Return to Salado

By Tony Masero

Everett Chad spent a long time on the run.
Now, no longer the boy that fled and took up the outlaw trail, a hardened Everett is back to make peace with his family and see the girl he left behind.
But as Everett is to about discover, changes have come to town and it is not going to be an easy homecoming. With unforgiving enemies wanting retribution for the killing he left behind, there will be more blood spilt and battles to overcome if he is to survive on the streets of Salado.
But there is one thing none of them know - Everett comes riding under false colors!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Tony Masero
• Release date: Dec 5, 2019
• ISBN: 9780463661239

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

RETURN TO SALADO

TONY MASERO

Everett Chad spent a long time on the run.

Now, no longer the boy that fled and took up the outlaw trail, a hardened Everett is back to make peace with his family and see the girl he left behind.

But as Everett is to about discover, changes have come to town and it is not going to be an easy homecoming. With unforgiving enemies wanting retribution for the killing he left behind, there will be more blood spilt and battles to overcome if he is to survive on the streets of Salado.

But there is one thing none of them know - Everett comes riding under false colors!

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 2019

Smashwords Edition

Chapter One

Everett Chad felt awkward.

He stood outside the picket fence, hat in hand as if he were some reluctant schoolboy.

Lacey had not noticed him yet, she was hanging up washing and the bed sheets were flapping in the breeze. They would be dry in minutes, she knew, the hot air off the Sonoran Desert would bake them stiff as boards soon enough.

‘Lacey!’ he said, his voice catching in his throat. She did not hear him under the flap of the sheets.

He called again more loudly and she spun around startled.

Lacey’s eyes opened wide in momentary fear. She was alone out here and it was still a dangerous spot on the edge of the desert and a good distance from the town of Salado.

In the glare of sunlight she saw a figure at the fence. Not tall but still a head height over her and looking a little rough around the edges with a Mexican jacket frayed at the edges and wearing worn denims. He carried a gunbelt too with a bone-handled pistol and knife showing, slung from his saddle horn by a leather thong hung a Winchester rifle.

There was something about the face though, hidden under a week’s growth of beard and travel dust.

‘Howdy, Lacey.’

‘Ev!’ she gasped. ‘Is that you?’

He smiled then, that slow quirking of the lips that she had known so well. ‘Have I changed that much?’

‘Oh, God!’ she gasped, dropping her end of the pinned sheet so that it draped in the dust of the yard. One hand, fingers fluttering, ran to her lips. ‘You’re back….’

It was both a question and statement covering only the expression of her confusion.

‘Good to see you,’ he said. And it was, she was as slender and beautiful as he remembered. Even now with her fair hair windblown and awry, dressed in a pinafore with her sleeves rolled up from the washing. She looked a little haggard he noticed, had lost some weight and there were dark patches under her eyes. Five years had taken their toll he guessed but still, that radiance he had so treasured as a younger man was still there under the surface.

‘Come in, come in,’ she said remembering herself and hurrying to open the gate.

They stood before each other a silent moment and then she launched herself forward and held him in an embrace.

‘Where have you been, Ev? It’s been such a long time.’

He backed off a little awkwardly, ‘Is Pappy around?’

Lacey shook her head, ‘He’s not here at the moment. You know he’s sheriff at Salado now?’

‘And Duane?’

‘Deputy,’ she confirmed and then paused. ‘We married, did you know that?’

‘You married Duane?’

Lacey nodded affirmation and then shrugged, ‘But come on in, up to the house. I’ll make us some coffee.’

Everett followed her looking over the wide front of the house and veranda outside, ‘Hasn’t changed much, except maybe for a coat of paint.’

‘Your Pappy likes it kept up.’

They stepped onto the porch steps and Everett remembered his pony, ‘The pony okay tied up out there or you want it in the corral?’ he asked.

‘Sure, it’ll be fine there,’ she said as she led the way into the parlor. ‘Wait here, Ev, I’ll get the coffee.’

‘Don’t bother, Lacey. Water will be fine.’

He looked around the room as she hurried off to fetch him a glass. It was still there, he noted. Resting on the dresser next to the old man’s Rangers badge, the Indian arrow that Pappy had pulled out of him all those years ago.

In a whirling moment of memory he was back there on that day….

The dust and blood. The screaming and gunfire. Whooping Comanche braves, their victory assured, rushing in to kill off the remaining defenders of the wagon train. His father butchered with tomahawks before his eyes. And his mother….

But so much had been lost over time, he had only been ten years old back then and now much of it was a vague and confused memory.

He rubbed his shoulder where the arrow had pinioned him. An old wound and one of many now. The ache was a distant recollection but he did recall his uncle and now adoptive father cutting it out.

Everett and his family had been coming to join his father’s brother, Louis Chad, when the raid on the wagon train had been sprung on them and the familial meeting had not been one any of them had been expecting. Louis Chad had led the company of Rangers that had driven off the Indians and saved him.

No one else survived, only he, left for dead with the arrow piercing his back. But finally, carried away in his uncle’s arms Everett had been brought back to the ranch and there taken in and raised with his cousin Duane, Pappy’s only son, his own wife having died many years earlier.

Ranger Chad had been a tough surrogate father, with his ingrained code of honor and duty as much a part of his makeup as the looping mustache that draped down his jaw.

‘Here, Ev,’ said Lacey, returning and offering him the glass.

‘Thank you,’ he sipped the water politely.

She sighed, crossing her hands before her and studying him, ‘What have you been doing, Ev? You look like its been hard times.’

He grinned evasively and set down the glass on the sideboard, ‘You know me,’ he answered. ‘Running loose as usual.’

‘So what brings you back here?’

‘Just passing through, I thought I’d drop by and see how everyone was doing.’

Lacey frowned then and her lip twisted, ‘I don’t know how Pappy will take it. You know, what with all that went on.’

‘Ach! It’s old news now.’

‘He still takes it bad, Ev.’

‘Well, he was the one that set me on the road.’

‘Sure, I know. Nobody else knows about that but it sits hard with him.’

‘Offends his lawman’s code, I guess.’

‘Oh, yes,’ she smiled at recognition of the veiled criticism. ‘He’s as stern as ever.’

‘I’ll bet. But you and Duane, that’s a hard one to figure.’

Her eyes dropped and she shrugged again, ‘There didn’t seem much else to do….’ Her jaw tightened and she looked up at him with hardened eyes, ‘….after you left.’

He felt the wave of accusation and it brought a lump into his throat, ‘I couldn’t do much else myself, Lacey. I had to run and make it fast too. The Bailey’s were a mean bunch, they would have had me strung up from a tree if it hadn’t been for Pappy.’

‘They’re still around you know? Old man Bailey’s dead now but the two Bailey boys are still living on that heap of theirs outside of town and running the haulage company.’

‘Still making trouble, I suppose.’

‘They keep Pappy’s hands full, not a week goes by when one or the other of them isn’t in the town lockup for being drunk and disorderly.’

There was the sound of boots thumping on the porch step outside and the front door opening.

Everett recognized Duane, ‘You there, honey? We’re back.’

Then Everett heard Pappy’s voice call out behind him, ‘We got visitors, Lacey? Who’s is that pony outside?’

Chapter Two

As they entered, both Sheriff and Deputy stood with their mouths slightly agape in surprise. In the following moment of silence Everett jumped back to an afternoon thirteen years before….

A hot, slick day and school was out. A lowering cloudy sky with the kind of close heat that brought beads of sweat to the forehead.

Billy Lee Bailey, the youngest of the pack, spitting at his feet.

Everett going stiff as a post at the insult, his fists clenching by his side.

‘Go on then,’ jibed Billy Lee. ‘Try it on, you little squirt.’

A fat and ugly bully with one eye a-squint, being egged on by his elder brothers.

‘You get him, Billy Lee,’ urged his big brother Carl, the oldest of the three and built like an ox. ‘He allus thought himself better than you.’

‘Yeah, damned toady, just ‘cos his old man runs with the Rangers,’ agreed lean and sly Wax, the middle one.

‘Ain’t even his real pa,’ added Carl. ‘I reckon he was found under bush somewhere.’

‘That’s what they do with bastards, ain’t it?’ sneered Wax. ‘Leave ‘em under a bush.’

‘Sure, the Indians do it. Maybe he’s a redskin’s bastard.’

Billy Lee needed no more urging and he charged forward, snarling and expecting his weight to carry the battle. All bluster, red-faced and spiteful. Everett, smaller and lighter, twisting to one side as the bigger boy rushed past.

Pappy had shown both Everett and Duane how to handle themselves in a fisticuffs fight, how to duck and weave and use any means possible to overcome. He had hung a sack full of sand from an old tree branch and had them punching it. Shown them the way of bunching their fists, balling the hand tight and keeping the thumbs tucked to the side. How to strike with the knuckles and deliver from firmly placed feet. It was the only play they had ever had with Pappy, tucking their elbows in and keeping a protective shoulder raised as they pounded the sack repeatedly.

Duane had invariably whined at his grazed knuckles and ducked out before long but the bitterness that still lurked in Everett’s heart from the loss of his true family had left him with an enmity that he delivered each time he socked the punch bag.

Billy Lee did not know what he was walking into that day after school and Everett had set about dismantling the bully with a viciousness that belied his age. This had not been a pugilist’s preparation, this was a no-holds-barred street fighting technique that Pappy had educated them with and Everett used it with cold efficiency.

Billy Lee buckled under the attack, he gasped and doubled over as his opponent sunk one into his soft gut followed by a stinging whack to the side of the skull. Doubling around behind Billy Lee, Everett delivered a snapping blow to the kidneys and then another to the exposed jaw over Billy Lee’s shoulder.

Panting and blubbering, Billy Lee turned pleading eyes to his elder brothers and they had waded in. Everett was hard put to ward off the attack from the bigger boys. Duane had made a half-hearted attempt to help but been easily stiff-armed aside before backing off and leaving Everett to take a battering.

When at last Everett had lain bruised and beaten to the ground, Wax Bailey had shouted into his face, ‘See what you get when you mix with the Bailey’s.’ With that he had swiped a backhanded blow across the watching Duane’s face and split his lip. ‘You too, you dopey little chicken-shit!’

On that day Everett had discovered the true nature of his cousin and adoptive brother but bizarrely he had taken it as his mission in life to protect the weaker Duane. It was in a way a thanks to Pappy for taking him in and he had stood up for Duane, who thrived under his protection, all the way through their growing years together.

Right up until the day he had shot down and killed Billy Lee Bailey.

‘What the hell!’ gasped Duane, recovering his surprise. ‘Lord Almighty! Everett!’

‘Howdy, Duane,’ Everett answered but his eyes were on Pappy.

‘Everett,’ Pappy allowed. ‘Been a while.’

The old Ranger looked even crustier to Everett, the hair, white now and the seamed faced tanned to the color of leather. The same old-style mustache drooping down to his jawline with those weathered and firmly compressed lips like a creased slash across his lower face. The eyes were faded, the light blue color bleached away to a pale gray yet still with an expression that gave nothing away and was as cold as an icepack.

- He must have been one hell of a mean sonofabitch in his day – thought Everett.

‘What brings you back?’ burst out Duane.

‘Just passing through,’ Everett answered calmly. ‘Thought I’d look in.’

‘Well…. You know….’ Duane looked across at his father for guidance. ‘Things have changed….’

The air in the room was taut as they waited for the old lawman’s response. He said nothing and it was Everett who broke the silence with an obvious challenge.

‘Good to see you all. Ain’t that right, Pappy?’

Pappy turned slowly towards Lacey ignoring the query, ‘We got supper on the way, girl?’

‘It’s ready, Pappy,’ Lacey answered nervously. ‘Just needs warming up.’

Pappy turned to Everett, ‘You staying?’

Everett shook his head, ‘No thanks, I’ll get out of your hair, I didn’t mean to intrude.’

‘Then you’d best get going,’ said Pappy, turning away dismissively.

‘Hey now!’ cried Duane. ‘Don’t be like that, Pappy. We ain’t seen Ev for a heck of a time, least we can do is give him supper.’

Pappy turned at the doorway, ‘He can stay if he wants, I ain’t saying he can’t but I ain’t sitting at table with him.’

‘Oh, Pappy,’ sighed Lacey in exasperation but the old man had turned his back and left the room.

Duane looked from Everett to Lacey, unsure of what to do.

‘I’d best move on,’ said Everett, picking up his