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    The Law According to Court
    The Law According to Court
    The Law According to Court
    Ebook181 pages4 hours

    The Law According to Court

    By Tony Masero

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    A killer is loose in the West and nobody is more directly affected than Reuben Court, the one-time roustabout and gunman. Reuben has seen his fair share of trouble but this one hits home and hurts bad. His heartbreak is superseded by the determination to seek justice and he sets out determined to find those responsible. Why and by whom? It mystifies Reuben as he follows a trail of victims all of whom die horribly at the hands of the unknown killer and seemingly for the basest of reasons.
    Meanwhile his partner in the hunt is under the gun of a band of bounty hunters whose rich boss has laid such a hefty price on his head that the trackers are relentlessly determined to take him down, definitely more dead than alive.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherTony Masero
    Release dateSep 5, 2017
    ISBN9781370430833
    The Law According to Court
    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 Law According to Court - Tony Masero

      THE LAW ACCORDING TO COURT

      Tony Masero

      A killer is loose in the West and nobody is more directly affected than Reuben Court, the one-time roustabout and gunman. Reuben has seen his fair share of trouble but this one hits home and hurts bad. His heartbreak is superseded by the determination to seek justice and he sets out determined to find those responsible. Why and by whom? It mystifies Reuben as he follows a trail of victims all of whom die horribly at the hands of the unknown killer and seemingly for the basest of reasons.

      Meanwhile his partner in the hunt is under the gun of a band of bounty hunters whose rich boss has laid such a hefty price on his head that the trackers are relentlessly determined to take him down, definitely more dead than alive.

      A Hand Painted Western

      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 2017

      Smashwords Edition

      Prologue

      The first time I saw Reuben Court he was leading a posse that brought in Kid Dooley Prentice and Frenchie Lebec. They were a couple of liquored up bums and no accounts that had stolen some horses and a sulky plow from one of the farmers down on The Levels. Reuben rode those two up Main Street still on the hacks they had stolen with a whole mob of citizens following on along the sidewalks all cheering and clapping at his success. But old Reuben never gave them a second glance he just rode on stiff as a statue right up to the jailhouse. He was a big man; tall in the saddle with a wide-brimmed, flat-crown hat and long tailed dark frock coat and vest that he always kept neat and tidy. A cold featured heavily mustached fellow who would stand no nonsense and, some would say, dealt with malcontents in an often questionably and expeditious manner.

      That was back when my folks had first moved into Gallowsway, the town being on a busy crossroads and a place with good opportunity for trade so my pa thought. And he was right, as both he and ma prospered there after a year or so as storekeepers in woman’s wear.

      The town had some unusual origins, seeing as how it got its name from the gallows tree that used to stand on the main Contention road out of town. It was a big old oak tree with this right sturdy branch thick as an elephant leg that hung out over the side of the highway. Must have been a hundred years old that tree it was so grand. Well this particular branch was about fifteen feet up from tiptoe and therefore real suitable for hanging folks from. They would put up maybe two or three criminals at a time and pin on them a notice with the nature of their crimes displayed. High sounding legal pronouncements like ‘equine larceny’ (That means horse stealing for those of you too ignorant to know), ‘criminal ambuscade on the road,’ ‘excision by firearms’ and suchlike, that kind of thing. So all the passersby on that busy road could take heed and gain fair warning from these examples of how justice was handed out in Tomeha County under the auspices of Marshal Reuben Court. Trouble was not many folks could read too well in them days and those that could, well they never understood the intricacies of learned phrasing that our erudite judge, Louis T. Fairweather favored when he wrote up them citations.

      Usually they took down the executed after a week or a few days but the worse one I ever saw was a fellow who had been robbing away small children and mistreating them in a foul and carnal manner. They left him dangling there a long while and he had so riled up the local people that every resentful father riding past would take out a pistol and have a shot at the hanging cadaver. Man, that fellow was so full of holes there weren’t much of him left. Nobody would touch the corpse though, they all thinking it was tainted somehow by a crime so heinous. In the course of time the limbs and various body parts started to disintegrate and fall off and was left lying there until the whole area under that tree was real putrid, so bad it made you sick to your stomach you got downwind of it.

      Anyway, it all ended when some shortsighted freight hauler came up from Contention with a loaded wagon and drove real close to read some of the signs on the latest victims and that’s when his high-loaded vehicle plumb clipped that branch and took it down. And that was that, no more gallows, but the name stayed on all the same.

      But I digress; I was telling you about Reuben Court.

      Reuben was not a friendly man, he didn’t take to people real well and kept his own council, so he was something of a loner not given to speaking of himself. There were all kinds of stories about his past, of course, about the days before he took up the law. The gossipmongers in town couldn’t resist an opportunity like that. The story they told was that he was a younger during the Civil War and grew up like most of us by losing some members of his family during the conflict (indeed, true to say, I lost me a couple of distant cousins on the Round Top at Gettysburg). In Reuben’s case it was his three elder brothers and his pa. That left Reuben with his ma and two younger kin, James and Billy, a couple of boys still in short pants, so Reuben was breadwinner for the whole family from then on.

      Seems like it had been a pretty tough life for young Reuben, he must have been around fourteen or fifteen about this time but he was loyal to his family and worked hard to provide for them. It got even harder when some asshole started making unwelcome advances towards his ma. Now why this man should do that I ain’t too sure, Ma Court weren’t no oil painting by all accounts and after bearing six kids in an earth floor country shack she was well past her prime. They say this fella, an older rascal and local rancher named Zachary Leason, most likely had intentions towards the natural springs and salt licks that showed on the Court property, them being a prime source for the then growing cattle market. The Court family had allowed the local ranchers to use the plot freely as good neighbors should and never asked for any payment but it seems Zachary had other ideas and hoped to wed the widow and make himself a few dollars on the side. Like maybe two dollars a head of cattle allowed in.

      Well Reuben loved his ma and he didn’t like Zachary who was a big bumptious sonofabitch with a whole halo of attitude. So it ended up like this. One day Reuben was in town getting supplies with his ma and younger brother James. They had their buckboard in the street outside the general store whilst Zachary and his sister were across the way with their own wagon. So, Reuben’s ma is inside having neighborly conversation with the owner and Reuben is about to reach out and collect a candy bar for his little brother from the jar on the counter. You know the kind, them sort that looks like a walking cane and are all striped in red and white color like a barbershop pole. Trouble is it’s the last stick in the jar and as his fingers reach out a gloved hand moves in and brushes him aside and snatches up that stick of candy.

      ‘I needs the sweetness,’ says Zachary, with a kind of leering grin. Well, he surely did, as there weren’t much sugar coating to be found in his self-seeking disposition.

      ‘That was for my kid brother James,’ says Reuben. ‘I’d appreciate you letting me have that.’

      ‘Tough’, says Zack, in a low voice that only Reuben can hear. ‘You little pissants got too much already. Your brother can go eat shit for all I care.’

      With that, and nice as you like, he tips his hat to Mrs. Court and says to the storekeeper as he sticks the candy in his mouth, ‘Put it on my bill.’ Then he’s out the store like he owns the place.

      Well, Reuben is fuming; he didn’t like that, no siree, not at all.

      So after a moment of consideration he steps outside and goes straight across to the Leason wagon where Zack’s sister is sitting up on the driving seat looking all prim and righteous whilst her brother loads some baling wire in back.

      Reuben didn’t hold back none although this fellow is nigh on twice his size. He catches Zachary by the back of the head and whops him down on the open tailgate. That half chokes Zachary as he’s still sucking on his candy stick and it ends up half way down his throat. Then, quick as a flash, Reuben grabs both the stunned man’s ankles and pulls them out from under him. Zachary goes face down again onto the tailgate with an almighty smack and ends up sliding down on his ass in the dirt and counting stars.

      ‘Don’t you ever front me again like that in front of my people,’ warns Reuben, with his boot in Zachary’s chest.

      Just then Zachary’s sister comes around the wagon holding a loaded six-gun in two shaky hands.

      ‘You leave my brother alone,’ she screams and looses off one that whistles past Reuben’s ear.

      By now Reuben is right irritated, so he grabs her pistol hand and twists the gun away but she struggles hard, screeching something fit to bust until Reuben lands her a smart one on the jaw. That sets her down in a fluff of dust in the road.

      So Reuben’s is left holding this pistol with a weeping woman at his feet and Zachary coming at him with an axe he’s lifted out of the wagon bed. Nothing much else he could do, so Reuben hauls of and plugs the fellow with two shots to the chest. Bam! Bam! And down goes Zack shot dead straight through the heart.

      Reuben is cool as ice. He tosses the gun in the back of their wagon and without a backward glance leaves off to go get his ma and brother and then, still easy as you like, he steps up and takes hold the reins of their buckboard and heads out of town.

      Reuben had to light out of the State for that one. He left his family and rode out West heading for California and other adventures along the way. But that tells you the kind of man Reuben Court is. He gets in first and he gets in hard and he kills if he has to.

      Chapter One

      Reuben Court fell in love. That much I can tell you with surety.

      He lost himself to Sabine Abigail Brenovitch with the kind of devotion you might find in a church or chapel.

      He’d been out on the prairie skinning buffalo for a while, had driven supply freight for the army and ridden shotgun on the Overland stage line and him being in his twenty-third year had reckoned it was about time to settle down. Leastways, that was his logical thinking but more likely he had seen this real pretty eighteen-year-old girl out walking out with her ma’s shopping and lost his heart right then and there.

      She was pretty too. Some say she was like an angel with golden locks and soft pale skin that glowed with life. Generally she was of a temperate and intelligent nature and she took calmly to Reuben’s eager advances as if a lady of twice her years. He fell over himself bringing her flowers and candy and calling at her door each and every day he was that enamored. It was like the hardened kid had been melted and Abby (as they called her in lieu of her given Christian name), had earned herself this soft spectacle of an ardent beau who would have kissed her feet if she so asked him he was that lost. It was a right turnaround for Reuben and it softened his soul something radical. I guess a woman can do that if she fits the bill for a man.

      In those days he hadn’t yet growed himself a mustache and was a handsome enough looking young fellow so that Abby could look on his features with kindly attraction. She admired the boldness that she recognized latent in his character and soon enough they were out walking together. He would take her, hand in hand through the bands of trees and into the meadows on the fringes of town where she’d pick wild flowers and chain them whilst he sat and watched like a tongue-tied dummy in a waxworks. Right soon though he could hold himself back no longer and he begged a kiss from her,

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