Stryker's Ambush ( a Stryker Western #2) Page 5

  “Matthew Stryker!”

  “I’m here,” Stryker said.

  A tall man with a walrus moustache and red sash under a frock coat stepped off the boardwalk. “Don’t you recognize me, Stryker?”

  Stryker sat the zebra with his hands crossed over the saddle horn. “Can’t say as I do, stranger, but many people think they know me when they merely know me by sight. What can I do for you?”

  The man pushed his coat back behind the ivory grips of his six-gun. “Don’t tell me you’ve forgotten who Claude Atkinson is.”

  “I knew Atkinson,” Stryker said. “He died with my bullet in his useless brain. He deserved it fully.”

  Sparrow raised the Frontier and cocked it, holding it steady on the tall man’s body mass.

  “You can’t draw faster than Jaime Sparrow can pull a trigger, mister. And he hits what he points that gun at. I reckon it’d be best if you’d pull in your horns.”

  “I’m Clive Atkinson,” the man said. “And I’ll have your blood for killing my brother. Maybe not now, but sometime, somewhere.”

  “Like I said, Claude Atkinson deserved what he got. If it had not been my bullet, it would have been the hangman’s noose. Let it be, Atkinson. Let it be.”

  “For now,” Atkinson said. He turned on his heel and went into the Bird Cage.

  “You’d better watch your back, Stryker.”

  “Didn’t see you watching that, Johnny.”

  “Not my worry,” Johnny Behan said. “I gotta watch over the whole dadblamed county. Jim Neagle’s the marshal. Anything you should take up with him? Who’s your Mex pard?”

  “Get right down to it, Johnny, I’d like to have a word with Bill Meade. Hope I don’t have to shoot my way through half the town just to see him. My partner is Jaime Sparrow.”

  “Meade’s office is in the courthouse, same as mine. I’m headed that way. Come along.”

  Stryker rode the zebra along North Third Street, keeping pace with Behan’s stride. Sparrow trailed along behind, his Frontier drawn and cocked, but half out of sight beneath his serape. They turned on Tough-nut Street and Stryker dismounted and tied the zebra to the hitching rail. Sparrow looped the lineback’s reins over the same rail and squatted, back to a water trough, waiting and watching.

  Inside the courthouse, Johnny Behan led Stryker to Meade’s office. He rapped on the door.

  “Come in.” Not curt. Not expectant.

  Stryker turned the knob, nodding his thanks to Behan.

  “Matt Stryker?” Meade stood from his plush chair.

  “Don’t reckon I look much like Matt Stryker any more, but that’s who I am, Bill.”

  “Jeez. I heard about that to-do in Ponderosa, but what brings you to Tombstone?”

  “Just passing through,” Stryker said.

  “Passing through to where?”

  “Somewhere south of here.”

  Meade smiled with a mouth that wasn’t used to it. “You don’t get too far south of here before you’re outta my territory and into the Rurales’.”

  “May have to go there.”

  Meade motioned at a chair. “Tell me about it,” he said, “and have a seat. Who’re ya after?”

  Stryker thought a moment. “Ness Havelock’s asked me to hunt up Alfredo McLaws. Wants to see the man up close and personal.”

  “McLaws?”

  “None other.”

  “He’s tougher than a tub of wildcats, but I ain’t heard of him getting on the backside of the law. Ness, you say?”

  “What about the Douglas stage?”

  “What about it?”

  “Federal guys saying McLaws done it. Everybody dead. Papers of some kind gone.”

  “How’d they figure McLaws done it?”

  “Dunno. Ness don’t think he did. Wants him back alive. Sort things out. You heard anything about him?”

  “Not a word. Didn’t know he was headed in this direction.”

  “Don’t reckon he’ll cause you trouble. Seems he’s headed back to the Yaquis.”

  “Good. Coffee?”

  “Nah. Thanks. Where’d be the best place to get a beer? Thought I’d have one and then sleep it off at the Grand. May be the last chance I get for a bath for a while.”

  Meade chuckled. “Could be. Maggie’s Den is close to the Grand. Not a bad place. Try that.”

  Stryker stood. “I’ll do that. Thanks, Bill. Whereabouts would I find Jim Neagle?”

  “This time of day? The Oriental. Coolest place in town. Why?”

  “Man who called himself Clive Atkinson called me down a couple of minutes ago. Seems he’s blood kin to Claude Atkinson. I killed Claude when I was marshalling at Rimrock. He needed it, but his brother has a chip on his shoulder about that shooting. If he comes looking for me, I might have to kill him, and I’d like Jim to know beforehand.”

  “Be a good thing.” Meade thrust out his hand again. “I reckon Ness got the right man to find McLaws.”

  Stryker shook Meade’s hand. “Let’s hope so.” He could feel Meade’s eyes on him as he left the room.

  Sparrow stood up when Stryker came out of the courthouse. A slight shake of his head told Stryker nothing waited to drygulch him.

  Stryker undid the zebra’s reins and mounted. “To Dexter’s livery,” he said. Sparrow mounted the lineback and followed.

  In front of Dexter’s, Stryker waved a hand at the OK Corral and Livery across the street. “The Earp-Clanton feud came to a head over in back of that outfit,” he said. They got stalls at Dexter’s and an extra bait of oats for the horses. “I’ll slope on over to the Oriental and get a beer.”

  Sparrow nodded, but said nothing of his own plans.

  The Oriental’s noise reached Stryker when he was still half a block away. Some crowd. He pushed the door open and paused a moment to survey the drinkers and carousers. No drunken dentist now, but plenty of drunks. Stryker edged his way to the bar that ran down the east side of the room. “What’s the chance of a beer?” he asked the bartender.

  “Gimme a dime, you get a beer.”

  Stryker dug out a dime. “Thought beers were a nickel,” he said.

  “Dime since last Thursday.” The bartender scooped up the dime and went for Stryker’s beer.

  Stryker leaned against the bar and listened to the buzz of conversation around him. Half a dozen men in rough range clothing stood together near the end of the bar. At first, they talked in low tones that Stryker couldn’t hear, but as the discussion heated up, their voices got louder.

  “It’s Colonel Canby, I tell you. He’s raising men.”

  “What for, d’ya think?”

  “Damned if I know. Pay’s good though.”

  The men crowded closer together and once again the clamor of the Oriental’s drinkers obscured their words.

  “A hundred men!” The comment was nearly a shout. Then the conversation joined the general jumble of voices in the Oriental.

  “Beer,” the barkeep said, pushing the foaming brew across the bar.

  “What’s this scuttlebutt about Colonel Canby?” Stryker asked.

  The bartender shrugged. “They’re forming a guard unit in Nogales,” he said. “Heard that Judge Ward ruled that citizens could raise their own guard units if they chose to. The Nogales Guards ‘re looking for good men, they say.”

  “What for?”

  “Who the Hell knows?” The barkeep spent some time polishing a glass, but didn’t move away.

  “I’m pretty good with a gun, short or long. Who would I see about this guard unit?”

  The barkeep stared at Stryker’s face for a long moment. Then he nodded to himself. “It’s something that usually gets done over on the other side of Allen Street,” he said. “You could try the Bird Cage. Talk to Mick Kennedy. Tell him Chucky Willis sentcha.”

  “Why, much obliged, Chucky. I’ll do just that, after I finish my beer here. The Oriental does right well by its patrons. Right well.”

  Chucky the bartender smiled at the compliment and used the
cloth in his hand to wipe down the burnished mahogany of the Oriental’s fancy bar. “We do our best,” he said.

  Stryker drank down the beer and put a silver dollar on the bar. “Have yourself a drink when you get a moment,” he said. He turned to go, then turned back. “Say, Chucky, you seen Jim Neagle in here tonight?”

  “Nope. It’s early for the marshal. He don’t usually come in ‘til after suppertime.”

  Stryker lifted a hand in farewell and headed cattycorner across Allen Street for the Bird Cage. From the corner of his eye, he caught movement, and Sparrow materialized to his left. A tiny shake of the head from Sparrow told Stryker that no gunman lay in wait. Stryker nodded.

  If the Oriental was loud, the Bird Cage upped the ante. Normal conversation didn’t happen there. Only shouts. And most of them mouth-to-ear, as if every patron was born hard of hearing.

  Stryker pushed his way through the double doors and made for the bar. He didn’t even have time to order a beer when the crash of a pistol shot turned off the chatter like someone had dropped a floodgate into a river.

  “Matthew Stryker!” Clive Atkinson stood spraddle-legged in the middle of the room, a smoking Colt SAA in his hand. Patrons vied to get out of the line of fire between Stryker and Atkinson.

  Stryker turned very deliberately to face Atkinson. He said nothing. But he was ready. Whatever was coming, he was ready.

  Chapter Six

  The hole held clean water when Alfredo McLaws dipped his bandana in it and wrung the water into his canteen. The sun was down and cactus growth was thicker, so he had more than enough to eat, though some meat would have been welcome.

  Much of his strength restored, Alfredo broke into a trot and ran twenty miles before he stopped to rest. He followed the railroad through the southern foothills of the Chiricahuas and skirted Camp Rucker wide enough that none of its pickets caught sight of him. By dawn, he was on San Bernardino range. He knew Texas John Slaughter by reputation and had no intention of meeting him or any of his riders in person. He holed up under a ledge at sunup, and saw the smokes in the afternoon. He didn’t know Apache signals, but there were too many to ignore. He decided to cut south and cross the border. That way, the horse soldiers would be out of his hair.

  He wondered briefly about the affair in the badlands, but could find no rhyme or reason for army scouts to be following him. The letter he carried had nothing to do with the U.S. Government or the governments of New Mexico and Arizona, for that matter.

  He stayed under the ledge all day. He slept twice. He woke once when a packrat came trying to steal the silver concho on his possibles bag. Once when a crow landed on the ledge and cawed off and on for nearly half an hour. Alfredo stayed awake after that, just in case something came to investigate why the crow was so noisy. Nothing came.

  Soon after he left that night, he found a barrel cactus. He decapitated it with a swipe of his Bowie knife, then cut out its heart. Eaten in slivers, it was not all that different from the white man’s cucumber. Alfredo had no idea how much good the cactus pulp would do him, but it was a helluva lot better than nothing. From his hidey-hole under the ledge, Alfredo saw no smokes. Of course that did not mean there were none. In the heart of the night, he started into Skeleton Canyon. By morning, he would be in Mexico, that much nearer to Cocorit, his destination.

  Jason Bills took the stage from Tombstone to Nogales. He carried an official writ from Superior Judge Ellison Ward that declared formation of the Nogales Guard was clearly within the Second Amendment of Constitution the United States of America, which guaranteed citizens’ right to bear arms.

  To Bills, Nogales was a dirty little Mexican town, but it was also the gateway to expansion. With a little provocation, the Nogales Guards could march into Mexico and every bit of land north of the 19th parallel would belong to Arizona, and Jason Bills would stand to make a killing, as the saying went.

  Turkey Westfall worked the lines and Sid Lyle rode shotgun. The stage made its run to Nogales without mishap. No one messed with a stage guarded by Sid Lyle. Still, there wouldn’t be many more stage runs because the railroad had only a few more miles of track to be laid.

  “Mr. Lyle,” Bills said as he stepped from the stage.

  Lyle glanced in Bills’s direction, then continued his watch. Just because a stage had stopped in a town didn’t mean a robbery was impossible. If rumor had it right, the dandy Bills was hauling a lot of cash. He moved the cocked Winchester leaning against the seat to a place closer to hand. The twin hammers of his long 10-gauge shotgun were eared back, too.

  “Mr. Lyle?”

  “What.” Lyle replied sharply, without looking at Bills.

  “We’re forming a militia in Nogales, sir, and you look like officer material. If you’re interested, contact Colonel Danby at the Last Chance, near the border.

  Lyle gave a short nod. “I’ll think on it,” he said.

  “Mr. Bills? Mr. Bills?” A nervous man approached. “Are you Mr. Jason Bills?” His fingers turned a brown derby had round and round in his hands.

  “Yes, I’m Bills. What of it?”

  “Colonel Canby sent me to fetch you, sir.”

  “Good. Carriage?”

  “Got a buggy just back of the stage.”

  “Hmph. Well. Get my bags from inside the stage, and let us be on our way.”

  “Yes, sir.” The little man ducked into the stage and came out with a plump carpetbag in one hand and a bulging leather case in the other. “Is this all, Mr. Bills?”

  “Did you see any more in there?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Then why ask? Let us go.” Bills paused. “Mr. Lyle,” he called. “Think about that commission.”

  Lyle lifted a hand, but said nothing. His hard gray eyes continued their sweep of the rooftops and alleyways. The stage wasn’t home yet.

  Bills clambered into the buggy. The driver stowed the bags on the floorboard, and seated himself beside Bills. He picked up the reins and slapped them at the team, carefully guiding them around the stage and south toward the border between Arizona and Mexico.

  Harry Cairns built his place as near to the border as a building could get without actually being in Mexico. On the left, the sign said “Last Chance.” On the right, the sign said, “Gateway to Mexico.” The big adobe building had barrooms at each side beneath the signs, and other rooms for use as the need arose. For the moment, The Nogales Guards headquarters resided at Harry’s.

  “Here you are,” the buggy driver said. He reined the team to a stop in front of Harry’s.

  A tall gaunt man with premature white hair stood outside. His bearing said he’d spent years in military service. “Good day, Jason,” he said. His accent placed him south of the Mason-Dixon, a southern gentleman.

  “Hello, Artemus,” Bills said. “We are now official.”

  “Come inside, Jason, please. Let’s not make plans or say things that may compromise our position while we are outside where anyone can hear. Please come inside.” Artemus Canby held the center door to Harry’s place open so Bills could enter. The driver went in as well, a heavy bag in each hand.

  “By the fireplace, Ken,” Canby said. “Thanks for picking Mr. Bills up.”

  “Pleasure, Colonel,” the driver said.

  “That will be all.”

  “Yes, sir.” The driver left the room.

  When the door closed, Jason Bills said, “Word that we’re forming a contingent of Nogales Guards is out. You’re taking the recruits, they say.”

  “That’s fine, but what do we do with them?”

  “A Hall & Hodges freight wagon is on its way here from Tombstone as we speak. It is loaded with twenty-five four-man tents. A mess tent. A commander’s tent. And two company leader’s tents. A second wagon has mess gear, everything the cooks will need to care for the men. A third wagon carries armament. Henry rifles. Remington Army revolvers. Two Gatling guns. Sabers for officers.”

  “Uniforms?”

  “Ah, yes. Uniforms. What shall we do
for uniforms?”

  Artemus Canby retrieved some papers from a roll top desk that stood against the wall. “I have some uniform sketches,” he said. “The trousers are canvas, natural tan, with black stripes down the outer seam. The blouses are muslin, loose-fitting, with shoulder tabs but no collars. Each soldier should be issued a large tan bandana to wear around his neck. The kepis are French Foreign Legion style with neck flaps to protect the soldier’s skin from the burning sun in Sonora. Officers wear epaulets, non-coms have black stripes on their sleeves.

  Bills peered at the drawings. “Very soldierly,” he said. “Footwear?”

  “Boots. All on order in Tucson. A telegram will have these uniform items to us in a couple of days.”

  “Do it,” Bills ordered.

  Canby stiffened at Bill’s imperative tone, but merely nodded.

  Someone knocked on the door.

  “Come,” Canby called.

  “Perdon, General Canby. A group of men is here to see you. About Nogales Guards, they say.”

  Canby and Bills exchanged glances. Their plans began to come to fruition.

  “I’ll be right out, Miguel,” Canby said. “Gracias.”

  “I’ll telegraph,” Bills said. “To whom?”

  “Larson’s Bootery and Supplies.”

  Bills wrote the name on the back of one of the uniform sketches. Canby left to talk with the volunteers. Bills rubbed his hands together and smiled a rare smile to himself. He went in search of Harry Cairns.

  The silence stretched. Stryker stood straight, but relaxed, and his eyes focused solely on Atkinson. No one else in the room mattered to him.

  People scattered the moment Atkinson called Stryker’s name, but they turned to watch the shootout, for shootout it would surely be.

  “Five bucks says Clive takes scarface.” The voice came from the crowd of men standing against the bar.

  “Cover your bet and anyone else who figures Atkinson is lucky.”

  “Thanks for the confidence, Frank,” Stryker said. How he recognized Frank Leslie without looking at him was anybody’s guess. He stared at Clive Atkinson. “I don’t think you want to do this, Atkinson,” he said. “Claude died when he tried it. No reason for you to do the same.”