The Riflemen Read online

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  Arizona, 1868.

  Two men. One white, one colored.

  Both proficient with the long arm, the greatest long-range weapon of the age. The .50 caliber Sharps rifle.

  Ex-sharpshooters Nick Guardeen and Thaddeus Johnston are called before the Governor to receive the promise of something they’ve never had before: land. The proviso is that they undertake a highly dangerous mission across the border into Mexico.

  Hounded by a mysterious gang of merciless assassins they press on across the desert to discover the whereabouts of a ruthless ex-Confederate general whose crazed mission is to restore the Confederacy.

  Nick and Thaddeus need all the military techniques learned during the recent conflict and their skills with the long rifle to survive against Apaches, murderers and a reinstated army of rebel forces massed in their deadly stronghold.

  THE RIFLEMEN

  By Tony Masero

  First published by Solstice Publishing in 2011

  Copyright © 2011 by Tony Masero

  Published by Piccadilly Publishing at Smashwords: May 2014

  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. This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each reader.

  Cover image © 2014 by Tony Masero

  This is a Piccadilly Publishing Book

  Text © Piccadilly Publishing

  Published by Arrangement with the Author.

  For my crew

  Each and every one of them

  SOME FIVE STAR REVIEWS FOR THE RIFLEMEN

  Chris La Tray reviewed The Riflemen

  This is a fine first novel by artist Tony Masero. What I liked most about it is it read like a Western action movie. Lots of gunplay, plenty of narrow escapes, and, yes, some set pieces that come to something of an implausible conclusion that nonetheless work in the context of the story. The details of the landscape really came through, and I enjoyed that. The characters -- particularly the four primary villains -- had distinct personalities that, while not veering too far from the stereotypes of the genre, were still excellent. That was a highlight as well. All in all a solid effort. I'd read another book from Masero without hesitation.

  Fast paced, authentic western By Clive Viegas Bennett

  Tony Masero is a new author in the Western genre although I gather he is well known as an illustrator and cover designer. I came across this book by accident and, not having read a Western in years, no, decades, was slightly apprehensive. I was wrong. Cursing Masero at four in the morning because I had to read "just another page", proved just how wrong. This story of an unlikely pair of former Civil War sharp shooters - one white, one black - is truly gripping. Their mission is to break into the invincible desert redoubt of the psychopathic leader of a New Confederacy gang and kill him. I didn't mind that some of the plot twists and denouements are far-fetched, it was like being seduced by an obviously outrageous flirt and didn't hurt a bit. Underneath the plot driven structure are some substantial insights into the pathetic but ever present nostalgia - even today - for the Confederacy and the racial domination it institutionalised. Some serious research has been done in the details of weaponry, clothing and 19th century life in the West: I'm sure true aficionados will find no gripes.

  Western Fiction Review

  Tony Masero sets scenes well with brief but detailed enough descriptions that paint vivid imagery of the locations his story is played out in. Dialogue is handled confidently, and often has touches of humour within it. The story builds well to its action-packed final chapters – Billy Ray’s downfall providing a great laugh.

  After finishing The Riflemen I’ve found myself hoping it isn’t too long before another book appears from Tony Masero.

  Chapter One

  Sighting along the business end of his custom-made Sharps, Nick Guardeen brought the distant figures into focus. Below him on the valley floor, two men on horseback herded five head of cattle. Five head that didn’t belong to them.

  Slowly, so as not to upset his steady posture, Guardeen slipped an eighty gram .54 caliber cartridge from the marked ammunition belt at his waist and slid it into the breech. He steadied his breathing, slowed his heartbeat and eased back the hammer on the rifle.

  “They too far off, Mister Nick,” Thaddeus Johnston said.

  “Be quiet. I’m concentrating here.” Guardeen’s long-time partner and one-time body slave lay beside him on the clifftop; they’d ridden together since they were children before the War, a war in which they fought side by side, first as slave and master and then later, after Lincoln’s edict giving slaves their freedom, as fellow combatants. They’d both managed to come out the other side of the conflict intact. Well, almost intact. Guardeen sported three minié ball wounds about his body and Thaddeus favored his left leg a little after a deep thrust from a Johnny Reb saber.

  “Must be best part of eight hundred yards,” muttered Guardeen to himself as much as to Thaddeus, while he adjusted the gate on the rifle’s open ladder sight. Check that elevation, then. No wind, but the updraft here off the canyon is going to count for something. Lucky it’s early, it’s not hot enough to raise a ripple down there yet awhile.

  “They Mexican, you think?”

  “Sure as hell are. Vaqueros over the line and set to driving them Three-B cows across the border. Going to advise them of their misdemeanor momentarily.”

  Guardeen held the four-foot weapon securely on the saddle blanket before him. The blanket was rolled tight and laid across the rocks to cut down the recoil and save the walnut stock from damage. He steadied his breathing. He trusted his technique. He’d learned his killing skills in that long, hard, vicious and ultimately self-destructive Civil War, but the shooting had been different then. Like potting rabbit and squirrel on the home farm in Pennsylvania where he’d been raised. The boys in butternut and gray, marching in long closed-up straight lines toward him across the battlefield, had made easy pickings for him in his hide. He always picked a high spot – hill, tree, church steeple, whatever was to hand.

  This was a different affair altogether though, riding gun for the cattle ranch. He let his breath out slowly and eased the sensitive well-oiled trigger back. Five hundred yards was the given range for a breech loading Sharps and this was a mite further than that. No point hesitating. With a boom the rifle leaped up in recoil and cast its .54 caliber missile high into the ether, looping the lead in a long sliding arc away down toward the distant figures.

  The sound of the shot echoed up to them from the valley below and the pair waited, barely breathing, in expectation.

  The far off tiny figure sitting astride his pony suddenly straightened up and flung his arms wide, then tumbled from the saddle.

  “Well, I’ll be!” Guardeen said, and grinned in satisfaction.

  “You got him. You surely got him.”

  “He’s no more than stunned, I reckon. At this range that bullet won’t do any more than frighten them.”

  “You know what? I think you’re getting better over time. Hell, I’ve never seen anything like that since we were with the ‘Sharpshooters’.”

  “Different times, Thaddeus. Different days.”

  “What they doing down there now?” Thaddeus squinted into the distance, where the remaining vaquero was circling his pony around his fallen companion’s horse in an obvious state of panic as he tried to catch up the riderless animal’s reins.

  Guardeen slipped open the breech and slid another cartridge into the rifle.

&nbs
p; “You going to try for another?”

  “No, I’m not. I reckon it’s about time you earned your keep. Been sitting there watching me long enough.” He rolled to one side. “Take the shot, Thaddeus.”

  Thaddeus licked his lips and rubbed a hand over his brown face and spat into his open palm in a workmanlike fashion. He took his position with the loaded rifle. Each man owned his own weapon but Thaddeus favored the shorter, carbine version of the Sharps and his own ‘Big 50’ was still bucketed back in its saddle scabbard where they’d left the horses below the ridge. Back in the War, both of them had served as green coated Union skirmishers with Berdan’s Sharpshooters in the Second Regiment and Guardeen knew that Thaddeus was as good as, if not better than, his one-time master.

  Thaddeus nestled the wooden stock into his cheek and settled himself, pushing up the brim of his old and battered infantryman’s forage cap. One last memento of his army days. Thaddeus’s eyes narrowed as he took careful aim. Belly down on the cliff rim and spreading legs wide in an anchored position, he lay as stock-still as one of the rocks about him.

  Guardeen watched with a sneaking feeling of approval and pride. He’d never admit it to the man’s face but he had great affection for the Negro. The pride part stemmed from the fact that it had been Guardeen who’d first shown Thaddeus the basics of long arm shooting and he’d taken to it as naturally as if he’d been born with a rifle in his hand.

  The Sharps boomed again and Guardeen quickly took up his binoculars. “Tough one, Thaddeus. They’re moving around a lot now.”

  “Yeah, I know, that’s why....”

  “Hah! He’s down! Damned horse upped and threw him.”

  “... I aimed for the pony.”

  Guardeen quirked an eyebrow and cast a dubious look in Thaddeus’s direction. “You joshing me? You didn’t aim at the horse, you just plumb missed and got lucky.”

  “Lord is my witness, Mister Nick, I shot for the pony.”

  Guardeen shook his head doubtfully and chuckled. “All right, you damned heathen. Best we go down there and go get them cows. Though those two thieving wetbacks will probably be long gone by the time we arrive.”

  Chapter Two

  After leaving the recovered cattle in the corral, Guardeen and Thaddeus rode past the Three-B ranch house veranda. Their boss, Betty Besterman stood, watching them, a slip of yellow paper in her hand. Guardeen knew she was thirty-eight, yet she looked more like fifty. A small round ball of a woman, still full of vital energy, she had a shocking head of wiry gray hair that haloed her plump face like an electric cloud. With weathered skin the color of toughened rawhide she approached her advancing years with the same kind of fortitude she’d handled both cowhands and cattle alike. Not a woman to mince her words, she spoke out directly and her honesty was appreciated by all who came in contact with her. Yet he guessed that in her heart there still beat a sympathetic soul bereft of the children she had never had and at moments she could soften her tough exterior and display a sweeter and more kindly inner nature.

  In 1863, midway through the War Between the States, the House of Representatives’ Bill number 357 was passed by Congress and as a result Arizona Territory was created out of the western half of New Mexico. Section three of that same Bill laid down that slavery and involuntary servitude was forever forbidden in the Territory. Four years later, a young rancher, Billy James Besterman purchased one hundred and sixty acres of that wild land to form the Three-B Ranch. Apparently, some cussed him as a carpetbagger, come to make the most out of poor southerners beset by poverty after the war, but whatever might be thought of him Billy did not have a lot of opportunity to enjoy his purchase anyway, Guardeen reflected, as he met an early end on the point of an Apache lance. He did leave something behind: his name. The initials joined with his widow’s to form the brand and ranch title of the Three-B. Betty Besterman proved to be a hardy young widow but the locals said that she’d aged quickly under the pressures of creating a going concern out of the cattle ranch without her husband.

  “You’ve got a telegram,” she called from the porch steps. “They brought it in special from the railhead.”

  Guardeen eased down off the saddle and touched the brim of his Stetson with a gauntleted hand. “That a fact? Why, I never had one of those before.” He was a tall, rangy man, favoring a small bristling moustache with a military cut to it. The brim of his pale hat was often pinned up in front to allow him easy sight along his rifle. Around his neck hung a large Mexican bandana an incongruously bright item, she thought, for such a dour man.

  The yellow slip fluttered as she held it out to him.

  “Mind reading it for me, ma’am? I left my reading spectacles in the bunkhouse.”

  She bit back a smile at the poor attempt to disguise his illiteracy. “Sure, I don’t mind doing that, seeing as I already read it myself.”

  “What’s it say, ma’am?”

  “It’s important, Guardeen. From the Governor of the State himself.”

  “That right? Who is this fellow, I don’t rightly know who the Governor is just now.”

  “A gentleman called Mr. Elias T. George.”

  “Elias T. George. Oh, yes indeed, I believe I know that man. Old Captain George. We served together. You remember that old boy, don’t you, Thaddeus?” He turned to the mounted Negro. “Pompous little fellow.”

  “I do recall him,” answered Thaddeus, nodding. “Thought more of himself than his men, if I remember correctly.”

  “That’s right, he did too. Reckon he’ll make a real good politician, has all the right attributes for the job.”

  “Well, he wants you to up and visit him in the State capital. Has an important task for you, least that’s what he says here.” Betty waved the slip of paper urgently in Guardeen’s face.

  Guardeen frowned. “Don’t know as I want to get involved with Captain George again. Never did impress me too well.”

  “He got to make General by the end of it, didn’t he?” added Thaddeus glumly.

  “That a fact? General George. Don’t that beat all? But it don’t make me like him any the better.”

  “Nicholas Guardeen,” Betty said sternly, “this here is a request from an elected representative of the people. It’s your given duty to answer his call, that’s just good manners. Don’t mean you’re committed to doing anything. Just go hear the man out, is all.”

  “Well then, Miss Betty, if you think it’s right. I suppose, him being a fellow veteran and all, we ought to make the effort. It’s a busy time around here, though, coming up to spring roundup. You sure you’re not going to miss us while we’re up there?”

  “Miss you! Hell, I’ll be glad to see the back of you pair of argumentative saddle bums.”

  Guardeen chuckled. “All right, then. We’ll go see old Elias but you keep our places here, won’t you? We’ll be back soon enough. Don’t expect Governor George’s got anything we want.”

  Betty’s voice softened and she looked at him fondly. “Don’t you worry, there’ll always be a place here for you, Guardeen. You too, Thaddeus. Just take care out there, boys.”

  Chapter Three

  They took the well-worn Overland Stagecoach road as the quickest route to the capital. It was an easy three-day journey and although they could stay at a staging post one night along the way, it still meant one night out in the open. And it was on this last night that an obvious feeling of unease descended over Thaddeus.

  “What’s up?” Guardeen asked, picking up on Thaddeus’s distress as he crouched over their small cook fire frying a skillet of eggs.

  “Don’t know, Mister Nick. Something isn’t right, is all.”

  Guardeen sniffed the night air. “You mean out there?’ He nodded into the darkness.

  “Uhuh. We’ve got eyes on us.”

  Guardeen knew well enough to trust Thaddeus’s sharp senses; they’d paid off well in the past.

  “These eyes human?”

  “I would say so.”

  “Want to go take a look?
”

  “Might be wise.”

  “Go to it then. Make like you’re off to relieve yourself in them rocks there.”

  “I’m gone.”

  With that, he was too, cunningly, as silent as a shadow. Thaddeus was a past master at the art of stealth; his forebears had been skilled hunters and warriors on the west coast of Africa and he’d inherited all their native skills.

  After Thaddeus left, Guardeen busied himself about his cooking all the while with an ear to the sounds of the night beyond the camp. He heard nothing; only the distant call of a coyote wailing at the moon.

  About an hour later, Thaddeus slipped back as silently as he’d left. One minute he was not there and then he was, slipping the broad bladed Bowie knife back into the scabbard at his belt.

  “Eggs are cold,” offered Guardeen indifferently, his own supper long since digested.

  With a wry look, Thaddeus crouched down over his congealed plate and picked at it distastefully with his fingers.

  “Well?” Guardeen asked abruptly.

  “Nothing.” Thaddeus shook his head. “There’s somethin’ out there, but danged if I could find it.”

  “Indian?”

  “Smelt like it. But something else. I couldn’t be sure. Maybe half an’ half.”

  “A breed. Could just be some layabout road agent looking for easy pickings.”

  “Maybe, but best keep the horses close by tonight.”

  “I guess. Dammit! That’s upset my night. Won’t be able to sleep a wink now for looking over my shoulder.”

  They were up early next morning, Guardeen grumpy after his restless night. Impatiently he waited whilst Thaddeus quartered the area beyond the campsite looking for sign.

  “Come on, Thaddeus,” growled Guardeen. “There’s nothing out there. Who’d want to trouble us anyway? We’ve not got anything worth having.”

  “Is that a fact?” Thaddeus asked cynically as he mounted up. “We’ve got horse, haven’t we? We’ve got guns too. There’s those out there that would take the eyes right out of your head if they had half the chance.”