The war wagon a gatling.., p.11
The War Wagon (A Gatling Western #5), page 11
McNelly said, “A poor town, small and miserable. Poor like the rest of the state. Town is about a hundred miles due south of here. The fort is in the center of town. That’s where the old Governor’s soldiers were quartered. Nothing like good protection from the populace. Cortinas’ bandits are quartered there now. That’s where your damned rifles are. What’s left of the old Governor’s troops are quartered in the cathedral.”
“How many of the old garrison?” Gatling was thinking that taking a fort, even an old one, wouldn’t be so easy even with the armored car.
“My man tells me maybe a hundred and fifty are left. Cortinas has maybe the same number of bandits, so you’ll be facing about three hundred men. Some of the old garrison may try to run when the shooting starts. Some will stay. Could be a lot of them will. A uniform means food and a pair of shoes and a place to sleep. That’s how it is in Mexico.”
“Any artillery?”
“Mr. Gatling, you’re asking too much. My man was just reporting on the state of things down there. He keeps me informed. He doesn’t expect me to attack the place. The question now is, do you still want to try it?”
The colonel got up to fix two more brandy and sodas. “It’s the only way to get back the rifles. You haven’t changed your mind, have you?”
“Can’t do that, Colonel.”
Gatling said, “McNelly thinks we’ll just kill ourselves and the rifles will stay with Cheno. Nobody else will try it, he’s pretty sure. Our friend here isn’t worried about us one goddamned bit. Isn’t that right, Captain?”
McNelly grinned like a fox in a henhouse. “You got me there, Gatling. You’ll get killed for sure and where will that leave us?”
“Trying to outfox everybody in sight.”
“The hell with you, Gatling.”
“Gentlemen! Gentlemen!” the colonel protested. “That’s no way to be. This is no place for personal abuse. Captain McNelly, we wouldn’t try this if we didn’t think we could carry it off. I was a British officer for thirty years and Mr. Gatling has had wide experience in—shall I say, military matters? Besides, there is no way you can stop us.”
“There is if I want to.” McNelly stuck out his iron jaw. “I can arrest you for disturbing the peace with that gasoline locomotive. But I’m not going to. Go ahead and try it. See what happens. Maybe you’ll get lucky, though I doubt it. You going to raft that thing across the river? There’s no bridge here.”
Gatling said, “That’s what we plan to do. You know somebody can build a raft?”
McNelly stood up to go, finishing his drink on his feet. “I probably know such a man. I’ll let you know in the morning. One last thing. I notice you got three guns on that thing. You’ll be shooting one of them while the colonel steers. Who’ll be shooting the other two? Man can’t steer and shoot at the same time.”
“There’ll just be me shooting,” Gatling said. He would be glad to see McNelly leave. The man could be an awful pain in the ass.
“You ought to hire on two good men. I could find two good men for you.”
“We don’t need them,” Gatling said.
“Your funeral, friend.” McNelly went out.
McNelly’s raft-builder, an old downriver ferryman named Skidmore, started work on the raft by noon the next day. Skidmore came to the hotel and he and the colonel struck a deal, and that was that. No way to keep a secret of a raft of that size. By the time Skidmore and his crew started hauling logs, news of the raft and what it was meant for was all over town. Gatling didn’t like that, but there was nothing he could do about it.
“Surely you don’t think there’ll be any dirty work?” the colonel said. They were eating in the hotel dining room. “How could Cortinas possibly know about it? We’re so far from where he is, and you killed his two agents your first night in town.”
They were getting curious glances from the other diners, men who looked like town merchants. Nobody who looked like a Mexican was there.
“There could be others,” Gatling said, forking up some of the bad hotel food. “If they’re here and they get at the car, that’s the end of it. I better sleep in the car till the raft is finished and we’re ready to travel. How long did Skidmore say?”
“Three days.”
“That’s not so bad. I’ve slept in worse places than an armored car.”
The colonel was trying to make the best of an overdone steak. “I really think you’re making too much out of this. When I called those men agents I didn’t really mean agents. Cortinas is a bandit, not a government.”
“He has killers. And McNelly is right about the trouble he’s been causing among the border Mexicans. His daughter is—was—part of it. So was that Yankee schoolteacher that got murdered, I’m fairly sure. I’ll sleep in the car if it’s all right with you.”
Gatling and the colonel seldom spent any time together without quarreling. Now the colonel took out his annoyance on the tough steak. “Sleep on a bloody bed of nails if you want to,” he said. Then there was a thoughtful pause. “Do you think McNelly made some sort of money arrangement with that raft-builder fellow? I wouldn’t put it past him.”
Gatling said, “I don’t know. I wouldn’t put anything past him.”
He killed the rest of the long, hot day cleaning the guns on the Motor War Car. Then he covered them carefully, and after that he went down to the river to see how the big raft was coming. Skidmore and his men looked like they were doing it right. A bunch of gawkers were standing on the dock. A young reporter from the Intelligencer tried to interview him, wanting to know if he and the colonel were really taking the armored car to Mexico. Gatling said that was absolutely untrue; they were on their way to Brownsville, hence the raft. When the young man persisted with his questions, Gatling threatened to throw him in the river.
McNelly came along while he was still standing there. “Looks like they’re doing well,” McNelly said, puffing on his cigar. “You know, it would be kind of interesting to do what you men are about to do. Try to, I should say.”
Gatling looked down at the raft. “Why don’t you come along? We could use a good man, like you said.”
McNelly laughed as if Gatling had just gotten off a good one, a real knee-slapper. “My old momma didn’t raise her boy to be a fool. I said it might be kind of interesting, like getting hanged might be kind of interesting, in a manner of speaking. But even if I wanted to come along, was dumb enough to want to come along, I couldn’t. Against regulations. I’m a fairly high official of the State of Texas. Going with you could cost me my pension.”
Gatling didn’t know if he could believe him; the man had a lot of turns to his character. “That bother you?”
“Why wouldn’t it? It would bother most men, but it probably wouldn’t bother you. You’ve got to be a rich man, all that gun money you rake in. See you at the launching.”
That evening, Gatling took blankets and a pillow down to the depot barn. The day guards were just about to go off duty; the colonel had dismissed the night men. A dark lantern was the only light in the place. He had the light gun with him, a canteen of cold coffee, and a small covered basket of cold fried chicken. The barn still smelled of the horses that had been stabled there once. He liked the smell of horses better than the smell of the gasoline motor. He spread the blanket on the metal floor of the car, then sat on the seat behind the pom-pom gun and drank some coffee, but left the chicken for later. The barn doors were open, and from where he was he could see the dim lights of the depot. A freight train clanged past slowly, blowing steam. It was hauling livestock north. Now and then voices drifted up from the depot. Then there were no sounds at all. After a few hours of sitting behind the gun, he drank more coffee and ate some of the chicken.
It was sometime after twelve when he heard the slow creak of wagon wheels. The sound came from the road coming down behind the depot. It came so softly that the axles had to be heavily greased. When he realized that there was no sound of horses’ hoofs, he straightened up. Even a horse moving slowly, plodding down a dusty road, made some sound. But there was just the soft creak of the wheels. It got closer, but he still could barely hear it. He fed a case of shells into the pom-pom gun and waited.
Now he could see the dark shape of a big wagon as it turned in from the road and headed for the barn. A hay wagon, with men pushing it from behind, guiding it with the shafts. The smell of kerosene came to him, then a match flared behind the wagon and it burst into flames with an exploding sound. In an instant it picked up speed and was heading straight for the barn door.
Gatling squeezed the firing handles and ten one-pound shells blasted through the open door. The pom-pom sound of the gun was like a fast, steady drumbeat. All ten shells hit the wagon or where the wagon had been when the first few shells exploded. There was no screaming; the gun had hit too fast and too hard. Out about a hundred yards from the barn, the road and the area on both sides of it were scattered with burning hay. A clump of brush was on fire. Holding the light gun, Gatling jumped down and dragged the double doors shut behind him. If the fire got to the armored car, the barn would be blown a mile high.
But the scattered fires burned out as he waited: burning hay didn’t last long. The brush fire still blazed, but it was small and not too close to the barn. While there was still some light he walked through the smoking hay and saw bits of bodies. Close to the brush fire a Mexican hat was smoldering. It seemed like an hour before he heard the clang of a fire pumper. McNelly and two of his Rangers clung to the side of it.
They pumped the fires out and got lights going. McNelly had pulled his pants on over a nightshirt. Gatling thought it was funny to see McNelly in a red flannel nightshirt. But he wore his gun, the short-barreled Sheriff’s Model Colt .45, and sticking out from the side of his huge form, it looked like a whore’s purse gun. He followed Gatling into the barn, and the firemen started to hose water on the roof. It sounded like heavy rain.
McNelly sat on the nail keg; Gatling sat on the step of the armored car and ate chicken. Outside, the Rangers were collecting bits of bodies by lantern light. The firemen had finished their work and gone home. It was about one-fifteen.
“You sure you didn’t blow up some late-owl farmer on his way home?” McNelly grinned at his own joke. “Tell me again how it happened. I’ll have to make a full report to the Governor. This is political.”
Gatling told him again. McNelly reached over and took a chicken leg from the box. He chewed for a while before he said, “I’d be mightily obliged if you and the colonel took this contraption out of this town before you blow us all to smithereens. Tell old Skidmore to hurry it up. How much explosives you got?”
“Two hundred one pound-shells, thousands of rounds of ammunition for the Maxim guns. Would make a big bang, I admit.”
“We could have lost our depot, the whole shooting match. Maybe more than the depot.” McNelly gnawed on the drumstick. “You like this kind of work?”
“You mean shooting at hay wagons with a cannon?”
“You know what I mean,” McNelly said.
“I like it all right.” Gatling watched another chicken leg disappear. “I’m used to it by now.”
McNelly said, “That talk about giving your money to the—what are they—Zunis? Came up one time, the colonel mentioned it. Next day I asked him was it true and he said it was. I’m asking you, is it true?”
“True enough,” Gatling said impatiently. He hated to be questioned. “I owe them from times past, all right?”
“I wouldn’t have figured you for a man like that.”
“I didn’t care how you figure me.”
McNelly put his chicken bones in the empty box and wiped his mouth with a handkerchief as red and half as big as his nightshirt.
“Well, it can’t be a dull life,” he said.
“You find your life dull, McNelly?”
McNelly pulled a wry face. “It’s been getting kind of dull of late. Twenty years ago there wasn’t a dull day the whole year long. Range wars, stage robberies, mine trouble, lynchings, all kinds of bloodletting and mayhem. A man knew he was alive in those days. Now it’s 1887 and things are slowing down, the banks, the railroads, Edison talking machines, electric light, typewriter girls, motor cars—as your colonel calls this goddamned thing.”
Gatling had never heard McNelly talk so much about something that had nothing to do with the law. It was hard to figure him and he’d given up trying. Maybe he was just one of those men with a lot of different moods.
“All that should make life easier for a lawman,” Gatling said.
McNelly got up off his nail keg when one of his Rangers came in and reported that the town doctor had reassembled what he thought were the remains of four Mexicans. “Doc ain’t entirely sure of that,” the Ranger said. “Some of the bits and parts still missing, but he thinks that’s close enough. Doc wants to know if he should hold an inquest?”
McNelly started to laugh, then gave up on it. “No need for that, Toddy. Tell Doc to get them planted quick as he can. Keep it as quiet as you can. We don’t want another riot maybe worse than the last one.”
McNelly seemed reluctant to go. “I like the wild life,” he said to Gatling. “Not for the money to be made out of it, like you, but for the sheer hell of it. A good horse, a brave bunch of men to back you, that’s the ticket! Now we can’t even follow that bastard Cortinas into Mexico. But you’ll be doing it for me, in a way.”
Gatling wished the big Ranger would go home and go to bed. “In no way am I doing it for you,” he said. “I’m doing it for the Zunis. The colonel is doing it for money. If I had enough money to put the Zunis back on their feet, I’d probably give it up for good.”
“I find that hard to believe.” McNelly was still hanging on. “I think you’d miss it like I miss the old days.”
“Come along with us and you’ll see all the wildness you want.”
“Shit on that! That’s just a stupid way to die. Riding around the desert in a tin can waiting to be dynamited or die of thirst.”
“If that’s not wild enough for you,” Gatling said, “why don’t you get a job mixing powder in an explosives factory or walking a tightrope in a circus?”
McNelly’s wide face swelled with sudden anger and his balled fists swung by his sides like hammers. Then as suddenly he loosened up, saying, “Ah, what the hell am I wasting my time talking to you for?”
“Why are you?” Gatling said as McNelly stalked out. Gatling spent the rest of the night guarding the armored car, but nothing happened by sunup. The colonel showed up before the day guards came on duty. “I just heard about it twenty minutes ago. Bastards didn’t wake me. Here’s some hot coffee for you.”
Gatling thought, they didn’t wake you because you weren’t in your room. The colonel disliked dark-skinned men, but he had nothing against dark-skinned women, of which Del Rio had plenty.
Gatling repeated the story between sips of black coffee. “At least they didn’t burn the raft,” the colonel said angrily.
“Wouldn’t be worth their while, Colonel. We could always build another raft.”
The colonel sat down on the nail keg; Gatling saw that he hadn’t shaved. “At the hotel they said you killed twenty Mexicans.”
“Bullshit! I killed four with the pom-pom gun,” Gatling said. “McNelly was here a long time after the others left.”
“What did he want?”
“I don’t know.”
The colonel rubbed his silver-stubbled chin, making a rasping sound. The old bastard had been having a hard night with the dark-skinned whore, Gatling thought.
“Do you think this business with Cortinas could be a scheme to extort a huge sum of money from the Company?”
That was something Gatling hadn’t expected. “Why do you say that? McNelly never struck me as a crook.”
The colonel said, “He’s been so unyielding, so implacable about it. If Washington is so concerned about the rifles, why haven’t I heard from them? Or the Governor of Texas, for that matter? Those papers, the pardon, the ranch deed could have been fakes. He sent you to see Cortinas, knowing you’d fail and surely be murdered. That would leave me without my best man.”
“Thanks, Colonel.”
“Go to blazes! But now listen. When he heard we were about to use the armored car, he did everything he could to discourage the idea. Then when we said we were going anyway, isn’t it possible that he hired those Mexicans with the hay wagon?”
“It’s a bit hairy, Colonel.”
“Is it? Isn’t it also possible that McNelly hired that mob to lynch you on the night of your arrival? Think about it, Gatling. There’s something that isn’t right about that man.”
Gatling still didn’t think the colonel was on the right track. But he agreed to think about it. Everything the colonel said was possible. Anything was possible. It was even possible that the world had square corners. “What’s wrong with your crook theory is it could be checked so easily. Somebody big in Washington would surely talk to you. You want to send a telegram? What about the Governor of Texas? If it’ll ease your mind, why not get off some telegrams right now? The telegrapher’s on duty twenty-four hours.”
The colonel looked uneasy. “If I do that I could be encouraging a gang of thieves much worse than McNelly. There are so many thieves in Washington and so few honest men.”
“All right, if you won’t send the telegrams, when do you think McNelly will make his demand? There’s only two days left. If we cross the river, that’s the end of his scheme.”
The colonel said, “Not necessarily. Here’s the way I see it. Two ways. He can make his demand before we leave. A very large sum of money for hushing up the so-called stink about the rifles. For, say, fifty thousand dollars, well, all right, make it a hundred—he’ll inform the Governor that the rifles have been destroyed.”
“What else?” Gatling said.
“Or he can try to turn us back between here and the town of Coahuila. Then when he thinks he finds me tired and dejected and defeated, he makes his blackmail demand. Peace for a lot of money. It could be something like that, don’t you think?”
