The Fury of Iron Eyes (An Iron Eyes Western #4) Read Free

killed the outlaw on
their own. Together, it was only a matter of how long it would take
for Dan Creedy’s body to realize that it was dead.
    It had not been a long
duel. It had ended almost as soon as it had begun.
    Slowly, Dan Creedy slumped
forward and fell heavily on his face in the stale sawdust. There
was a huge gasp as his life seemed to escape like swamp gas from
his being. He had been wrong. It was possible to draw guns from
your belt if you were Iron Eyes. Creedy had made a mistake. It was
to be his last.
    Walking up to the body,
Iron Eyes placed his guns back into his belt and leaned on the bar.
It was over and yet he felt nothing. It had been too
easy.
    As he picked up the whiskey
bottle and raised it to his lips he noticed spots of blood dripping
on to his hand. Looking up into the cracked, dirty mirror behind
the bar, he saw the wound on his scalp. There was a parting in his
long, matted mane which had never been there before.
    One of Dan Creedy’s shots
had dug out a chunk of his scalp as it passed over him. Blood was
running freely down his face before he managed to finish the
contents of the liquor bottle. It was cheap, rotgut whiskey which
had probably been made in a tin bathtub out back, but Iron Eyes did
not care. Liquor had never managed to make him drunk, however much
of it he consumed. Even the most expensive brands had no effect on
his pitifully lean frame.
    Yet Iron Eyes was confused.
He was bleeding badly, but there was no pain from the ugly wound.
It did not even sting. It just bled.
    Touching his scalp with his
long fingers, Iron Eyes found the deep wound in his straggly hair.
Dan Creedy’s final shot had only been an inch too high, he
thought.
    Iron Eyes stared at the
sticky red blood on the tips of his fingers and paused. Could
Creedy have been right when he called the bounty hunter a ghost?
Ghosts were already dead and that meant they could not feel pain.
But he was bleeding like a stuck pig.
    Did ghosts bleed? Why was
there no pain? Something just did not add up.
    As he turned to face the
corpse, he suddenly felt giddy. It was a strange feeling which made
him rest his lean frame against the wooden bar. Blood ran down the
strands of hair before his eyes and dripped. It was a continuous
flow of crimson droplets which meant the wound was probably far
worse than he had first thought. Yet it still did not
hurt.
    Why didn’t it hurt? Iron
Eyes was troubled by this strange truth. His head was filled with a
fog that seemed reluctant to clear.
    Stepping away from the bar,
Iron Eyes stood over the body of Dan Creedy and looked down at it
for several seconds. He waited until his thoughts became sharp
again. There was something strange about the outlaw that Iron Eyes
had noticed just before they had drawn their guns and fired. Dan
Creedy had seemed to be totally unafraid. Not at first when Iron
Eyes had entered the saloon, but a split second before they had
gone for their weapons.
    Why was the outlaw
unafraid? Did he know something which Iron Eyes had yet to
learn?
    Iron Eyes leaned over,
grabbed the collar of his prize and then lifted it off the ground
and hauled it out into the deserted street. Looking around the
wooden structures he finally saw the sheriff’s office.
    Above the locked office door,
Iron Eyes spied a small window and a dim light behind its lace
drape. Dragging the body of his prey across the street towards the
office, Iron Eyes felt his long, bony legs buckling for a moment.
Somehow he managed to continue until his mule-ear boots found the
opposite boardwalk and mounted it. Then he released his grip and
dropped the lifeless body at his feet.
    Resting his bleeding head
against the wall, he began hitting the door with a clenched
fist.
    Iron Eyes wanted his reward
money. He also wanted to know where the nearest doctor was. As his
fist struck the door for the tenth time, he saw a man through its
glass pane, carrying a candle inside the building, walking
hurriedly towards him.
    As the man