Hard Bitten

By Tony Masero

Six stories and novellas of the Old West told with the rough humor and brutality of hard-bitten men. Including, the famed mountain man Misty Blue who sets out to aid his long lost sister in ‘Getting Religion’. In ‘Deguello Gold’ a staggering amount of gold coin brings out rapacious competing robber bands all intent on capturing the haul at whatever the cost. In ‘Flystone’ a trip to the silver town and the Coolen brothers who will take no trouble from anybody not even the Devil himself. ‘Stormy Munday’ is a high country hunter who comes across a young maid that is literally out of this world. In ‘Rage’ all is not as it seems with the docile odd job man. ‘Wire Rope Express’ cuts a wide path through the cold mountains where sheepherders are lost and the cause hidden deep in the snow.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Tony Masero
• Release date: Jul 22, 2021
• ISBN: 9781005063412

Tony Masero

It’s not such a big step from pictures to writing.And that’s how it started out for me. I’ve illustrated more Western book covers than I care to mention and been doing it for a long time. No hardship, I hasten to add, I love the genre and have since a kid, although originally I made my name painting the cover art for other people, now at least, I manage to create covers for my own books.A long-term closet writer, only comparatively recently, with a family grown and the availability of self-publishing have I managed to be able to write and get my stories out there.As I did when illustrating, research counts a lot and has inspired many of my Westerns and Thrillers to have a basis in historical fact or at least weave their tale around the seeds of factual content.Having such a visual background, mostly it’s a matter of describing the pictures I see in my head and translating them to the written page. I guess that’s why one of my early four-star reviewers described the book like a ‘Western movie, fast paced and full of action.’I enjoy writing them; I hope folks enjoy reading the results.

Book preview

Chapter One

It all started on one dark and chilly night in late December 1873.

Exactly how Kinkaid Lawrence escaped from Leavenworth Penitentiary is a mystery to this day but get out he did. He was smart enough to choose the Christmas holiday period to do it and so there were less guards about and those that were, once Kinkaid’s disappearance was discovered, either did not feel obliged to go out on a freezing cold country hue-and-cry on their day off or were too drunk after the festivities to make a difference.

All said and done there was only a rather lame attempt to recapture the escaped convict and by nightfall, Kinkaid had made it down to a levee township situated on the banks of a creek that ran into Marion Lake and there he found a hardware store with a rear window small enough for a twelve-year old to get through and being a slender guy anyway and after five years of only mildly nutritious prison slop he slipped in real easy.

Most of the town was also laid up with seasonal joy so the place was deserted and Kinkaid readily helped himself from the store shelves. He discovered the owner’s aged Navy Colt handgun in the counter drawer where he kept it in case of trouble and shoved that with some difficulty into the waistband of a brand new pair of Levi denim workpants that were tight fitting on him and about as stiff as a pine board and mighty uncomfortable to wear at first.

The drunken cowboy who had passed out in an alley off Main Street supplied him with a ready saddled pony and all accouterments so he hightailed it out of there as fast as the creature’s four legs could carry him.

He was heading off towards the amazing Daisy Maze’s bordello situated down at the border town of Deguello, and only stopped off briefly for a few days recuperative drinking and a private little mission of a more personal nature at a highly placed and isolated way station along the way, and then he hastened on.

After five years of celibacy Kinkaid was keen to try frizzy-haired young Daisy’s accommodating embrace and even though she had already serviced ten other bucks the same night as Kinkaid arrived, Daisy was a working girl and not one to turn down an extra dollar. She was a chunky and broad beamed little lady with a kinky head of fair hair and an attitude to match, standing at not more than four foot five she was prepared to cooperate with the most bizarre of client demands. All of which had given her a fame reaching far beyond the boundaries of the small town set on the Arizona border with Mexico.

It was near dawn when Kinkaid came on the fulsome figure of Daisy, lying spread out on her back on her brass framed bed in the dim light, her nightdress rolled up high over her ample bosom and wearing only a pair of black and white striped stockings below, he could not restrain himself. One glance at that small tuft of wiry blond pubic hair carefully tailored into a fetching heart shape and sitting waiting patiently beneath the dome of her pale belly and he was lost.

Kinkaid barely got his buttons undone and his tight fitting denims down to his boot tops when lust overcame him and he could not be bothered with the rest so he set about his business almost fully clothed.

He was on his second go around and rutting like a starving stag with Daisy groaning fit to bust and beginning to wish she had not been so welcoming…. after all it had been a long night…. when things took a downturn.

Suffice to say, Kinkaid made it to the top of the hill and was kneeling over Daisy on the bed and feeling much relieved, if a little limp, when the door crashed open and Minnesota Jack burst in.

Minnesota was a man with a grievance and once he had heard Kinkaid was out of jail he had travelled poste-haste down to Deguello, as he knew full well that Kinkaid had a thing for Daisy Maze. He did not hesitate and as he pushed the door in, his Colt pistol was already cocked and ready in his hand and he loosed off a shot at the kneeling figure outlined against the window light.

Now that bullet did a funny thing as flying lead will often do.

It hit Kinkaid in the left temple, that being the softest part of bone in his skull, and flying at some velocity it passed clean through and meeting no obstacles to write home about inside it came clean out the other side. The slug flew across the room and hit on a decorative copper bed warmer hanging on the wall. This thing being one of those household items that are commonly filled with hot charcoal to warm up the bed sheets on a cold night.

That bullet pinged off the pan lid and did a volte-face coming back at an angle across the room and ending its journey neatly bedded between Daisy Maze’s eyebrows. She was dead before she could finish gasping, ‘What the f - ?’. A crude term doubtless but given the nature of her employment not one to be surprised at, even though this strange turn of events did surprise the hell out of Daisy.

Minnesota Jack who was a body prone to self-discussion of the loud vocal sort, a thing that often unnerved his business partners, apologized profusely.

‘Oh, Miss Daisy, I sure am sorry about that. The damned thing just did its own business there; I was aiming at this son-of-a-bitch right here. Real sorry.’

Daisy did not have a word to say on the matter.

Standing there after the loud bang of the pistol, the pang of the bed warmer and all the powder smoke, in the following deathly silence Minnesota frowned as he heard a steady tinkling sound like the rill of falling water in a stream. It sounded to Minnesota as if someone was piddling in a corner of the room and he searched the shadows suspiciously.

‘What the devil is that?’ he asked the two dead persons.

Getting no reply, he moved around the bed and in the dim dawn light saw a sight that left him speechless. Now, you have to understand that to leave Minnesota speechless it had to be a sight of some import. And it was.

A steady stream of gold coin, fresh and bright was tumbling in a flow from the edge of the bed. It took a moment for Minnesota to realize that they were falling from Kinkaid’s overloaded jacket pocket and tumbling in a pile onto a couple of hefty looking saddlebags placed under the bed.

At last Minnesota regained his speech.

‘Gold! Oh, my sweet Mary! It’s the gold.’

He was quickly on his knees and running his fingers through the glittering stream of shiny double-headed eagles. ‘So, you did hide it all away, you rat bastard,’ Minnesota cursed. ‘Left me on that hilltop to hold off the posse whilst you went to fetch the ponies and never coming back. I just got out of there with my neck intact, no thanks to you, Kinkaid Lawrence. Fine partner you was, you deserved to get caught on that pissant horse stealing charge not three weeks later. Damned well served you right.’

Pale-faced Kinkaid was laid spread-eagled across the bed and staring dolefully up at him and in a show of barely respectful remorse, Minnesota placed his hat over the dead man’s face.

‘Rest in peace, you sack of shit,’ he said, giving a shrug and glancing across at Daisy’s crinkled head of hair where it lay on the pillow, ‘Least you died on a high, you lucky dog.’

Minnesota dragged out the two saddlebags that were so heavy it took all his effort to get them clear.

‘Hot damn! This is truly awesome,’ he babbled. ‘It’s all of it, the whole damned haul. Oh, my! I’m rich now, I guess I surely am.’

It occurred to Minnesota just then that he had better make a move before other parties in the whorehouse took an interest. He was in the process of dragging the heavy load across the landing and down the stairs heading for the lobby when the town sheriff arrived.

Sheriff ‘Nervous’ Nightly was a poor excuse for a lawman. A jittery character at the best of times and having been disturbed at mid-breakfast by the news of shots fired at Daisy Maze’s he was in a feverish state and still only in his boots and nightshirt with a hefty Schofield pistol strapped around his middle and weighing down a heavy ammunition belt.

He came on the hatless figure of Minnesota part way down the stairs leading from the upper gallery and humping two heavy bags from step to step. He was yakking to himself per usual as the bags clinked and clunked on every riser.

‘Bless my mother’s precious soul,’ he breathed excitedly. ‘I never knowed the like. It beats all, don’t it?’

‘You th-there?’ called Nervous nervously, in the exact stuttering manner that had earned him his nickname. ‘What’re you about?’

Minnesota stopped in mid-haul, ‘Why, me? I ain’t up to nothing.’

‘W-W-What you got there?’ asked Nervous, drawing his pistol. His fingers naturally held an unsteady tremble as he pointed the gun at the figure on the stairs and the pistol weaved and ticked uncertainly in his hand.

‘This here? Why, this ain’t nothing but my laundry, sir,’ Minnesota explained innocently.

‘Well-um-’ Nervous was nonplussed unsure of where to take things from here. ‘Mighty heavy for l-laundry, ain’t it?’

‘Sure is,’ Minnesota went on. ‘I been one dirty son-of-a-gun, you know? Three months on the trail and its gonna take a whole parcel of washer women to get this lot clean.’

At that moment another client to the establishment, Bard Winthrop, being in dire need of an early sprinkle was heading for the outhouse and had left his room dressed only in his red Long John’s with the intention of making for the facilities in the yard outside. On his way along the landing he passed Daisy Maze’s room and looking through the open door saw the corpses spread out in a welter of blood across the bed.

‘We got two bodies up here,’ he called loudly and both men below looked up.

‘You have?’ Minnesota feigned surprise. ‘That’s mighty unfortunate.’

‘They d-dead?’ quavered Nervous, still keeping the Schofield shakily leveled at Minnesota.

‘Well, they ain’t doing a two-step at a county hoe-down,’ Bard replied.

‘Too bad,’ said Minnesota, quickly continuing his descent and dragging the saddlebags as he went.

‘H-H-HOLD IT RIGHT THERE!’ bawled Nervous. Trouble was he was shaking so much by now that he inadvertently set off the pistol and shot Minnesota plumb through his bowed back and blew his pump apart.

Minnesota keeled over and began a slide down the stairs on his back with the saddlebags catching up fast. The whole bundle racketed down the stairs gathering momentum and only stopping when they rammed up against the panel wall at the bottom. The thin planks gave way under the impact and Minnesota and all his ill-gotten gains ended up in a large hole cracked through the brittle wood.

Minnesota was sitting there in the dark place with the two bags between his spread legs and one of the bag flaps had come open and burst a plethora off gold coin onto his lap along with his blood.

‘H-Holy cow!’ cried Nervous. ‘I n-never meant to do that.’

‘Look here,’ said Bard, tiptoeing cautiously down the stairs. ‘This poor sucker might be beyond physical help but he is most certainly economically sound and it ain’t just with nickels and dimes.’

Jumping and twitching, Nervous leaned forward to take a look.

‘I wonder, Sheriff,’ said Bard. ‘You mind holstering that weapon? I’d sure like to keep myself intact and we wouldn’t want another accident, now would we?’

‘N-No, of course n-not,’ replied Nervous, setting aside his smoking pistol.

‘This a robbery, do you think?’ asked Bard, kneeling and studying one of the bright gold pieces. ‘Not fresh minted but they sure ain’t seen a sign of wear.’

‘M-More like the p-proceeds, I would say.’

‘Some kind of thievery and the two robbers fell out, do you suppose?’

‘Looks that way,’ Nervous agreed. ‘We’ll find out. Meantime, I’d best get all this c-c-cash to a safe place, though Lord knows where.’

Bard looked at him speculatively, ‘Awful lot of money here. Perhaps the bank would be best?’

‘I g-guess,’ Nervous agreed.

‘You want a hand?’

‘Be o-obliged.’

‘Okay,’ said Bard, who by now was hopping from foot to foot with a need to relieve to his bladder. ‘I’ll attend to a nature call and be right with you.’

So it was that the sheriff, dressed in his long white nightshirt and accompanied by a barefoot figure in a bright red set of Long John’s struggled with the weighty load across Main Street and headed for the Deguello Trust and Loan.

Nervous did not know it at the time but his skivvy-clad companion Bard Winthrop was a passing stringer for the Arizona Spectacle, a newspaper of some note and he was already mentally writing the headline article as Nervous hammered on the door of the bank in an attempt to awaken the owner Joshua Bullready.

‘GREAT HAUL OF CASH MONEY DISCOVERED IN BORDER TOWN’, was the headline that appealed to Bard, with his byline in large print underneath.

And that was how it duly appeared.

It was certainly a banner headline that was to evoke a whole parcel of interest from far and wide.

Chapter Two

‘You seen this?’ asked Possum Lloyd, snapping the newspaper open.

Constantine Raper sniffed and, using his pinky finger, he played with a troublesome piece of chicken lodged in his incisors.

‘Should I?’ he asked with little interest.

The two were sitting in the broad dining room of Littlewood Crossing’s highly favored and renowned hotel with two empty plates of Poulet á l’Orange just finished before them. The Prestige Hotel had under its gilded palatial roof a top-notch restaurant, a gaming house and saloon, where, at that moment Raper and the rest of his gang were enjoying a brief respite after their successful invasion and subjugation of the town.

Raper’s eyes roamed over the rest of his men who were steadily achieving obliteration with the proceeds of The Prestige’s fine cellar. Choice beverages imported from Europe were spilled willy-nilly over the marble tiled floor and those fine liquors and aperitifs from across the pond that escaped the said devastation were steadily being poured with abandon down unshaven throats.

It was an establishment that had made some impressive attempts at decorum and sported fine oil paintings, a hand-carved darkly polished mahogany bar and chandeliers of cut crystal hanging from the high and decoratively embossed ceiling. None of this had any impact on the rampaging crew who were blind to such refinement and intent only on little more than immediate and total indulgence. The French chef who had prepared the excellent meal for Raper and his second-in-command now dangled forgotten from a meat hook in the cold cellar. The Baroque framed mirror behind the bar, a huge silvered glass wonder especially transported many miles across the prairie with great care from back east, now lay in pieces after ‘Hoary’ Ben Livres had hauled off and thrown a champagne bottle clean through it.

Despite the apparent wealth of the crossroads and depot town, the bank had been found to hold little within its vault and this had set Raper into one of his depressions.

‘Who’d have thought it?’ he complained dully, pushing his untouched glass of a very fine Armagnac away from him with a well-manicured fingertip. ‘Place like this. Just look at it, Possum. Hanging with every pretty thing that money can buy but a bank with no more than five thousand measly dollars inside.’

‘Certainly a surprise,’ Possum agreed.

‘I know that,’ Raper snapped irritably as his companion stated the obvious. ‘Don’t you get the point though?’

Possum raised a questioning eyebrow unwilling to commit himself.

‘It’s pretention, that’s all it is. Believe me, it’s a mark of out times. All show and nothing much else. Empty, vapid, all an exterior display that warrants no substance.’

‘Hmm,’ nodded Possum, noting Raper’s gloom and knowing full well the normal dangerous outcome of such moods. ‘Maybe a woman?’ he suggested cautiously. ‘You know, to bring things into perspective.’

Raper looked across at his men, who had stripped the town’s schoolteacher stark naked and had her dancing on the bar top. A gaunt and spinsterish-looking lady in her late forties with gold-rimmed spectacles and hair tied back in a tight bun. Obliquely, he noted that she seemed to be enjoying all the attention, probably more than she received from her pupils, he speculated.

‘Don’t be so facile,’ he dismissed Possum’s suggestion with a hint of distaste.

Constantine Raper was a minister’s son and although he was an unshaven and dust stained figure dressed in black leather now, he had at one time sat at the knee of learning and was remarkably well educated for one to be surrounded by such a band of illiterate villains and mentally challenged dummies. However, Raper had discovered his true value in their leadership, which, when all said and done, was not a difficult task. But, in all, Raper still hungered for the some stimulating conversation and at sight of the town’s only source of such a possibility, prancing and waggling her bony ass along the bar whilst drunken men urged her on did little to relieve his concern.

‘Anything in the gaming rooms?’ he asked.

‘Not so you’d notice. They’re using them wooden chips instead of money.’

‘There must be more,’ pondered Raper. ‘Somewhere in this godforsaken hole there has to be more. What about the owner of this place? He’d have to back up those chips somehow.’

Possum thumbed the crowd of whooping men; ‘They shot him when we came in.’

‘Hell and damnation! I despair I really do. Three blasted raids lately and nothing to show for it. That train down in Topeka, remember? When we opened up the wrong car and blew up a crate of sewing machines instead of the safe. Goddammit! Then that stage, we took the whole thing this time, stagecoach, passengers and moneybox. And with a troop of cavalry on our tail, what happens? The damned wheel falls off the stage and we had to leave it behind, I give up. Is Fate intent on ruining my life, I wonder. And now this,’ he glanced at the others in the bar. ‘These fools are going to want paying soon or they’ll all hightail it out and I’ll have no gang to speak of. It’s downright embarrassing, it really is.’

‘Will you damn well look at this,’ Possum protested, shoving the newssheet at him.

‘What? What?’ snapped Raper in annoyance. ‘What possibly could some hack-written rag hold of interest for me?’

‘How does five hundred thousand in gold suit you?’

Raper eyed him narrowly, ‘Show me.’

He studied the article Possum indicated with a dirty fingernail.

‘Today in the small town of Deguello this reporter came across a most unbelievable sight. Five hundred thousand dollars in gold coin was discovered in the possession of one Jack Montane, a highwayman of low repute also known as ‘Minnesota’ Jack.

On this dark and chilly night, at about cockcrow Minnesota Jack crept unseen into the dormitories of a well-known entertainment establishment and whilst his one-time partner Kinkaid Lawrence, another bad hat recently escaped from the Leavenworth Penitentiary, was engaged in friendly discourse with a lady companion, a certain Miss Daisy Daze, Jack compounded his evil plan. Taking out a loaded pistol, Jack without preface broke into the room and instantly shot down the couple and having laid them low took to himself the cash that Lawrence bore with him and kept hidden there in two bags.

Sheriff Eric Nightly, the town’s police officer, on being alerted, boldly came forward and slew the reprehensible villain with a single well-aimed shot before he could make good his escape. The money, a sizeable amount and weighty to boot, was then carried to the town’s vault for safekeeping. This reporter had a hand in the removal himself so can vouch for the exact amount and there in the bank it is expected to reside until the rightful owners can be discovered.

Both of the deceased will be available this week for viewing in the town undertaker’s window from ten in the morning until seven at night. Those wishing for souvenirs will be charged a small fee for the privilege but no body parts may be removed.

The departure of dear sweet Miss Daisy will be a sad grievance by all those that knew her and the remains will be on view for mourners who will recall her in life with affection and might once more desire to gaze on her attributes. A child of generous sensibilities who took to her breast many in kind offerings of succor. Her bounty shall be remembered by all.’

‘At two dollars a throw if I remember correctly,’ observed Raper cynically.

Chapter Three

In the obscure little rain swept village of Drubbet Hollow up in the Appalachian Mountains, two bands of miserable looking men sat and faced each other across an earth-floored tavern that was accurately named, Hogswill’s Hole. It was a dank place, smelling of old damp and decaying timber with an open doorway that let the weather in, not that it bothered the rangy group of men inside. They had lived their entire lives in these hills and it was all a regular part of their mean existence.

The Eli’s and the McCaverns were feuding families that had spent generations attempting to wipe each other’s clan from the face of the earth. Indeed, the tradition went back to the days of the Revolutionary War when the Eli family came from one side of the mountains and the McCaverns from the other. And it was the representatives of both families that now sat facing each other in stolid silence.

The long wait of glowering quiet was eventually broken by the head of the Eli’s, one Abercanatha Eli, that they called Abe for short. A cadaverous creature with hollow cheeks and a long equine face that stared solemnly out from below a limply brimmed high-crowned hat.

‘Will you partake of a drink of Hogswill’s liquor, Alexander McCavern?’ he asked his opposite number across the room.

Alexander, a hirsute and heavily bearded man with a bristling crop of bright red hair filling his face, studied his opponent with small suspicious eyes from under a brush of spikey ginger eyebrows. He held a trace of imported Scottish accent and the whole clan still proudly wore the tartan trews and tam-o’shanters that their ancestors had originally brought over from the old homestead in the county of Fife in Scotland many years before. These sets of clothing were somewhat worn and tattered by now but still handed down from generation to generation with respectful pride. Pride it may have been but wearing such worn and tacky clothing gave them the general look of a bunch