Free The Spirit of Iron Eyes by Rory Black

then
scooped the water bag up and began to stagger down the sloping cave
tunnel.
    He continued on his journey.
    But this time he was using the cave walls to
support him as he fought with the demons that were filling his
thoughts.
    The fire finally went out behind him.
    The half-dead Iron Eyes was walking in total
darkness again.
    He did not notice.

Chapter Eleven
    Matty Hume, Col Wall and Tanny Gibson had
been Texas Rangers for more than twenty years between them. Yet the
current mission that they had been sent on had nothing to do with
Texas, or any other civilized place for that matter. Captain Matty
Hume had been given the unenviable job of trying to trace the
whereabouts of Marshal Tom Quaid.
    It seemed that the marshal had friends in
high places who knew that the grieving lawman was hell bent on
finding the notorious outlaw known only as Diamond Back Jones. It
seemed that there were powerful people who had political plans for
the veteran law officer Tom Quaid. To them he was a man who could
bridge the gap between the old and the new Texas.
    The last thing the politicians wanted was
for those ambitions to be scuppered by Quaid himself breaking the
very laws that he had spent a lifetime upholding.
    Tom Quaid could simply not be allowed to
administer his own form of justice. Yet the three riders knew that
they would probably be driven by the same feelings of revenge if
someone had brutally murdered their daughters.
    Matty Hume had been given one simple order.
He had to try and find Quaid before Quaid found Diamond Back Jones.
Find the lawman and bring him back to Waco.
    It was not a job the seasoned Texas Ranger
had wanted but he knew that there were few others in his platoon
who could match his own tracking skills. He had also never been a
man to refuse any request from his superiors simply because there
was an element of danger attached to it.
    Hume had known Quaid for more than a decade
and grown to admire the silver-haired marshal. The Texas Ranger
knew that this was out of character for the lawman, but he
understood it.
    He also knew that Tom Quaid would never
forgive himself if he did kill the outlaw in cold blood.
    Captain Hume had asked for
volunteers in the Texas Ranger outpost just west of Waco, but only
two men had responded to the lean man ’s request for help.
    Col Wall was roughly five feet
nine inches in height with light-brown- colored hair. His face was broad and
looked as though it had taken a lot of punches over its thirty
years but the green eyes sparkled with the joy of just being what
he was. He was a Texas Ranger and no man could ever have equaled
his pride in that simple fact.
    Tanny Gibson was the least capable of the
trio. Yet he had worked hard to try and make himself worthy of the
badge he had been given thirteen months earlier. Gibson wanted to
be as good as the two riders he rode with. Few other Rangers could
equal his ambition and commitment.
    Rangers Wall and Gibson were always willing
to follow their captain. They knew that he was one Texas Ranger
officer who never took risks with the lives of those in his company
and always led from the front. Matty Hume was no armchair general
like so many others of his rank. He would never ask his men to go
anywhere he was unwilling to go himself.
    That one simple fact gave his men confidence
and trust, two key factors when you were riding into uncharted
terrain.
    The three riders had trailed Tom Quaid
across the high border mountains and then down into the devilishly
hot prairie that led into the unmapped and unnamed territory west
of the sprawling Lone Star State.
    Captain Matty Hume had few equals when it
came to following trails and had led his two followers across more
than a hundred miles of the most diverse land to be found anywhere
in the vast continent.
    The three horsemen had visited
Dry Gulch and managed to leave its boundaries unscathed. They had
purchased enough provisions and water in the stinking town to last them at
least two weeks for