by Rory Black
‘What about Ben here?’ The gunfighter eased himself off the desk and rested his hands on the grips of his guns.
‘Burn him with it,’ Kelly answered bluntly.
The gunman shook his head. ‘Oh yeah? I sent Seth and Jed to Hardy’s to make sure Iron Eyes is dead.’
Kelly’s eyes opened. He looked at Fargo. ‘You should have gone yourself, Fargo. I’ve heard that even half-dead Iron Eyes is more than a match for even the best of gunslingers.’
‘You scared of that bounty hunter, Texas?’
‘Nope.’
‘A man can never tell when you’re bluffing.’ Fargo looked down at what was left of Layne and then back at the gambler. He licked his dry lips, then gritted his teeth. ‘One day you’ll play your hand wrong, Texas. Even four aces can be beat.’
Kelly returned to his padded chair and sat down. He changed the subject as his mind returned to the fortune which had so far eluded him.
‘I want the rest of them gold coins, Fargo. Savvy?’
‘I savvy.’ The gunman carefully stepped over the pool of blood which was growing around the lifeless body of Layne. He opened the door to the secret staircase and then looked back at the gambler. ‘I’ll round up a few of the boys.’
Whatever the gambler was thinking it was well hidden behind the mask of a man who knew how to bluff. Texas Jack Kelly picked up a box of matches from his desk and tossed them the length of the room. Fargo caught them.
‘OK?’ Kelly asked through a line of cigar smoke.
Fargo swallowed hard. ‘Yep.’
Chapter Thirteen
JED GREEN AND Seth Smith were not the only people who were headed for the small office belonging to Doc Hardy, although they were the only ones to choose the longer route through the blackness of Main Street’s back alleys. Another man with an entirely different agenda had already reached the unimposing wooden structure in answer to the request he had received earlier. The two-room ground-floor office where Hardy had labored for so long on Iron Eyes was quite dark when the undertaker reached the unlocked front door and entered. With only the desk lamp with its brass wheel turned fully up and the others respectfully adjusted to a dim glow around the table where the body lay beneath a bloodstained white sheet, the office had taken on an eerie atmosphere that even Cyril Perkins noticed. Shadows danced in the flickering amber light on the room’s four walls like ill-behaved sprites as the thin figure closed the door behind him.
The light from the glass dome over the desk lamp illuminated the whiskey bottle beside it as the tall, thin man quietly walked towards it. His eyes saw the bottle long before they noticed the table and its draped burden.
Perkins looked every inch the owner of a funeral parlor as he ventured into the silent office. Clad entirely in black and wearing a silk top hat, he moved to the desk and ran a slim finger along the length of the bottle. Perkins was well over six feet in height and nearly as thin as the body which he had come to measure before taking it down to his undertaker’s parlor to prepare for the burial. His white sideburns were as wild as his small green eyes. It was said that some folks are created to do certain jobs. Being an undertaker was the only profession that Perkins could ever have done without looking out of place.
Few people ever spoke to Perkins unless they had to do so because he had a way of making people think that he was measuring them up with his eyes for a pine box.
He moved silently, as most of those in his trade did, and paused beside the desk. The thin man who looked little healthier than those he laid to rest placed his knuckles on his hips. He was about to proceed towards the white sheet when his long nose caught the aroma of the expensive whiskey vapors rising from the open neck of the bottle on the desk. Perkins was a man who had consumed most spirits in his time, apart from embalming fluid, although there were many who doubted his vigorous denials concerning even that. His pale complexion looked as though it was he and not those whom he buried who was actually deceased. Temptation was a hard mistress and she had always got the better of Perkins. He plucked the bottle up, held its neck beneath his nose and inhaled deeply.
This was far more inviting than the usual fluids he dealt with and proved impossible to resist to a man who had spent the better part of his fifty years vainly attempting to get the stench of death out of his nose.
‘Doc won’t miss a couple of fingers,’ Perkins muttered. He placed the neck of the bottle to his mouth until the amber liquor started to flow into his mouth. He swallowed and then swallowed again. Then he lowered his arm and gave out a belch. ‘Damn! That is good stuff!’
Perkins walked with the bottle in his left hand to the table and took another long swig. Satisfied, his thin fingers took the end of the long sheet and pulled it off the nearly naked Iron Eyes. The sheet fell to the floor as the undertaker squinted in the dim light at the unexpected sight before him.
Like a spooked bronco, Perkins reeled in horror at the sight which met his eyes.
‘Sweet Lord! Damn it all! What on earth happened to this poor critter?’ Perkins asked himself as he edged closer to the bounty hunter’s head. Nervously he bent over to get a better view. ‘Reckon this had better be a closed casket job! Nobody will want to set eyes on that face and no mistake!’
After another swig to settle his nerves, Perkins placed the bottle down beside the nearest of the motionless hands and then, in true businesslike manner, he pulled out his tape measure. He unrolled it and put one end at the top of Iron Eyes’ head, then he walked the length of the table until he reached the feet. Perkins raised the measure and then looked at the tape. He glanced back at the strange scarred body.
‘I don’t know who you are but you’re the same height as me, son! Exactly the same!’ The long-legged undertaker moved around the table and returned on the opposite side of the body. When he reached the torso he measured the chest and noted, ‘Pretty wide for a skinny varmint!’
Perkins looked across the room and saw the chair shrouded in shadows. The chair where the bounty hunter’s trail coat lay with the pair of matched Navy Colts atop it. The long mule-eared boots stood before the chair and the remnants of Iron Eyes’ pants and shirt were next to them. It was obvious to the experienced undertaker that the blood-soaked clothing had been cut from the body and thrown to where they lay before Hardy had started his work.
Perkins licked his lips. They were dry. His green eyes looked across the bounty hunter’s chest at the tempting whiskey bottle and its amber contents. He stretched over and grabbed hold of it, then raised it to his mouth and began drinking once again. As he drank, he looked at the scars which covered every inch of the body beside him. It seemed impossible that they could be real. Over the years Hardy and Perkins had enjoyed trying to get the better of one another, playing practical jokes which had often risen to ludicrous heights.
With his free hand Perkins started to scratch at the skin of the body. The scars remained intact but he noticed something else. The skin ought to have been cold and yet it felt warm to his fingertips.
Perkins started to nod knowingly. ‘I got me a feeling that old Doc is up to one of his childish pranks again!’
Suddenly a strange noise came from the chest of the bounty hunter. It was like a rattler getting ready to strike out at its prey. Startled, Perkins jerked the bottle away from his lips and looked down at Iron Eyes.
Then the noise happened again. ‘What the hell was that?’ the stunned undertaker asked himself. He prodded the body with straight fingers. ‘Get up, boy! you ain’t fooling nobody.’
Then the upper part of Iron Eyes’ torso jerked with such violence that the chest lifted off the table for a few seconds before returning to where it had rested for over an hour. Perkins’s eyes widened in disbelief as they stared down at the chest a mere eighteen inches away from his face. It rose and fell in staggered motion. Even in the dim lamplight he could actually see the heart pounding between the arch of the ribs.
It was beating like a war drum.
‘What’s going on here?
’ Perkins gasped and lowered the bottle until it rested on the table next to Iron Eyes’ right hand. ‘I was told you were dead, boy! Why’d they cover you up under a sheet if you weren’t dead? I’m gonna kill Doc for wasting my time like this!’
An amused expression had carved itself into the usually bland features of the owner of the funeral parlor. He went to walk away, then realized that his legs refused to obey. He slapped them hard.
‘C’mon! This is just one of old Doc’s jokes!’ Perkins told his lower limbs. ‘I ain’t scared, legs! How could I be scared of that? That gotta be the worst make-up I ever seen. Nobody ever looked that bad.’
Perkins placed a hand on the edge of the table to steady himself as he saw the lips of the bounty hunter start to move, as though he were tasting the air for the very first time.
‘Where am I?’ Iron Eyes croaked. ‘Who are you?’
‘I knew it! You weren’t dead at all! Dead men don’t suddenly get undead. Does Doc think he can trick me?’ Perkins walked a few inches away from where his feet had felt they were nailed to the floor. He closed his eyes and tried to calm down. He was furious with his old pal. ‘This ’un will take some bettering, though.’
Iron Eyes’ right hand located the whiskey bottle and dragged it up and over his chest until its neck was close to his lips. Perkins watched in stunned terror as the bounty hunter tipped the contents into his mouth and eagerly swallowed the fiery liquid.
‘How much did that old fool pay you to play-act like this, boy?’ Perkins waved his finger at the bounty hunter. ‘Whatever it was he should have saved his money coz you are the most pitiful critter I ever seen. I saw right through you.’
Then a thought occurred to the undertaker.
‘Hang on a damn minute here,5 he heard himself saying as he stared at Iron Eyes. ‘I got me a feeling that old Doc might be hiding around here watching.’
The bounty hunter paused his drinking and looked through blurred eyes at the smiling man beside the table. ‘Are you the sawbones, mister?’
‘No I ain’t!’ Perkins snapped back. ‘I’m the undertaker.’
‘But I ain’t dead,’ Iron Eyes said.
‘We both knows that, boy.’
A sense of relief washed over the undertaker. He felt himself calming down fast as he leaned against the table with his back to Iron Eyes.
‘Get on up, boy.’ Perkins laughed out loud. ‘The joke’s on you and old Doc. I seen through you. Ha! I should have known that nobody could look as bad as you.’
The sound of the back door in the rear room opening suddenly filled Perkins’s ears. He smiled as best his withered face could actually smile.
‘Who’s that?’ Iron Eyes released the bottle.
‘You know full well who that is.’ The undertaker frowned. ‘I hear you back there, Doc. It didn’t work, you old fool. Come on in here. Your pal here couldn’t hold his breath long enough to fool me.’
The sound of two pairs of boots rang through the structure as Texas Jack’s men walked out of the shadows into the light. Seth Smith and Jed Green entered the office with their guns drawn and levelled. They watched as the undertaker’s expression changed once again. This time it went from amusement to confusion.
‘Who are they?’ Iron Eyes whispered.
‘Damned if I know, boy.’ Perkins took a step towards the gunmen between the table and the doorway. ‘You ain’t old Doc Hardy. Who in the name of the Lord are you and what you doing here?’
‘where’s Iron Eyes?’ Green asked.
‘He’s on that table there, Jed.’ Smith pointed with his free hand. ‘See him?’
‘I see him.’
‘He ain’t dead.’
‘He will be.’
Again, Perkins closed the distance between them. ‘Put those guns away, boys. This joke’s gone far enough. Ain’t nobody laughing any more. Where’s old Doc?’
Without warning both gunmen fanned their hammers in answer to Perkins’s innocent question. They gleefully watched as the undertaker was lifted off his feet by the bullets which hit his chest dead center. Both fired again, sending their lead after the body before it crashed into the wall. The office echoed to the sound of the deafening noise.
Acrid gun smoke filled the distance between the table and the hot barrels of their. 45s.
‘Now we finish the famous Iron Eyes off. C’mon!’ Seth Smith snarled as he walked forward through the choking gun smoke with Green at his side. Their thumbs clawed back on their hammers until their weapons fully locked.
Neither man squeezed his trigger, though.
It was Green who stopped first.
Then Smith became rooted to the spot.
They waved the dense, lingering gun smoke away with their free hands and stared at the long, empty table. Green spun full circle on his heels as his eyes vainly searched the dimly lit room in desperation.
Jed Green stared at the table and its dried-gore covered surface.
Only the whiskey bottle remained upon it.
A cold shiver raced up Green’s spine as he stared at the table. ‘He was there. Buck naked, Seth! I seen him there.
Iron Eyes was lying there buck naked.’
‘I know that. I seen him as well.’
‘Men can’t disappear into thin air, can they?’
‘W-where’d he go then?’ Smith stammered.
A whistle attracted their attention. ‘You looking for me?’
The gunmen swung round to where the trail coat lay on the chair, but the pair of Navy Colts were no longer upon its bloodstained fabric.
They fired again frantically at the dancing shadows upon the wall. The coat rose into the air as their bullets tore it to shreds. Both men continued firing until their guns were empty.
‘Did we get him?’ Smith asked as he feverishly reloaded.
‘How the hell do I know?’ Green responded as his fingers clawed at fresh bullets from his gunbelt. ‘I can’t see nothing except our smoke.’
Then in the shadows they heard a sound coming from just beyond the table. It was the unmistakable sound of laughter. Iron Eyes staggered out into the dim lamplight with both his guns in his hands.
‘Oh my God! Look at him!’ Smith yelped like a dog with its tail caught in a trap. The faster he tried to get bullets into his smoking chambers the more of them fell to the floor.
‘That ain’t no real man,’ Green gulped.
Iron Eyes paused and inhaled deeply.
‘Who sent you to kill me?’ he asked.
Both men stared at the horrific sight before them. Neither had ever witnessed anything which came close to describing how the bounty hunter appeared.
They dropped their guns and raised their arms.
‘Answer me,’ the bounty hunter snarled.
‘Texas Jack Kelly,’ Green blurted out.
Iron Eyes took a deep breath and looked straight at Smith. ‘Is that right? Is your pard telling me the truth?’
Smith nodded. ‘Sure is. Iron Eyes.’
‘Who is this Texas Jack varmint?’
‘He’s the owner of The Texas House! He sent us here to kill you!’
Iron Eyes stepped even closer. ‘Why?’
‘On account of him being wanted and you being a bounty hunter and all,’ Green blurted. ‘He figured it was best if you were dead!’
Smith blinked hard as the gun smoke burned into his eyes. ‘Can we go now?’
‘Yeah! You can go.’ A twisted smile crept across Iron Eyes’ face. He cocked his hammers and then mercilessly pulled on both his triggers. White plumes of lethal ear-busting vengeance spewed from the barrels of the bounty hunter’s weapons. The two men flew backward and landed in the blackness of the rear room. ‘To Hell!’
Chapter Fourteen
NOTHING COULD HAVE alerted them to the horrors that they would discover inside the doctor’s small home when the trio of oddly assorted men responded to the sound of the gunfire. They had been close to the newly opened Texas House when the distant crackle of gunplay rang out
along the length and breadth of Main Street. They had been heading from the hotel to the lane beside Cooper’s store to see if the body Joshua had discovered was still there. All that changed when the shooting started. With Doc Hardy and his deputy in tow, Marshal Bale made his way back towards the place from where he was sure the gunfire had come. They had been two hundred yards away from the small wooden building when the last of the shots were fired. The flashing of lead lightning had lit up the front window and drawn the keen-eyed Bale towards it. Yet when they had arrived all that greeted them were three freshly dispatched corpses and the smell of gunpowder.
Doc Hardy stood in the center of the bloody floor as Marshal Bale turned each of the lamps up until their light filled the office. The deputy had not moved from the doorframe and simply stood open-mouthed, staring in disbelief at the horrific sight which had greeted them all when they answered the call of the round of gunshots they had heard only minutes earlier.
Hardy was in a state of shock. He could not comprehend the carnage which had occurred inside the building he had lived and worked in for so many years. His wrinkled eyes darted from one body to the next and then repeated the futile action. Then he saw the blood-splattered walls and the bullet holes in the plaster and woodwork. He had tended those who had found themselves on the wrong side of a shooting-iron more times than he could recall, but it was the first time anything like this had occurred within the sanctity of his own home. It chilled him to the bone.
As Bale moved back to him the old medical man gripped the lawman’s arm in a way he had never done before. Hardy was shaking as the enormity of the situation washed over him like floodwater.
Bale looked into the old eyes, then guided Hardy to the desk chair and sat him down.
‘Easy, Doc. I know this must be a shock to you, seeing your office all shot up like this. We’ll sort it out for you.’
Hardy rubbed his face. ‘What in tarnation went on in here, Monte? I don’t cotton this at all.’
Joshua ventured across the floor nervously. He glanced at the two dead gunslingers lying in the rear room where the force of Iron Eyes’ bullets had propelled them. He cleared his throat and then rested beside the desk.
