The Ghost of Iron Eyes (An Iron Eyes Western Book 8) (7 page)

Yet it was a sound that
Jardine and his confederates had heard many times over the previous
months. The outlaws knew that they would not permit any rebels
within the boundaries of this town. They had learned by their
mistakes on their way to Diamond City.

They knew that this time they
would
have
to allow some of the townspeople to live if they were to remain
here. They required slaves to keep the town up and running. This
would not be like Black Rock, Porter’s Bluff and the other
settlements they had entered and plundered. This time they would
not slaughter every living creature within the town’s
boundaries.

This time they would be
merciful. At least merciful by the sordid standards they had set
themselves. For to them, to use people as mere objects had become
second nature. They had grown accustomed to raping females and then
killing them. This time they would have to try and control their
brutal emotions.

One of the screaming females
ran towards the smoking rifle and started clubbing at the chest of
the outlaw. Toke Darrow threw the empty Winchester to his brother
Jade, then looked down into the face of the woman. He laughed. It
was the cruel laughter of a man who had lost all sense of right and
wrong since straying willingly into a life
of crime with his
brothers.

‘
She’s
a feisty one and no mistake, boys,’ Darrow laughed as his strong
fingers encircled the female’s wrists. He squeezed with all his
might and lifted her off her feet. He seemed to take even more
pleasure in the pain he could see in her tear-stained face. ‘Reckon
she’s ripe?’

The rest of the outlaws
gathered closer to their amused colleague.

‘
Blood
can make a woman darn frisky, Toke,’ said Rufus Clayton. ‘They all
want to be used. You ought to drag her up to your room and let her
taste a real man, Toke.’

‘
Damn
right, Red.’ Darrow smiled. He released his grip and dropped the
woman. She fell on to her knees and stared through her long hair at
the vermin in human form who surrounded her.

Suddenly, the woman threw
herself at Darrow
’s gunbelt. She hauled one of his prized Colts from its
holster, then fell on to her broad bottom.

‘
Now
I’m gonna kill you, mister!’ Her raised voice snapped at the
stunned outlaw who gazed down at her in amazement.

‘
I
doubt that, missy!’ Toke Darrow growled. His left hand moved to his
gun and slid it from its holster.

The heavy weapon shook in her
hands as she tried to pull back its hammer. Then her eyes widened
as she watched Darrow
’s left thumb easily pull back the hammer of his
gun until it locked. Desperately she tried to emulate his action.
Yet not both her thumbs could achieve the feat. She simply did not
have the strength to do so.

‘
Kill
me, you swine!’ she screamed defiantly.

Toke Darrow looked around
the faces of the other outlaws and then at the remaining women. A
wry smile etched his unshaven features.

‘
OK!’
he said.

He squeezed the trigger and
watched as half her head was blown off her neck. Blood,
hair and fragments
of skull splattered over the sand behind the kneeling woman. She
crumpled like a rag-doll and fell. Darrow blew the smoke from the
barrel of his gun. He leaned down and grabbed his Colt from her
lifeless hands, then holstered both his guns.

‘
You
mindless fool,’ snarled Luther Cole. He shook his head and thought
of all the other people who had fallen victim to the three
gun-happy Darrow boys. Most of the killing he had witnessed during
the time they had ridden together had been started by the Darrows.
Even his hardened constitution was beginning to get tired of the
carnage. ‘Do you have to kill everyone who stands in your way,
boy?’

‘
Why
not, Luther?’ Toke Darrow spat. ‘She’s stopped screamin’, ain’t
she?’

‘
That
was a waste of a woman, Toke,’ Henry Jardine commented. He placed a
cigar between his teeth and struck a match on a porch upright. ‘If
we intend staying in Diamond City, you can’t keep killing the way
we did in all the towns behind us.’

Darrow looked up at the rest
of the women.

‘
We
got us plenty more corralled over yonder, old-timer.’ Jardine
turned to face the sobbing women whom they had grouped together
outside the saloon. He knew that it might be a lot harder to take
control of this town than he had first imagined.

‘
Just
don’t kill too many folks or we’ll have to do all the town’s chores
ourselves.’

‘
I’ll
kill as many folks as I damn well want, Jardine,’ Darrow
retorted.

‘
Them
women are a noisy bunch though, Toke,’ said Jardine. ‘They’re
scared, and scared women are darn noisy.’

‘
Damned if I care how noisy they gets.’ Darrow raised an
eyebrow. ‘All I want is a little satisfaction. I’m used to my
females screaming, anyways.’

‘
Pop
and Clay are scouting for more females down the end of town, Toke.’
Jardine sighed. ‘They might find a few quieter ones if n you’re
prepared to wait.’

Darrow gestured to his
brothers. They moved towards him and headed for the terrified
females.

‘
We’ll
service this bunch first, Henry. You and the rest of the older boys
can have the rest of the town’s bitches.’

Luther Cole walked to
Jardine
’s
side. Both men watched as the three Darrow brothers herded the
females into the saloon and up the wide staircase.

‘
I
don’t like them Darrows!’ Cole announced.

Jardine glanced at the bald
outlaw beside him.

‘
Me
neither, Luther. Me neither,’ he admitted, smoke drifting through
his teeth.

‘
It
was a mistake letting them join us. They’ll bring the law down on
us and no mistake, Henry,’ Cole snorted as he heard the screams of
the females getting louder inside the saloon.

Jardine eyed his long-time
companion.

‘
Then
we have to kill them before they get the rest of our gang killed.
Right?’

Luther Cole
nodded.

Razor-sharp talons scraped
along the rockface, showering dust over the head of the crouching
bounty hunter. The massive wingspan of the large black scavenger
lifted it up on the hot air until it had rejoined the rest in the
sky. Iron Eyes raised himself back to his full height and stared up
at the circling birds. Since he had killed the pair of pumas the
previous evening, he had never seen so many vultures in one place
before. The huge birds had made short work of stripping the
carcasses of the mountain lions of fur and flesh until all that was
left was bones.

Iron Eyes knew that now they
wanted more. Now they wanted to do the same to him. Even in his
weakened state, he was not going to allow that to
happen.

But vultures are the most
patient of living creatures. They will wait weeks
for their chosen
meal to die if necessary. To them all things die and when dead, the
vultures feast. Iron Eyes was more dead than alive, and the birds
sensed it.

The vultures instinctively knew
it was only a matter of time before the lone figure in the dry
canyon dropped. They had trailed him long before the night had
ended. The smell of the pumas
’ blood had drawn them to the fallen animals and
then in turn to him.

The bounty hunter had
decided long before sunrise that if he were ever to escape this
deadly place, he would have to force his legs to carry him out of
the maze of canyons. He knew he could ill afford to waste another
day.

Iron Eyes had somehow
managed to force himself upright and start the long
trek.

With no water or food, he knew
the odds were against his ever finding his way out of the high
valleys of rock and sand. When he had started, he wondered
if any trace of his
horse’s hoof-tracks might remain to guide him. When the sun rose,
Iron Eyes soon realized that the incessant wind that blew along the
canyons had obliterated all signs of the trail he had left when he
had ridden in to Devil’s Canyon.

The sand was smooth, as if
nothing had ever moved across its surface. But he was already
committed. He had come too far to turn back.

Iron Eyes moved slowly,
using every available shadow to keep the blistering sun off his
frail body.

The man who had always been
so confident in his own abilities, could now barely understand how
he had managed to end up in this unholy place. His memory was vague
and he knew that he was required to drink his own pathetic weight
in water if he were to regain his strength or his sanity
again.

Yet there was no water
anywhere.

Dust blew off the rugged
rockfaces as if mocking the infamous hunter of men. If anywhere
could have resembled Hell itself,
Iron Eyes knew that Devil’s Canyon was
that place.

But he continued
walking.

Step after step, he forced
his thin weak legs to keep moving onward.

Racked by pain, the tall
emaciated figure kept walking. Iron Eyes knew there was no
alternative unless he was willing to die here.

He was not!

The vultures screeched above
him. His eyes darted upward again and again as their shadows swept
over him. Somehow he managed to remain upright even though every
sinew in his body tortured him. His ice cold eyes continued to look
at the birds above him as they floated effortlessly on the warm
air.

They had been overhead for
more than two hours and showed no sign of losing
interest.

For death provided them with
life.

Their sharp vision knew that
the staggering creature below their high vantage point was as close
to death as it was
possible to get without actually dying. Every now and then
one of their number would dive down as if trying to make him lose
his balance and fall.

It was if they knew that
once Iron Eyes fell, he would never muster enough strength to get
upright again.

Iron Eyes knew that he was
ill-equipped for this or any other journey. His clothing was
tattered and torn, exposing his scarred flesh. Half his long coat
had been burned in the fire that had almost consumed him months
earlier. What was left of it hung like the weathered drapes found
on the windows of ghost-town buildings.

Yet the pockets of the coat
still served their purpose. He had emptied the bullets from his
saddle-bags into them before he had set out on his defiant
walk.

His pair of guns also rested
in them. He had found it impossible to take even a solitary step
with the Navy Colts in his belt. With little remaining of his
shirt, their hammers had cut into what was left of the skin on his
flat belly.

Iron Eyes stopped. He leaned
into the canyon wall and drew one of his weapons. He cocked its
hammer, then raised its barrel.

He stared along his right
arm and down the blue metal barrel until he had the vultures in his
sights.

Then he fired.

A deafening explosion echoed
all around him as slowly he lowered the smoking weapon. He watched
as black feathers exploded from one of the large circling birds. It
twisted as its companions scattered and then fell like a stone out
of the blue cloudless sky.

Iron Eyes watched it
disappear above the ridge opposite him. The rest of the vultures
swooped down after it.

‘
Eat
that, you feathered bastards!’ he mumbled, pushing the weapon back
into the right coat-pocket. ‘He probably tastes better than me,
anyway.’

Iron Eyes inhaled deeply. The
smell of the gunsmoke seemed to fill him with renewed confidence.
He set off once more. This time his movements
were more labored. Far slower.
He cursed himself for being so weak. So feeble.

He knew that he had another
enemy now. One that was far more deadly than the vultures who had
taunted him.

Exhaustion was overwhelming
him.

Iron Eyes was disgusted with
the realization of his own mortality. As with all creatures, he too
had thought himself invulnerable. The truth was a bitter pill that
even he found hard to swallow. Death had always been a close
companion and yet for the past nine months, he had managed to defy
the inevitable and remain alive.

But now he wondered if at
last it was his turn to meet the Grim Reaper.

The last drop of water had
touched his cracked lips hours earlier and Iron Eyes knew that he
could not carry on for much longer without a drink.

Where was the water in this
damn place? His mind screamed out inside his skull. It had to be
here somewhere. He
tried to reason with himself.