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

defeat
Iron Eyes. The thought troubled the skeletal figure as he stared
into his glass, because for the first time in all his years of
hunting down outlaws, he had been seriously wounded.
    The saloon had remained open
for the solitary customer, who sat at a table only a few feet away
from the bloodstained sawdust which bore evidence to his last
conquest. The bartender snored in an easy chair as Iron Eyes
continued to pour one measure after another of the amber liquid
into his glass.
    Iron Eyes cast his hollow
bullet-colored pupils around the silent saloon, and wondered how
much more blood he could have afforded to lose before he would have
joined Dan Creedy in the very bowels of Lucifer’s eternal flames.
Iron Eyes had been wounded many times before but had never bled
like that. He stared at the pool of red sawdust near the bar and
the trail which led out of the saloon.
    As the sun finally rose far
off in the prairie and light washed over the small township of
Bonny, Iron Eyes continued drinking his whiskey. Whatever this new
day had in store for him, he would face it with the same contempt
he had faced all of the others.
    He had eaten the steak meal as
advised by the elderly doctor but felt no better. How long did it
take for blood to be made in a body such as his anyway? Iron Eyes had tried
to understand the old physician’s words but, to him, it did not
make any sense. How could eating grub make blood? Maybe it was
because steak was usually filled with blood and the doctor meant
that as long as he somehow consumed the red liquid, it would fill
his empty veins.
    Iron Eyes rubbed his face
angrily. As the morning light entered the saloon, he noticed the
dried blood which stained the shoulders of his coat. The browning
patches stretched down his sleeves and covered most of his
clothing.
    Dan Creedy’s last shot
would have killed most men, but Iron Eyes was not like other men.
Perhaps the outlaw’s words had been true and he was already dead.
Looking at the evidence of how much blood he had lost, the bounty
hunter wondered if there could possibly be any left.
    The whiskey had gone down his
throat better than the tough steak. It always went down better. If the
doctor had said that drinking vast volumes of rotgut liquor made
blood, Iron Eyes could have seen the sense in it. At least both
were liquid.
    He touched the stitches and
wondered again why his scalp was still totally numb. Would it
matter if it stayed that way? It might even be an advantage in the
future should anyone break a chair over his skull.
    The giddiness had not
troubled him since he had left the doctor’s house. Maybe it had
only happened because his head had been split open and once it was
sewn back together, it was a thing of the past.
    Iron Eyes liked that idea. He
swallowed another glass of the whiskey and stared down again at the
sawdust before him. Dan Creedy’s body had been removed by someone
before he had returned to the saloon. He knew that: the sheriff
must have awoken the town undertaker when he had wired off
for permission to pay the bounty money. So much blood had been
spilled on to the sawdust, and most of it had been his
own.
    He could still see the
outline in the sawdust where Creedy’s lifeless body had
lain.
    The sound of a rooster
echoed off the buildings around the silent saloon. Iron Eyes pushed
the plate away from him and rose to his feet. He carried the
whiskey bottle in his hand and replaced its cork into the black
glass neck before dropping it into one of his deep
pockets.
    The town was still asleep
as he walked out on to the boardwalk and looked at his pitiful
horse. It was in a sorrowful state but Iron Eyes had never cared
for horses. To him, they were simply things which he rode until
they dropped, and then he simply acquired a replacement.
    Finding one of his long, black
cigars amid the countless bullets in his other coat pocket, Iron
Eyes placed it between his sharp teeth and then found a box of matches in
his shirt