Free The Ghost of Iron Eyes (An Iron Eyes Western Book 8) by Rory Black Page A

divert their eyes from the brothers, except
Jardine.
    He alone felt no fear as he
walked to the smug outlaws.
    ‘ Me
and the rest of the gang have been talkin’ about striking at Waco,
Toke,’ Jardine said.
    ‘ About
time, Henry,’ Toke responded, sliding his gun back into its
holster.
    ‘ But
we’ve bin trying to figure which of us boys should go down there
and get the lie of the land. I was thinking that maybe Doc and
Skeet,’ Jardine lied.
    ‘ What
about me and my brothers?’ Toke rested against the desk and rubbed
the sweat from his features. ‘I figure we’ll be better at judging
the place than any of these old-timers.’
    Jardine nodded.
    ‘ Yeah,
I reckon you’re right, Toke.’
    Toke Darrow boomed with
laughter. Soon the entire foyer of the hotel resounded with men
laughing. Jardine walked around his fellow outlaws, knowing that
they all had exactly the same thought as he had himself.
    ‘ We
ride at dawn, boys,’ Darrow told his brothers. ‘Waco ain’t gonna
know what hit it after we arrive.’
    The rest of the outlaws
started laughing. Yet their laughter came from a different
place.

Chapter
Thirteen
    It took a lot to spook tough
Texas lawmen, but the fleeting glimpse of the ghostlike rider
heading towards them managed to do just that. The four horsemen
dragged their reins back and steadied their skittish mounts. They
focused through the sand-storm at the unholy vision that continued
to approach. If ever there had been a more unnerving sight, the
lawmen had never set eyes upon it. The almost skeletal rider
astride the painted Indian pony looked as if he were more dead than
alive, and yet his cold unblinking bullet- colored eyes were fixed on the
quartet of lawmen.
    Their mounts and pack-horses
shied and whinnied and forced their masters to wrestle them in
order to control them. Only Marshal Lane Clark remained calm as he
used his strong arms to hold his stallion steady.
    ‘ Easy,
boy!’ Clark commanded the powerful animal beneath him. ‘Ain’t
nothing to be scared of. Leastways, I don’t think there
is.’
    ‘ What
in tarnation is that?’ Col Drake gasped. Even after wiping the dust
from his sore eyes, he still could not understand what he was
looking at. ‘Is that an Indian?’
    ‘ Apache!’ Pete Hall said as he saw the rider’s long hair
flap in the sand-storm. ‘It’s an Apache!’
    ‘ That
ain’t no Apache, boys,’ Lane Clark shouted. He jabbed his spurs
into his stallion’s sides and pressed the horse to edge ahead of
his deputies’ mounts. ‘Keep them guns in their holsters or you’ll
regret it.’
    ‘ Then
if it ain’t an Apache, what is it?’ Tom Ripley asked nervously.
‘Sure looks like one to me.’
    The veteran lawman studied the
gruesome sight of the rider who continued to ride towards them
through the swirling sand. He knew every inch of the horseman that
kept on coming at him and his frightened men. Yet even Clark was shocked
by the appearance of the bounty hunter. There were more scars now
and skin that appeared to have melted on half of the gaunt
features. Clark swallowed hard and looked back at his
deputies.
    ‘ That,
my half-witted friends, is Iron Eyes!’ he replied. ‘The man we’ve
bin looking for.’
    The trio of deputies moved
their horses forward with their pack-animals until they were beside
their marshal. Lane Clark held his reins in check and stared at the
still-approaching bounty hunter.
    ‘ Don’t
none of you move your hands too fast. He’s deadly and he’s hurt.
Iron Eyes could kill us all before we could clear our holsters,’
Clark warned.
    ‘ Damn!
He’s even uglier than you said he was,’ Ripley gasped in horror. ‘I
never seen such injuries on any living critter.’
    Iron Eyes ’ legs hung almost to the
ground from the sides of the small pony. He sat with the precious
water-bag on his lap as if it were the most valuable thing he
possessed. Indeed it was. It had saved his bacon back in Devil’s
Canyon and he would not willingly