Read Online The Wrath of Iron Eyes (An Iron Eyes Western #5) by Rory Black - Free Book Online Page B

dramatic announcement. The lighted torches illuminated every
one of the cold eyes that were trained on him.
    The bandits were waiting. Waiting for their
chance.
    They wanted her and Malverez had not dared
to take his own selfish pleasures for fear of turning his back on
the men whom he knew were quite as ruthless as he was himself.
    Malverez knew that a knife or bullet would
find his back as soon as he showed it to them. The bandit leader
was troubled. These were five angry men who faced him. He propped
his head against the huge rolled up blankets and knew that any one
of them was more than capable of killing him without a second
thought.
    Malverez lit yet another cigar
and drew the putrid smoke into his lungs. For the last hour he had
felt more and more uneasy as the bandits seemed to edge ever
closer.
    It was the middle of the night and yet none
of them was willing to succumb to the tiredness that had threatened
to overwhelm them hours earlier.
    The leader of the bandits dragged his
pistols from their holsters and sucked on the long cigar. He laid
the guns on his chest and watched the eyes that flashed in the
flickering torchlight before him.
    Would they actually attack him?
    Malverez knew that no amount of the free
tequila he had plied them with could calm this storm. It had gone
too far. There was only one way that he might stop them now, and
that was to give them what they so desperately wanted.
    He could give them the girl and it would be
over.
    There was one other choice open to him
though. Malverez knew that he could still keep the beautiful prize
for himself if he pretended that he was willing to let them have
her.
    But he would then have to kill them all when
they started to take their pleasure.
    It was a risky course of action to take and
would probably end in disaster for all of them, he thought.
Malverez wanted this female more than any other he had ever taken
by force. She seemed different from all the rest who lay buried
beneath the sands of Mexico.
    He knew that he would have to fight for
her.
    The five men had ridden with him for ten
long years and yet he knew that only fear had ever kept them in
check. There was no loyalty in their ranks. Just the fear of the
weak when faced with the mighty.
    Now they loomed like vultures waiting for
him to sleep. There was no way that he would ever awaken from that
sleep if he did not do something to calm them down.
    Malverez touched the hair of
the female beside him and gritted what was left of his teeth. She
did not move a muscle. The bandit did not know whether she was asleep or
just frozen with fear. He glared at the men through the smoke of
his cigar, then picked up the two matching pistols and rose to his
feet.
    The five other bandits all stood up with
their hands on the grips of their own guns and faced him defiantly.
Whatever he had decided to do, they could only guess at.
    Malverez flicked the ash off his cigar with
the barrel of one of his pistols and then began to laugh.
    He had made up his mind.
    He would try and bluff them into doing
nothing with the promise of their getting what they wanted.
    ‘We have had a very eventful
day, amigos,’ Malverez joked as he slipped one gun back into its holster
and twirled the other on his index finger.
    ‘ We want to share this
female with you,’ Carlos grunted angrily.
    ‘ And you shall.’
    The five bandits’ faces went blank.
    He had confused them, if only briefly. They
stared at him as he removed his sombrero and spun it across the
cave.
    ‘ You have changed your mind
about keeping her for yourself?’
    Malverez rubbed the cold gun barrel over his
unshaven cheek and smiled broadly.
    ‘I was lying when I said that I
would keep this girl for my own satisfaction, Jose.’
    The bandit stepped forward and tilted his
head at the seemingly jovial Malverez.
    ‘It was a bad joke, amigo,’ one of the others
commented.
    ‘Si, it was a very bad joke. But when you
all lost your tempers, I got angry. I should have said