Iron Eyes Must Die (3 page)

The tall man paced around the cell and nursed
his throbbing swollen face. He tried to think but his head hurt. It
felt as though a hundred war drums were beating inside his
skull.

Then he stopped and looked up at the small
barred window.

A shaft of moonlight trailed
into the cell. He walked into it and stared at
the wall of bars. He had never
been caged like an animal before. His eyes studied the well-crafted
metalwork. It made no sense to him.

Locks and keys had played no part in his
existence until now.

He started to wonder.

Were these so called upholders of the law
actually going to take him into court? Were they bluffing? His bony
hands gripped the bars of the cell door firmly. He strained with
all his might but the cell door remained locked.

Then the name of Judge Travis
filled his thoughts. The hanging judge was infamous in these parts.
He
’d hang
anyone for anything.

A stack of dead bodies and a fancy hotel
burned to the ground might be just the sort of thing to sway Travis
into ordering a fresh rope, he thought.

Iron Eyes rested the swollen side of his face
against the cool bars. It eased the pain a little, but it did not
stop the thoughts which haunted him.

He was trapped!

For the first time in his life, he was unable
to defend himself.

Unable to fight.

Was this how it would end?

Would he be hanged by dishonest lawmen simply
because they wanted to claim the bounty money he had earned? Could
they end his existence by using the law when so many had failed to
do the same with guns?

The bounty hunter sat down again on the edge
of the cot and did what the sheriff and his henchmen had failed to
do. He slid his thin hand down into the neck of his right
mule-eared boot.

Slowly he pulled the long deadly Bowie knife
out from its hiding-place and stared at its honed blade.

He nodded.

‘
It
ain’t over yet,’ he whispered to himself. ‘In fact, it ain’t even
started yet!’

If they wanted war, Iron Eyes would oblige
them.

Deadman
’s Flats was a windswept plain of
black sand and rough gravel. Nothing grew on its acidic surface and
only dried bones littered ancient long-disused trails. Its entire
horizon was made up of distant jagged-spired mountains which
touched the clouds and acted as borders to even less hospitable
territories. This was a land that even the wildest of animals
seldom visited. Yet almost in the very centre of the vast rugged
plain six weathered wooden structures were huddled together beside
a single line of metal railroad tracks. The water-tower continually
sucked the precious and rare liquid up from a vast underground
lake.

It was the only reason men were
able to remain in this merciless and unforgiving land. Yet it was a
vital link in
the chain of remote places that ensured the two trains a
day had their thirsty boilers filled so that they could continue on
their journeys both east and west.

The businessmen of
Deadman
’s
Flats had made good and profitable use of the sixty-minute
stopovers their twice daily visitors made to their small
settlement.

Being so far from any other
town, Deadman
’s Flats had never had call to hire anyone to protect them.
There was no law here and there never had been.

Yet as dawn broke and the sun rose and spread
its blanket of light across the huge level plains, exactly as it
had done countless times before, the twenty or more people who
lived next to the railroad tracks realized that this day would be
different from all those that had gone before.

Hoot Dawson opened wide the
doors of his saloon and stared out at the familiar, unchanging
landscape. As he inhaled and stretched his thin frame Dawson
noticed something which seemed
impossible. Dust was rising up into the
thin air a couple of miles beyond the water-tower.

The fifty-three-year-old man pulled his
suspenders up over his shoulders and stepped to the edge of the
porch. His eyes squinted as he tried to focus.

‘
What
ya looking at, Hoot?’ the rotund Frank Mason asked as he sucked
vainly on a pipe and walked down from his cafe.

The saloon-owner raised an arm and
pointed.

‘
Look,
Frank. See them?’

Mason pulled out a pair of spectacles and put
them on. He too squinted.

‘
That’s riders, Hoot!’

‘
That’s what I reckoned.’ Dawson nodded. ‘But how could any
riders be coming from thataway?’

‘
Beats
me!’ Frank Mason answered. ‘I thought that no one had ever managed
to navigate a trail from the north down to Deadman’s Flats. The
nearest water is up in the mountains about twenty miles
away.’

Another of the
town
’s
citizens strolled to the boardwalk of the saloon. He too could not
believe his eyes.

‘
Riders? Is them riders I see?’

‘
Yep!
It’s riders OK, Dan.’

‘
I
don’t like the looks of this, Frank,’ Dawson said. He turned and
led the men into his saloon. ‘I’m getting my guns.’

‘
How
come?’ Dan Cooper asked.

Dawson reached beneath his long bar-counter
and pulled out a scatter gun. He then filled his pants pockets with
large red cartridges.

‘
I
don’t like the looks of them!’ he responded. ‘You’d better get your
own guns. Just in case.’

Dan Cooper shrugged.

‘
I
ain’t got me a gun, boys.’

The three men went out on to the porch again.
The riders were even closer. Now it was possible actually to count
them.

‘
Seven
of the varmints!’ Frank Mason gulped. ‘I got me an old Remington
somewhere in the cafe. I’m gonna go find it and see if I got any
bullets.’

Dawson glanced to either side of his saloon
as more men moved out from other buildings nearby and started to
gather near his well-established drinking-hole.

‘
Tell
them to get as many of their weapons together as they can find,
Dan,’ Dawson said firmly.

Cooper did not require telling twice. He
rushed to the crowd and told them what the saloon-owner had said.
Hoot Dawson felt sweat rolling down his back.

The seven ominous riders had appeared like
phantoms out of the heat haze. They aimed their horses at the small
railhead settlement and continued to approach silently.

It seemed impossible to any of the onlookers
that anyone could have ridden down from the north and survived to
reach the middle of the plain.

Yet they had survived and were headed
straight towards the small group of buildings.

The riders, like the distant
mountains behind them, appeared grey. There seemed to be no
actual
color
on any of them or their mounts. They all wore long, dark,
dust-coats which covered most of their clothing. Each sported dark
hats with low crowns and narrow brims.

Hoot Dawson knew that it was a
style
favored by people who lived far to the north where the
winds were even more powerful than those that ceaselessly swept
across the plain.

But it was not these small details that put
the fear into the men who watched the seven horsemen approach.

Each of them held
long-
barreled rifles which pointed straight up. Their wooden
stocks rested on their thighs and the gloved hands were wrapped
around the trigger guards.

The light of the rising sun glanced across
each of the metal barrels in turn. It was like staring at a swarm
of fireflies dancing in the air.

But these riders were no harmless
fireflies.

These were men on a mission.

The residents of
Deadman
’s
Flats would soon discover how deadly that mission was.

Hoot Dawson looked at his friends outside his
saloon. Only a third of them had anything resembling firearms. None
looked as if he had any idea of how to use them.

‘
What
we gonna do, Hoot?’ Mason asked, trying to hold his gun in hands
which refused to stop shaking.

‘
C’mon! Let’s go and greet these strangers!’ Dawson stepped
down from the boardwalk, moved through the nervous townsfolk and
started to walk to where the seven horsemen were headed. ‘They
might be just harmless drifters.’

Hoot Dawson was wrong. These were not
drifters who had accidentally stumbled upon the remote train-stop.
They were here on purpose.

The seven riders drew back on
their reins below the water-tower and stepped down on to the wooden
platform. The
seven dust-caked horses soon surrounded the large
water-trough below the tower. A solitary pump next to the trough
was used to quench the riders’ thirst as their leader watched the
approaching townspeople.

‘
Looks
like we just drew us a crowd, boys!’ Snake Adams said coldly at the
sight of Hoot Dawson and the rest of the men from Deadman’s Flats.
He slid his Winchester into his saddle scabbard and moved away from
his men.

The other six horsemen all turned and looked
to where Adams was staring. They had faced many similar crowds over
the years they had ridden together.

‘
Fat
old men!’ Buck Harris laughed as he chewed on a toothpick. ‘Just a
bunch of fat old men, Snake.’

‘
I
sure hate fat old folks.’ Adams slid his right hand into the loose
pocket of his dust-coat. The pockets of the lightweight garment
gave easy access to the wearer’s trail gear. His hand found the
grip of his gun sitting in its holster. He flicked the leather
safety loop off the hammer.

The five other riders walked to either side
of their lean leader with their rifles in their gloved hands. Adams
glanced to his right.

Coop Starr, Ferdy Mayne and
George
‘One
Ear’ Brewster gazed in amusement at the men who were walking
towards them.

Snake Adams then looked to his left.

Ben Lynch and Kyle Parker cranked the
mechanisms of their rifles and stared ahead of them with
unemotional eyes.

Hoot Dawson
’s step slowed to a halt when
he was able to focus on the seven unexpected visitors to their
small community. His worst fears had been realized. These men were
every inch the sort that no honest community desired to appear
within their midst.

Dawson cleared his throat.

‘
You
boys here to drink?’

Snake Adams smiled.

‘
We’re
here on business, old man!’

‘
What
kinda business could Dead-man’s Flats possibly have for your kind?’
Dawson demanded.

Adams lowered his head. His eyes burned
across the distance between himself and the twenty men.

‘
I
don’t like your tone, you fat old man!’

Dawson
’s shirt was soaked in sweat as he
gripped on to his scattergun. Yet he was a man that would not back
down.

‘
We
own this town! We don’t cotton to trouble! Now answer me and tell
me why you’re here!’

The sound of a
train
’s
whistle and bell rang out across the vast flat plain. Adams glanced
to both sides of him and chuckled.

‘
That’s why!’ he said.

‘
The
train?’ Frank Mason said aloud. He gripped Dawson’s shoulder.
‘These boys are train robbers, Hoot!’

Snake Adams drew his gun and
fired through his coat. The smell of
smoldering fabric filled the nostrils of
the men who surrounded him. A trail of smoke followed the deadly
bullet as it hit Dawson dead centre. It punched its way right
through his frame. The saloon-owner staggered backwards and fell at
the feet of his friends.

A startled gasp came from every one of
them.

The six men to either side of Snake Adams
turned the barrels of their rifles on the stunned crowd.

‘
Should we kill them all, Snake?’ Buck Harris asked eagerly,
his index finger stroking the rifle trigger. ‘We got time to kill
them all!’

The crowd backed away a few strides.

Snake Adams pulled his gun out from his coat
and hauled its hammer back again. He considered the option for a
few endless seconds and the people before him shed their weaponry
in terror. He looked straight at the large-girthed Mason and waved
the barrel of the Colt.

‘
You
get these folks to obey orders and you might be alive in an hour’s
time. Pick this carcass up and take him someplace,’ Adams ordered.
‘If you don’t, we’ll kill you all right now!’

Frank Mason herded the rest of the townsmen
around the blood-soaked body. Four of them reached down and lifted
what was left of Hoot Dawson up.

‘
Take
him to behind the outhouses!’ Mason said as the entire crowd moved
as one.

‘
Cover
the body with sand and rocks so nobody curious sets eyes on it!’
Adams insisted.

Mason nodded fearfully.