Beware the Guns of Iron Eyes

By Rory Black

Iron Eyes finds himself staring at a forest. A forest that reminds him of a time long before he had become the scarred infamous bounty hunter he now was. As he waits for his beloved Squirrel Sally to show up on her stagecoach, his mind drifts back to how it had all started. Iron Eyes remembers the time when he first set foot out of the forest where he had grown to manhood. The forest was where he had been abandoned as a baby and raised by timber wolves.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Robert Hale Fiction
• Release date: Aug 1, 2018
• ISBN: 9780719827556

Rory Black

Under the name 'Rory Black' Michael D George is the author of the wildly-popular Iron Eyes westerns, coming from PP very, very soon! Writes Michael: "In my time I've done a lot of things. I've been a barber, a freelance commercial artist, a portrait painter, a grave stone designer (a dying trade), an animator and an author. I did spend a few years in the Merchant Navy and was lucky to have travelled around the world four times before I was 23. I spent a lot of time in America during those days and cruised for two summers between California and Alaska. Now it is forty years later and these days I spend most of my time writing novels under my own name and no less than seven pseudonyms. I've been lucky to number a few of my old cowboy heroes as friends, and my walls are covered in the photographs of several of my cowboy hero pals. Ive written a lot of books and have plenty more stories still to tell. As one of those friends, the late, legendary Monte Hale used to tell me, 'Shoot low -- they might be crawling!'"

Book preview

PROLOGUE

Few who had ever set eyes upon the hideously maimed creature, known throughout the Wild West as Iron Eyes the bounty hunter, could ever have imagined the horrors that he had endured since he had first opened his eyes and filled his lungs with precious air. Iron Eyes would grow to adulthood in the eerie twilight of a vast forest filled with deadly animals and venomous serpents. Abandoned at birth by an unknown mother due some misplaced notion of shame, the newly born baby would survive only because of a pack of timber wolves’ instinctive kindness. The wolves would raise and teach him the ways of the wild. It was a debt for which he would be eternally thankful.

Iron Eyes was one of those rare creatures, a feral child. More animal than human in his ways, this gave him the swiftness to outwit all that tried to end his short existence once and for all.

Many have wondered about the hideously scarred bounty hunter and how his unique story had started. Had they known how he had become the almost mythical and infamous bounty hunter who roamed the West with his smoking Navy Colts gripped in his skeletal hands, they might have understood the tall emaciated figure a little better.

Even the most fertile of imaginations, however, could never have envisioned that anything that looked the way he did could ever have once appeared normal.

But he had.

Long before he was covered in the scars of his seemingly endless battles, Iron Eyes had been an enigmatic figure. It was said that the Indians who roamed the vast forest knew who and what Iron Eyes truly was, but even they did not know the whole truth.

It was rumoured that they also knew where he had come from, but they remained silent. In reality the Indians were no wiser to the origins of the infamous Iron Eyes than anyone else, but they would embellish his myth around their campfires. Every telling would add just a little bit more to the man they had grown to think of as a ghost.

During his childhood, the wolves had taught Iron Eyes to remain out of his enemies’ line of sight. The Indians’ campfire stories interpreted this as meaning that he was not actually a living man like themselves. The reason they had never been able to stop him stealing their weaponry or their fresh kills was because Iron Eyes was already dead.

Even the greatest Indian bowman could not be expected to kill a phantom. As a young boy who had moved unseen and unheard through the dense undergrowth to taunt the Indians, Iron Eyes had became a thorn in their collective sides. In the mythology that grew around Iron Eyes, he became known by the title Ayan-Ees, the evil spirit.

For years until he reached maturity, Iron Eyes had honed the ways of the wolf and stolen anything he needed or simply desired from their traps and encampments.

Resentment had grown into hatred.

Iron Eyes disliked them as much as they hated him.

Year by year the Indian tales became taller with each telling. Secreted above the Indians’ camps with only tree canopies to hide him from view, Iron Eyes had listened to the Indians so often that he actually understood their language.

Just like the stories that still prevail in the wilderness across the vast land, the Indians would find his footprints along the muddy trails. Yet no matter how hard they tried, they could never actually see him clearly. In time the footprints grew larger, just as Iron Eyes himself developed into a tall agile young man.

Iron Eyes would climb the tallest trees and stare out from the forest at the glowing amber lights of a nearby logging town. Silver Creek’s coal oil lanterns glowed in the darkness and intrigued the inquisitive youngster. He was curious as to what sort of people dwelled in the unfamiliar houses he could just make out from his perilous perch.

This was when Iron Eyes realized that there was another world beyond the limits of the woodlands he roamed. A place where he might not have to dodge the arrows of those who tried to kill him as they had also done to most of the timber wolves that had raised him.

Could the glowing settlement be the safe haven he had always craved? The thought grew like a cancer in his curious mind for months. Life in the forest had grown tedious for the young hunter and he grew weary of forever remaining in the shadows so that he could avoid the Indians’ arrows.

He had spotted several of the lumberjacks who were gradually clearing the hills and noticed that they covered their bodies in clothing like the Indians did during the winter months.

Iron Eyes was intelligent enough to realize that if he were to venture into the town, he would have to fashion some sort of clothing for himself. Using leather from his animal pelts and anything else he could lay his hands upon, he somehow managed to make a crude shirt and pants that he thought resembled what he had seen the lumberjacks wearing.

Somehow Iron Eyes even managed to cobble together a pair of boots. Before setting out for the town, Iron Eyes decided to test out his crude appearance on his mortal enemies and let them catch sight of him. For the first time in his life the gaunt hunter no longer hid from view amid the numerous shadows of the forest. The sudden sight of the tall emaciated youngster terrified most of the Indians as they had never seen him clearly before.

Now it was their turn to run and hide. The creature they had built up so many stories about was suddenly real to them and appeared even more lethal-looking than any of their tall-tales.

This reaction gave Iron Eyes even more confidence than he already had. It was his height that troubled the Indians the most, for he was at least a foot taller than any of the forest warriors.

His tall lean frame and mane of long jet black hair gave him the appearance of a noble prince belonging to some strange forgotten tribe.

Perhaps that was what he actually was.

Nobody would ever know for sure.

His appearance was not actually like that of any of the native braves that he constantly encountered, though. Neither did he resemble any of the white settlers who slowly but surely made their way across the once sacred land where he had grown up.

Iron Eyes was an enigma. He simply did not fit in either camp. The Indians had grown to hate him due to his uncanny hunting skills, and the whites he would eventually encounter considered him to be something akin to an Apache spy. It had not taken the fearless misfit long to realize that he did not belong to either of the opposing sides.

He would soon discover that most men feared him for some unknown reason. Unfortunately men always try to destroy or kill such things.

Curiosity lured the hunter out from the dense forested mountains and begin his long trek into lands which he neither understood or cared for. Soon, however, he would bury his misgivings beneath a waterfall of firewater and cheap cigars.

Unlike his despised enemies, the whiskey he either traded or stole had no effect on his pitifully lean body or deadly keen mind. Somehow he could drink as much of the fiery liquid as he desired with no ill effects.

Although Iron Eyes would never fit into the land where most of us dwell, he simply could not prevent himself from continuing on his long blood-stained journey. Once the naïve youngster left the relative safety of the forest, he found his curiosity impossible to resist. No matter how much pain he suffered in civilization, he simply could not stop moving forward.

Most men, it is said, are buried less than a stone’s throw away from where they were born. They never dare leave the place where they feel safe. Some like Iron Eyes seek the one thing they may never find and are willing to suffer the brutal atrocities fate throws at them during their often futile quest.

This is the story of Iron Eyes before he became hideously mutilated by the bullets, arrows and knives of his countless foes. An almost forgotten time when the gaunt creature crawled out from the safety of the forest and discovered that his hunting skills were better suited to hunting down and killing wanted men for bounty money.

This is the beginning.

But beware the guns.

Beware the guns of Iron Eyes.

CHAPTER ONE

The sight of the lone horseman was enough to stop the numerous birds from singing and freeze the hearts of anyone that might have cast their innocent attention in his direction. The skeletal figure who sat astride his magnificent palomino stallion appeared to have come from the bowels of Hell itself. He sat motionless on his high-shouldered mount and studied the forest before him and began to remember things he had thought were long forgotten.

A stiff breeze raced across the barren hillside like a freight train and moved the tall grass between his mount and the dark untamed forest. His mutilated face watched the strangely familiar sight as thoughts drifted from hunting down another wanted outlaw to memories of a time when things were less dramatic.

His long bony fingers touched his face and traced across the disfigured flesh that covered his skull, reminding him of a time when there were no hideous reminders of his many injuries.

Iron Eyes bore the scars of countless fights. Every battle he had waged during his lifetime showed on his mutilated face. Draped in an oversized trail coat and hunched over his ornate saddle, his mind drifted back to when he too resembled regular folk.

His hands began to search his many pockets for a cigar in a vain