Blood of Iron Eyes

by Rory Black

  Then it happened.

  One of the drinkers suddenly got loud. That was always a bad sign in any drinking- or gambling-hole. For some folks get deaf when they have consumed too much liquor. They also get a false sense of their own worth.

  ‘Ya ain’t lookin’ so big now, Fontaine!’ the drunken man screamed out across the saloon. ‘That scarecrow whooped ya ass real good! Ya lost a lotta men this afternoon, boy! Reckon ya gonna lose a lot more!’

  The hired guns all turned and stared at the man who had risen to his feet and was swaying like a blade of long grass out on the range. He had a gunbelt strapped around his middle and his right hand rested on the grip of a gun he had long since lost the ability to use.

  ‘What’ll we do, boss?’ one of the standing men called Big Harry asked.

  Fontaine stared at the whiskey bottle which had less than three fingers of liquor remaining inside its clear moulded glass shape. Riley was to his left and Keno to his right.

  ‘Shut his mouth up!’ Fontaine replied without bothering to look at Big Harry.

  The large gunman led the rest of the gunmen towards the shouting man.

  ‘Stay back, ya bastards!’ the drunken man shouted. ‘I’ll kill ya all if ya don’t!’

  ‘Easy, old-timer!’ Big Harry said as he and his fellow gun hands continued to close in on the irate man. ‘Ya liquored up and ain’t in no fit state to kill no one!’

  ‘Shut the hell up, Hyram!’ one of the other seated men nervously said to the swaying man. ‘Sit down before ya gets yaself killed! These boys get paid to kill the likes of us, and ya ain’t no gunslinger! Sit down!’

  ‘I ain’t feared of no trail trash like this bunch, Joe!’ the man slurred. ‘I killed me a lotta critters like them in the old days! That scarecrow showed us how to kill these lily-livered bastards this afternoon! It ain’t hard! Ya just draws and shoots!’

  Then he decided to demonstrate. It was to be his last mistake in a life of many similar errors.

  The drunken man hauled his gun from its holster and clawed with his thumb at the hammer. It had been a long time since he had attempted to do anything so foolhardy. The gun had not seen a drop of gun-oil in a decade. Its hammer was rigid with rust, as was its trigger.

  That meant nothing to Fontaine’s henchmen.

  Big Harry drew and blasted a hole through the man named Hyram’s midriff. Guts and blood splattered all over the wall behind the drunken man. Then the rest of the gunmen copied the deadly action. The acrid aroma of gunsmoke choked the seated onlookers. The deafening roar of gunfire shook the saloon’s interior.

  Before the body hit the floor another dozen bullets had torn him to shreds. The remaining men sat drinking around the corpse and stared in disbelief at the ferocity of the attack. They kept their hands on the tables before them so that the gunslingers would not turn their venom on them as well.

  ‘What’ll we do with this, boss?’ Big Harry asked through the clouds of gunsmoke that swirled around the saloon as he pointed at the body.

  ‘Throw it out front with the rest of the garbage, Harry,’ Fontaine muttered. ‘The undertaker will take care of it!’

  Big Harry touched the brim of his hat and waved at the closest four of the gunmen. The quartet of gunmen grabbed the blood-soaked body by its arms and feet and carried it across the floor towards the swing-doors. A trail of blood marked their route over the sawdust.

  They unceremoniously tossed what was left of the drunk’s body out on to the sand between the hitching-rails. The horses shied away from the smell and sight of death. Only their leather reins secured to the rails prevented them from galloping away in terror.

  The henchmen walked back into the Spinning Wheel and resumed their places around their paymaster.

  Fontaine looked to either side of him at Keno and Riley and cleared his throat. They continued to talk and drink. ‘Remind me, what do I pay you boys for?’

  ‘Killin’ folks!’ Riley answered.

  ‘Then why didn’t ya get up and kill that drunk?’ Fontaine hissed like a snake.

  ‘What drunk?’ Riley joked.

  Keno leaned forward and rested both elbows on the table. He glanced at Fontaine hard.

  ‘What’s wrong, boss? We lost men before and ya didn’t get yaself all worked up then! What’s different?’

  ‘Where could Iron Eyes have gone?’ Fontaine asked for the hundredth time. ‘Men can’t just disappear like that into thin air! Where did Iron Eyes go?’

  Riley held the thimble glass in his left hand and gazed at the amber liquid in it. He downed the whiskey and then placed the glass back down on to the table.

  ‘We’ll get the varmint!’ he slurred. ‘Ain’t no way that he’ll manage to get out of this town without one of the boys noticing, boss. I sent Clem to call in every one of our boys from around the range. They’ll be here before midnight!’

  Keno poured himself and Riley another drink from the bottle.

  ‘Frank’s right, boss. Iron Eyes must be wounded ’coz ya found his blood out there on the boardwalk. I figure he’s curled up underneath one of them boardwalks waiting to die!’

  Fontaine sighed.

  ‘That’s the liquor talking, Keno! Iron Eyes might be wounded but his sort don’t just curl up and wait to die! His sort tries to take as many folks as he can with him to hell! Nope, I reckon that bounty hunter is hiding to get the drop on the rest of us!’

  Riley glanced at his boss.

  ‘I’ve got the rest of the boys huntin’ that bastard! If he’s anywhere in Hope they’ll find him, boss! Stop frettin’!’

  ‘I ain’t frettin’, Riley!’ Fontaine snarled. ‘I’m just not used to havin’ someone loose in town that’s as good as he is with his guns! He’s already slaughtered almost a third of my men! He could strike at any time at any place! I don’t cotton to folks that hit what they’re aimin’ at, Riley! He might aim his guns at me!’

  ‘Maybe ya should have paid him the bounty money,’ Keno suggested. ‘He sure got worked up when he realized that ya wasn’t gonna let him get his hands on that reward money!’

  ‘Iron Eyes must be loco!’ Riley growled. ‘No sane hombre would have gone up against so many guns! Yep! Iron Eyes must be plumb loco!’

  Walt Jason, another of Fontaine’s hired guns, walked through the swing-doors of the saloon and ambled across the sawdust towards Fontaine’s table. The young gunslinger pulled out a telegraph message from his vest-pocket and handed it to his boss.

  ‘The telegraph operator gave me this for ya, boss!’ Jason said, gazing around at the blood which covered the floor and wall.

  Fontaine unfolded the paper and read the brief message. His eyes widened as he absorbed the words.

  ‘Damn it all! If I ain’t got enough troubles! Now this!’

  ‘What’s wrong, boss?’ Keno asked.

  ‘Looks like we got us company headed this way!’ Fontaine said in a heavy voice. ‘A certain Herbert Carmichael has been sent here from Washington to try and steal our territory out from under us. He wants to turn old Arizona into another state! If that happens I’ll be ruined!’

  The faces of the two gunmen seated on either side of Fontaine suddenly went pale. Every hired gun who roamed the territories knew what would happen once statehood took over.

  ‘We can’t allow that critter to pull the rug out from under us, boss!’ Keno said urgently.

  ‘We have to stop him!’ Riley added.

  ‘I know!’ Fontaine agreed. ‘The trouble is that Carmichael has himself a military escort. Anything we do will be reported back East. It might ricochet in our faces if we just kill them. The government might decide to send in a hundred times as many troopers with another Carmichael! There has to be another way!’

  ‘What can we do?’ Keno asked. ‘I reckon we just ought to kill them all and see what happens!’

  ‘Keno’s right, boss!’ Riley nodded.

  ‘We have to kill him and his escort in a way that will make them Eastern dudes think that this is one territo
ry that’s just too wild to be tamed just yet!’ Fontaine replied. ‘But how are we going to do that?’

  ‘What if we ambush him and make it look like it’s Injuns on the warpath?’ Riley suggested. ‘If we got all the boys together and dressed up like redskins, we could attack them! Them Easterners don’t cotton to Injuns!’

  ‘That might work!’ Fontaine nodded in agreement. ‘They might swallow that one if we did it right! They ain’t to know that there ain’t an Indian within fifty miles of here! We kill just enough of them to make them turn tail and run! That way the news will get back East fast! They might just think that Arizona is still too wild to become a state!’

  ‘It might work!’ Keno shrugged.

  ‘What about Iron Eyes?’ Riley asked Fontaine. ‘We ain’t caught him yet, boss!’

  ‘Iron Eyes can wait!’ Fontaine stood and threw the telegraph message at the floor. ‘First we have to bushwhack this Carmichael critter!’

  Fontaine led his men out of the saloon to where their horses were tied to the hitching-rails. Ted Cooper polished a beer-glass and silently watched from behind the bar counter as the deadly hired killers mounted their horses and rode in the direction of Fontaine’s house.

  He had heard every word.

  Whoever this Carmichael was, the bartender thought, he was in trouble. Real big trouble.

  The wall clock started to chime across the room. His eyes glanced at it and saw that it was seven. Slim Parker, his relief bartender entered the Spinning Wheel.

  ‘Howdy, Ted!’ Parker said as he started to unwrap his white apron. ‘Reckon ya ready to go home, huh?’

  Cooper removed his apron, then picked up his coat from under the counter. He slipped it on.

  ‘Yeah! It’s bin a real strange day, Slim!’ Cooper said.

  Parker paused and looked at the bloody sawdust and the human debris covering the wall behind the quiet drinkers.

  ‘Who got shot?’

  ‘Hyram!’ Cooper shrugged. ‘He got himself liquored up and Fontaine had his boys shut him up permanent!’

  ‘I’d better get a bucket of soapy water and wash this mess down before it starts to stink the saloon out!’ Slim Parker sighed.

  ‘See ya!’ Cooper patted the shoulder of his pal and headed for the rear door leading to the back alleys which stretched from one end of Hope to the other. He entered the shadows and glanced up at the red sky. He started walking. He knew the alleys would take him back to his small shack and the guest he had sent there hours earlier. He was also thankful that he had brushed away all evidence of the bleeding bounty hunter’s departure. If any of Fontaine’s men had spotted the trail of blood they would have followed.

  With every step Cooper wondered if Iron Eyes could possibly still be alive. The pitifully thin bounty hunter had been pumping blood the last time he had seen him. The bartender knew that unless the flow of blood had been stopped, there was no chance of Iron Eyes having survived since he had last seen him.

  Was it possible for him to have survived this long?

  No normal human being could have, yet was the monstrous Iron Eyes actually human? He appeared more like a monster than anything created in his Maker’s image!

  Cooper quickened his pace. He recalled the horrific face of the bounty hunter. Iron Eyes had looked more dead than alive even before he had been wounded.

  The high fences shielded Cooper from prying eyes, just as they had hidden the strange rider when he galloped away from the back of the saloon.

  Cooper knew it would soon be dark.

  It could not come too soon for the nervous bartender.

  TEN

  Territorial Governor John Masterson was an honourable soul of honest conviction. Unfortunately the man who had been sent from Washington DC to act as his secretary had no such virtue. Herbert Carmichael had lived his entire adult life trying to make America not only bigger, but better. It was also an ambition he had designated for himself. Few unelected men in government had grown as prosperous as Carmichael himself. He had entered the civil service as a twenty-five-year-old straight out of college and achieved a meteoric rise to success. Carmichael had learned early how to manipulate the rules which governed politics. Rules were made to be bent to one’s advantage, and he had no equal when it came to such matters. He had grown wealthy far beyond what his salary should have allowed, yet there were few in Washington DC who would have dared question the integrity of their peers. When you live in glass houses, it is never wise to throw stones. Even his enemies knew that you never pointed an accusing finger at anyone, for fear it might seek you out next.

  Carmichael had been quicker than most of his contemporaries to realize the financial possibilities of exploiting the expanding West, and how someone in his position could profit from encouraging it.

  For years he had tried to turn every available territory into a new state, whatever the cost. He was a single-minded soul who had little truck with those who had sympathy for the Indians who had once occupied the vast land beyond the Appalachians. Tribe after tribe were cast aside to satisfy his ambition. To the ignorant Easterners the Indians were nothing but savages. They deserved no favours from the superior white man.

  He knew how to exploit the fears of his fellow man, how to get them to turn a blind eye to any atrocities. It was something which came naturally to the majority of them. At least a third of the senators had at one time owned slaves.

  The heart of America was a land that Carmichael considered the perfect place to send the East coast’s surplus population.

  Turn a territory into a state and you could tax the majority who clawed out an existence there. Carmichael had many friends who would tender their bids to him for government contracts to ‘tame’ the wilderness with the knowledge that they would be successful.

  Carmichael always granted contracts to those companies that had been generous to him. For nearly thirty years he had learned how to work the system. It did not matter to him who was crushed underfoot in the process.

  There was not a single sympathetic bone in fifty-four-year-old Carmichael’s body. To him, it was just business. Dirty business, but business all the same. He was no better or worse than the rest of his kind.

  He was just a lot shrewder.

  Secretary Carmichael saw the financial possibilities that expansion could bring, not just to the government, but mainly to himself. He was no better than the territories’ criminals whom he had publicly vowed to cast out and destroy.

  At least the gamblers, conmen and killers who had been driven into one territory after another, fleeing civilization, had been brave enough to risk their lives in their pursuit of riches.

  Carmichael, however, hid behind the flag and pretended to be patriotic.

  In truth, he was just another thief.

  Once again Carmichael had managed to convince the authorities back East that he was the man for the job of helping Governor Masterson bring civilization to yet another massive chunk of American acreage. The job of convincing the people within another territory that joining the Union and embracing statehood would be good for them was something at which he had already been successful. Carmichael would omit telling any of them that once Arizona became a state, it would come under the control of faceless bureaucrats thousands of miles away.

  Freedom as they had known it would no longer exist.

  Herbert Carmichael had a lot riding on success in his latest mission. He had already accepted the advance gifts and money the tenderers had showered on him upon his agreeing that he would ensure their bids were on top of the pile when the government contracts were dished out.

  All he had to do now was get Arizona to go, unwittingly, along with his proposals.

  As always when he entered lawless territories, Carmichael was escorted by a troop of well-armed cavalry. No fewer than forty of the seasoned Seventh had flanked either side of his carriage all the way from Fort Bragg.

  He sat inside his handsome conveyance with his only child, Florence for company. The nineteen-year-
old had no idea why she had been enlisted to accompany her father on this important visit. She assumed, as most loving children do, that her father was proud of her and wanted to show her off. Florence was indeed a beautiful female.

  In truth, the heartless Carmichael wanted his daughter as nothing more than a human shield. She would be sacrificed if the need arose. He knew that even the most ruthless of outlaws would rarely fire a gun at their worst enemies if a handsome female was close at hand.

  Women were far too scarce in the Wild West. To risk shooting one by accident was unthinkable.

  The vehicle that Carmichael had commissioned to be built was not what it appeared to be. From the outside it looked as though it was of wooden construction. The carriage was in fact made of cast iron and had been covered with a thin veneer of wooden panels. It weighed three times as much as an ordinary stagecoach. Six sturdy horses were required to pull its immense weight, and even then the animals could barely cover twenty miles in a day.

  Carmichael had planned their route and ensured that on each night of their long overland journey he and his escort would take refuge in one of the many stagecoach way stations which were dotted across the vast desert and plains.

  Captain Bob Sherwood led his troop and the hefty well-armoured carriage down through a dusty draw into the flat plains toward the Overland Stage Company outpost at Apache Wells. The sun was low. Sherwood knew that the six-horse team was again exhausted from pulling the massive vehicle.

  Carmichael watched from inside the carriage with a satisfied smile upon his face. He could see the flaming torches on the high-walled way station, indicating that darkness would soon be with them again. Tomorrow they would reach the fertile range filled with a multitude of cattle. A jewel in the crown of the mainly arid territory.

  He knew the risks that he faced when he eventually reached his destination. They were formidable. There were always scores of wealthy men who wanted nothing to do with relinquishing their hold on what they believed was theirs.

  They would do anything to stop him.