by Rory Black
He had never imagined in his wildest dreams that he would see so many Apache Indians in one place at the same time. Luckily for him, they had not noticed the mounted law officer on the prairie behind them. He thanked the Lord that the soft sand had muffled the hoofs of his long-legged black mount.
It had been a long ride to this remote place. Yet the trail had been an easy one for the marshal to follow. It had been littered with the bodies of Indians and ponies. The lawman had wondered how much of those bodies would be left once the sun rose and brought the vultures off the high peaks that surrounded the prairie.
He wrapped the reins around his saddle horn and quickly dismounted. His gloved hand grabbed the bridle and led the horse behind a broad Joshua tree. Sweat trickled down from the hatband of his Stetson over his weathered features as he unwrapped the reins again and looped them around the spiky trunk of the Joshua tree. His gloved hands knotted the leather firmly before he drew both his Remingtons and knelt down.
‘I must be plumb loco!’ Quaid scolded himself. ‘I ain’t no damn Indian fighter. What the hell am I doin’ here?’
The Indians were looking up at something on the ridge but Quaid was too far away to tell what it was. He had no idea that Conchowata and his braves had been watching Diamond Back Jones returning along the steep ledge from the cave.
Tom Quaid began to speculate: could Iron Eyes have survived so many Apache braves and be cornered?
If the bounty hunter had survived, it must be some sort of miracle, the marshal thought. Quaid edged his way further around the thorn-covered bushes and squinted hard. Was Diamond Back Jones amongst those Apache braves?
He had to be! The marshal thought back to the trail he had so diligently followed to this spot. The hoof-tracks of Jones’s horse had been easy to follow until the unshod mounts of the Indians had churned up the prairie sand. Then it was impossible to tell one set of tracks from another.
Quaid shook his head in frustration.
Diamond Back Jones must be out there with those Indians, he thought.
But what if he wasn’t?
How close to those painted warriors was he willing to get to find his man? He exhaled heavily and bit his dry lower lip. Even if the cold-blooded killer was with the rest of his people, how could he pluck Diamond Back Jones out of there without committing suicide in the process?
He rose slowly to his full height.
Now what did he do?
The question filled his tired mind. He had come so far following the outlaw who had killed his daughters. Quaid knew that he couldn’t quit now.
Every fiber of what made him the man he was told him to mount up and hightail it out of here before the Apache spotted him and turned their rifles and bows on him. Yet he was haunted by the images of his children when he had discovered their bodies. Could he betray them?
Quaid knew the answer to that one. He could never quit until he had captured the outlaw who had ruined what was left of his life.
Was it vengeance that drove him on?
To Quaid it was more like retribution! He had to finish the job that he had started back in Waco. Whatever the cost, he had to see it through until the end.
He swallowed hard and studied the painted men. Quaid had never even met an Apache before let alone tried to fight a whole bunch of them. All he knew of the notorious tribe was what he had read in dime novels. How much of that was real and how much just the colorful scribblings of an army of Eastern writers?
There was no way of knowing.
All he knew for certain was that they had been trying to kill the bounty hunter and had lost scores of their own in the process. It had not seemed to trouble them, though. The Apaches appeared to be willing to sacrifice their lives in order to kill just one man.
In that way, they were very much like himself.
Quaid knew that made them a formidable enemy!
His eyes squinted into the moonlight and he hastily did a quick head count.
When he had reached sixty, he stopped counting.
He felt sick.
This was not the way he had planned it. He had left Texas on the trail of one man, Diamond Back Jones. Along the tortuous trail he had learned many things about the wanted outlaw. The fact that Jones was actually a full-blooded Apache had not troubled him until this very moment.
He took another deep breath and tried to think.
It was pointless getting himself killed before he brought the outlaw to justice. Going anywhere near those Indians would prove fatal. Quaid knew he had to try to separate Jones from the rest of the Apache.
But how?
How was that possible?
If Diamond Back Jones was out there, he was using his entire tribe as a shield. The outlaw was every bit as cunning as the lawman thought him to be.
The marshal tried to think, but the mixture of hunger and weariness made the task seem impossible.
Marshal Quaid gazed around the prairie. Apart from the sparse brush near the high wall of sand-rock, there was little to hide behind.
Could one man take on so many? Again his thoughts drifted to the strange bounty hunter. Iron Eyes seemed to have survived against all the odds. He turned to his horse and looked at the Winchester in its leather scabbard, poking out from beneath the saddle fender. It might be possible to take the Apaches on if he could keep them at long range with his carbine, he thought. His mind raced as he vainly continued to try and make out Diamond Back Jones amongst the scores of painted warriors. Silently he cursed the light of the big yellow moon over his shoulder.
It played tricks on even the sharpest of eyes. Was the deadly killer he sought really there? If he was, Tom Quaid could not see him.
The marshal breathed out through his nostrils and listened to the sound of coyotes howling out across the arid prairie. Their howl was unlike that of other wild dogs. It had a way of chilling the souls of even the most determined of men.
Quaid straightened up and laid a gloved hand on the trunk of the Joshua tree. He wondered if he might have made a mistake out there on the trail as he followed the unshod hoof-tracks of the Indian ponies.
Maybe Jones had left the main group of riders long before reaching this place, he thought. Had his tired eyes actually missed the shod hoof-tracks of the outlaw’s mount when it had ridden away across the sand?
Quaid had always prided himself on his tracking skills, but he knew that he was trail weary. He might have missed the telltale signs back there in the eerie light of the moon. Nothing seemed truly real any longer.
The marshal stared at the Apaches again.
Could he take on such a deadly force and then discover that the outlaw he sought had not even been with these lean near-naked figures in the first place?
Suddenly something caught his eye.
A glint of moonlight flashed out on the prairie as it danced off the long war lances of a group of silent riders. He turned his head and saw them.
His heart sank.
More Apache riders heading from the west towards the Indians gathered at the foot of the ridge.
Quaid holstered both his guns and moved slowly backward towards his horse. He turned and placed one hand on the black gelding’s nose and pushed the animal as far into the tangled brush as it would go.
For some reason, sixteen more Apache riders were joining the main group.
Why?
What was going on?
Again Marshal Tom Quaid found himself consumed by questions that had no answers. He held the nose of his mount firmly and whispered softly into the skittish animal’s ear. He knew that if the innocent horse made just one sound, it would echo around the entire prairie and bring every one of those Apaches down on him faster than he could mount the gelding.
‘Easy, boy!’ he whispered over and over.
The lawman knew that he had ridden into something that he might live to regret. For the first time since he had headed out from Texas he began to wish that he had listened to his friends and allowed others to trail the outlaw.
He still wanted Diamond Back Jones more than life itself, but vengeance was a bitter pill to swallow when faced with such daunting odds.
For the first time in his long distinguished career the veteran lawman doubted his own judgment.
He rubbed the nose of the tall black gelding and sighed heavily into its ear.
‘We’re in big trouble, boy! And I’m damned if I know how to get us out of it!’ he admitted.
Chapter Fifteen
Iron Eyes was still in trouble. Big trouble. More dead than alive he still had enough spirit left to know that for the first time in all his days, he was staring into the jaws of death. The fever which had relentlessly consumed him for hours still raged inside his emaciated body. And yet he still could not work out why he was trapped in this devilish nightmare. Wisps of rational thought battled with the rattler’s poison for control of what was left of his mind. He had always known that even the hunter must eventually face the Grim Reaper, but that did not answer the feverish question which tortured him.
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 unco
ntrollable 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!
