The Fury of Iron Eyes (An Iron Eyes Western #4)

by Rory Black

  Bob Creedy was first to spot the glinting rifle barrel as the light of the large moon overhead bounced off it. Without a second’s hesitation he raised both his guns and fired across the clearing at the waiting figures.

  Treat Creedy squeezed his trigger with an almost reluctant pain etched on his face. He had never been the best of shots and he knew it. Even aiming with the greatest of care, his bullets could go anywhere.

  It was the young Frankie Creedy who allowed his weapons to do their worst, as always. It was said that he could shoot the wings off a bumblebee at fifty paces. As he emptied his guns in the direction Bob was firing, he cursed continually. Of all the outlaw brothers, Frankie loved killing men.

  The Creedys paused for a moment to allow the gunsmoke to drift off the high mountain clearing. They speedily reloaded their weapons and waited until they could see their targets once more.

  Suddenly a screaming figure broke through the heavy brush opposite them and charged across the clearing. They could see the long, black hair flapping on their attacker’s shoulders as the figure began cocking and firing his repeating rifle.

  ‘Iron Eyes!’ Treat Creedy exclaimed as he stared wide-eyed at the man who was racing straight at them.

  Bullets bounced off the tree trunks around the kneeling brothers as they were startled into firing again. Frankie managed to hit the yelling man in the leg as he leapt on to them.

  As Bob Creedy forced the figure off Frankie with every ounce of his strength, he saw another man charging them. He too had a mane of long, black hair.

  The smoke from the man’s rifle seemed to create a fog within the clearing. A fog none of their eyes could penetrate.

  Smashing the barrel of his pistol across the head of the man who was wrestling with his brothers, Bob felt the heat of hot lead as it tore through his sleeve.

  Raising his guns in the rough direction he had last seen the second man, he fired. Before Bob could cock his hammers and squeeze his triggers again, the dark-haired man hit him square on.

  Bob Creedy felt as if all the air had been kicked out of his body. Falling backward with the sturdy figure on top of him, he hit the ground.

  Even in the smoke-filled clearing he could see the face above him. This was not Iron Eyes, he thought. Grabbing hold of the rifle barrel he fought the man for his very life on the cold soil. This was an Indian.

  Seeing a knife appear in the brave’s other hand, Bob Creedy grabbed at it whilst his brothers tried desperately to pull the strong Cheyenne off him.

  The blade drew closer to Bob’s face as the single-minded warrior bore down on him. A bullet then exploded above them both and the Indian’s head shattered apart.

  Blood and gore splattered over Bob Creedy as the dead Cheyenne fell limply on to his prostrate form. Struggling free of the heavy weighty Bob looked into the face of Frankie who was smiling as he blew down the barrel of his pistol.

  ‘I got the bastard, Bob.’ Frankie began to laugh in a way which chilled even his brothers’ blood.

  Wiping the remnants of the Indian brave’s brains off his face, Bob Creedy began to rise to his feet. He was only halfway up when his eyes widened at the sight behind both his brothers.

  This Cheyenne brave was neither screaming nor firing a rifle as he approached. This Indian was carrying a long war lance as he ran at them.

  ‘Frankie! Treat! Behind you!’ Bob Creedy yelled as the running man got closer.

  Before the two brothers could turn, the warrior reached them. His lance went straight into the middle of Treat’s back and tore its way out of the front of his shirt. Frankie began to raise his guns, but felt his jaw cracking as the Cheyenne brave smashed the back of his left hand into it.

  Bob Creedy picked up his pistols off the ground and pulled back both gun hammers faster than he had ever done before. He pulled the triggers without even aiming, but his bullets found their target and he watched the warrior spinning on his heels before collapsing into the dense brush.

  ‘Treat,’ Bob said as he grabbed the shoulders of his stunned brother, who was somehow still on his feet with the long, lethal lance skewered through him.

  Treat Creedy licked his lips silently before looking at the face of his older brother.

  ‘This don’t feel good, Bob,’ Treat said as blood trickled from his mouth and dripped onto his bandanna.

  ‘It don’t look too handsome either, Treat,’ Bob said as his eyes frantically tried to work out if the war lance might have missed all the vital organs. The blood-covered metal point of the lance had gone through Treat’s shoulder blade and protruded a few inches below his right collarbone. It had missed the heart, but Bob knew that it must have gone through the middle of Treat’s right lung.

  ‘Which one’s Iron Eyes, Bob?’ Treat asked as blood flowed from his mouth, and he stumbled into the arms of his brothers.

  ‘None of them,’ Bob replied. ‘They’re just redskins. Iron Eyes ain’t nowhere to be seen.’

  ‘Injuns?’ Treat shook his head sorrowfully. He had hoped one of the bodies lying at their feet would have been the bounty hunter who had killed Dan back in the stinking town of Bonny. That would have at least been something to take to his grave. The satisfaction that they had managed to reap vengeance.

  ‘Yep. Just some of them Cheyenne critters the old sheriff told us about,’ Bob added.

  Treat smiled. It was a gruesome sight to see a mouthful of teeth stained with so much blood and lung tissue.

  ‘I got myself killed by a stinking Cheyenne. That ain’t even funny, Bob.’

  ‘You ain’t dead yet, Treat,’ Bob insisted. ‘All we gotta do is pull out that lance.’

  ‘It’ll leave a mighty big hole, Bob.’ Treat spat out a huge blood clot as he arched in pain.

  ‘I’ll plug up the hole, Treat. However big it is,’ the eldest Creedy vowed. ‘You ain’t gonna die up here on this damn mountain.’

  ‘How do you feel? Does it hurt?’ Frankie asked as he supported Treat whilst Bob checked the wound carefully.

  ‘I’m kinda short of breath, boys.’ Blood dripped from Treat Creedy’s mouth with every word. ‘I feel like I’m drowning.’

  Bob Creedy would do anything to try and save his brother’s life, yet he knew that Treat was drowning.

  Drowning in his own blood.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Iron Eyes and Silent Wolf reached the clearing roughly twenty minutes after having heard the last weapon being fired in the short but deadly gunfight. Using every shadow within the dense forest of tall pine trees, they edged their way around the clearing until they were convinced that there was no living soul inside its moonlit parameter.

  Cautiously they moved into the moonlight and tried to work out what had occurred here, and why. Steam was still rising from the bodies in the brush near where the Creedys had fought the Cheyenne.

  After hearing the raging gun-battle only minutes earlier, both Iron Eyes and Silent Wolf were surprised by the silence which now filled this place. They had expected to find the white men who had shot at them, but there were none to be seen.

  Iron Eyes sniffed at the cold, night air as he ventured forward towards the centre of the clearing. The air was still tainted with the acrid smell of gunpowder and death. It was an aroma he had long been used to.

  The bounty hunter stared at the rising steam which emanated from the three corpses and pointed them out to his companion. The bodies of the three Cheyenne braves told the two hunters everything. The men who had tried to kill Iron Eyes had somehow found themselves in a fight with these Indians.

  ‘White men,’ Silent Wolf said staring at the ground and the high-heeled-boot prints beside the tracks of three horses.

  ‘Shod horses?’ Iron Eyes questioned.

  ‘And much blood,’ the young Cheyenne added.

  ‘Much blood, huh?’ Iron Eyes felt himself smile as he repeated his companion’s words. ‘At least your brother Cheyenne managed to wound one of the varmints.’

  Silent Wolf nodded and then poin
ted towards a narrow gap in the trees.

  ‘They go down that trail. Three men.’

  The tall bounty hunter narrowed his eyes as he glared in the direction his companion was pointing. Whoever they were, they were heading deeper into the reservation, he thought. Were they insane? Maybe they were just ignorant of the fact that down there, in the belly of the reservation, there were thousands of Cheyenne. Maybe they were just plain dumb.

  ‘It don’t figure,’ Iron Eyes sighed.

  ‘Iron Eyes. Look,’ Silent Wolf said picking up the blood-covered war lance, which had been broken into two pieces. ‘This why white man hurt.’

  Iron Eyes turned and stared at the lance in the hands of Silent Wolf before stepping closer. ‘So one of them varmints got himself stuck like a pig, little hunter?’

  ‘Much blood,’ Silent Wolf said again as he tossed the war lance away and rubbed his blood-smeared hands down his buckskin shirt front. ‘Men take hurt one with them.’

  ‘Good. The bastard will leave us a nice easy trail to follow if he keeps bleeding.’ Iron Eyes strolled to where the three dead Indians were lying. His eyes narrowed as he stared down at the trio of bodies.

  They had been killed all right, but not cleanly the way he would have done it. There was a panic in the way these men had been killed.

  ‘Are these men hunters like you, Silent Wolf?’

  ‘No. They scouts. They make fire for signals to warn of danger,’ Silent Wolf replied.

  Iron Eyes rammed his pistol into his belt and walked towards the edge of the trail taken by the Creedys’. It was black and untouched by the moon. Silent Wolf moved to the side of the tall, gaunt figure.

  ‘They foolish. They go wrong way. That way mean death to white men.’

  Iron Eyes’ head turned slowly as he absorbed the words. ‘Would your people kill me if I go down there?’

  ‘Not if you with Silent Wolf,’ the young warrior said coldly.

  ‘What if we gets separated?’ Iron Eyes pulled a cigar out of his pocket and placed it between his teeth.

  ‘Then Cheyenne might try and kill you, my friend,’ Silent Wolf said.

  ‘That sounds like bad medicine.’

  ‘Heap bad medicine.’

  Iron Eyes struck a match with his thumb nail and dragged its flame into the black cigar. Smoke drifted from his teeth whilst he began nodding.

  ‘Reckon I better stick close to you, if I want to stay alive long enough to see morning, Silent Wolf.’

  ‘Silent Wolf will never leave Iron Eyes. Me owe you my life.’

  ‘Go and get our horses, little hunter. We got us some prey to catch,’ Iron Eyes whispered.

  Chapter Twenty

  These were young Cheyenne warriors who had tasted the blood of their mortal enemies for the first time. They had triumphed and destroyed the troopers and the gold miners who had not been able to follow Major Thomas Roberts through the wall of fire and back on to the relative safety of distant prairie.

  The glory of war had returned to the hearts of the braves who had managed to trap the invaders in the narrow valley. To the majority of them, it was a new experience.

  Having dispatched the last of the soldiers and the miners the same way that their fathers had done to other enemies a generation before, the younger braves seemed almost drunk with the brutal power of it all. Victory tasted good, but not as good as the barrels of hard liquor they had discovered in the captured wagons before setting the vehicles alight.

  Now more than a hundred of the Cheyenne warriors were drinking and dancing around the blazing wagons and the mutilated bodies of their victims. Primed by the rotgut whiskey, they soon found themselves fuelled by something far more dangerous than any of them had experienced before. To them, battles were something they had only heard spoken about around the campfires by their elders. Now the taste of blood filled their souls and poisoned their judgment.

  They wanted more.

  Iron Eyes allowed his younger companion to lead the way down into the darkness of the steep trail. Both knew this had been where the white riders had fled after the fight back in the mountain clearing, because they had left tracks that even a blind man could follow. Branches were broken where the shoulders of the three mounted outlaws had ridden on their frantic journey down into the unknown. To the pair of experienced hunters, it was the easiest tracking either of them had ever encountered. Only the lack of light slowed Silent Wolf, yet even in the blackness of a place that the moonlight could not penetrate, the pair of expert hunters saw every sign left by the Creedy brothers.

  It was almost as if they wanted to be caught, Iron Eyes thought, as he teased the reins of his tall horse. This was too easy. Far too easy.

  The grey pony walked slowly down the dark trail, as its master sat gripping on to its mane. Silent Wolf s keen senses missed nothing as he steered the animal along the trail. Iron Eyes allowed his more nervous mount to follow.

  This was not his land. It belonged to Silent Wolf and his tribe. He had never hunted men through terrain such as this, and knew every tree posed the threat of an ambush. With one hand on his reins and the other on the grip of one of his Navy Colts, the bounty hunter’s eyes darted from one side of the trail to the other.

  Iron Eyes knew he should have somehow managed to persuade Silent Wolf to hunt these ruthless killers alone, yet to do so would have put him at the mercy of the entire Cheyenne nation.

  Silent Wolf was his lifeline. However much it stuck in Iron Eye’s craw, he knew he needed the handsome brave, if only to stay alive long enough to get out of this hauntingly beautiful reservation.

  Iron Eyes touched his scalp for the first time in hours. It hurt, but had stopped bleeding again. His head no longer ached and the only drumming he could now hear was coming from down in the heart of the forest.

  They had been riding for no more than ten minutes when the young hunter dragged his crude reins and pony’s mane back. The grey gelding stopped.

  Silently, Iron Eyes moved his horse to the side of the pony and then halted. ‘What is it?’

  ‘There!’ Silent Wolf pointed through the thicket of trees to a point forty or so feet below them. A place where the moonlight had found a gap in the dense tree-canopies above them.

  Iron Eyes stood in his stirrups and squinted. Gradually his eyes managed to focus on the exact point his companion was pointing at. ‘That’s them, little hunter.’

  Silent Wolf pulled his ancient rifle up from where it hung in the bag across the grey pony’s shoulders. ‘We shoot them now?’

  Iron Eyes shook his head and pushed the barrel of the rifle down. ‘Nope. Not from here. We ain’t got a clean shot from this distance, little hunter.’

  ‘Too many trees?’ Silent Wolf asked as he thought about his actions more clearly.

  ‘Yep.’ Iron Eyes dismounted and tethered his reins to a stout branch. ‘I got to get closer.’

  Silent Wolf swiftly leapt from the back of his pony and landed beside the gruesome-featured man.

  ‘We go.’

  Iron Eyes gripped the shoulders of the smaller figure. ‘Nope. I go down there alone. This ain’t your fight, it’s mine. You stay here where it’s safe, little hunter.’

  Silent Wolf was about to argue when he felt the strength of Iron Eyes’ hands squeezing his shoulders. Suddenly he knew the tall, rawboned figure meant it.

  Reluctantly, the Cheyenne youth bowed his head in obedient frustration. ‘I come if there is trouble, Iron Eyes.’

  Iron Eyes smiled. ‘Okay. If I get myself in a fix, you come and help me.’

  After patting Silent Wolf on his shoulder, Iron Eyes studied the winding trail before them. Then he stared through the trees down the steep incline filled with straight tree-trunks.

  He knew to take the safer route on foot would cost him far too much time. Time he could not afford. The direct path was dangerous but also one that would give him the element of surprise. Glancing at the face of Silent Wolf he nodded, and then slipped into the undergrowth and began heading
down towards where he could just make out the three figures.

  He knew he could have stuck to the less hazardous trail used by the riders, but instinctively felt that it would have taken too long. He had to cut down through the steep, wooded slope if he were to take these men.

  The slope was slippery underfoot and the long legs of the bounty hunter seemed ill-suited to the difficult terrain. Yet he persevered on down to where the moon illuminated his prey.

  Using the straight, slim trees to stop himself from falling off the mountainside, Iron Eyes knew whoever the three men were, they would not expect anyone to drop in on their makeshift camp from this deadly direction.

  Halfway down, Iron Eyes had to muster every ounce of his waning strength just to remain upright. Leaning against the trunk of one of the many trees he had encountered on his descent, Iron Eyes peered down on the men.

  Screwing up his eyes, the infamous figure suddenly began to notice that this greasy, sloping incline was not as he had first suspected when he had started down through the trees. Now he could make out a ledge between where he had stopped to catch his breath, and the three figures. Iron Eyes began to wonder how high the ledge was from the flat ground below it. Ten feet? Maybe twenty?

  However big the drop was, Iron Eyes knew he had to take even more care on the final part of his descent. The last thing he wanted to do was to fall and break his neck after surviving the slippery slope.

  Iron Eyes saw the men more clearly when he moved down to the next tree and rested against its trunk. Two of them were tending the injuries of the third. For a moment Iron Eyes wondered why they were bothering. Even at this distance and elevation, the bounty hunter could see that the figure was more dead than alive.

  Having never had any kin himself, Iron Eyes knew nothing of the bond between siblings. The Creedys might have been ruthless killers and thieves, but they were also brothers. Brothers refused to write one another off until the very last breath had left their bodies. To Iron Eyes it seemed totally pointless.

  The ground beneath his feet was covered in moss, and seemed to defy anyone or anything standing on it. Licking his dry lips, Iron Eyes knew that unless he was extremely cautious, he would more than likely lose his footing and fall.