by Rory Black
He was clad in a well-fitting outfit. A short jacket with silver thread detailing and a white frilly shirt drew her attention. A shining pistol holstered across his middle gleamed in the evening light.
‘I care for living, señorita,’ the figure informed her. ‘I do not understand why you are so hostile to me.’
‘Who is you exactly?’ she snorted.
He walked along the line of horses. She kept the rifle on his every step.
‘My name is Pablo,’ he answered and stopped below her high seat. There was no hint of his being worried by the deadly rifle that was still perfectly aimed at him. ‘And who are you, my beautiful one?’
Most men did not tend to act the way Pablo did when Sally aimed her Winchester at them. Normally they started to stammer and raise their hands above their heads. She could not understand why this particular man was just grinning.
‘Don’t go making no sudden moves, Pablo,’ Squirrel Sally said in her deepest voice. ‘I’d hate to blow that pretty head off your shoulders.’
He shrugged and looked along the rifle barrel into her eyes and sighed.
‘I have told you my name. Is your name a secret, pretty lady?’ Pablo asked again from behind a disarming smile. ‘What are you called?’
Totally surprised by his refusal to acknowledge the deadly rifle trained on his every movement, Sally leaned back and stared straight at him. Her temper was starting to boil as he continued to smile at her.
‘My name’s Sally.’ She snorted furiously. ‘Folks call me Squirrel Sally. Happy now?’
His brows lifted. ‘That is a very unusual name.’
Sally lifted the rifle until its stock rested against her shoulder. ‘You gonna make fun of my handle? Are you, huh?’
He shook his head. ‘When a pretty girl has a pretty rifle aimed at me, I would never dare to make fun. Besides, I like your name. It is most attractive.’
‘It is?’ Sally looked bemused.
‘Very seductive.’ Pablo sighed.
‘Good.’ She gave a firm nod of her head. Her long golden hair whipped forward, sending a cloud of trail dust flying over the edge of the driver’s seat. ‘That means you’ll live a while longer. If there’s one thing I can’t stand it’s being made fun of by men who are handsomer than me.’
Pablo rested his hands on the edge of the high driver’s seat and bolstered himself up by using the small wheel below Sally’s high perch.
‘I am not handsomer than you, Squirrel,’ he cooed like a lovesick turtle dove. ‘You are a goddess in this mockery of a town. A beautiful angel sent from heaven to melt the souls of weaklings like myself.’
Sally could not help but lower the rifle as she felt the unusual redness of her cheeks wallow in his flattering words as they washed over her.
‘You sure talk pretty, Pablo.’ She sighed.
He stretched his every fibre until his lips were only inches from hers. His eyes burned into her eyes as his fingertips touched her moonlit mane of curls.
‘I have never before seen a beautiful female like you, Squirrel,’ Pablo said softly as he watched her close her eyes.
Then before she could do anything, he grabbed her rifle and tore it from her hands. He tossed the Winchester over his shoulder, grabbed her hair and hauled her brutally from the driver’s seat.
She flew over his shoulder.
Squirrel Sally somersaulted in mid air and fell helplessly toward the sand. Luckily for the youngster, the churned up sand was soft as she landed heavily upon it. A cloud of dust erupted from all around her shapely form as she collided with the ground and landed on her back. Every ounce of wind was forced from the stunned female.
Normally Sally would have cussed the hind leg off a blue nosed donkey but it was all she could do just to lie on the sand and count the stars which filled her eyes.
Sally coughed and felt a draft rising up between her thighs. Her dazed mind told her that her britches had split again but it was pointless getting too worked up about it. She had bigger problems to fret about. She raised her head off the sand and watched as the handsome Mexican stepped back down off the stagecoach wheel and approach her with his pistol drawn and aimed at her.
Sally turned her head in search of her trusty Winchester. She had no sooner spotted the deadly carbine when she suddenly noticed two much larger men appear from the shadows to either side of the still smiling Pablo. One of the men picked her rifle up as the other remained just behind Pablo’s left shoulder.
Snorting like a tormented bull, she got up on to her elbows and glared at them.
‘Hell, Pablo,’ Sally groaned indignantly. ‘What in tarnation did you wanna go doing that for? I might have bust something.’
He tilted his head and looked down at her torn clothing and smiled at her.
‘It appears that you have bust something, Squirrel.’ Pablo pointed the barrel of his nickel-plated pistol at her ripped pants and shirt.
Sally glanced down her prostrate form and realized that her britches were in far worse shape than she had first imagined. Her knees closed together as she blew her wavy locks off her face.
‘I don’t know where I am but I sure don’t cotton to the way you treat folks around here,’ she snarled. ‘Don’t you know who I am, fella? I’m betrothed to Iron Eyes. Him and me are bounty hunters and we kill critters like you just for the fun of it.’
Pablo nodded. ‘I have heard of Iron Eyes and I have also heard of his woman. It is said that he is never too far from you, señorita.’
Sally smiled up at Pablo.
‘Damn right,’ she confirmed. ‘That ugly bastard gets mighty ornery if some fancy dude like you even looks at me for too long. If I was you I’d skedaddle while you still can. He’ll be mighty riled when he learns what you done to me.’
‘This is good.’ Pablo grinned. ‘We want Iron Eyes to learn of this. We want him to be angry. Angrier than he has ever been before.’
Squirrel Sally looked totally baffled. ‘You must be darn tired of living, Pablo. Iron Eyes ain’t known for his sense of humour.’
Pablo Fernandez stepped forward until he hovered over her in the spilled light of the cantina. He was no longer smiling as he glared down at her. He snapped his fingers at his vaqueros.
‘Pick the pretty Squirrel up, Luis,’ he commanded the muscular man behind his shoulders. ‘Pick her up and secure her. We have got what we came to get. Now we shall take her back to the hacienda.’
Sally wanted to protest but every scrap of her normally limitless strength had escaped her. The large hands of Pablo’s henchmen dragged her off the dusty ground and threw her against the side of the stagecoach. Before she could fall limply back to the ground she felt a powerful hand press her against the vehicle’s door. The pressure of the hand that rested in the small of her back was so great she could feel her breasts being crushed.
‘Take it easy, you big galoot,’ Sally vainly protested. ‘My chests are getting flattened here.’
Her protests fell on deaf ears. Within seconds her wrists were pulled back behind her back and secured with rawhide laces. She winced as the bonds were tightened. Sally glanced over her slim shoulder at Pablo.
‘What the hell’s going on here, Pablo?’ she shouted as his underlings continued to manhandle her. ‘You seem to want to die and I promise you that’s what’ll happen when Iron Eyes finds out about this.’
Pablo loosened the drawstring under his chin and then pulled his sombrero off his back and placed it on his head. He tilted his head and looked into her eyes.
‘Your betrothed is a very difficult man to do business with, little Squirrel.’ He smiled. ‘The only way to do so is to lure him here. You are the bait, my pretty one.’
It suddenly dawned on Sally that she was part of some devilish plan the grinning man had conceived.
‘You want Iron Eyes to come after me, don’t you?’ she said fearfully. ‘You want my man to ride into your guns. You’re gonna try and kill Iron Eyes.’
Pablo did not answer. He snapped his fingers agai
n and both his men obeyed the command.
They lifted Sally off her bare feet as if she weighed little more than a feather. The coach door was opened and she was thrown into the interior of the vehicle. The burly men lashed the doors with an uncoiled saddle rope so that it was impossible for her to escape.
Sally rested against the padded seats and stared at the door as the tall figure of Pablo Fernandez looked in at his captured prey.
‘You can’t be serious, can you?’ Sally yelled. ‘Nobody ever gets the better of Iron Eyes. Let me go and I won’t tell him what you done to me. You’ll be six feet under if’n you don’t.’
Pablo did not answer his captive. He signalled to both his vaqueros. One climbed up on to the driver’s seat with her rifle as the other went to the side of the whitewashed cantina and led their three horses toward the stationary vehicle.
As the amber light cascaded across the moonlit sand, Pablo mounted his tall thoroughbred and watched as one of their horses was tethered to the tailgate of the stagecoach. He signalled to the man above him.
‘Take the stagecoach to my father’s hacienda, Raul.’ He gestured as he controlled his eager mount. ‘Luis and I shall follow after we have completed the second part of my father’s plan.’
‘Sí, Pablo.’ The man thrashed the heavy leathers down across the backs of the team. The six horses pulled away from the cantina and headed out into the darkness.
Pablo turned his horse and nodded to Luis.
‘Our business here is done, my friend,’ he said as the burly Luis mounted his horse. ‘Now we have to inform the famous Iron Eyes that my father wishes to speak with him.’
Luis gathered up his reins and stared at his boss.
‘But what if this Iron Eyes does not want to speak with Don Jose, Pablo?’
Pablo placed a cigar between his teeth and then struck a match. He raised the flame to the long black length of tobacco and inhaled the flavoursome smoke.
‘Do not worry. Iron Eyes will speak with my father when he learns that we have his woman, Luis,’ he said through a cloud of smoke.
Luis looked concerned. ‘But Iron Eyes is not like other men, Pablo. They say that he shoots first and asks questions afterwards. The fact that we have his woman might just make him angrier than he usually is said to be.’
Pablo considered the problem. ‘I have heard that his face is terribly scarred, Luis. Men who look more like monsters than real men tend to look after their women. He is lucky to have such a beautiful little señorita and I think he must know this. He will not give us any trouble.’
Luis crossed his chest in prayer. ‘I hope you are right, Pablo.’
Pablo Fernandez adjusted his drawstring under his chin.
‘So do I, amigo.’ He sighed.
The large vaquero nodded as he turned his mount. ‘Where will we find this deadly bounty hunter, Pablo?’
‘Iron Eyes has been followed ever since he crossed the border, amigo. My father’s spies have told me exactly where he can be found, Luis,’ Pablo explained as he tapped his spurs into the flesh of his horse and headed west. ‘He is in Costa Angelo.’
As Luis rode alongside Pablo, he adjusted his sombrero until its wide brim rested in the furrows of his brow.
‘If this Iron Eyes is so ugly how can such a pretty girl like the golden-haired one in the coach be in love with him, Pablo?’ he asked.
‘Love is blind, my big friend,’ Pablo replied. ‘Love is truly blind.’
As the two horsemen thundered across the moonlit sand in the direction of Costa Angelo, they could still hear the loud vocals coming from the stagecoach as it headed off toward the hacienda of Don Jose Fernandez.
CHAPTER FOUR
The scent of the warm Pacific waters lapping against the Mexican beach alerted the dishevelled bounty hunter that the trail he had doggedly followed for the previous five days and nights was coming to an end. Iron Eyes raised his brutalized face and stared out through the darkness at the shoreline. The light of stars and the large moon rippled toward the shore as the sturdy palomino walked across the sand toward it.
As his high-shouldered stallion headed down from the moonlit slope toward the water, it was clear to Iron Eyes that his prey had flown. Two sets of hoof tracks led right up to the water and mysteriously disappeared in the waves.
It seemed impossible to Iron Eyes but the tracks led to a place where he knew no rider would go. To ride into the ocean was suicidal and the gaunt horseman knew that Bodine and Walters were many things but they were not suicidal.
This had to be a trick, he told himself.
It appeared that both outlaws had vanished into the waves like phantoms. But Iron Eyes did not believe in phantoms. This was a trick.
A cunning ploy designed to throw him off their trail. The longer he stared at the ocean, the more he began to believe that they might have just succeeded.
A good horse could carry a rider across a swollen river without too much trouble but rivers are not tidal like oceans. Rivers have banks on both sides that are usually visible. Not even a loco bean would dare to try and cross anything as wide as this.
It seemed that he had lost his chance of getting his bony hands on the $3,000 reward money and was riled. For the first time he had failed to ensnare the wanted men he had pursued and could not understand how.
Iron Eyes drew back on his reins and stopped the powerful animal beneath his highly decorated saddle. He steadied the animal and stared at the hoof marks which led to the ocean and disappeared in the incoming tide before him.
He wanted to draw his Navy Colts and empty every bullet in their chambers into the lapping waves that continued to mock him but even the infamous bounty hunter knew he could not kill a whole ocean.
‘Damn it all,’ he growled angrily and beat his fist on the silver horn of his saddle. ‘Nobody ever gets away from Iron Eyes.’
His fiery eyes narrowed. He was fuming with rage.
‘This just can’t be.’ Iron Eyes snorted in frustration. ‘Them outlaws ain’t smart enough to get the better of me.’
His skeletal hand reached back, lifted the flap of one of his saddle bag satchels and pulled out the last of his whiskey bottles. Without looking at the bottle he raised it to his savaged lips. His sharp teeth gripped the cork and pulled it free of the bottle neck.
Whiskey fumes filled his flared nostrils.
‘How the hell did they do this?’ he wondered. ‘It just ain’t possible.’
The hard liquor burned a trail down his dry throat as he kept staring at the vast expanse of water.
It just did not make any sense.
The bright moon cast its unearthly illumination across the vast ocean as he vainly searched for a glimpse of the two horsemen who seemingly had ridden into it.
Iron Eyes threw the cork at the sand and then raised the bottle to his scarred lips again. He consumed every last drop of the fiery liquor and then angrily flung the clear glass vessel into the waves.
Waves that defiantly kept on moving toward the hoofs of his handsome horse. If the two outlaws imagined that Iron Eyes would meekly accept defeat and ride away, they were very much mistaken. This was a puzzle. One which he was determined to solve. Iron Eyes threw his long right leg over the mane of the palomino and slid to the sand.
‘You think I’m just gonna swallow this?’ he snarled through gritted teeth. ‘If you do, you’re wrong. I’ll figure this out even if it takes all night.’
The emaciated bounty hunter walked away from his mount to where the hoof tracks of the outlaws’ horses disappeared into the water. He shook his head in disbelief as he tried to work out how they had achieved this illusion.
He knelt and studied the sand even more intently as the hoof tracks dissolved in the lapping water. After a few seconds he rose back to his full height and shook his head again. His bony fingers pushed his limp hair off his face as his mule-eared boots sank into the wet sand. Then something a hundred yards away caught his keen attention.
His eyes narrowe
d.
It looked like a black mound of coal but he knew that there was no coal in these parts. He inhaled deeply and caught the scent of death in his flared nostrils.
He grabbed the long leathers of his mount and proceeded along the beach toward it. With every step, the strange dark shapes became clearer. The closer he got the more the moonlight enlightened the object of his curiosity.
Then he could see clearly what it was.
The two dead saddle horses had almost been enveloped by the incoming tide. The waves were washing over the legs and bellies of the stricken animals as he dropped his reins and stepped over the first carcass.
His eyes darted between them.
Both dead horses were saddled. Their masters had left their expensive trimmings but they had taken both of the saddle bags. The bounty hunter leaned over and found the leather rifle scabbards. The Winchesters had been removed from them. Then he spotted the bullet holes in the side of the animals’ heads.
Two clean wounds. These exhausted creatures had not been put out of their misery due to severe injury, they had been callously executed. Both horses had been shot dead and left to be washed away by the tide.
That must have been the outlaws’ plan, Iron Eyes thought. To make him believe they had ridden into the waves. But he had arrived at the beach before the ocean had time to claim the horses’ bodies.
All he was meant to find were only the hoof tracks that led into the sea, but he had travelled far faster than either Bodine or Walters had anticipated.
Iron Eyes straightened up. He was not so easily fooled as most of his profession.
He had driven the mighty stallion far harder than most men would ever dare push their mounts. Surviving on rations of cigars and whiskey and going without sleep had gained a whole day on the outlaws.
Walters and Bodine had wrongly assumed that the bodies of the horses would be long gone before their relentless hunter reached the beach.
Iron Eyes made his way back to the palomino stallion. He paused and looked back at the carcasses as the waves crashed over them. Soon they would be dragged into the vast ocean and consumed.
