Between

By Tony Masero

He came out of the desert alone and understanding no one.
When they found him he was wild and untamed and as he grew age did not mellow him.
Taken in by range hands at a young age, they called him Joe Between for convenience sake. At first Joe found the white man’s ways difficult to grasp but his education only truly began under the tutelage of the bluecoat soldiers and in particular the colonel’s beautiful and disaffected wife.
Joe is sent away to avoid difficulties and in his new situation finds himself confronting a hated enemy from his past. With a lawman’s star on his vest Joe has to choose between the white man’s ways or to fight in the way of the warrior.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Tony Masero
• Release date: Sep 4, 2022
• ISBN: 9781005413323

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

BETWEEN

Tony Masero

He came out of the desert alone and understanding no one.

When they found him he was wild and untamed and as he grew age did not mellow him.

Taken in by range hands at a young age, they called him Joe Between for convenience sake. At first Joe found the white man’s ways difficult to grasp but his education only truly began under the tutelage of the bluecoat soldiers and in particular the colonel’s beautiful and disaffected wife.

Joe is sent away to avoid difficulties and in his new situation finds himself confronting a hated enemy from his past. With a lawman’s star on his vest Joe has to choose between the white man’s ways or to fight in the way of the warrior.

Cover Illustration: Tony Masero

Names, characters and incidents in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations,

or persons living or dead is purely coincidental.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or

mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information or storage and retrieval system, without the

written permission of the author, except where permitted by law.

Copyright © Tony Masero 2022

Smashwords Edition

Chapter 1

The young Indian boy stood alone on the high promontory and looked out over a flat treeless plain stretching away like a vast waterless ocean before him.

Stands-Between-Mountain-and-Sky was around thirteen summers old and coming as he did from a more moderate coastal climate he had never known desert like this before and the immensity of it dazzled him.

From a young age his people had called him Nôwiwi that meant ‘In the Middle’ or ‘Between’, and that was how he felt right now as if he stood on the high rocks of the mesa, as if he were indeed held somewhere between earth and sky.

In that peculiar way that a name-giving will create identity for a new soul it was almost a mystical prediction of what the boy’s life would become for he was always to stand ‘In the Middle’ or ‘Between’ for the rest of his days.

The Staked Plain beneath him rolled to to a distant hazy horizon with nothing to see except 37,000 square miles of hot baked sand sucked dry of moisture and without any sign of life apart from those few figures walking below him.

He was already tired and weakened by the long march they had made but on the desert bed he saw the other members of his family trudging slowly across the sands in single file and they were all more exhausted and starving than he was.

The six little figures cast long stretched shadows on the sand and from the Indian boy’s height on the mesa they all seemed insignificant in the great expanse before him.

This was all that remained of his tribe, the last refugee members of the Sashwani people. Driven from their lands by invaders and disease, this one small family had left their homeland on the promise given to his father by a Karankawa man. The promise was of rivers and fertile fields, rich with berries and nuts, where many buffalo and deer roamed freely.

Such a dream it was.

His long-suffering mother, Calf-With-Long-Legs, dragged the lodge poles with all their frugal possessions strapped travois-style on the limbs. Their one horse had been killed and eaten long ago, followed by their camp dog a few weeks later.

His elder sister tagged along at the rear holding the hands of the three minors, two boys and a little girl barely old enough to walk.

In the still desert air Nôwiwi could hear their tears from up here, the little ones empty of food and water were complaining bitterly. But there was nothing to be done, they had come so far and now there was no turning back. Not that anything awaited them there anyway. White traders had brought the spotted disease into the camp and laid low many. Then seeing they were weak and unable to defend themselves, the Comanche had descended on them, massacring all.

Only they had escaped.

When his father, Man-With-Long-Hair, had been told of this Promised Land. So desperate was he that he had believed the words from the tribesman who spoke of California and had mistakenly given them directions along the great chain of mountains and then to head north. Never having been there, the Karankawa man was a pompous braggart and it was only hearsay he passed on and in his arrogance he mistakenly guided them towards the far and distant Canada and not west towards the ocean.

Nôwiwi descended to report to his father that no water or game were in sight only endless acres of dust with the gray placement of empty playa lakes that were as dry as bone at the moment.

As he drew near, his father’s back was before him striding purposefully on ahead of the others, a small man with his quiver and bow hanging across his back over waist length dark hair. A man of rigid countenance, he smiled rarely and was a strict disciplinarian with a face lined with the sorrows he had witnessed over the past years. Almost black in color, his bronzed and wasted body now thin from their meager supplies was naked and clad only in a scrap of deerskin about his waist.

In desperation Man-With-Long-Hair had taken this last chance and mistakenly led his family into the wilderness.

They came to a small enclave of baked sandstone rocks and Calf-With-Long-Legs called out that they must rest; the little ones were exhausted and tired from lack of food and water. Man-With-Long-Hair was abrasive, he wanted to press on until they found water but his wife was insistent so he finally surrendered and grunted his approval for a short respite.

They settled amongst the meager shade from the boulders and Calf-With-Long-Legs spread a cover so the little ones, two boys and a small girl, might sleep in its shade. They were permitted a sip from their last gourd of water and told to suck stones against their thirst.

Nôwiwi bit his lip with concern and then approached his father, who sat apart and glowered down at the sand between his folded legs.

‘Father,’ he began. ‘Let me go on, let me hunt to try and feed us.’

His father looked up at him dully and Nôwiwi saw only defeat in his eyes, a distant gray blankness that told him that his withered father was already on his lost way to the grave.

Man-With-Long-Hair stared at his son as if he saw nothing before him and then he shrugged indifferently, ‘Go,’ was all he grunted.

Taking his bow and quiver of arrows Nôwiwi moved off between the rocks. His last glance back at his family was to see his mother looking after him with a stony-faced expression of despair written across her features. He knew then that unless he found water and a food supply they would all soon die on this terrible wilderness.

Nôwiwi had no expectation of death, come to that he had not much expectation of life either. He moved solely in a youthful never-land of dream and distance, the comforting ways of his tribe had crumbled away and all that was left for him was survival. Of any future there was no thought, he lived in a middle ground of almost forgotten tribal games and the present harsh necessities enforced upon him.

For the last few days he had eaten nothing but a lizard and some grubs, they had cut Barrel Cactus and sucked the juice but none of it had been fulfilling. His lips were dry and dust covered his face and filled his nostrils. Two hours out from their camp and squinting against the bright sunlight he crossed over the lip of a small hillock and to his surprise saw beneath him a bunch of prairie dogs gathered about their burrows. He wished they still had their camp dog with them, as the dog would go down the holes swiftly enough, but they had eaten the poor creature that many weeks before.

He froze on the spot, his bow was already in his hand and he gently began to ease an arrow from the quiver on his back. Inexplicably, for he had been cautious to make no sound or sudden movement, one of the animals suddenly rose on its hind legs and barked out a warning and the sensitive creatures began a panicked scurry into the safety of their holes. In one flowing movement, Nôwiwi raised the bow and almost instantly released. The arrow ran true and pinioned the warning prairie dog, still raised on its legs. The creature fell quivering to the ground, shivering against the sudden shock of the stone tipped shaft running through it.

With a whoop of delight, Nôwiwi ran down the slope of the hillock and fell on the dying creature. It was food and all of them would taste his success this night.

But then he felt the reason for the speedy departure of the animals as they fled into their deep burrows. The ground trembled beneath him and Nôwiwi dropped to one knee as he felt the thuds of movement travelling up through the earth.

Riders coming.

Long training came into play and instinctively the young man dropped full length to the ground, with only his head raised high enough so his eyes might see.

In clouds of swirling dust he saw the racing riders pass by him. They were war painted Comanche warriors, with a herd of twenty horses charging between them. Yipping and lashing with their quirts they drove the herd on and Nôwiwi realized they had been a raiding party from further south and were returning back to their homes with their prizes.

The Indian ponies were painted for war and Nôwiwi could see bloody scalps dangling in bunches from some of the belts of the riders. He watched them ride away leaving only a dense dust cloud hovering in the air. Once they were gone and the desert was silent again he climbed cautiously to his feet and collected his dead prairie dog.

He must return to his family and warn them that the Comanche were nearby. With that in mind and boosted by his success in the hunt, Nôwiwi loped quickly back the way he had come.

His throat was dry and he picked up a pebble as he ran and sucked on it to relieve some of the dryness. The heat of the sun beat down on his starved body like a stick against his skin and he felt a moment of dizziness come over him. The young Indian staggered and struggled to recover himself. He knew he must bring the sustenance back to his kin. Feeding thoughts of his mother’s praise and his father’s begrudging recognition of him as hunter came into his stunned brain, Nôwiwi collected himself and struggled forward again on his path.

They would skin the prairie dog and roast it over a low fire; every part of the small beast would nourish them. Nôwiwi could almost taste the meat between his dry teeth. They would suck on the pelt and extract every last ounce of benefit from the creature.

He blinked as he approached the enclave of rocks. There was loud noise coming from the camp and the smell of burning was in the air. Nôwiwi shrank down behind a chain of twisted boulders and crept nearer fearfully.

The painted Comanche had found them.

The raiding party strutted in their fringed pants and painted skins, hollering and whooping arrogantly. The twenty horses they had taken were nearby, obviously exhausted after their long run and the Indians moved freely amongst their captives. His father stood before the family, his arms spread wide in either protection or surrender and his mother and the rest of the children hovered in terror behind her.

One of the Comanche seemed to lead, he stood apart watching coldly with arms folded across his chest as Nôwiwi’s older sister was dragged from the group and set upon.

The leader was a grim pale-faced man with white hair flowing long down his back and bound in place by a leather headband. Impassively, he watched as his sister was stripped by three of the bucks and they fell on her with loincloths lifted and their erections in plain sight. The girl screamed plaintively as the warriors rutted on her gleefully one after the other and Man-With-Long-Hair did nothing but stare sadly at the rape of his daughter. He began a chant then, a reedy high-sounding song that spoke of his life and coming death for he saw there was nothing he could do about any of it. Then, when the Comanche had finished with his daughter they moved in on his wife.

Nôwiwi knew he could do little; there was no way he could stand up against the five warriors. They carried pistols in gun belts and one even had a Springfield rifle that he fired frequently into the air.

The white headed leader, left off his solemn watch and moved swiftly forward, a long knife in his hand. In one swoop, he slashed across the throat of the praying man and Nôwiwi saw his father spout a great gush of red blood from between his fingers and drop forward onto his knees. At that, the young warrior almost leapt to his feet and ran forward but the logic of self-preservation held him back. He stood no chance against these wild killers. He sank down with his back to the rock and hunched over with his arms around his knees and tried not to listen to the awful bloodcurdling screams as the air was wrenched apart by the cries of the braves.

Amongst all the noise he heard the name of the war leader called out repeatedly in victory.

‘See him!’ they roared. ‘Pelo Blanco moves amongst us. El Pelo Blanco is blessed by the gods.’

Chapter 2

Nôwiwi did not notice them leave.

His mind shut down and was full of roaring noise for hours, a tangled chaos of terror and shouting as he sat transfixed in his hidden place behind the rock. Only later as night was falling did he awaken as if from a deep sleep.

All was silence. A deathly silence.

Gingerly he peeped out from his hiding place.

Bizarrely they had laid them out neatly. His entire family. They had scalped the adults