The Curse of Iron Eyes by Rory Black Read Free Book Online Page B

drove
them off.
    But
none of this meant anything to Iron Eyes. The sound of his mount’s
thundering hoofs echoed all around him yet he paid no attention to
the noise.
    All he could think
about was finding somewhere in this godforsaken place that might
allow him to take cover and ambush the man who had been trying to
put a bullet in his back for the past fifteen or more minutes.
    Iron Eyes spurred the
horse into the sweltering sun-baked pass and knew that this place
was not designed to protect the hunted, only the hunter. Its smooth
towering walls had little shape to them and that troubled the
bounty hunter.
    If he stopped his
horse, he knew that he could not climb the canyon walls. Nobody
could. They were just too smooth. It was as if nature itself had
sanded them down.
    Iron Eyes needed a
corner, a jagged boulder or anything that might be large enough to
shield himself and his mount from the deadly buffalo gun.
    He thundered on.
    There had to be a place
where he could dismount and wait for the rider to get within the
range of his deadly Navy Colts, he kept telling himself.
    Yet
the further he rode, the less he began to believe that such a place
existed within this canyon pass. For this place was unlike any
other he had ever ridden through. Sweat was now pouring off the
pony and himself.
    He had never known
anywhere to be as hot as this pass.
    Iron Eyes continued to
whip the now spent pony onward with even more urgency. He glanced
down at his chest. His shirt and skin were covered in the blood
that was still seeping from the knife wounds. His left pants leg
was now also soaked in blood. He was bleeding like a stuck pig and
knew he had to find somewhere to try and stem the flow of blood
real fast.
    Then his keen eyes
spotted the thing he had been looking for, a hundred or more yards
ahead of him. Iron Eyes aimed the nose of his mount towards it.
    He hauled his reins to
his blood-soaked chest and jumped from the back of the exhausted
mount. A cloud of choking dust rose into the air and covered both
man and beast for a few moments as the bounty hunter caught his
breath.
    Iron Eyes held firmly
on to his reins and stared at the sight before him. He then
convinced himself that it was real and not a mirage created by the
blood-loss or unbearable heat.
    It was really
there.
    A
large rock twice his own height was propped against the canyon
wall. It must have fallen from high above to the canyon floor where
it now lay, he concluded. For it was different from the smooth
walls of sand-colored stone that made up the length of the trail he
had ridden through so far.
    He
looked up and stared at the top of the high canyon. His
steel-colored eyes surveyed the entire length of it until he saw
the slight blemish on an otherwise perfect surface. That was where
the boulder had fallen from, he concluded.
    For a
few moments Iron Eyes stood perfectly still and listened. If the
rider who was after him had already entered the pass he would have
heard the sound of his horse’s hoofs echoing by now.
    There was no noise.
    That meant the rider
had yet to enter this devilish place.
    He still had time to
put his plan into action.
    Iron Eyes led the pony
behind the boulder and tied the reins firmly to a small jagged edge
at its base. He then hauled the large water bag that he had
confiscated from one of the other Apache mounts off the saddle horn
and pulled out its crude stopper.
    He lifted the bag to
his cracked lips and swallowed two large mouthfuls of the cool
liquid. It felt good as it made its way through his thin body.
    Then he looked at the
pony beside him.
    Iron
Eyes knew that he needed this pathetic animal to get him out of
this place. He removed his coat and laid it down on the ground
before the pony’s front legs and poured a couple of pints of the
precious liquid on to it.
    He watched as the
grateful horse drank the water. Then he hung the bag back on the
saddle horn again.
    Iron Eyes hauled his
weapons from his belt, cocked their hammers and