by Rory Black
Iron Eyes looked and saw Fire Bird riding deep into the undergrowth before he pulled another arrow from his quiver and charged the bow once more.
Suddenly more arrows cut passed him.
He squinted hard at the fiery torches and heard the cries of lumberjacks as some of the arrows hit them. He swallowed hard and then tossed the bow aside as his skeletal hand drew one of the guns from his belt. He cocked and fired the six-shooter at the Indians and then athletically climbed up the tree into its overhanging branches.
No sooner had Iron Eyes come to rest on a sturdy leaf draped branch when the Indian riders thundered between the trees below him. Just like the lumberjacks, they wanted to find and kill the elusive Iron Eyes. Their whooping and feverish cries echoed around the forest. The Indians did not stop their war cries until they rode straight into the lumberjacks’ ranks.
Suddenly, as Iron Eyes crouched on the branch, he witnessed the darkness light up as the loggers’ guns exploded into action. The deafening noise was chilling, even to the young observer as he watched the bloody battle.
The gut-wrenching screams filled the forest as both sides fought for their very lives. Neither side showed the other any mercy. Ponies raced back toward the Indian encampment. Iron Eyes stared down through the shadows and noticed that every single one of the ponies was drenched in the blood of its master.
A handful of heartbeats later, the forest had fallen strangely silent. The brief but gory battle was over. Iron Eyes clambered back down to the ground and stood like a statue staring into the gunsmoke-filled air.
He cautiously moved with the six-gun still in his hand toward the site of the brutal encounter. The sight of carnage stunned the tall youth as he finally reached the place where both the lumberjacks and the Indians had unwittingly crashed into each other.
Iron Eyes gazed at the bodies that littered the woodland floor and shook his head silently. Even the fleeting moonlight could not disguise the blood-covered ground. A couple of maimed ponies had suffered the same fate as their riders and had been either shot or stabbed in the heat of battle. Bodies were strewn everywhere and every one of them was dead.
His narrowed eyes looked up and noted the feverish retreat of the majority of the lumberjacks as they fled with their fiery torches back toward Silver Creek.
He could see the lumberjacks assisting the wounded through the long grass. Iron Eyes studied the bodies at his feet and then noticed the familiar features of Hog Barker staring with dead eyes up at the tree canopies.
The long-legged hunter nodded to himself at the sight of the arrow-filled man who had caused him so much unwanted attention earlier that day. A satisfied smirk etched his haunting face before he turned on his heels and raced through the dense undergrowth back toward the den where he had earlier left his goods. He dragged the box out into the murky moonlight and quickly tore a cork from a whiskey bottle and downed a third of its contents. The fumes of the hard liquor filled his exhausted mind as its contents burned its way down into his craw.
As he placed one of the cigars from the box between his teeth he heard the sound of unshod hoofs behind his broad back. Iron Eyes turned and stared through the drifting cloud of gunsmoke as the young Indian girl rode through its ghostly mist toward him leading his pony beside her own.
Fire Bird dismounted and ran up to him. Her arms wrapped around his middle and squeezed his lean frame tightly.
‘You are safe, Ayan-Ees,’ she sobbed thankfully. ‘I heard the fight and thought you must be dead.’
Iron Eyes pulled out a match and ignited it with his thumbnail and touched the end of the cigar with its flickering flame. He inhaled the smoke deeply and then exhaled above her head. As she looked up at him, he nodded.
‘I do not die that easy, Fire Bird,’ he said stroking her braided hair. ‘They tried to kill me and ended up killing each other.’
Fire Bird watched as he pulled away from her and raised the bottle to his lips again. As the burning whiskey made its way down his throat, he returned the cigar to his mouth and inhaled deeply.
‘Soon the rest of my tribe’s warriors will come to this part of the forest,’ Fire Bird said as she stared at the crimson-stained ground. ‘They will be looking for my body and yours and when they do not find them, they will hunt us down.’
Iron Eyes nodded.
‘You are right, we must leave this place,’ he said through a cloud of cigar smoke. ‘I cannot leave you here to suffer the wrath of your people alone. I must take you with me.’
She moved closer to her tall companion. ‘Will we be safe out there in the land of the white men, Ayan-Ees?’
‘Maybe,’ Iron Eyes shrugged and somehow managed to mount the pony as Fire Bird threw herself on to the back of her own horse. She stared at her strange companion as he chewed thoughtfully on his cigar.
‘We go now?’ she asked.
‘We go now,’ Iron Eyes agreed.
The two ponies headed out of the forested terrain and slowly moved through the moonlight away from Silver Creek.
FINALE
The unmistakable sound of the stagecoach drew the attention of the heavily-scarred Iron Eyes. He turned on his ornate saddle and sucked the last of his cigar’s smoke before tossing it aside. He turned the high-shouldered palomino stallion and watched as Squirrel Sally drove her six-horse team across the rolling range toward him.
The morning sun made the fiery female’s mane of long hair look as though it were spun from precious gold.
Smoke filtered through his teeth as the stagecoach drew to a halt before the powerful stallion. Sally rested her bare foot on the brake pole and stared down at the man who she refused to ever let get too far away from her.
‘What in tarnation are you doing, you ugly galoot?’ she asked before poking her pipe between her teeth and scratching a match across the driving board. She puffed a few times and then looked down upon the thoughtful horseman.
‘I was just thinking,’ Iron Eyes replied as he turned the horse full circle to study the terrain.
‘What was you thinking about, my beloved?’ Sally asked before tossing the spent match over her shoulder on to the stagecoach roof.
He sighed. ‘I was just recalling a few things, Squirrel.’
‘And what was you recalling?’ she grinned.
‘I was recalling a time long ago when I met a real pretty little Injun gal, Squirrel,’ he replied before turning his palomino away from the stagecoach and tapping his spurs.
Sally’s eyebrows rose up into her fringe.
‘And who exactly was this real pretty Injun gal, Iron Eyes?’ she snorted angrily at him as he slowly rode away from the feisty female. ‘Well? Who is she? Where is she?’
Iron Eyes looked over his wide shoulder.
‘That’s another story, Squirrel,’ he answered.
