Caldone

By Tony Masero

John Caldone served as a fierce Indian fighter with the famed Buffalo Soldiers, courageous black men of the 10th US Cavalry but now they are discharged from the army. He and his men have left to start their own ranch but with a major cattle drive in the offing he receives news that a terrible disaster has struck. So begins his search for a reckoning but these are brutal and callous men he faces. Caldone discovers that vengeful cattle barons have recruited a posse from amongst the worst villains on the frontier to chase down the marauders. When the parties meet it will be a bloody clash that echoes all of Caldone’s earlier battles - the ones he had hoped to forget.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Tony Masero
• Release date: Dec 27, 2022
• ISBN: 9781005361600

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

CALDONE

Tony Masero

John Caldone served as a fierce Indian fighter with the famed Buffalo Soldiers, courageous black men of the 10th US Cavalry but now they are discharged from the army. He and his men have left to start their own ranch but with a major cattle drive in the offing he receives news that a terrible disaster has struck. So begins his search for a reckoning but these are brutal and callous men he faces. Caldone discovers that vengeful cattle barons have recruited a posse from amongst the worst villains on the frontier to chase down the marauders. When the parties meet it will be a bloody clash that echoes all of Caldone’s earlier battles - the ones he had hoped to forget.

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

A Smashwords Edition

Chapter 1

John Caldone heard it first.

Then all the others heard it too.

Hoof beats coming fast.

It came from somewhere out of sight in the dark night but was muffled and echoed around the grassy canyons and hills at their backs.

Caldone jerked a questioning chin at his friend and trail boss, Levant Freeman. Levant downturned his lips and shook his head in doubt, he shrugged and indicated with his forefinger so that two of the black drovers, both men who rode flank and swing on the herd, set down their supper dishes and moved over to the chuck wagon where the long weapons were kept whilst they rode with the cattle.

The nine other Negroes still around the fire set aside their evening meals, their backs stiff as they rotated towards the sound of the racing pony. None of them were seriously worried, this was a peaceful part of the country but still they cast a wary eye over their trail herd spread out in the valley yonder. For each of them had invested their years of saved pay in buying the cattle and now the herd represented all of their futures.

They were black cowboys and each of them at one time had been military. ‘Buffalo Soldiers’ the Indians had called them back then but now the Indian Wars were all but done. Honorably discharged and without any place to call home the men had founded their own collective ranch based on the comradeship enjoyed in the army. They called it the Bar-Kay, ‘K’ being their old troop designation and the pennant they rode under in the 10th Cavalry.

There was a rising air of tension as the hoof beats came nearer and the two at the chuck wagon freed their carbines from under the tarpaulin and leveled them over the open back of the wagon. Heads turned towards the approaching sounds and every man was curious as to why a lone rider would head towards them with such speed at night. They all guessed at one thing, although they said nothing - it did not bode well.

Twenty-four hours earlier in the nearby town of Gesture thirty-five riders had casually made their way into town in groups of two and three and coming from different directions. They were discreet and unobtrusive making no unnecessary show of themselves.

Gesture was a quiet and sleepy little out-of-the-way place set between the edge of the desert and the mountain foothills. The townsfolk made their living from the dense pine forest populating the mountain slopes and a large sawmill kept most of the occupants in employment. It was a hidden place far away from the main wagon trail further to the south that lay beyond salt flats and desert land that effectively isolated the town.

The timber frame houses were run down and poor looking, shoddy and unmaintained, in fact the whole place looked tired and worn out. It was as if the entire population had given up hope and merely went through a daily pretense at some sort of survival. But this was exactly why the wealthy cattle barons had decided to store their money there. One look at the dilapidated appearance of the bank set in the middle of the town and no one would guess that nigh on three million dollars was stored inside.

It had taken the half-breed bandit, Joey Seltzer, the gang’s leader, twelve months to figure it out and gather his men together. They were all professional thieves and killers; some were a little crazy perhaps but Joey could keep them in check with his promise of a fortune divided equally amongst them all. Joey himself was no angel, he was a cold-blooded killer and not above bringing down any who argued with him and the rest of the gang gave him grudging respect as a result. He was not an unhandsome man, slender and powerfully built with a silent presence that denied his quick mind and organizational skills. Women approved of his tanned skin and curly black hair and the unshaven growth that became a dark beard under his chin and as a result he was never short of admirers.

He had laid his plans carefully and over many months, making sure that the bank’s financial deposits were at their maximum after the round-up and sale of the cattlemen’s vast herds. Now his scheme was coming to fruition and, as he watched the men disperse casually as he had ordered them to do so, he felt a suppressed surge of excitement and tension but did not show any of it, as he was not a man to demonstrate his emotions openly.

The cattleman’s bank had kept security at a minimum, as they did not want to attract attention to the vast sums secured in the place and only two bored looking bank guards propped up chairs in the rather seedy looking interior. It was a big empty room with two frame windows on either side of the main entrance a low ceiling and bare wooden floor, along the rear stretched the barred counter-windows with a few tired bank clerks behind them for show. The heat of the day filled the room and the open door allowed an irritating cloud of circling flies to enter and take up residence in the center of the room. The guards lazily stared aimlessly up at the ceiling or read a newspaper as they sat their chairs and tipped them back against the wall on each side of the doorway.

Customers were few, as the place did not rely on the townspeople of Gesture, so it was usually empty leaving the staff inside to drift through their tedious days as guardians of the immense fortune kept in the vault without a thought of ever owning such wealth.

Joey did not expect any particular trouble from the few unsuspecting defenders of the bank and he had only chosen such a large band of men as he knew that once the cattle millionaires heard of the raid they would not give up their stash lightly and there would be a small army of lawmen chasing them down after the raid was over. His thinking was to disperse the likelihood of personal danger with the distraction of numbers riding off in every direction and in the following confusion to make his own way to the coast and flee the country with his saddlebags stuffed with his share of the cash.

But as with any well-laid scheme there is always the unlikely and unconsidered danger of something going wrong. And in this case it certainly did.

The ten-man patrol out of Fort Belvedere had started out early with mission orders given to their lieutenant, a man called Benjamin Repose. Lieutenant Repose’s task was to move his patrol in a wide semi-circular route intended to form a blocking movement, that in combination with the main force coming from the fort, would cut off a party of renegade Apaches under the war chief Bloody Sleeve that had broken out of the reservation and were heading for the security of the mountains.

The patrol was moving swiftly and it was Repose’s intention to make the town of Gesture his base for military activities as it was so well placed within the foothills.

As Joey gave the signal to enter the bank, he did so by taking off his hat and wiping the sweat from his brow, at the same moment Lieutenant Repose was leading his column into the far side of town. Neither party was aware of the other at this time.

It still might have gone down quietly and quickly except for one over-eager bank guard and a trigger-happy robber. The guard almost fell off his chair as the group of bank robbers burst into the bank. Nobody inside was ready for such a surge of custom let alone that every prospective customer held a six-gun in his hand.

The guard fumbled with his pistol, almost dropping the damned thing with fingers that were all thumbs. A grinning young gunsel called Pinky Dew did not hesitate and even as Joey hollered for him to hold off, Pinky shot the guard twice in the chest and laughed as he did so.

The loud shots echoed around the empty room and caused cries of distress from the tellers who were quickly lifting their hands over their heads.

With a wave of his pistol, Joey commanded some of the men to leap the barrier of the counter and get the vault doors open.

The bank manager who had paled visibly at the killing tried a word of bluster, ‘I advise you not to do this some important men hold funds here and they will not be pleased.’

Joey pushed his shooter under the man’s double chin, ‘I ain’t here to please nobody, buster. Just get those safe doors open.’

The vault was the only expensive investment in the place, a large thick metal door imposing with its great hinges and locking wheel. The impressive key the manager produced was fitting for the general size of the protective barrier and as he spun the wheel and the metal rods slid back the door was swung open to reveal a small barred interior.

Joey peered between the bars and noted the deep metal boxes lying in the room with hefty padlocks on the lids ‘Get ‘em open,’ he commanded.

There were collective gasps and eager asides from the gaping robbers as the box lids were swung back to expose the stacks of dollar bills and bars of gold inside.

‘I told y’all,’ said a gleeful Joey, for once allowing his emotions to show through. ‘I done told you.’

‘It’s a goddamned fortune,’ grinned one robber with greedy eyes glittering in the reflected yellow light of the gold bars.

‘Get it loaded, forget the chests they’re too cumbersome,’ ordered Joey, swinging down the saddlebags he carried over his shoulder. Burying his hands into the heap of greenbacks and gold, he lifted a load into his bags. When the saddlebags were full to bursting he brushed past the others who were now piling in around the treasure and desperately filling sacks and pockets, even the inside of their shirts.

Joey hit the porch outside just as Lieutenant Ben Repose finally had all his men placed in position across from the bank. It had not taken him long to figure out that the sound of shooting came from inside the bank and the number of horses at the hitching rail outside told him the exact number of men inside, far too many of them for innocent customer transactions he supposed.

‘Hold it there!’ As Joey stepped out Repose hollered from behind the safe cover of a large water barrel across the way. ‘This is the United States Cavalry.’

Joey froze on the spot and his eyes quickly roved the opposite side of the street and noted the pale cavalry hats and pointed carbines behind the cover of the houses opposite.

‘Raise your hands and walk slowly towards me,’ ordered Repose.

‘What’s this about?’ called Joey playing for time as his mind raced over the options.

‘Do like I say,’ replied Repose. ‘Or my men will open fire.’

By now, the gang was filling the doorway behind Joey and he hissed at them, ‘Get back inside, all of you.’

The men slowly melted into the shadows behind the bank door and Joey quickly dived back inside, ‘Take cover,’ he hollered. ‘We got the whole damned army out there.’

Lieutenant Repose saw that the robbers intended to make a fight of it and ordered his men to open fire. At his word a sheet of smoke and flame shot across the roadway and the wooden front of the bank exploded into gouts of splinters and split timber. All the robbers ducked to the floor, one was a little slow and ran across the open doorway. He was hit and skittered sideways spouting blood before tumbling to the ground.

‘Stay down, you stupid ass!’ called Joey.

‘Too late, boss,’ came the reply. ‘He’s a goner.’

Desperately, Joey looked at the men laid out on the floor around him.

‘Pinky!’ he called, thinking that the gunman was crazy enough to do anything. ‘Can you and your brother make a run for the corner of the bank?’

‘You betcha,’ cried the excited gunman.

His elder brother a tall, lugubrious and silent individual called Dover gave a brief nod of agreement.

‘Take two others and make a run for it, we need to get them in some sort of crossfire. Three more of you, get to the back of the bank and see if you can bust through the rear wall. We need an out of here.’

Joey wormed his way across to the doorway and peered out, ‘Okay, boys, give Pinky some covering fire.’

Window glass was shattered and the robbers replied with their own barrage of shooting. The street was full of gun smoke coming from both sides and under the misty haze, Pinky and his three associates made their run. Pinky was screaming madly through gritted teeth as he ran, almost as if he was daring the elements to allow a bullet to find its mark in his body. Around him the military volley spat into the walls and wooden porch as he and the others sprinted for the corner of the building.

One of the running gunman took a bullets in the shoulder and slammed down over the porch step and into the street, he called out for help and was struggling to rise when the studied fire from the army picked him out and cut him to pieces in a hail of shot.

Still screaming wildly, Pinky and the two others made it to the corner and disappeared from sight around the edge of the building.

Repose had not had time enough to surround the building and his ten men were spread along the frontage of the bank so that both sides and rear of the building were safe from his shooters.

The men sent to the rear of the bank inside came back to report to Joey, ‘Can’t do it, boss. They used thick planks