The Pursued

By Tony Masero

1890 – Wyoming
Some old friends may die hard and with all of them now separated by time, money and bad memories it’s a hard trail to track.
It’s been over thirty years since Powers Brent has last seen them but he answers the call anyway. Promising to make good the bad they did he must re-acquaint himself with his old companions, wherever they are and whatever they’ve become.
But someone out there is on a killing spree.
Could it be punishment for former sins or payback for a crime not committed?
Killers wait in the sidelines and after Powers has found all his old friends he still has to face yet more vengeful and unknown shadows from the past.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Piccadilly
• Release date: Jul 31, 2014
• ISBN: 9781311438898

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.

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Issuing classic fiction from Yesterday and Today!

1890 – Wyoming

Some old friends may die hard and with all of them now separated by time, money and bad memories it’s a hard trail to track.

It’s been over thirty years since Powers Brent has last seen them but he answers the call anyway. Promising to make good the bad they did he must re-acquaint himself with his old companions, wherever they are and whatever they’ve become.

But someone out there is on a killing spree.

Could it be punishment for former sins or payback for a crime not committed?

Killers wait in the sidelines and after Powers has found all his old friends he still has to face yet more vengeful and unknown shadows from the past.

THE PURSUED

By Tony Masero

First published by Solstice Publishing in 2012

Copyright © 2012 by Tony Masero

Published by Piccadilly Publishing at Smashwords: August 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

Visit Tony here

This is a Piccadilly Publishing Book

Series Editor: Ben Bridges

Text © Piccadilly Publishing

Published by Arrangement with the Author.

Prologue

Powers dreamed.

The same damned recurring dream.He was dressed in his dirty Union blues again and still carrying the old Springfield rifle. The bayonet was bloody and there was fire all around him and the stench of death strong in his nostrils.

Everything moved fast. Too fast. But it was exciting! The fire raced in his young blood and pounded in his head. Oh, such a thrill, almost as if a Fourth of July firework had been launched in his chest and burst in his brain. The feeling brought forgiveness to him for everything.

Ghostlike, the old farmer came toward him, waving both hands desperately and pointing but Powers ignored the gestures and just watched the bullet strike. A shockwave of dust spread wide across the front of the man’s worn overalls before he dropped and lay still.

At first, a glimmer of pity ran through Powers but it was rapidly suppressed. He’d seen so many fall, torn and mangled by shell and shot. Why should this man deserve any pity? He was not a comrade, nor even a brother in arms. What did he know of the frantic charges they had made across open fields that screamed with volley fire and the rip of case-shot? All the farmer knew was the plow and the soft security of a fireside pipe.

A new scene flashed through the dream.

His sleeping eardrums were pierced as he heard the screaming, high pitched and terrible. A warbling of disbelief that rose to a frantic pleading.

He remembered smiling. Smiling! How could he do that?

It was the proud woman he saw, at first bustling with aggressive anger but then collapsing into disbelief as the men wrenched her young daughter away. The mother dropped to her knees and begged plaintively until one of the soldiers hit the side of her head with a rifle butt. The stunned woman gaped silently in anguish and terror as the clothes were torn from her body and they spread-eagled her on the bare boards beside her daughter.

One of the others covered her quickly. Pale blue pants and leather braces rode loose around his thighs as he pumped rapidly. For a moment in the dream, the mother stared back into Powers’s watching face with an almost whimsical look of sorrow. Then her sad eyes were lost from view behind the looming shoulders of her thrusting rider.

When they had all finished, their lust satiated, he watched as one of the men slit the throats of the two women.

There was fire all around him now. He was buried in fire. Figures flitted among the flames, demonic shadows that blurred into the burning roar and ran away laughing. A mad, crazy laughter, expanded in volume by the jars of liquor they had gorged on, until the noise became a long continuous bellow in his head.

They could destroy. The god of war allowed them. It was a perverse freedom that opened the devil’s door and gave them entry into Hell. A drug so potent, he never wanted it to end.

Breaking. Smashing. Killing.It did not matter. None of these possessions or people were his and he would never pass this way again. All he had in his heart was wild violence and the justification of a righteous war to give him the energy for all his rapacious lust.

But then he saw the children … and the apples … They seemed to issue radiance … a sparkling gleam that spun and filled the room with its golden light, like the brightness of a rising sun ….

Breathless, he awoke sharply. His chest heaved and he panted as if he’d been running down the grassy slopes of the steep hill toward the farm again. Sweat beaded his brow and he wiped it away restlessly with his palm.

God! Would it never leave him?

Chapter One

Powers Brent settled into his usual cubicle in Minnie Cote’s eating-house with all the comfortable sense of belonging that these regular visits brought him when he came into town. He nodded politely at the other elderly male customers late breakfasting as he took off his hat and laid it on the seat next to him. Powers was a man just into his fifty-second year this past month and he thanked God he was still fit and able, unlike some of those he shared the dining room with this morning.

Running the Diamond and a Half was a demanding task and left little time for illness or distraction. That was mostly why he enjoyed this time at Minnie’s; it was his one brief oasis of relaxation in an otherwise hectic life.

He knew the other diners saw a burly, thickset and broad shouldered man, clean-shaven with crisp gray hair kept cropped tight to his skull. A genial, tanned face that looked as if it had seen some rough times. A broken nose and thickened eyebrows spoke of a brush with bare-knuckle fisticuffs for a while.For town visits he favored a gray slouch hat, silk ribbon tie and drape jacket over a pressed white shirt — but however he dressed, he always wore the old .44 Schofield strapped to his waist under the coat. Some habits died hard.

Even though he had no intention of reading it, he laid a month-old Wyoming Farmer newspaper on the table in front of him. The closely packed columns of gossip held little interest for him. It was just a useful barrier behind which he could retreat when the townsfolk came calling. Mostly, they showed respect for the wealthy cattle baron and tried to visit with him when he was in town. It was nice to be respected in the community, but Powers cherished his privacy more. He preferred to think things through at such times and not be bothered by the social chitchat of his neighbors.

Minnie arrived with his coffee. She didn’t need to ask; it was understood that he would automatically need a full cup, strong and sweet.

She was a widowed lady and therefore dressed in black with her dark curly hair fastened up in a topknot. She was a pretty woman and still young enough to create a following, despite her volatile and sometimes uncomfortably forthright personality. Those of her customers who were enamored of her noted the constant attention she paid Powers and had to admit it was obvious she’d set her cap for him. They remained hopeful, however as they also observed that — to date — Powers had shown not the slightest desire to reciprocate.

He was a loner, and rumor had it that his isolationist attitude arose out of an almost regal position necessitated by the solitary control he kept over his vast spread. He had an empire that covered fifteen thousand acres and often ran beef herds of over one hundred thousand up to the railhead.

Powers had it in mind to extend his domain by the eventual addition of a railhead with its own packinghouses and ice plants, but that was a dream as yet unfulfilled.

Morning, Powers, said Minnie, laying the thick china cup and saucer down before him. How goes the world?

He looked up, a twinkle in his eye. Round and round, as usual. And what have you got to say for yourself this fine day, Minnie?

"It is a fine day, isn’t it?" She sighed contentedly and looked – rather vacantly, he thought – through the full size plate glass window onto the front street of Fellows Crossing.

Powers recognized that she saw nothing there, yet saw everything, for little changed outside the window day to day. It was a bright day, true enough, with midmorning sunlight angling down from a clear blue cloudless sky. A flatbed wagon stood outside Carver’s Store as the clerk loaded it with boxed supplies. The wagon's patient team of mules hung their heads and defecated onto the street with unwarranted regularity. Josh Linneker, the blacksmith, shaped a horseshoe with ringing tones under the split cane roof of his smoky smithy. A group of three ladies chirped together, birdlike on the sidewalk under their parasols and a lone cowboy dusty from the trail rode in slowly.

Minnie grunted. Here’s somebody new.

Powers folded his unread paper. He watched the cowboy as the young fellow pulled up, tipped his curly brimmed black hat and spoke to the chatting ladies. It was obvious from his gestures that the young man was asking for directions. Receiving no success, the cowboy moved on and stopped at the blacksmith’s, asking again.

A cold shiver trickled down Powers’s spine. He knew somehow that the boy was coming for him. It was a definite sensation. A warning signal learned in the many tight spots he had endured over the years and one not to be ignored.

Powers checked him over, looking for some sign of recognition by which he might identify the young man. The boy wore nothing unusual; a dirty deer hide vest over a panel-fronted red shirt and loose black neckerchief; well worked brown leather batwing chaps and denim pants with a pair of Mexican silver roundel spurs hanging from worn, down-at-the-heel boots.He was young, somewhere between eighteen and twenty, with brown hair under his hat and an open and round face with a mustache that cut alongside both sides of his mouth and ran Mex-style down to his jaw-line. He looked innocent enough, except for the holstered short-barreled Colt in the gun-belt around his belly. It was an old gun, the bone grip yellowed with use and age. An inheritance, Powers guessed. An inheritance from an older owner, and he wondered if it was that owner who might have had complaint against him. After all, a man did not build a ranch like the Diamond and a Half without making some enemies.

Josh Linneker pointed over toward Minnie’s and the boy thanked the blacksmith with a tip of his hat. He tied off his pony to the street hitching post before walking casually over to the eating-house.

You thinking about my breakfast? Powers asked Minnie, who still gazed dreamily into the street. It was a tactical question, asked for her security. He thought it best that she be moved away from him just now.

Oh, Lord! she jumped. I’m sorry, Powers. I was miles away. Sure, you want the usual?

That’d be best. He smiled up at her.

Right away, she promised, hurrying off.

Powers watched the young man draw near, heard the jingle bobs on his spurs as he stepped up and his boots thudded on the wooden boardwalk outside. The boy opened the glass- paneled