
‘
Yep. I figure only death
would stop Dan from meeting up with us, boys,’ Bob Creedy
interrupted as he began walking slowly back towards the main street
and the crowds of neatly dressed people who still seemed unable to
take their eyes off them. ‘Come on. We ain’t gonna get nothing done
sitting outside a stable.’
‘
I don’t like the way these
bastards are eyeing us, Bob,’ the sweating Frankie snarled from
beneath his youthful features. ‘I reckon we ought to get our
carbines, just in case.’
Bob glanced at the
youngster.
‘We have to look like ordinary
folks
just
passing through, Frankie. If we are carrying our Winchesters, I
figure it’ll take five minutes before we are surrounded by every
damn lawman in this town.’
‘
What if we run into the
sheriff or his deputies?’ Treat asked.
‘
We’ll have to try and talk
our way out of trouble,’ Bob said firmly.
‘
What if they ain’t the
talkative kind?’
‘
We’ll have to try and
shoot our way back to the horses,’ Bob sighed as they drew closer
to the main street once more. ‘That’s our last resort. I don’t want
no shooting unless there ain’t no option.’
‘
I knew this was a dumb
thing to do, riding into this blasted place.’ Treat shook his head
as he walked beside his brothers.
‘
Just keep smiling, Treat,’
Bob Creedy advised as he tipped his dusty Stetson to passing women
carrying their baskets. ‘A smile can confuse even the smartest of
folks.’
The three brothers moved
cautiously.
They knew it was only a
matter of time before one or more of this town’s numerous deputies
bumped into them. They had to try and act like normal folks until
they discovered the information they sought.
It was not going to be
easy. None of the three men could remember the last time they had
actually been normal folks without a price on their heads. If they
were to survive in Tequila Flats long enough to learn about their
brother’s fate, they had to try and not look like the deadly
thieves and killers they really were.
It would not be easy, for
with every step the three Creedy brothers took as they walked
deeper into the streets of Tequila Flats, the Devil seemed to ring
out a tune of warning on their razor-sharp spurs.