by Chuck Tyrell
Atkinson whipped glances right and left. Bloodthirsty faces filled both sides of the line of fire.
Buckskin Frank Leslie took bets from a crowd of men in the corner at the end of the bar.
No piano played. No whores laughed. No glasses clinked. And the silence seemed to come to a point on Clive Atkinson.
“Damn it all,” he said and went for his gun.
The movement of Atkinson’s lips telegraphed his intentions to Stryker, who took a big step to his right. Atkinson’s bullet plowed into the bar at gut level. Stryker’s Remington Army bored a hole in Atkinson’s chest, but Stryker didn’t pull the trigger. “You can live, Clive, if you’ll just drop the Colt on the floor. You try to cock it and you’ll find a hole plumb through your innards. With Doc Goodfellow here in tombstone, you might make it. I don’t think it’s worth a try.”
Atkinson sorely wanted to cock his SAA for another shot at Stryker, but the .44 caliber bore of Stryker’s Remington never strayed, and Stryker’s eyes focused on Atkinson like he was the only living thing on earth. He heaved a sigh and dropped his gun.
“The other one, too,” Stryker said. There was no give in his voice. “Thumb and forefinger.”
Atkinson used his left hand, thumb and forefinger, to draw his other SAA. This, too, he let fall to the floor.
The door to the Bird Cage opened.
Stryker didn’t look. His Remington held its steady aim on Atkinson’s gut.
“’Nough,” said the man who pushed the door open. “You two wanna shoot it out, you do it outside of town.”
“That sumbitch killed my brother,” Atkinson said. He looked longingly at the Colts, perhaps wondering if he dove for one Striker might miss.
“Don’t even think about it, Clive,” the man warned. The shield badge on his vest caught the light of the Bird Cage’s lanterns. He held a well-worn Peacemaker in his hand.
“I was gonna tell you about Atkinson,” Stryker said, but you weren’t at the Oriental.”
“Too early,” Marshal Jim Neagle said.
“I’m gonna put this hogleg away, Jim. Don’t you let that mad brother kill me.”
“You do that, Matt. This’n’ll accompany me to the local hoosegow, where he’ll stay until you’re well outta town. You are leaving.”
“I am. Off in the morning.”
“Good. People tend to die when you’re in town.”
“I remember saying that same thing to Tom Hall.”
Neagle nodded. “That’s true too.” He waved his Peacemaker at Atkinson. “You walk to the door real careful, Clive. We’ll meander over to the jail, where you can spend the night.”
Atkinson fumed, but was careful not to make a move that could be interpreted as going for a gun. “Bastard killed my brother. I’m gonna for sure kill him. Mark my words.”
“You won’t do it in my town, Atkinson,” Neagle said. “Move.”
Atkinson walked very slowly, almost like he was hobbled. His face was an ugly mask.
“You’ll have trouble with that boy down the line,” Neagle said.
“Yeah, I reckon. But not in Tombstone.”
“For a fact.”
“Want me to pick up his guns for you?”
“Nah. Jer,” he said, looking at a bartender, “get Clive’s guns for me, OK?”
“Sure.” The ‘tender whisked around the bar, dragging a wet cloth over it as he went. He squatted and got Atkinson’s guns. No one made any kind of suspicious move. Neagle still had his Peacemaker in his hand, and the customers at the Bird Cage didn’t push him.
Jerry the barman held the guns out.
“Hang ‘em here.” Neagle pointed his left index finger in Jerry’s direction.
Jerry hung Atkinson’s guns on Neagle’s finger by their trigger guards.
“Thanks.”
“Anything for you, Marshal.”
Neagle favored Jerry with a little smile so fleeting that it might not have been a smile at all.
“OK,” Neagle said. “Let’s you and me trot on over to the jailhouse, young Mr. Atkinson. Let’s go!”
Atkinson cringed at Neagle’s command, but pushed open the door so the two men could exit.
“Later, Matt,” Neagle said.
“See ya at the Oriental,” Stryker said.
“Why in Hell didn’t you shoot that rannie, Matt?” Buckskin Frank said.
“Don’t really like to kill people,” Stryker said.
“She-it. Man can’t make any money if gunfighters don’t gunfight.”
“Sorry about that. Beer?”
“You buying?”
“Buy you a beer. Stronger stuff makes you nasty. I wouldn’t like that.”
“Beer it is.”
“Two beers,” Stryker called to Jerry.
“Coming up.” Moments later he slid two tall foaming glasses to a stand in front of Stryker and Buckskin Frank. “The best that Dutchman Shoen can brew. Fresh from Yuma once a week.”
Stryker blew a hole in the foam and sipped the beer. He put two dimes on the bar. “Beers a dime a piece in Tombstone, I hear,” he said.
“’S right,” Jerry said.
“Mick Kennedy around?”
Jerry pointed his chin at a man serving at the far end of the bar. “Him down there talking with them galoots. Everyone coming in asking for Mick.”
“Looks busy.”
“Damn right. Someone buying gun hands for some outfit called the Nogales Guards.”
“Buying?”
“Anyone paying a hundred a month for buck soldiers gotta be buying guns. That ain’t a hiring wage. It’s a buying wage. In my book, it is.”
“I shoot pretty good,” Stryker said.
“Excuse me, Mr. Stryker, but I can’t see you selling your gun.”
“Matt Stryker don’t sell out to no one,” Buckskin Frank said. “Now me, I can be bought. Not cheap, though.”
Jerry laughed. “I reckon your gun could be bought, Mr. Leslie. But I can’t imagine you slogging through the cholla with a trapdoor Springfield on your back.”
“Sounds like you know a bit about what’s going on,” Stryker said.
“No secret,” Jerry said. “Jason Bills and Art Canby are putting together a hundred-man legion down to Nogales. They say to protect the town from raggedy peons coming up from Mexico.”
“Don’t sound like a reason to raise an army,” Stryker said.
“Buckskin Frank tapped Stryker on the arm. “Lily Sue’s up to sing in a minute,” he said. “I’m gonna get me a stage-side seat.”
“Good luck,” Stryker said.
Jerry ambled down the bar to serve a couple of miners, then wandered back.
“Good brew,” Stryker said.
Jerry nodded.
“Want one? They let you drink behind the bar?”
Jerry smiled and his blue eyes twinkled. “In the Bird Cage,” he said, “anybody can drink anything, but it’s got to tally at the end of the day.”
“Have one on me.” Stryker pushed a two-bit piece across the bar. “No change needed,” he said.
Jerry brought a foaming glass back and set it on the bar in front of Stryker. He took care of two more miners. Old Potrero straight. A sip of beer, then more whiskey for more men. The Bird Cage shook with noise and laughter. Jerry took another sip.
The beer was half gone before Jerry had a chance to say anything more to Stryker.
“Busy night,” Stryker said.
“Usual,” Jerry said on his way by.
Then Miss Lily Sue Barkley began to sing from the little stage at the end of the room. Suddenly the Bird Cage was quiet. Men held drinks halfway to their mouths. Women held on to men’s arms and laid their cheeks against the nearest shoulder.
Stryker moved to the near end of the bar, away from the entertainment. Jerry followed. No one ordered drinks while Lily Sue sang.
Jerry took a long pull on his beer. He leaned across the bar and, in a voice meant for Stryker’s ears only, he said, “Something funny going on over to
Nogales. Talk about how all the land north of the 19th parallel should by rights belong to the Arizona Territory. That’s a beeline straight from Nogales across the desert to Puerto Peñasco on the Sea of Cortez.”
Stryker lifted an eyebrow. “A land grab?” He fished out his bandana to wipe away the tears.
Jerry nodded.
Chapter Seven
Alfredo McLaws could feel the eyes as he moved south through Skeleton Canyon, even though the night darkness surely kept him out of sight. Most canyons have a stream or a river at the bottom. Skeleton was no different, with Skeleton Creek leading into the canyon from the northeast and exiting to the southwest. Cattle trail easily there; there’s no place they can go but straight ahead, either up into Arizona or down into Mexico. Alfredo went southwest.
A cave in the western face of the canyon gave him shelter through the day. Sleep did not describe what he did during daylight hours. Napped, perhaps. He slept lightly with his ear on his hand, which was pressed to the floor of the cave. Human footsteps or the sound of a horse walking would come through the stone magnified, and he would be ready. As he napped, his right hand gripped the handle of his naked Bowie.
He heard the patter of rodents’ feet and the scaly swish of a rattlesnake passing, but nothing manmade. Still, he had felt eyes. Someone watched. Who?
The sun seemed to take longer to set. Shadows came early to the canyon bottom, but the sky kept its pale blue for hours after that. Alfredo did not move until he could count the stars. And then he slipped from the cave like a ghost.
The eyes were gone. After a long moment beside the cave entrance, Alfredo stepped out; He followed the cow trail at the bottom of Skeleton Canyon as it wound along the creek. The eyes returned after the moon reached its zenith. Somehow the eyes did not breathe danger. They only watched, and watched. Whether Alfredo went fast or slow, the eyes watched.
He kept a moderate pace, traveling less than five white man miles in an hour of time. By dawn, he would be in Mexico and out of U.S. Army territory. From there he had only to worry about the Federales, who were hardly worth any worry, and the Apaches, who were worth a great deal of worry. Why is it our tribes must always be at war? He walked onward.
Sparrow materialized beside Stryker as he left the Bird Cage.
“What is it?” Stryker asked.
“The Yaqui is found.”
“Where?”
“In Skeleton Canyon.”
“Does he know?”
“¿Quien sabe?”
“Why speak Mexican?”
Stryker could feel Sparrow’s smile. “He is in Mexico,” Sparrow said.
“I told Jim Neagle I’d see him at the Oriental.”
Sparrow said nothing.
“I guess that can wait. Horses got some rest and a bait of grain. Think you’d mind getting them saddled up and give ‘em a good drink at the water trough?”
“I can do that,” Sparrow said. “You pay the livery man?”
“You pay him with this.” Stryker gave Sparrow a double eagle.
“Good.”
Stryker strode away. Ordinarily, he’d ride, but the horse’s stamina would be better used out in the Sonora desert. He turned on Third Street and went half a block east. A light showed in the window and the shingle on the gate said, George Goodfellow, M.D. He opened the gate of the picket fence and walked the flagstones to the door.
“Yeah, yeah,” came the answer to Stryker’s knock. The door jerked open. “Who’s shot?” Doc Goodfellow said.
“’Lo, Doc.”
“Matthew? By all that’s holy. Matthew Stryker. Come in. Come in.”
“You left word in Prescott that I owed you a drink, Doc.”
Goodfellow laughed. “That I did. That I did. Is that what you intend, Matthew?”
“Well, I don’t have time to do it proper at the Oriental, Doc. But I thought I’d say hello before I rode out.”
“Well, as I said, come in. Come in. We can have a drink from my resident bottle of Turley’s Mill, then.” Doc Goodfellow stood back and beckoned Stryker into his office-home.
“Thank you, Doc. But just for a minute.” Stryker applied his bandana to the trickle of tears from his right eye. He stepped into Doctor Goodfellow’s front room.
“Jayzus,” Goodfellow said. “Not meaning to blaspheme. Someone played bloody Hell with your face, Matthew. Bloody Hell.”
“His name was Jake Cahill. He’s dead.”
“Should be. Yes. Should be. Now. Let me have a look.”
“I didn’t come here for treatment, Doc.”
“Shut up, will you. Just shut up, and let me see. Come over here next to the lamp.”
Stryker followed the doctor and stood where he was told.
Goodfellow used surprisingly gentle hands to turn Stryker’s face this way and that. Tears flowed from his damaged eye. “You never went to a doctor with this, did you?”
“No doctor around at the time.”
“Where?”
“Over on the Mogollon Rim.”
“Where?”
“Over near Cherry Creek.”
“Good doctors in Holbrook, Snowflake, Ponderosa, and Saint Johns. Why’d you not go?”
“I can make it with the face I’ve got, Doc. I didn’t come over here to talk about the condition of that face.”
“Then what for? Hmmm? What for?”
“To thank you for getting that bullet outta my guts, and to ask if you know anything about what’s going on in Nogales.”
“You’re welcome.” Goodfellow rubbed his stubble. “Nogales? Nogales,” he said.
“Seems a man named Jason Bills and an old CSA Colonel called Canby have started recruiting gunhands for a militia called the Nogales Guards. You get around, Doc. You heard anything about what they plan to do with all those guns?”
Goodfellow frowned. “Doctor’s not to talk about what patients tell him,” he said. “But I can say that I’ve heard several rumors about Jason Bills, and he’s no patient of mine.”
“Like what?”
“Well, first off, Bills is rich as Satan himself. Buys and sells land, mines, businesses. Doesn’t do a thing by himself. Just makes money off what others do. If I was to bet, I’d say he’s the wealthiest man this side of Leadville.”
“What’s he gonna do with a hundred gunmen parading around like soldiers?”
“He’ll do nothing. Whatever’s done will be done by Artemus Canby. Bills may make the money in the end, but Canby will do the work. Mark my words.”
“And what work’s Canby gonna do?”
“Who knows?”
“What have you heard, Doc?”
“People here, and in Nogales, I suppose, are saying the Gadsden Purchase robbed Arizona of land. That the border should follow the 19th parallel all the way to the Sea of Cortez. Give Arizona a deep water port, they say.”
“And Bills is going to get that land with a hundred men?”
“Rurales are not much force in Sonora,” Goodfellow said. “Join me in some Turley’s Mill?” He hoisted a long-necked bottle half full of amber liquid. “Not half bad, as whiskeys go,” he said.
“Thanks, Doc. Reckon I’d better get along. Got some riding to do. Not good to ride on a belly full of whiskey.”
“Matthew. I don’t know what you’re doing, but when you’re not in a hurry, come in and let me take a real good look at your face. I can’t repair all the damage, of course. But some, Matthew, some.”
“I’ll do that, Doc. And thank you.” Stryker backed through the front door, shook hands with Doctor Goodfellow, and turned toward the picket fence. Sparrow stood outside the gate with his lineback buckskin and the zebra dun for Stryker.
Thirty miles to the border, then who knew how many miles to Alfredo. Sparrow held out the zebra’s reins.
“Reckon we should be in Mexico by sunup,” Stryker said.
“The smokes will tell us where to go for Alfredo,” Sparrow said. He mounted. He still wore the serape across his shoulders, and had his s
hort-brimmed hat pulled low above his eyes. But something made him look Apache. Something.
When the Hall & Hodges wagons from Tombstone rolled into Nogales filled with tents and armament, fifty-seven recruits stood by to help unload. Mexican laborers had cleared a place on high ground north of Nogales for the newly formed Guard’s bivouac.
Artemus Canby directed the operation. By evening, the tents were up and cooks prepared a meal of beef and beans, like any chuck wagon would serve. After they’d eaten, Canby called the men into formation on the parade ground.
When they were in ranks, Canby raised his voice. “Men,” he said. “First, let me welcome you to the Nogales Guard. Each of you has signed enlistment papers, but let me just make some simple things clear. This is a military detachment. As such, military rules are the order of the day. Many of you have seen military action. To some of you, the military is something new.”
Canby cleared his throat and spat to one side.
“Tomorrow you will be issued weapons. Of course you may keep your own. You are to keep the issued weapons as clean as your own, or cleaner. Now. How many of you have served as officers?”
One hand.
“Step forward.”
The man moved to a place one step in front of the ranks.
“How many sergeants?”
Three hands.
“Step forward.”
The three former sergeants joined the former officer.
“The Guard will be formed into four companies of twenty men. The companies will have one captain, one master sergeant, and two sergeants. The remaining men will be the heavy weapons squad, which will handle the Gatling guns. Gentlemen, we are here to make history.”
Canby stepped over to confront the man who’d claimed officer experience. “Name,” he barked.
“Clifton Roberts, sir.”
Canby walked slowly around the man, who looked to be in his forties, examining him as if he were a prime beef. Roberts stood at attention, but not braced as a West Point or VMI cadet would be. “Where did you serve as an officer, Mr. Roberts?”
“First Texas Cavalry, Arizona Brigade, sir, under Colonel Hardeman. “Ninth Cavalry out of Fort Lincoln after that.”
“Till when?”
“Seventy-six, sir.”