The Spirit of Iron Eyes (12 page)

How had he managed to get into so much
trouble?

If there was an answer, it escaped him.

Iron Eyes had helplessly
watched the countless Apaches for what felt like hours as he lay
soaked on his back in the dry brush outside the small cave opening
at the foot of the ridge.
The snake’s poison still flowed through him
unchecked and he had no idea how many times he had slipped in and
out of consciousness since being washed out of the cave and into
the dry undergrowth.

The bright moon still mocked his
helplessness high above him and appeared not to have moved since
his eyes had first looked up at it. Little time could have elapsed
but Iron Eyes could not be certain of anything any longer.

Only the pain was real!

He tilted his head again and blinked hard
trying to focus.

His small
steel-
colored eyes trained on the growing number of Indians.
Again he realized that he had not managed to escape them, but had
actually been thrown to within a mere hundred or so yards from
their camp-fires by the hidden cave pond.

His only hope of salvation was that they had
not noticed him yet.

Iron Eyes had tried to move more than a
dozen times since finding himself on his back outside the small
half-hidden cave mouth.

Each time, the weak man had failed to even
rise off his aching spine.

The bounty hunter wondered why more than a
dozen Apache riders had joined the main group of warriors. He also
wondered if even more of them might join the already formidable
numbers.

What was going on?

Why were they so all-fired up?

Then he recalled all the times he had
encountered the Apache warriors and how many of their tribe he had
slain in combat. Yet Iron Eyes had never once killed an Indian who
had not already tried to kill him first. There was no profit in
killing men who had no bounty on their head.

But the Apaches had grown to hate him. His
reputation had spread throughout their scattered tribes across
hundreds of square miles.

He closed his eyes and tried to muster his
flagging strength as he resigned himself to the fact that the
Indian warriors would not rest until they had finally killed him.
They wanted revenge and the name of revenge was Iron Eyes!

He raised his hands and slid them into the
wet pockets of his drenched long coat.

Slowly his bony fingers searched the pockets
for his guns and knife. Iron Eyes dragged them out and laid them on
his bare bruised chest. He then searched for bullets but knew most
of them had probably sunk to the bottom of the cave pool when he
had fallen into its ice-cold water.

He managed to find just five of
the .36
caliber bullets. He laid them at his side.

So few bullets and so many Indians, he
thought.

The bounty hunter shook his head and
silently raged at himself. Iron Eyes twisted and slid the long
blade of the Bowie knife into the neck of his left boot. Then his
eyes studied the two wet pistols.

He knew that they were totally useless
unless he could manage to dry them.

His long fingers opened the
chambers of both Navy Colts and removed the bullets. Water ran
freely out of the guns
’ innards and over his chest.

Iron Eyes was cursing with every frustrated
movement of his bleeding hands. He grabbed the grips of the guns
and shook them as hard as he could, trying to rid them of the
water. He knew that he had lost his small toolbag containing the
screwdrivers and oil required to clean the weapons. That had been
in the saddle-bags of his injured pony back on the prairie.

The ice-cold eyes of the bounty hunter homed
on to the guns with an intensity he had not been able to muster for
hours. His mind raced.

Would his prized weapons work with water
inside their delicate insides?

There was only one way to find out and that
was to load and fire them. That in itself would be suicidal.

He glanced again through the
brittle brush at the Indians who were building their fires with
every scrap of kindling that they could find. The entire
rock face began to
reflect the reddish hue of the flames.

Iron Eyes was troubled as he noticed the
firelight dancing across him. He wondered how long he could remain
undetected in this hiding-place.

Suddenly he felt the pain and
fog returning to his weary brain. He inhaled deeply, then shook the
delirium from his mind and pushed his damp limp hair off his face
again. His eyes narrowed and
stared hard at the two blue metal guns in his
hands as they rested on his chest.

He looked for something to dry the pistols
with. But it was a vain search as everything he wore was completely
sodden.

The bounty
hunter
’s
eyes flashed again across at the scores of Apache braves who were
milling around in total ignorance of his whereabouts.

Iron Eyes knew that if they caught even one
whiff of his scent, he would most probably be dead within
seconds.

There was an air of panic now racing through
the outstretched figure as he felt the venom burning through him
for the umpteenth time.

Somehow he had to dry his guns off.

Even if he managed to do so, he knew that
there was no certainty that they would fire. Only once before in
his life had he found his guns wet and it had taken two days before
they had dried out well enough to fire.

Silently, Iron Eyes rolled over on to his
belly.

He stared through the dry brush at the
Indians again. For a few moments his eyes refused to focus, then he
saw the figure in the Stetson. Instantly Iron Eyes recognized the
outlaw known as Diamond Back Jones from their bloody encounter back
in the remote town of Dry Gulch and the crude image that had
adorned the wanted poster he had burned back in the cave
tunnel.

The bounty hunter could almost taste the
reward money in his cracked and bleeding mouth.

He snorted quietly as anger welled up inside
his lean frame.

Jones was so close and yet he might as well
have been a thousand miles away for all the good it did Iron
Eyes.

There was no way he could kill the outlaw
now!

Not with so many Indians around and the
uncertainty that his Navy Colts would not work whilst wet.

A lifetime of instinct made
Iron Eyes want to kill the arrogant outlaw more than he had ever
wanted to kill anyone before. Even in his confused state, he knew
that the reward money on Diamond Back
’s head was more than generous.

But it had not been the money that had made
him chase the outlaw with such determination. For all his
reputation at being a heartless killer, he still had a hatred of
anyone who harmed females. To him, it was something that no real
man did.

To Iron Eyes, all outlaws were nothing more
than animals that had gone mad.

He killed mad animals because they did not
deserve to live amongst other creatures.

Diamond Back Jones was simply a two-legged
mad animal that had to be destroyed.

It was a task Iron Eyes considered his
duty.

Suddenly the pain increased and
made the bruised and battered man clench both fists. He silently
endured the agony that was slowly tearing him apart. His long body
curled up and shook in uncontrollable spasms. Iron Eyes gritted his
teeth
and
rode the demons inside his tortured carcass as if they were wild
mustangs, until the horrific pain finally ebbed.

Exhausted, the bounty hunter felt his body
relax.

He rubbed the sweat from both
his eyes and looked at his guns again. He knew that without them,
he was
defenseless.

His hands clawed at the dry brush that
surrounded him and he attempted to soak up the moisture from both
the Navy Colts with the brittle grass.

There was no way of knowing whether it would
work.

But he had to try.

After a few minutes he assembled the first
of the guns and slid the bullets back into the chambers. Ten
minutes later the second Colt was reassembled and loaded. A nagging
thought returned to haunt him. Without oil on the dozens of springs
and moving parts inside the pair of matched Colts, would they work
when called upon to do so?

Iron Eyes rested his brow on
the backs of his grazed hands and tried to find the strength that
he knew had been sapped by the rattlesnake
’s vicious bite.

He raised his head slightly and stared
across at the scores of Indian ponies that were within spitting
distance of his hiding-place.

The trouble was, Iron Eyes had
no spittle in his mouth. Only the acrid taste of poison that
refused
to
go away. He breathed heavily, and slid his fingers around both his
guns and cocked their hammers.

With every ounce of willpower that he could
find in the depths of his soul, he forced himself up off the damp
sand. He stood holding his guns in his hands and stared at the
ponies.

Iron Eyes forced himself through the brush
and staggered across the moonlit sand toward the ponies.

He was only half way when he
heard the raised voices of the Apache warriors to his right. Scores
of Conchowata
’s braves were racing across the distance between
them.

Iron Eyes twisted his body, aimed and
squeezed the triggers of both Navy Colts at the fast approaching
Indians.

Neither weapon fired!

Within a beat of his pounding heart, they
were upon him!

To the injured bounty hunter it sounded as
if the Devil had released untold numbers of demons from the very
bowels of Hell itself to add even more pain upon his already
half-dead body. Yet Iron Eyes knew that they were not creatures
from another world, but his sworn enemy. His eyes widened as he saw
the scores of knife-wielding Apache braves a moment before they
overwhelmed him.

Iron Eyes crumpled under the sheer weight of
the screaming warriors who had leapt upon him one after another.
Yet even in his weakened state, it took more than a dozen of them
to knock the staggering lean-framed man off his feet.

The vicious attack went on and on and yet
they did not use the keen-edged blades of their knives on him. As
the bounty hunter felt their fury, he wondered why they were only
using their fists and clubs.

Any one of the painted braves
could have used
his dagger and ripped his heart out of his chest without
him being able to prevent it.

Yet they seemed content to just batter him
into a pulp.

Iron Eyes vainly tried to defend himself but
it was impossible. There were simply too many of them to fend off.
As one blow after another rained down on every inch of what was
left of his body, he realized that he could not feel any of their
punches or kicks.

The snake poison that coursed unchecked
through his veins made him totally impervious to any exterior
pain.

After being hauled back to his feet, Iron
Eyes felt his body being dragged across the sand by countless
hands. He knew that the Apaches had something planned for him but
was helpless to stop them doing whatever they wanted.

His feet dragged behind him as the Apaches
brought him towards the largest of their camp-fires.

Blood was flowing from his scalp again and
dripping from the long limp strands of his matted hair that hung
above the moonlit sand. He tried to raise his head but could
not.

Sweat dripped from his temples on to the
sand almost as fast as the droplets of blood. He found himself
staring at the strange pattern it made below him.

Even if he had been uninjured,
the bounty hunter knew that he could not have withstood the
strength of so many
foes. More dead than alive, he had no chance.

His captors stopped and supported him
between them as if he were little more than fresh game caught out
on the prairie. It sounded to him as if every one of the Apaches
was talking at exactly the same moment.

He could not understand one word of it.

Slowly Iron Eyes looked upward through his
blood-soaked hair at the faces of the two men before him.
Conchowata stood like a statue beside the raging fire. Its flames
lit up the emotionless features of the Apache chief.

The grinning face of Diamond Back Jones
looked exactly like the image on his wanted poster. The laughter of
the outlaw made the bounty hunter fight against the numerous hands
which held him in check.

It was a valiant but vain effort which only
drained his strength even more.

‘
So
this is the great Iron Eyes!’ declared Jones as the warriors stood
before him and the chief with their captive in their grip. He
leaned closer and then spoke in English. ‘I knew that you weren’t
indestructible, Mr. Bounty Hunter! All them tall tales are nothin’
but flannel, ain’t they?’

‘
You
reckon?’ Iron Eyes asked through the blood that poured from his
bruised mouth.

Diamond Back Jones moved forward and then
kicked the belly of the tall man with all his might.

Iron Eyes was lifted off the
ground by the sheer
force of the kick. The Apache braves held his arms firmly
so that he could not avoid Jones’s second violent attack. This time
the outlaw used the back of his right fist. It came down across the
side of Iron Eyes’ jaw, knocking the bounty hunter’s head almost
off his wide shoulders.

There was an eerie silence only broken by
the chuckling of the Apache outlaw. He continued laughing until he
saw the head of their captive defiantly rising until he was looking
straight at Jones.