by Rory Black
Then a man who had obviously drunk more than his ration of hard liquor staggered towards the outlaw. His neat clothing was stained with vomit and other even less fragrant substances. At first Joe Brewster was amused. Then he realized that of all the eyes in Desert Springs he had walked up to a pair which recognized him.
‘It’s you!’ the drunk slurred. ‘You! You dirty low-down robber!’
Brewster moved up to a wall and rested in its shadow, but the man with the pointing finger closed in on him like a well-trained cutting horse. He jabbed each word into the outlaw’s chest.
‘You stole every penny I had back in Waco two years back, you bastard!’ the man shouted.
Men lived a lot longer when honest folks failed to notice them. Brewster intended to continue living. He glanced all around him at the crowd. They had not heard the words and Brewster knew he had to prevent any further outbursts from reaching their ears.
He crossed the wide street as horsemen steered their mounts towards The Texas House but the drunk kept snapping at his heels, ranting.
‘Turn around, you bastard! I know it’s you!’
Brewster hurriedly slid behind a buckboard as a burly man piled provisions from a grocery store on the flatbed. He stepped up on to the boardwalk and pretended to look at the goods inside the window for a few seconds. The drunk caught up with him, grabbed his arm and pulled him around.
Their eyes met.
‘Git going!’ Brewster snarled.
‘I ain’t going anywhere!’ the man raved. ‘I got money in the bank here now and you ain’t gonna go helping yourself to that as well. Savvy?’
‘I savvy.’ The outlaw grabbed the man’s throat. He squeezed it, then frog marched the drunk around a corner into the blackness.
It took less than thirty seconds for Brewster silently to kill the man. His strong hands crushed the throat until there were no more words. The body went limp and fell into the sand. Brewster left it there and returned to the street. The night had not brought any lowering in the temperature and beads of sweat traced their way down from the band of his new hat and over his freshly shaven face.
Again he checked his guns. They were loaded and ready.
People continued to move up and down the wooden walkway as more and more streetlights were ignited. The aroma of coal tar filled his nostrils as he tilted his head and stared down towards the gambling-hall.
His eyes ignored the patrons who were being allowed in through its gleaming doors. His attention was on the heavily armed men who appeared to be in charge of things. Brewster rubbed his lips as his body turned toward The Texas House. He began to walk. Walk slowly.
Each step was calculated.
His honed bank robber’s instincts were now in operation. He was not foolhardy enough simply to walk to the front door of the building and ask to see Texas Jack Kelly. That was as dumb as walking up to a bank and asking if he might rob it.
Brewster paused every few steps.
His eyes darted to every movement whether it be of man or beast.
He absorbed everything and tried to work out whether his brothers had made such a good deal with Kelly as they had all first assumed it to be. Gamblers were lowlife. Their entire lives were devoted to cheating and stealing.
Texas Jack Kelly also had a reputation for using his many hired gunmen to kill as well. Brewster was now within spitting distance of the porch overhang of the large brightly decorated building. The flaming torches’ light danced across the glossy paintwork and its many glass windows.
It was a dazzling sight but it failed to impress the outlaw.
Brewster searched his pockets for a cigar as he counted the armed men who guarded the building as they allowed eager men through their ranks.
He placed another cigar between his lips. His eyes looked up the alley to the nearer side of The Texas House. He could just make out another of the hired gunslingers lurking at a side door halfway along the long wall. Joe Brewster struck a match and inhaled his cigar’s smoke as he started to walk again. He did not head to where all the other men were going. He continued on until he was able to stop again and give the other side of the building a searching look. There was no door on this long wall. No door and therefore no man standing guard.
A horseman rode close to the well-dressed outlaw and Brewster used that moment to slip unseen into the alley. He continued to smoke his cigar as he paced along the side of the building until he reached the rear yard.
Brewster rested at the corner and removed his hat before bending slightly forward to look at the rear of The Texas house. A door was placed in the middle of the back wall with a lantern above it.
Another of Kelly’s henchmen guarded it. He had counted six so far. Each one of them packing more firepower than most men would ever require.
The outlaw nodded knowingly, placed his hat back on his head and then turned around. He retraced his steps back to the main street and this time went to where all the other men were heading.
He pulled out a swollen wallet as he approached the guards who, upon seeing the wad of bills, ushered him into the gambling-house.
Joe Brewster returned his wallet to his inside pocket and looked around the impressive interior. No expense had been spared in making this the grandest building of its kind in southern Texas, Brewster thought.
It was crowded.
That suited him just fine.
Again the outlaw smiled. A dozen or more near-naked females suddenly appeared at the top of the elaborate staircase. What clothing they were wearing suited the temperature and their profession.
Brewster diverted his stare from the handsome women and then caught sight of a man who, like the building itself, appeared to be adorned with the very best and most expensive decoration. A gold tiepin with a thumbnail-sized diamond moved through the crowds like a king amid peasants.
The outlaw knew that, although Kelly knew what his brothers looked like, he had never set eyes on the man who was no moving freely through the various rooms unhindered.
Joe Brewster was again invisible.
Again he smiled.
Chapter Eight
SUNDOWN HAD NOT brought any rest to the silver-haired medical man. There was no wandering along Main Street to the grand opening of The Texas House for Wilfred Eli Hardy. Doc Hardy had labored through what had remained of the long afternoon and into the early hours of darkness on the strange, emaciated creature who, Marshal Bale had informed him, was the legendary bounty hunter Iron Eyes. Yet for all his labors it felt to the seasoned sawbones that he was working on a corpse. He had in fact seen many dead men who displayed more animation than Iron Eyes was that day. Not a muscle had twitched on the limp bounty hunter since Bale had placed his wounded body down on the doctor’s table. The only hint that Iron Eyes was actually alive was the fevered droplets of sweat which trailed from every pore in his face, scalp and body. The table was soaked in it.
It had been relatively easy to clean and patch up the hole in the bounty hunter’s leg and a few well-placed stitches had stemmed the flow of blood quickly. Not that Hardy believed that it was due to his own medical skill, but more to the fact that he could barely see how there could be any blood remaining in the painfully lean frame.
Whatever kept Iron Eyes alive it certainly was not in any medical book that he had ever read. Perhaps it was sheer stubbornness or maybe it was true that this strange monster of a man was not really alive at all. Everything Hardy had ever learned about his profession was being mocked by Iron Eyes’ refusal to die. There was no way that any living creature on God’s earth could remain alive after such an incredible loss of blood, but the bounty hunter was alive.
Perhaps God had nothing to do with this pitiful being, Hardy had considered hours earlier. Maybe it was Satan himself who had created Iron Eyes in his own image.
Hardy had vainly tried not to look at the face or body of the man who lay atop his table as he attended to the injuries. Yet the scars were like magnets to an iron rod. They drew his attention
and curiosity over and over again. How could anyone survive such injuries? Most of the old scars told the wily old man that Iron Eyes must have tended his own wounds many times. Crudely stitched scars more akin to saddle work than mending broken human flesh were everywhere. His entire body was like a patchwork bed-throw. Brutal reminders such as burned and melted flesh also showed Hardy that the red-hot blade of a knife, or a poker, had been used many times to stem the flow of blood in the past.
Hardy knew only too well that it took a man with unimaginable courage to cauterize his own wounds in that way.
Most men would die of heart failure brought about by the shock but not this creature. Iron Eyes had survived.
But of all the injuries the near-naked body displayed it was those on the face that horrified Hardy the most. When the matted mane of long black hair had been pushed off the face it revealed something more gruesome even than Hardy’s own wildest nightmares. It was the most terrifying image he had ever set eyes upon.
Despite this, Hardy had forged on. One of the bounty hunter’s eyes had an untreated scar which made it impossible for the lid to close, leaving the eye always half-open. The eye appeared to watch his every movement. There was evidence of bullet scars across the top and sides of the head which had left hairless tracks through the otherwise thick hair. Half of one ear had been shot off. The mouth was twisted where yet again more wounds had been left to mend themselves and had done so badly.
One cheekbone was obviously crushed beneath the eye which could not close, giving Iron Eyes the look of someone who, even while unconscious, was continually snarling.
Every few moments Doc Hardy had checked his patient’s pulse to persuade himself to continue working on what appeared to be a corpse. When he had completed work on the leg wound, he moved to the more difficult injury.
The arrow which had gone right through Iron Eyes’ shoulder presented a more problematic task. The old doctor had seen many similar wounds in his earlier days, when Indian attacks were more common, but none for more than a decade. He knew there was a trick to removing the deadly projectiles from a man without tearing vital arteries apart. One false move and the razor-sharp arrowhead would simply sever anything in its path as it was withdrawn, leaving the patient to bleed internally. He had seen men pull arrows from their bodies quite easily and then die of unseen hemorrhaging.
The arrow had to be carefully broken into two sections and each part then carefully extracted, from front and back. The chances of poisoning were high and that probably accounted for the fever his sweat-soaked patient had been displaying, Hardy told himself. He knew that Apaches had a knowledge of wild plants and poisons such as he himself would never acquire. The archer who had sent this arrow into Iron Eyes was probably a hunter and therefore the flint arrowhead must have been treated with something which would render whatever it hit unconscious. But Iron Eyes had been conscious when he rode into Desert Springs, Hardy thought. Bale had told him so. Again, Hardy shook his head in bewilderment.
Hardy had carefully studied the arrow when he first set to work. It was an old piece of wood. Not rotten but close. Damn close. Age had stained its length with a green mold, a fine powder of potentially deathly spores, a lot of which was inside Iron Eyes.
The medical man had known from the outset that it would take every ounce of his knowledge and deftness to save the bounty hunter’s life. After hours of careful preparation Doc Hardy knew that he had to extract the arrow and then somehow purify the hole left in its gruesome wake. A hole which went right through Iron Eyes.
There were several ways of achieving this, but which of them, he pondered, was the best? After a few moments he decided to use whiskey and a long waxed taper to sterilize the hole. He knew that good liquor poked through a savage hole would kill most germs.
If done incorrectly, it had also been known to kill the patient almost immediately.
Doc Hardy opened his rolltop desk and pulled out an almost full bottle of labelled Scotch. He placed it on the table next to his patient’s head. He removed its cork and took a swig before resuming his work. It seemed a sorrowful waste of good whiskey to use it on someone who looked to be hanging on to life by a thread.
He dragged a stool close to the table, rested his rump upon it and leaned closer to his patient. He had already managed to cut the tail of the arrow away and discard it on to his bloodstained floor. Every now and then he found his eyes drawn to the Apache feathered flight. It reminded him of the early days when he had first ventured into the wilds of southern Texas. Then there had been many branches of the Apache family. So many that it was impossible to number them all. But that had been when his hair had not been white, when he had a spring in his legs and not a stiffening creak. Now the Apaches were as rare as the once abundant nomadic buffalo to the north. Their numbers now were a pitiful reminder of what the settlers had done to a once noble race.
Sweat flowed from the brow of the old man like a ceaseless waterfall. It nearly equaled that which oozed from Iron Eyes. When shadows had at last overwhelmed the light inside his office, his shaking fingers had managed to light all his lamps. Hardy had arranged them as close to the motionless Iron Eyes as possible before proceeding with his task.
It had been a slow process. The sticky flesh had clung to the shaft of the arrow and almost sapped Hardy’s strength as he tried to extract the part of the arrow which protruded out of Iron Eyes’ back. After what felt like a lifetime the arrow came free and with it a trickle of blood, which he plugged with clean rags. Soaked in his own sweat the old man had dragged his stool around to the front of the bounty hunter and gazed again at the face which appeared to be looking straight back at him.
A million thoughts crept through his tired brain.
One of which was: was Iron Eyes actually able to see him even though he was totally unconscious?
The thought chilled him as he had continued on with his work and gripped the tail of the arrow with pliers more suited to extracting teeth.
Hardy had tugged and tugged. His concern for not causing even more damage inside the motionless creature on the table had slowed his progress drastically. Then, after what had become a battle between the medical man and the defiant arrow, he decided that he had to forget his worries and get the last of the projectile out of Iron Eyes so that he could tend to the severe injury inside the sleeping man.
If there was poison in the man, he had to kill it before it killed Iron Eyes. That could only be achieved after the wooden shaft was dragged out of the body.
Mustering every ounce of his strength Doc Hardy had raised a knee, placed it against the flat belly of the bounty hunter and then pulled with all his might. Twisting and turning his old arms as they gripped the pliers firmly Doc Hardy began to curse to gods he no longer believed in. Then he had given out a grunt and the defiant arrow finally succumbed. The stool went hurtling away from beneath him. Hardy found himself a yard away from the table with the pliers in his hands and the bloody shaft of wood gripped between their pincers.
‘Got ya!’ he yelled triumphantly.
He tossed the pliers aside, then rushed to his patient and bent down. He closed one eye and squinted into the hole. It looked bad, real bad.
Blood was now flowing from the fresh hole. Iron Eyes was bleeding inside from torn veins, or worse. Hardy ran his bloody hands through his white hair and tried to think through his own exhaustion.
‘Come on! Think, you old fool!’ he shouted to himself. ‘He’s bleeding inside and you gotta stop it. Can’t go sticking in a poker from the pot-belly stove in there, although I reckon that’s what he’d do to himself. Nope! There gotta be—’
Hardy paused, then clapped his hands together.
A revelation swept over him. He grabbed hold of the whiskey bottle and the taper. He placed the bottle closer to the chest of his patient and tore a strip of cloth from the tail of his own shirt. He carefully wrapped it around the taper and soaked it in the whiskey before pushing the taper in and out of the wound from both front an
d back of the prostrate Iron Eyes.
When satisfied that he had filled the hole with as much whiskey as it was possible to get into the bounty hunter, he raised his arm above the nearest of his lamps. The taper’s wick ignited like a fire cracker.
‘I sure hope this works, Iron Eyes!’ Hardy muttered as he placed the burning taper close to the bounty hunter’s whiskey-soaked chest wound.
A flash temporarily blinded the doctor. He staggered backwards, then blinked hard. The flaming liquor had gone right through Iron Eyes from front to back. Smoke drifted upwards towards his ceiling as Hardy ventured back to his patient. The acrid stench of burning flesh filled the old man’s nostrils but the bleeding had stopped.
Doc Hardy carefully rolled the bounty hunter over until Iron Eyes was on his back. The doctor rubbed his dry mouth and then took another swig from his bottle. The whiskey tasted good.
Hardy’s fingers carefully picked up his patient’s thin bony wrist. Suddenly the smile left his triumphant features.
He could not find a pulse.
Hardy raised his hand and pressed his fingers into the neck of the man who lay as still as death itself. Again there was no sign of a heartbeat. He rushed around the table and lowered his head on to the blood-and-sweat-covered chest. Hard though he strained Hardy could detect no sign of a heartbeat.
The old man looked as sick as Iron Eyes, his face drawn and almost as white as his hair.
‘Damn it all, boy! We was almost there! What you have to up and quit now for?’
Just at that moment the door to his office opened and Monte Bale entered with his hat carefully gripped in his hands. Hardy glanced up at the marshal. He acknowledged him with a nod.
‘Monte!’
‘Any news, Doc?’ Bale asked.
‘Yep, I got news, Monte,’ Hardy sighed and then sat down on the chair next to his desk. He held his whiskey bottle in his hands and stared at its amber contents.
Bale ventured another step closer. ‘What news, Doc?’
‘Iron Eyes is dead.’
