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idea that he was heading straight into the jaws of a
place that was probably more dangerous than any wanted outlaw or
Indian whom he had ever encountered.
    Iron
Eyes was galloping into Devil’s Pass.

CHAPTER
EIGHT
    Big
Jack Brady was indeed just that. Big by any definition of the word
that anyone could think of. Standing over six feet seven inches in
height and weighing nearly three hundred pounds, the outlaw had met
few men who dared to challenge him. Those who had were all dead,
either by his skilled use of the guns he wore strapped to his broad
hips, or by the dozen men who trailed in his large
shadow.
    For more than forty
years the huge outlaw had roamed steadily south from the Canadian
logging camps high in the tree-covered mountains that had spawned
him, until he had discovered the lands once partitioned off as the
Indian territories.
    But
the various tribes that had been forced off their own land and
brought hundreds of miles to this inhospitable terrain soon
evaporated when men like Big Jack muscled their way in. The tribes
that remained in the designated territory were the more hardy
people such as the Apache and Comanche who were used to living on
even the most arid of lands. Yet even they kept their distance from
the growing outlaw population.
    At first the Indians
had welcomed the outlaws, but soon they discovered that their
guests had only one intention, and that was to take complete
control of the entire territory.
    Situated on the western side of Devil’s Pass, the territory
soon became known simply as the Badlands. It proved to be a safe
haven for the outlaws who, like Big Jack Brady, roamed the West
robbing and killing. For the law never entered the Badlands. It was
still officially regarded as Indian land on the maps and documents
back East and therefore not subject to the laws that ruled the rest
of the states. As long as the Indians remained within its
boundaries and behaved themselves, the government wanted nothing to
do with the place. Anyone who ventured across its borders did so at
their own risk.
    Money still flowed in
regularly from the Federal Reserve to the half-dozen Indian agents
who had remained long after their charges had left. For the
unscrupulous agents were paid in gold to buy food for the thousands
of Indians in their care. Having never informed the powers back
East that things had changed and that they had few if any Indians
to look after, the agents had grown wealthy.
    A town
had sprung up in the very center of the Badlands and although it
did not appear on any official maps, it was quite prosperous and
popular with the outlaws who found sanctuary there.
    Calico had everything
that other similar-sized towns outside the notorious Badlands had,
but it had more. More of everything. More saloons. More brothels.
More gambling-houses. The only thing that it had less of than the
towns outside the Badlands, was law.
    Even
though a crude form of self-government existed in Calico to keep
the thieves from stealing the gold fillings out of each other’s
mouths, it was not based on any known legal system. It was the law
of the gun that ruled.
    It was lynch law.
    The strongest became
even stronger.
    Big Jack Brady had
managed to carve himself out a tidy slice of Calico since his
arrival with his henchmen. Few dared to argue with the burly man.
Those who had been in Calico since it had first grown out of the
dry sand resented him, but as long as he did not try to take what
was theirs they tolerated his presence.
    Another reason why few
law-abiding people had ever heard of Calico was simple. There were
only two ways into the wild town.
    One
route came down from the north across almost uninhabited land, long
vacated by half a dozen tribes, and the only other way to reach it
was via a trail deep within the fearsome Devil’s Pass.
    To the thousands of
outlaws and people who had made Calico their home it seemed that
they had found paradise.
    But they had no idea
that one man in their midst had a plan