Stryker's Law (A Matt Stryker Western #1)

by Chuck Tyrell

  Cahill planted his feet and swung a huge roundhouse right that caught Riddle high on the cheekbone and sent him sliding down the bar. “B-b-b-b-oss! Don’t –“

  Cahill’s gloved left fist ploughed into Riddle’s midriff just below his sternum. He fell to his hands and knees, retching a thin stream of bile onto the dirty sawdust.

  Wynn cajoled his brother. “Come on, Nate. Let me have a turn.”

  Cahill stood back. “I don’t want him dead, Wynn. And don’t you cripple him either.”

  Wynn put on a feral grin. “You don’t mind if he hurts though, right?”

  “After what that ass did, he goldam ought to hurt. He let Matt Stryker take the marshal’s badge away from him. Shit. That’s going to cost us, and fart face here needs to pay for it.”

  Nate Cahill turned away from the blubbering Riddle. By the time he opened the door to his second-story office, Tag Riddle’s screams had begun in earnest.

  Prudence Comstock looked up from her desk at the Examiner when the cowbell on the door clanged, announcing a visitor. The broad shoulders of the man nearly filled the doorway. He seemed familiar, but Prudence couldn’t place him. The man removed his black hat as he came in, and Prudence couldn’t suppress a gasp at the ruin of his face. Surely the grimace was supposed to be a smile. She quickly recovered her poise. “How may I help you, sir?” she asked. He grimaced again, the scars pulling his lips in unintended directions.

  “I’m Matt Stryker,” he rasped, “the new marshal of Ponderosa.”

  Only then did Prudence notice the badge pinned to his vest. “Marshal?”

  “That’s right. Ponderosa no longer needs to worry about the likes of Nate Cahill and his gang.”

  Prudence couldn’t take her eyes from the ruins of Stryker’s face. His eyes twinkled back of the ridges of scars that surrounded them. “I wondered if the Examiner did job work,” Stryker said. “I’d like some notices printed.”

  “Of course.” She retrieved a job form from the desk. “Fill this in, please.”

  Stryker took the form and fished a stub of pencil from his vest pocket. Prudence went back to the desk while Stryker scowled at the form, wrote, scratched out, then wrote again. At last he finished, and turned the job order over to Prudence. She reviewed the contents.

  NOTICE

  No one shall carry firearms north of Bog Creek.

  Drunk and disorderly men shall be jailed until sober.

  Men who quarrel and fight shall be jailed and fined.

  Horses shall be ridden or driven no faster than a trot.

  No loitering.

  No vagrancy.

  Matt Stryker, Marshal

  “I wonder if the law can enforce these, Mister Stryker.”

  “Marshal Stryker, ma’am. Yes, we’ll enforce the rules.”

  “But is it legal? Can you just make up rules like this?”

  “Marshals do what is good for the town, Miss, we make the rules.”

  Prudence noticed Dan Brady standing near the open door. He seemed to be listening intently. “Shouldn’t the town council debate your rules, Mister Stryker? And shouldn’t they decide if you’re marshal?”

  “Nate Cahill took over the marshal’s office without a vote, Miss Comstock. Your brother – and the town, I might add – offered me the job of marshal. I was merely somewhat delayed in taking up the badge.” Stryker’s hand strayed to his damaged face and a finger traced the scar that pulled his left eyelid askance. “But now I’m here and Ponderosa will settle down and be civilized.” Stryker’s voice went cold and Prudence felt a shiver crawl up her spine. “I’ll see to it,” the big marshal said, “I purely will.”

  A thousand retorts formed on Prudence Comstock’s tongue . . . and died there as she looked into the cold hard ice-blue eyes of Matt Stryker.

  “The job will be ready in the morning, Mister Stryker.” Prudence refused to call him marshal. He’d taken the badge by force, must likely beaten that Tag Riddle. She turned her back on Stryker and carried the job order back into the press room. She heard Stryker say “Thank you, ma’am” as she shouldered her way through the swinging door.

  Zack Everett stood before the type bins, setting the next issue of the Examiner. “Job?” he asked.

  Prudence nodded and held out the order. Everett wiped his hands almost clean of ink and lead and took the handwritten notice. His eyebrows shot up as he scanned the sheet. “My oh my. Things are going to get very interesting. Matt Stryker, eh? I heard he turned the marshal job down. Matt Stryker. He’ll make the cowboys and blue bellies toe the line, if anyone can, but he’s headed down a thorny row, mark my words.”

  Dan Brady raised his arm to halt the Bar B Bar riders. “You boys got to leave your hog legs here with me when you go uptown,” he said.

  “You by yourself, Brady?”

  “Marshal Stryker says no sidearm’s north of Bog Creek. So leave them here.” Dan waved at the holding pen behind him. “Just unbuckle your gun belts and I’ll hang them on the top rail of the corral until you get back.”

  “Don’t like going to town naked, Brady. What do you say to that?”

  Dan shifted to face the young puncher. “Willis, before you get your back up, remember it’s Matt Stryker you’re facing, not Dan Brady. All I got is this shotgun and my old Dragoon.”

  “Come on, fellas. We’re just going over to Gardner’s store.” The blond cowboy on the left unbuckled his rig. “Here, Brady. Take it and be damned.” He handed the Colt and rig over with a smile.

  “Thanks, Dandy. I owe you a beer.” Dan hung the gun belt over the top pole while the rest of the riders followed Dandy’s lead.

  Seven gun belts hung on the corral fence as the riders gigged their horses up the grade toward Corduroy Road. Dan heaved a sigh of relief. No way he could face down half a dozen men with two loads of buckshot. He pulled his Dragoon and added a shell so all six chambers were full. Marshal Stryker told him to collect all firearms at the bottom of the grade from Ponderosa down into Bogtown, and that’s what he’d do. He was a little surprised to find the palms of his hands wet. He wiped them on the seat of his britches.

  Dan collected nineteen rigs and four loose guns that he put on a square of canvas before trouble rode his way from the bowels of Bogtown. None of Cahill’s gang was among the riders, but they all hung around Old Glory, and often did dirty work for Cahill. Dan eared the hammers back on the shotgun when he saw the bunch coming toward him from Bogtown. As they neared, the riders spread out. Now Dan could tell who they were. The leader wore a scar on his face, and they called him McGurty. Behind him, a youngster known as Kid Carl, a rider who just went by Old Man, Quaid who’d almost lost his scalp fighting Indians, and Whistling Willy.

  Dan’s mouth went dry. These hard cases were out to try the new marshal’s rules. If they got by Dan, the rule of law might as well jump in the Comstock log pond. He wiped his palms on his britches again.

  “That’s far enough, McGurty,” Dan said. His voice cracked.

  The scar-faced man grinned. “Sure, deputy.” He reined his horse in facing Dan. Two riders kept on. Then they too reined in, and Dan faced a semi-circle of grinning hard cases.

  “Just unbuckle your rigs and hand them down to me,” Dan said. He held the shotgun pointed more or less in McGurty’s direction.

  “Deputy, I put my hat on first thing in the morning. And soon as I pull up my pants, I buckle on this here Peacemaker.” McGurty patted the Colt .45 holstered high on his right hip. “I’d rather go without my pants than without my Peacemaker.”

  Dan licked his lips. He couldn’t point the shotgun at them all, so he left it on McGurty. “Marshal’s rules say no one goes into town wearing iron,” Dan said, trying to make his voice sound like he meant business.

  “What’d you mean, ‘Marshal’s rules?’ Last I knew, Tag Riddle was marshal of this burg. Ain’t heard nothing different.”

  “Matt Stryker’s the marshal, McGurty, you know that.”

  “Do I now? And where is this marshal. Ho
w come he’s got a wet-back-of-the-ears kid deputy disarming us men?”

  Dan wanted to wipe the trickle of sweat from his face, but knew any move on his part might start a shootout. “Just hand over the hardware,” he said.

  McGurty sneered at Dan. “Suppose you take my gun away from me, deputy. Think you can do that?”

  “I can blow you to Hell and gone, McGurty.” Brax Webber had always said to take out the leader of a gang first. Dan concentrated on the scar-faced man.

  “You ain’t got the guts, kid.” McGurty edged his horse closer and Dan backed off a step. The other men closed the semi-circle in around Dan, grinning like coyotes in a chicken coop.

  “Defying the law can get you shot, McGurty. I’ll do it, I swear I will.”

  McGurty threw his head back and laughed while his hand reached for his nickel-plated Peacemaker.

  “McGurty!” The gravelly roar came from the corner of the boardwalk. Stryker stood there with a Winchester at his cheek. He triggered the long gun as McGurty’s Colt came out of its holster. The .44-70 slug took the gunman in the chest and slammed him from his horse into a lifeless lump on the ground. The horse reared and whirled as the other riders clawed for their sidearm’s. Dan took three running steps toward Stryker and dropped behind a water barrel standing at the corner of the ketch pens. He triggered the right barrel of the shotgun as he disappeared. The buckshot went wide of the hard case riders but a pellet grazed Old Man’s paint horse, which reared and went to bucking. Kid Carl’s Colt barked and water poured from a bullet hole in the water barrel. Tom Hall’s shotgun bellowed from the south corner of the ketch pens and the Kid clutched a bloody forearm to his body and spurred his bay away toward Bogtown. Old Man couldn’t get control of his crow-hopping paint, which left Whistling Willy and Quaid to face Dan, Tom Hall, and Marshal Stryker. Quaid snapped a shot at Dan that put another hole low in the water barrel. He whirled his horse as Stryker fired the Winchester. The marshal’s shot went wide of its mark but burned a furrow across the top of Quaid’s shoulder. The hard case spurred his horse toward Bogtown and Whistling Willy followed. He’d not drawn a gun nor fired a shot.

  “Let them go,” Stryker called.

  McGurty’s horse loped after the departing riders. Out in the long grass, Old Man finally got control of his paint. He’d dropped his six-gun to stay on the horse and now he held both hands high.

  “Get over here,” Stryker shouted. He strode down the incline to meet the hard case. “Name?” Stryker demanded.

  “Charles Jenkins, but everyone calls me Old Man.”

  “Well, Old Man, we’re the law in Ponderosa, and we mean to maintain the peace. You ride back to Bogtown and tell that to Nate Cahill. You got that?”

  Old Man still held his hands at shoulder height.

  “You can put your hands down,” Stryker said. “I don’t figure you’re crazy enough to reach for iron right now.” He chuckled, but it sounded like gravel rattling.

  Old Man gingerly lowered his hands. “No disrespect, marshal. We figured that green boy was the only one around. We were all-fired wrong about that.”

  Stryker growled. “That you did. Remember that lesson well. When you see one of us lawmen, there’s another close by. We watch each other’s backs.” Stryker waved at McGurty’s body. “And you tell Cahill to send someone out to pick up McGurty.”

  “I’ll do that, marshal,” Old Man said.

  “Git.”

  Old Man spurred the paint and disappeared into the warrens of Bogtown.

  “Think he’ll leave town?” Dan came out from behind the leaking barrel.

  “Or else,” said Tom Hall. His open honest-looking face seemed certain Old Man would choose atmospheres far away from Ponderosa.

  “You hit Kid Carl with that shotgun,” Dan said. “How come he never went down?”

  Hall grinned. “Rock salt. No need to shoot down more men that we have to.” He glanced at Stryker. “Course, if Matt hadn’t downed McGurty, you’d be laying there instead of him. Boy, you gotta learn when to stop talking and start shooting.” Hall smiled to take the sting from his words.

  “You did good, Dan,” said Stryker. “Here come the lollygawkers. Nothing people like to look at more than a dead body, except maybe a hanging.” Stryker’s rasping voice carried a hint of bile.

  As the gawkers gathered, three riders appeared from Bogtown, with a fourth horse on a lead rope.

  “What’d he do to get shot?” someone asked.

  “He drew a gun on Deputy Brady,” Stryker said. He faced the curious people. “McGurty here reckoned he was bigger than the law,” he said. “Had he respected the law and the rules the law proscribes, he’d be alive and well this very moment. Instead, he chose to defy an officer of the law – Deputy Brady – acting in the line of duty. Luckily, I was able to take care of McGurty before he shot the deputy.”

  In the crowd of onlookers, Prudence Comstock scribbled on a pad of foolscap. She didn’t look happy. Dan figured Prudence was about the prettiest woman on the whole Colorado Plateau, but she was almighty sharp with her words and independent with her thinking. She puzzled Dan more than a little.

  The Bogtown riders stopped some distance away. One man gigged his mount a few steps closer. He kept both hands on the saddle horn so the lawmen could see his peaceful intentions.

  “Marshal,” the man called. “We come for McGurty, if it’s all right with you.”

  “You’re the one called Breed then,” Stryker said.

  “I am.”

  “You’ll do good to stay away from Nate Cahill, son.”

  Breed nodded. “I hear you, marshal, but I fork my own horses. McGurty?”

  Stryker waved a hand. “Take the body and be gone. Good riddance.”

  Breed stood his ground. “McGurty rode for the brand, marshal, just like you. Sometimes doing a job can get a man killed.”

  “Stay on the right side of the law, Breed, and you’ll not end up like McGurty.”

  “Begging your pardon, marshal, but lead poisoning is what it is and where you stand ain’t no protection. I’ve seen more than my share in the Nations. White Man’s law ain’t all it’s cut out to be. Now, can we pick up McGurty?”

  Stryker stepped aside. “Give these men room,” he said.

  Dan and Tom Hall backed up against the ketch pen fence and Stryker herded the onlookers a few feet back up the slope. Breed and the riders hefted McGurty’s body and put it belly down on the extra horse.

  Nate Cahill stood on the porch of Old Glory when Breed and the riders returned with McGurty’s corpse draped over the saddle.

  “What shall we do with the dead man?” Breed asked.

  “Dump him on the trash pile for all I care,” Cahill said, “but you’ll probably want to get some men together to dig a hole for him in the cemetery.”

  “He got any kin?”

  “None that I know of. Mac wasn’t the kind of man to spend a lot of time talking about home life. Just get him planted.”

  “Okay, boss.” Breed sat his horse, making no move to follow Cahill’s orders.

  “What do you want, Breed?”

  “I’m thinking, boss. May not have been a good idea to let that white man live. He’ll cause you a lot more grief before this is all over.”

  “You just bury the body, Breed. Don’t try to think.”

  “White men make that mistake all the time.”

  “Mistake?”

  “Yeah. Just taking it for granted that a red man can’t think. You watch out for that white man, boss.”

  “I’ve got plans for this town, Breed, and Matt Stryker’s not going to mess them up. After you’ve buried McGurty, keep the shovel handy so you can use it to bury Stryker.”

  Chapter Five

  “Read the Examiner, Mr. Brady?” Prudence Comstock pushed a freshly printed copy of Ponderosa’s newspaper into Dan Brady’s hands as he strode down the boardwalk toward Clark’s Kitchen. He’d been up since 4 o’clock in the morning to take his turn at the night watch a
nd he dearly wanted to get to Clark’s for two or three cups of good coffee and Jimmie Clark’s best Rancher’s Breakfast. He could almost smell the bacon. But then, Prudence Comstock stopped the world for Dan Brady, and hunger could wait whenever he had a chance to talk to her.

  “’Morning, Miss Comstock. Turning cold of late. I’ll have a copy of the paper, if you please. What’s interesting today?”

  “Five cents, Mister Brady. Don’t forget to read the story on the front page about yesterday’s murderous shooting. I wrote it.”

  Dan paid and took the folded paper from Prudence and watched as she went up the boardwalk. Prudence seemed different this morning. She walked with a spring in her step that hadn’t been there before. Dan put the paper under his arm and continued on to Clark’s Kitchen.

  The usual breakfast crowd filled Clark’s. Jimmie Clark was one of the few who believed in showing a menu to his customers. The Rancher’s Breakfast consisted of three eggs, four strips of hog belly bacon, potatoes fried with onions, and sourdough bread, toasted on both sides, and the meal always came with a pat of butter and a crock of high-country honey. Jimmie had his own hen house, but with cold weather coming on, the supply of eggs would dwindle as the hens gradually quit laying for the winter. Right now there was no egg problem, though, and Dan settled down in an empty seat to enjoy his. The meal came with the job, not out of Dan’s pocket, and that made it taste even better.

  Becky Clark passed Dan, her arms laden with plates of breakfast. “The usual, Dan?” she said.

  “’Morning, Beck. Yeah. Eggs over easy.”

  “You got it. Just give Jimmie a couple of minutes. I’ll be right back.” Becky disappeared into the kitchen.

  Dan opened the newspaper. . .

  Man Hurled into Eternity in a Moment

  Stormy as events sometimes get in Bogtown, nothing of that ilk ever occurred in Ponderosa until the events of yesterday. Following the unfortunate demise of Marshal Braxton Webber in Bogtown last fall, the town has been noted for its quietness and good order. It seems the quiet was but the calm that preceded the storm that burst upon us yesterday, although it burst not in Bogtown but upon the streets of Ponderosa as men who call themselves the law brought the thunder of firearms to the holding corrals on Corduroy Road near the Great Western and Santa Fe railway tracks in our good town.