Nazareth

by Tony Masero

  NAZARETH

  Tony Masero

  He came back east alone.

  After soldiering against warring Indians on the Frontier, Billy Lee LaBone was expecting a little serenity in his life. He hoped he will find it in the fishing village of Nazareth but soon discovers that unless you enjoy hauling nets on the cold seas there is not much else for an ex-military man to do except what he’s good at, namely carrying a gun for the town’s kingpin. But his boss’s wife has seduction on her mind and from then on things go from bad to worse.

  They do truly terrible things to his lady.

  They try to do terrible things to him too but Billy Lee was born with a will to survive and an unforgiving streak. It proves to be a long road back to Nazareth but he will do anything to exact revenge for what they did to him and the woman he loves.

  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.

  Smashwords Edition

  Copyright © Tony Masero 2016

  Chapter One

  Billy Lee LaBone was out of lead.

  First off, he always carried the pin over an empty chamber to save getting his leg blown off if he had to make a fast draw. That left him five live ones in the Colt. One he let off into the ceiling as a warning and the next one took the hat off the big fellow. That left him with three and now he was beginning to wish he had not been so generous with the warnings. The big fellow kept coming with that wild-eyed stare of one who will not be deterred. He was pissed and mumbling something about getting back for the hole in his brand new store-bought hat.

  It took two, center-chest to stop him complaining.

  The other guy was just a kid, long flaxen haired and spotty chinned, and he shouldn’t have been there at all.

  Billy Lee winged him. Put his last slug in the boy’s upper arm, just enough to do no more than crease the limb. But the kid insisted, he was still trying to cock the big old Schofield that he carried but the hammer was stiff and it was a mite too heavy for his delicate fingers to do one-handed.

  Being out of ammunition it left Billy Lee with only one option. So he walked right up to the kid and slammed him with his Colt. Bam! Right between the eyes with the butt of the pistol. It was the long barreled version so he had plenty of swing to it.

  The kid buckled at the knees but before he dropped Billy Lee reached down and slid the loaded Schofield from his fingers. The boy had popped off a few before he was winged and Billy Lee wasn’t sure how many he still had in the cylinder. But whatever he had left in there was more than Billy Lee owned right now.

  How the kid had missed him he did not know, after all Billy Lee was big enough. Six-foot tall, broad shouldered and carrying a hundred and fifty pounds of ample target, sufficient for even a whey faced punk kid to handle.

  Billy turned his attention to the third member of the gang. A toad-faced dummy who was far more interested in the cash drawer to notice that his buddies had not done as well as they should. He had his hands in the till scrabbling around for every greenback dollar and half cent he could find and Billy Lee looked him over one time, then he twisted a wry lip, took aim and dropped the ugly sucker with a single head shot that made one hell of a mess of the wall behind the cash desk.

  There had to be one other.

  Billy Lee strode across the bar room heading for the door.

  Those few remaining customers who had any curiosity left and were still inside The Broken Wing saloon, that is those who had not already fled, just gaped from behind upturned tables if they did not have their noses buried deep in the sawdust covered floor. A couple of the sporting ladies were whimpering in a feeble feminine kind of way and at the same time trying not to get their hair out of order, their skirts too dirty or their stockings laddered.

  Billy Lee eased the door open and stepped out.

  It was cold out there high on the cliff with a stiff breeze coming off the sea. The moon was high and its bright light showed the guy plainly, he was mounted and dressed in a bowler hat and long mackinaw whilst he held the reins to the three getaway ponies. The fellow was half turned towards Billy Lee, one hand on his pony’s rump the other holding the reins and he made one heck of a broad target sitting up there like he was with his coat flapping in the wind.

  ‘You get him, Leroy? I heard you popping off like merry hell in there,’ the fellow chuckled at the dark shape in the doorway, the light from the bar behind cutting Billy Lee into an unrecognizable silhouette.

  ‘Not likely,’ said Billy Lee, putting two, slap bang into the middle of the mackinaw.

  The guy threw up his arms and fell over across the other ponies; he didn’t drop, his boots being trapped in the stirrups. He just hung there, one foot hung foolishly high in the air whilst the ponies got all agitated and moved off taking him with them.

  Billy Lee walked across to the cliff edge. He was shaking and it wasn’t the cold. It was always this way after a fight and he stood looking down at the lights of the lower town and drawing the cold, brisk air into his lungs whilst he waiting for the tremors to stop.

  With a swing he cast the pistol far out, watching it glitter in the moonlight as it spun away down towards the dark sea and the twinkling lights of the town far below.

  Nazareth was an unusual old town even for coastal Maine in 1880.

  It stood on a small peninsular that reached out and naturally harbored the fishing town. The part they called Old Town was the first level settled back in the early days, and situated high up on top the rocky prominence. It was a place of wayward winding alleyways, cobbled streets and old crooked houses that had gradually become too overcrowded for the wealthier members of the community. All those folks, the merchants and whatnot, had moved down to Middle Town and populated the steep cliff with fine houses built on the rocky ledges that jutted out. The lower village was along the sea’s edge and quite fittingly they called that part ‘The Beach’, that being where most of the fishermen lived and had their boats drawn up. ‘The Beach’ always stunk of seaweed, lobster pots, drying fish, tar and bitumen. Everything down there was coated with fish scales that seemed to adhere to every surface, not with any luxurious sequin shine but more like the pale glittering of dead men’s eyes.

  The long curve of sandy beach stretched around below the prominent peninsular of protective rock that supported the single pillar of the Nazareth Light, a blunt white-painted brick stub that housed the light and appeared eerily out of place amongst the craggy black rocks stained with streaks of gull shit. A long track led up from the lighthouse and along the crest to the Old Town and eventually to the whorehouse and saloon that Billy Lee watched over for James Burk, the hard head who ran the gambling and prostitution in the town.

  ‘Hellfire!’ cursed Billy Lee, breathing heavily and staring down towards the distant beach. ‘I’ve had enough of this.’

  Five years before he had quit the army and come away from the Frontier and the murderous excesses of the Indian Wars, thinking that the eastern shores of the country with their remnants of the first arrivals in the Americas might carry on life with a modicum of conservative decorum and restraint. He had been sadly disappointed and soon found that the only way he could make a living once he reached the coast was either by hauling nets in the cold waters off the Great Banks or by doing what he had learnt to do so well during his army days.

/>   It was different to be sure, but realistically not so different. Out there he had faced fearsome red men intent on driving gold diggers from their sacred ground and here it was more a matter of commercial warfare but the gold diggers in the east could be every bit as merciless as those they called savages in the west.

  ‘You alright, Billy?’

  It was the tiny figure of Minnie Burk, who shouldn’t be alone on the cliff top at all at this time of night. She stood like a pale ghost wearing only a shawl over her shoulders and with her hands wrapped around her bare arms as she frowned at him. There was a cheeky glitter in her pale gray eyes and her fair hair that was bound up in a knot had come loose and threads blew across her cheek. The thin white shift dress she wore was blowing in the wind and pulled tight enough to mold around her body leaving little to the imagination in the moonlight.

  ‘Aw, hell! Minnie what are you doing here dressed like that, you’ll catch your death in this wind.’

  ‘I was worried about you,’ she pouted.

  She was clothed more for summer than this chill night and how she had gotten on the cliff top Billy Lee had no idea. Her damned husband could not keep her housebound, it was well known that Minnie Burk was a law unto herself and even James Burk, the criminal king of Nazareth, could not hold her in check. Despite her husband, Billy Lee knew she had held eyes for him; that much had been evident from the first time they met when Burk had hired him six months ago.

  And Billy had to admit a certain admiration for the woman. He liked her grit and the way she stood up for herself. She was a looker too, which might have had something to do with his attraction. Billy Lee was a choosy soul when it came to the female gender and despite being a minder of the sporting girls he would never take undue advantage of the whores at The Broken Wing. Not that he was prudish or feared a dose of something unpleasant; it was more that those kinds of liaisons did not appeal.

  Minnie stood awkwardly watching him, not appearing to feel the cold and yet Billy could see the tips of her nipples rising strongly erect through the fine cloth. It gave him pause for thought. How come she is up here with no corset on and a simple summer dress that told him everything?

  Goddamn! Thought Billy Lee, feeling old todger beginning to waggle at sight of those promising breasts. That was the other thing about a close brush with death, he realized, it always brought on the desire to procreate, to lay seed and replace the life already taken.

  ‘I’m alright,’ growled Billy Lee. His throat was dry and vainly, he made a sorry attempt at rejection. ‘You get along now, I’ll manage just fine.’

  ‘Now you know that’s not so,’ she said, strolling up to him with a provocative look in her eye. ‘I know how it is with a man after he’s done some death dealing. There’s a lot of excess energy trapped in there and just waiting to burst out.’

  Billy Lee glared at her not wanting to surrender to the truth of her words or accept the underlying invitation.

  ‘Leastways, that’s how it is with husband James. Thing is, he’s a real hot potato at the killing part but not such a keen blade in the bedroom department, if you get my meaning?’

  She stood close, looking up at him with the top of her head just reaching to under his chin. The wind swept her loosened hair across her face and she raised the fingers of one hand to pull back the errant strands.

  ‘You know this is what you want, big man. You wanted this a long time as I have too,’ she spoke in a soft husk, her eyes locked on his. ‘I want you Billy Lee, truth be told, I need you right now, I really do,’

  Jesus! Thought Billy Lee feeling his heart pounding in his chest. It was true, of course, he did want her. Who wouldn’t? She was a fine piece of womanhood, always far more bold and independent than any respectable woman in Nazareth should rightly be. James Burk gave her a lot of leeway but then it was well known he was besotted with her. He never gave a good goddamn for anybody else but, strangely, with Minnie, he went out of his way to give her the kind of liberties he would give to no other person on the planet.

  ‘Minnie, I just killed some men. I have to go back in there and sort it out before the law hears about it and Constable Long comes up here all hot and bothered.’

  ‘You come along right now,’ she said firmly, reaching down and cupping his swollen member gently in her hand. ‘I can tell you’re ready for what Minnie has to offer.’

  ‘Lord Almighty!’ breathed Billy Lee, backing away in surprise. ‘You’ll be the death of me, Minnie Burk. You know what’ll happen your husband gets wind of this.’

  She chuckled, ‘But what a way to go, huh?’

  Taking his broad hand in her tiny fingers she led him from the cliff edge around back of the house, into the shadows out of the wind and moonlight amongst the storehouses, dry barrels and stacked crates of empty bottles. And he went, against all his apprehensions and finer moral considerations; he followed her as meekly as a lamb.

  ‘No, Minnie, we can’t,’ Billy Lee tried. ‘Burk gets to hear, he won’t stand for it.’

  ‘He’s not going to get it, is he?’ she teased.

  She faced away and laid both of her raised hands flat against the tar painted planks of the back wall of The Broken Wing and proffered herself with a wantonness that took Billy’s breath away.

  ‘Go ahead then, big man,’ she said over her shoulder. Her tone was taunting, almost mocking in its encouragement, ‘You’re not afraid are you? They say you’re good with a gun, so unload your pistol and do your worst.’

  The temptation was absolute and Billy Lee swallowed hard, his blood was still up after the shooting and he had to admit that wasn’t all that was up.

  Billy Lee gingerly raised her skirts and ran his rough hand across the soft curves underneath. Minnie gave a deep, raw sigh and trembled with anticipation at his touch. She wore little more than stockings and garters under the dress, he could feel the little bows at the fastening but there was nothing else covering her. No camisole, petticoat or drawers, this woman had come prepared and there was little between him and her welcoming warmth. It was the damnably most racy thing Billy Lee had ever known.

  He shivered again but this time with lustful desire and quickly began to unbutton himself.

  ‘That’s it,’ she whispered feverishly, the heat evident in her voice. ‘Come on now, I’m ready. Lord! I’ve been ready for months. I want you, Billy Lee. Do it….’

  She broke off as he entered and a long groan of contentment broke from her lips.

  It was then; with the kind of timing that only synchronicity can offer at the worst of moments that Cyrus Obedah came quietly around the corner. He was the barkeep and cellar man at The Broken Wing and he was duly about his work carrying a crate of empties in his hands. It was dark in there where they stacked the empty crates but not that dark that he couldn’t see the two busy at their coupling. The soft beams of moonlight cast a fine light on Billy Lee who was moving with piston regularity and Minnie Burk gasping open-mouthed at every stroke of his magic wand.

  Cyrus bit his lip and his eyes opened as wide as china saucers. Hot damn! The hired gun banging the boss’s wife, that surely was something to wonder at.

  He stood stock still, the heavy crate held forgotten as he watched Billy Lee rut against the tender figure of Minnie, holding her about the waist in his big hands as he pumped out their pleasure.

  Carefully, so as not to make any noise, Cyrus backed away around the corner. He need not have worried, the two lovers were so hot in their passion and it is doubtful that even the crack of doom would have deterred them from aiming for finality.

  Cyrus, who was at heart a devious soul, saw mileage in this. Maybe, he considered, a few bucks and an advance in status were possible if he whispered what he had just seen into the right set of ears.

  Chapter Two

  Late next morning, Billy Lee fulfilled a dutiful role and went to report the night’s shooting to the boss man James Burk at his house.

  He felt a little jaded and somewhat sleepy, as his workout wi
th Minnie had gone on a little longer than the initial stages Cyrus had observed. One thing had led to another and it had not been until the early hours that the two lovers had returned to their respective billets. Millie to a large gold-framed bed with plump pillows and silk sheets and Billy Lee to the wood-board bunk bed in a little room he inhabited above the saloon.

  He approached the large mansion that Burk had created on the cliff side of Middle Town with some small feeling of trepidation, perhaps it was a sense of guilt about his adultery though and not so much any remorse about the bloodletting prior to his misuse of the man’s wife.

  Set back from the steeply sloping decline of the high cliffs, the white stone building stood amongst pine trees and lush grounds protected from the salt air by the trees and a team of hard working gardeners that kept the neatly manicured lawn and flowerbeds in order. The view was stupendous, looking out as it did beyond the barely visible huts and dives of The Beach below and on to the vast sweep of the Gulf of Maine and the Atlantic Ocean beyond.

  The earlier breeze had let up and the weather turned fine with a blue sky populated by high and fluffy banks of clouds. As Billy Lee made his way up the shingle drive towards the house he should have felt relaxed but the blank face of the house with its tall windows and columns reminiscent more of opulent pre-war colonialism than post-war financial stringency only managed to depress him.

  Part of the reason was that he did not like James Burk overly.

  To look at, Burk was a man of average height coming in onto his fiftieth year with a balding head and wings of white hair growing on each side above his ears. Still fit and active, yet his face bore the marks of his profession with a set of deeply sunken eyes and the seams of curling wrinkles working their way across his yellowish skin and lining his cheeks around the remnants of a savage star-shaped scar that marked his left forehead. The saving grace was the bright blueness of his eyes that shone with an aquamarine quality and softened his otherwise death’s head appearance.