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    The Thirty Six Hundreds
    The Thirty Six Hundreds
    The Thirty Six Hundreds
    Ebook204 pages3 hours

    The Thirty Six Hundreds

    By Tony Masero

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    Most of it is hellish country out there. Hot, dry, dusty and known to be deadly.
    When five ruthless men ride in on a terror raid they find a surprisingly fertile valley, a plantation garden blossoming in the desert.
    It has taken Jacob Marney years of toil and heartbreak. He lost his wife in the making of this oasis but the place warrants his suffering, it is both productive and remunerative even though he cares little for the financial reward it allows, unlike the five invaders.
    Jacob has one thing he cherishes above all others and when the five lay an edge on his treasure it cuts like a knife and demands desperate measures. But Jacob is a man of the soil, a peaceful man, ill equipped for violence and he is left with only one alternative.
    Sometimes events compel a man to do something he would much rather not.
    Needs must when the devil drives.... and the devil just arrived in The Thirty Six Hundreds.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherTony Masero
    Release dateSep 24, 2015
    ISBN9781310348099
    The Thirty Six Hundreds
    Author

    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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      Book preview

      The Thirty Six Hundreds - Tony Masero

      THE THIRTY SIX HUNDREDS

      Tony Masero

      Most of it is hellish country out there. Hot, dry, dusty and known to be deadly.

      When five ruthless men ride in on a terror raid they find a surprisingly fertile valley, a plantation garden blossoming in the desert.

      It has taken Jacob Marney years of toil and heartbreak. He lost his wife in the making of this oasis but the place warrants his suffering, it is both productive and remunerative even though he cares little for the financial reward it allows,

      unlike the five invaders.

      Jacob has one thing he cherishes above all others and when the five lay an edge on his treasure it cuts like a knife and demands desperate measures. But Jacob is a man of the soil, a peaceful man, ill equipped for violence

      and he is left with only one alternative.

      Sometimes events compel a man to do something he would much rather not.

      Needs must when the devil drives…. and the devil just arrived in The Thirty Six Hundreds.

      A Hand Painted Western Publication

      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.

      Text and Cover Art © Tony Masero 2015

      Smashwords Edition

      Chapter One

      There were five of them.

      They came up through a high pass in the Los Ratones just before dawn and kept heading southwest through the mountains.

      It wouldn’t be enough to say they were bad men – in truth they were worse than that. They were just plain evil, the whole bunch of them. Although realistically that judgment might well depend on a wholly subjective point of view. To themselves they were just regular fellows, with some history true enough, but they were merely making their way during difficult times. To the rest of the world they were the meanest, and most hard-bitten, downright cruel and ornery set of hombres the southwest had ever seen.

      When they rode into The Thirty-Six Hundreds they came with ill intent, there was no doubt about it. Thing about the five was that they looked just like what they were, a dark stain on the horizon like a coming storm. With sweat-stiffened, torn and raggedy clothes worn over stale bodies dirtied by travel, some of their gear still bearing the faded insignia of the cause they had served. Their business was plain to see and marked out by the hardware they carried, six-shot cylinder pistols, often more than one, wrapped around their bodies along with loaded ammunition belts. Rifles in saddle boots with the smooth gleam of frequent use and the occasional sniper’s piece, a telescopic-sighted Sharps or Whitworth jutting up. Broad bladed knives and army bayonets, one even wore a naval cutlass at his waist. The weapons were the only things they had about them that showed any signs of care. Every death-dealing device was clean and shiny and totally unlike the rest of their possessions, even their ponies stank and appeared to be in dire need of a scrub down with a hard brush and carbolic soap.

      Some had been warriors it was clear, mostly wild cross-country bushwhackers and raiders that had ridden with Quantrill’s irregulars and others like him. Back in the day they had learnt not so much the military techniques of war but more a way of being, where the taking of life and a general sense of ruin had been engrained into every crease of their sun baked hides. Taken with the sense of dominance that was born out of such cruelty it was the thing that had shaped and warped them.

      The three eldest were in their middle to late thirties, the two younger ones were twenty and eighteen years old apiece. Whatever their age though, there was no happiness or contentment visible in any of their bleak and unshaven faces. How could there be?

      They rode together in a scattered group as they approached The Hundreds, strung out as if proudly demonstrating their individuality but it was more the anti-social separateness and lack of fellow feeling that kept them apart. As a group it was convenience rather than any sense of loyalty that held them together, for together they found strength and safety in numbers and that was the sole reason for their shared company.

      Even so it was a lonely and unseen leader that held position before them and dominion over them all. There sat the cold and darkly cowled figure of Death carrying his reaping scythe and flying a torn warning flag of no mercy and it was this invisible presence that rode at their head and governed all their actions.

      As in the worst of days, morality was lost to them, bitterness and anger invested their lives and it was only an odd sense of false sentimentality that told them they had any feelings left at all.

      So it was that the youngest of the group, the innocently faced Holly James, kept a little Golden Retriever puppy in the unbuttoned breast of his Confederate shell jacket. He fed it milksops when they could find any milk and bread; generally he treated the animal as if it were a human child, a baby that needed constant attention. He petted it, crooned to it and cradled the creature constantly.

      But one should not be fooled by these demonstrations of affection.

      Holly James was as capable a killer as the rest of them.

      Eighteen years old now, Holly had earned himself thirteen dollars a month as a twelve-year-old drummer boy with the Confederate forces during the Great War between the States. He had seen and participated in the most terrifying and ghastly fields of battle, doubling as a stretcher-bearer when he wasn’t beating out a drumroll. He had observed things that no young soul should witness and in the witnessing had created a hardnosed protective barrier about himself that warded off any hope of receiving charity.

      And yet, such is the nature of humanity that even the most corrupted heart will express itself in some concerned way, as the sad demonstration of a cold-hearted killer’s care and concern for a little stray mutt proved.

      The two younger members of the band were acting as outriders and kept their station on either flank as they traversed the high plateau. A broad table of flat rock bereft of vegetation and littered with blue-tinted raw and brittle stone. Suddenly, their leader raised a gauntleted hand and the party pulled to a halt. They were stopped at the brink of the bleak plateau and from the high sheer ledge looked down into a suddenly green and fertile vale below. Such lush and verdant abundance was strangely shocking after the desolate landscape the band had just traversed and for a moment, just a moment, it held them in awe.

      They had arrived at their destination.

      Behind their ghostly and unseen front-runner, Aaron Silversmith was the nominal earthly leader and it was he who had called the halt.

      True, he was smarter or perhaps more cunning than the rest and they deferred to him in most things. Whether that was because the band recognized his astuteness or merely because they were too lazy to think for themselves is a question that goes unanswered. He never dwelt overly on his military service but still wore his 20th Kentucky cavalry hat to demonstrate his allegiance. As a lieutenant under General John Hunt Morgan he had taken part in the General’s thousand-mile raid through Tennessee, Kentucky, Indiana and into southern Ohio. An intervention that had gained fame as the farthest north any uniformed Confederate troops ventured during the entire war. In respect of the late General, Aaron sported a similar sweeping mustache and a pointy goatee beard under his lower lip. The rest of him bore not the slightest relationship to the departed General.

      Next in line was Doobie Belt. Clothed in flapping leather chaps and a woolen check shirt that marked him out as a horse herder and cowboy, which he had been for many for years before turning to rustling them rather than caring for the animals. A spit and cuss cowboy, Doobie held no affiliations with any branch of those two great armies of the past; he valued little in life other than his own self-interest but he was the best shot with the long rifle that they had.

      The third oldest member of the gang was the Lincoln-bearded Preacher Bob, who had served under Sherman in the 21st Michigan and won himself a Silver Citation Star for his bravery in action. He had at one time, indeed been a preacher. Until it was discovered that he was having his way with both sexes of the younger members of the church choir on a regular basis. A somber fellow, in a battered stovepipe hat and long dusty tailcoat, he carried a cut-down shotgun on a lanyard over his shoulder and next to that favored item, was a leather-bound Bible that was always close to hand. Forever bewailing his past sins and seeking redemption, he rode fearlessly into the way of trouble almost as if a constant death wish rode with him. Try as he might with many dark escapades that had been both wildly dangerous and risky, as yet, this much sought after act of self-annihilation had not been forthcoming.

      Lastly, Farley Watkins, who, with his handsomeness ruined by a long knife scar from eye to jaw, was perhaps the cruelest of the whole bunch. A confirmed killer at the age of fourteen he had since those early years notched up a number of additional killings by the gun. A slick draw, faster than many and forever vain about his appearance. A sharp-eyed, temperamental and ever-watchful young man, who favored neatly trimmed sideburns and pomaded his black hair with Rowland’s Macassar Oil every morning without fail. It was all a failed attempt to beautify his looks and distract attention from the puckered flesh that disfigured his cheek and this failure was a constant irritation to the gunman, leaving him with a permanent scowl across his wounded features. None of which did anything to improve his general demeanor.

      They all gathered silently at the lip of the drop and studied the neatly ordered valley below.

      Aaron looked around at them and quietly spoke the words that were filling all their minds.

      ‘Okay boys, let’s go down there and raise some hell.’

      Chapter Two

      The valley they overlooked on was broad – way broad. In fact it was more of a flat plain than a valley.

      Some time back, when the gold rush of ’66 was in full swing. The army had divided up the fertile land bordering the river into even sections and the first thirty-six hundred who had come and laid claim to a slot had also given the place its name. Later, it had been more like ten thousand hopeful prospectors that had arrived but by that time the land had been laid waste and the lode petered out. Even so, the earlier assessment had stuck and so had the name.

      To the northeast rose the long wall and evenly shaped gray teeth of the Los Ratones mountains and to the west the long tailed and numerous mesas of the Pasteles de Queso range, that sprouted like forbidding flat-headed extrusions onto the landscape, both ranges neatly bordered and enclosed the Thirty-Six Hundreds country. Down the middle snaked the ignominiously named Worm River that the early Spaniards had called Rio Serpiente, that being a far nobler title than the ‘Worm’ by anybody’s reckoning.

      When Jacob Marney had passed by in his Conestoga on the road west, he was the one who had engaged with the ravaged Hundreds and seen potential in the wasteland and after laying claim to the entire valley had come back with seedling fruit trees, their roots packed in dampened earth and tied in canvas sacks. With time and care and as the land beneath the putrid mess the miners had left was still a rich loam from the original formation of the wetlands in ancient times, Jacob had laid in irrigation channels and over the years created a veritable Garden of Eden. Within the two natural mountain barriers a unique climate had been created and along with the constantly channeled water supply the whole of the Thirty-Six Hundreds had flourished under Jacob’s care. It had taken him some years but now along the broad valley grew fields of peaches, oranges, lemons and apples, cherries and pears in great quantity. There was even a section set aside for almond, hazel and pecan in a vast orchard that stretched down either side of the entire length of the valley riverbed.

      In the spring when the trees came into blossom, the valley floated in a perfume-scented cloud of pink and white flowers and those that passed through marveled and thought the country lay under a great bed of unseasonal snow on first sight. With the flowers came birds, insects and bees and the enterprising Jacob encouraged hives that propagated his plants, produced him honey and gave sweetness to his morning coffee.

      It was Jacob who had founded the town of Orchardville that lay in the central part of the valley; he had intended it primarily as a staging post for the shipping of his produce. Great warehouses stacked with crates branded with the name Marney’s Plantation stood alongside the river and to them were ferried the picked fruit in flat-bottomed boats from the fields along the river. Then from the warehouses the fruit was freighted overland by wagon to the nearest train depot at Soda Springs and from there shipped to all points of the compass.

      In time, of course, the place flourished. Pickers were brought in during the season, many from down across the border. The rest of the year a small army of trained workers tended the plants and most of them elected to stay, to bring their womenfolk and start families. So the town had grown.

      Jacob Marney was a quiet and inoffensive man but smart enough to see the greater shape of things, so he had removed himself and built a large house on a small hillock outside and overlooking the town. He was a tall man in his forty-ninth year, not given to fat but raunchy and hard boned and he favored a spade-like beard on his lower chin. Most of the time he looked like just another one of his workers, dressed in work worn clothes with frayed cuffs, stained knees and ill-fitting jackets. A sour looking body with a full head of white hair over a sunken-cheeked expression that left one with the supposition he was a mean spirited and glowering sort.

      Not true. It was more that Jacob held himself within himself; his interest was solely in his land and the plants it produced. Despite how he may have looked, he had money and was no

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