Bannerman the Enforcer 17 Page 6

  “Glad to have you along, Chuck.”

  They started into the hotel and as they reached the door, Chuck said casually:

  “They tell me this Indian girl is really something, Yance. Brains and spirit as well as good looks ...”

  Five – The Gun

  When Johnny Cato woke up he figured he must have the worst hangover ever. His skull felt like it was exploding from the inside, but it kept compressing again and with each contraction, excruciating pain shot through his temples and sent blinding lights flashing behind his eyes. He moaned as he rolled over, even the scratching of the straw in the mattress causing him to wince.

  Hell almighty, he hadn’t felt this bad since one time in a cantina town in Mexico when a smiling señorita had slipped some peyote into his tequila and, during his wild, horrifying nightmares, she had stolen all his money ...

  Cato tensed, forcing his eyes open slowly. A señorita ... There had been one last night ... a contessa? No ... Conchita. That was her name! In that garbage heap of a saloon ... She had picked him out right away. Gone to the batwings and outside. He’d figured he’d lost her then, that some local had claimed her attentions. But she’d come back, all smiles, and they’d had a few drinks together. She had gone to the bar for the last ones and he had remarked that it had tasted queer, even as he had thrown the tequila down his throat, licked the salt from the back of his hand and sucked on the fresh lemon. She had assured him it was the lemon: it was maybe a little over-ripe ...

  After that, things got kind of hazy. He had felt drunk and dizzy and his legs wouldn’t operate properly. The girl had let him lean on her and he had clung to her ample charms as they staggered up the street to … Where? Here?

  He squinted in the early morning light and looked at a dingy room: dirty, warped floorboards, some women’s clothing hanging on nails driven into the wall, a few faded tintypes and pages torn from old newspapers pasted up, crude table and chairs, a shard of fly-specked mirror, wooden shutters instead of glass windows ... It looked like any mean Mexican shepherd’s hut in the Guadelupes ... But he knew damn well he wasn’t in that neck of the woods. He remembered where he was: in the outlaw town, Conchos. And that goddamn gal had put something in his drink. He felt immediately for his money but it was gone. His pockets had been emptied but he was still wearing his wide money-belt with the hidden, inside pouch and the special knife in the belt-buckle which Governor Dukes supplied to all his special operatives ...

  He sat up abruptly, regretting the move instantly, grabbing his head in both hands, swaying back on the bed to lean his shoulder against the wall. His head felt like there were a thousand little devils inside, all using sledgehammers ... When the spasm had passed, he gingerly swung his legs over the side of the cot. They had taken his boots, but what had made him sit up fast in the first place, was the fact that his gun and cartridge belt were missing. The Manstopper had always been Cato’s equalizer in situations like this, with the odds high against him. Without it, his chances of getting out of trouble plummeted fast ...

  The door leading to the street was locked as he found after staggering across the cabin. On the table was a clay pitcher of water. He drank a deep draught, hoping it wasn’t poisoned or laced with some other drug. But his raging thirst made him throw caution aside. Standing with the vessel still in his hands, legs shaking, he looked at the second door. Did it lead to the rear of the cabin, he wondered? Or to another room? Only one way to find out ... He staggered across and grabbed the latch handle. He was surprised when it lifted without resistance and he opened the door cautiously.

  He pushed it right back against the wall without any hindrance and he let his eyes slowly become adjusted to the gloom. When he stepped aside from the doorway, just enough light from the front room filtered through to show him the Gatling gun and its ammunition and magazines, scattered about the puncheon floor.

  He leaned against the door jamb, nodding slowly, one thought managing to hammer through the throbbing of his head. Whoever had gotten the girl to slip something into his drink wanted him for only one thing: to assemble the gun. He would bet on it. And he would also bet that it was the gun stolen by the ‘Indians’ in that raid on the army wagons in the pass south of Fort Marlow.

  Well, he had accomplished part of his mission: he had located the missing Gatling gun. Now all he had to do was get out of this alive ...

  He turned as he heard someone at the front door but in his groggy state, he didn’t have time to grab any sort of a weapon before the door opened and three men came in.

  Cato recognized Kidd first, then Arnie, and finally, his mind ticking over slower than usual, Jake Edge. He had seen the outlaw’s likeness on many a wanted dodger back in Austin and in frontier towns he had passed through.

  Jethro Kidd was wearing Cato’s Manstopper on his right hip and he grinned when he saw the small man’s eyes go straight to it. Kidd lifted it from its holster, spun the cylinder and worked the toggle on the hammer that allowed the central shot-shell to be fired.

  “A mighty mean weapon, Colt,” Kidd said. “I’ll sure be able to make good use of it in my line of work.”

  Cato said nothing, waiting, watching Edge, knowing the man was said to be insane at least part of the time. Edge watched Cato in return, like a wolf. Suddenly, he reached out and knocked Kidd’s hand aside. Kidd, sobered now, holstered the Manstopper.

  “You’re a gunsmith, Jethro says,” Edge said flatly. “A good one, he reckons.”

  Cato shrugged. “I once had my own business in Laramie.”

  Edge gestured beyond Cato to the back room. “Put that thing together for me.”

  “Why should I?” Cato countered.

  “Because I tell you to,” Edge said very quietly.

  “What’ll it get me?”

  “Your freedom, maybe ... Maybe some dinero.”

  Cato smiled crookedly as he shook his head. “You ain’t generous, Edge, by all accounts.”

  Edge’s eyes narrowed and Cato tensed, seeing Kidd and Arnie looking at the outlaw chief anxiously, waiting for his reaction. Edge stepped closer to Cato, looking down at him.

  “Depends how important things are to me,” he said as quietly as his grating voice allowed. “And that goddamn Gatling gun’s very important ... You got yourself in a little trouble back in Austin, Cato. Oh, yeah, I keep up to date on wanted dodgers and so on. Have to when I’m runnin’ a place like this… Most of the hombres here pay for the privilege of stayin’ for a spell. You can pay your way by fixin’ that gun for me.”

  “Plus the hundred dollars someone took from my shirt pocket last night?” Cato snapped.

  Edge turned slowly and looked at Kidd.

  “Must have been the gal, Jake,” Kidd said quickly.

  Edge nodded. “Well, that’s gone, so make the best of what you’ve got left and still workin’ in your favor, Cato. If you got any sense at all.”

  Cato sighed and lifted his hands out from his sides. “I don’t have a hell of a lot of choice, do I? But why the hell did you have to drug me? I got a head on me like a rotten pumpkin in a hide press!”

  The three men found that amusing.

  “We had to play it safe, Colt,” Kidd told him. “We knew how you could use this here Manstopper and we didn’t want to risk you stoppin’ a bullet. So, knowin’ you got an eye for the gals ...”

  Cato held up his hand. “Okay, okay ... All right, Edge. I need somewhere to lie low for a spell so I’ll put the Gatling gun together for you. But what the hell are you going to do with it? Start a war?”

  Cato reeled back from the abrupt blow that smashed across his mouth and sent him staggering onto the cot. He blinked, shook his head, spitting blood from split lips as he glared hotly at the outlaw chief.

  Edge pulled out his Colt and thumbed back the hammer, pointing the muzzle at Cato. The small man showed no fear: he knew Edge wouldn’t be loco enough to shoot him down yet ...

  “My plans ain’t got nothin’ to do with you, Cato. You just get that g
un together and workin’, pronto. That way you might go on livin’ …”

  Cato continued to stare at the outlaw until he holstered his gun and jerked his head at Kidd and Arnie, starting for the door.

  “How long have I got?” Cato asked.

  Edge turned, held up three fingers. “Three days.”

  Cato pursed his lips. “Well, without the proper tools, I dunno if I can guarantee that …”

  “Do it!” Edge snapped and went out.

  Kidd paused at the door, gestured to Arnie. “Arnie’ll be right outside ...” He laughed shortly. “In case you need anythin’, Colt!”

  Cato kept his face impassive as they went out and closed the front door after them.

  The Gatling gun Cato had to work on was the 1874 model, one that was to become the ‘classic’ Gatling out of all the many models that were produced from its invention during the Civil War, clear up until 1911 when the U.S. Army began to look at other forms of machine guns. The 1874 was an open-barrel model, with a cluster of ten barrels, each firing as they reached the eight o’clock position. The caliber was .45-.70, the ‘government’ caliber, a heavier and more powerful weapon than previous models. Dr. R. J. Gatling always maintained that his invention prevented more bloodshed than it caused and was fond of quoting an event during the Ashanti War of 1874 when British troops were equipped with his guns.

  On the Prah River, Ashanti warriors and chiefs gathered to do battle with the advancing British forces. Seeing the native chiefs and envoys gathered on the river bank, the British commanding officer ordered the Gatling gun brought forward. As a show of strength, he ordered burst after burst fired at floating logs in the river and trees on the opposite bank down from the gathered warriors. He used a whole drum of ammunition, sending wood splinters showering, actually cutting through the trunks of small saplings. The Ashantis were so impressed that they surrendered without further bloodshed. Later, one of the native chiefs committed suicide, he was so terrified by the demonstration of firepower. Rather than risk falling into the hands of the men who commanded such power, he took his own life.

  It was a gun that was to win fame for its inventor all over the world and long after Dr. Gatling himself had departed this life. The Gatling gun was used in the Cuban ten years’ war of 1868 to 1878, on the Khivan Expedition during 1873, the Russo-Turkish War of 1877—which was still blazing in all its carnage and glory at the time Cato struggled to assemble the stolen Gatling in Conchos—the Zulu War of 1879, the Egyptian and Sudan campaigns during the 1880s, the Spanish-American War of 1898 and the Philippines Insurrection in 1899.

  With each model of the gun, Dr. Gatling added more innovations, including enclosed barrels, new types of magazines, elevation wheels and traversing or oscillating devices. Some were mounted on wheels for ease of transport, while others, like the one Cato was working on, were built on tripods. They all had tremendous psychological effect on those who came up against the guns ...

  Cato wondered what Edge had in mind. He had discarded his original idea that maybe the outlaw was going to sell it to the Indians. Edge wanted this weapon in working order in three days’ time. Cato’s guess was that the outlaw was planning a raid of some kind and was going to use the Gatling gun to back his play ...

  They rounded up every kind of tool available in Conchos and, although there were some of the actual tools that came with the gun, Cato knew he was still going to have trouble with some of the assembly. The brass breech block and bolt circle required special spanners which he didn’t have. He would have to improvise, padding jaws of tongs that were unwieldy and chewed the edges off the soft brass nuts. The releasing valves on the back bolt carrier had to be screwed in only finger-tight through lack of the special tool necessary to snug them down. He devised a method of tightening them with a soft iron rod and rawhide hammer, but the edges burred, and while this wouldn’t affect the smoothness of the action, he knew that, if anything went wrong, he would never be able to remove the valves ... And if he couldn’t fix a malfunction, he knew Edge would put a bullet in him.

  He managed somehow without special tools and instruments to align each of the back-plates, the troublesome release valves, loading tray, breech-block and front support piece. Not only did proper functioning depend on this, but also the assembled gun’s accuracy. He asked Arnie to lend a hand to lift the barrel assembly into place and Jethro Kidd and Hack stood by with drawn guns while the men struggled to work the assembly into the correct position.

  When it came to fitting the Accles ammunition drum, the ‘improved’ loader Gatling had added in his 1872 patent, Cato dearly wished he could see the patent sheet drawings. It had to be timed exactly with the crank mechanism so that cartridges fed into the breech at the precise time to be cycled properly through the action for firing in sequence. To make it more difficult, he discovered that the rate of fire could be varied by removing the side crank handle and fixing it directly to where the drive shaft protruded from the rear of the gun. This almost doubled the gun’s firepower ...

  It was a problem that his gunsmith’s training enabled him to immerse himself in before solving. He forgot where he was, what he was doing and who he was doing it for. It became a minor obsession with him until finally, the timer clicked into place and it was only a matter of snapping the magazine drum on. It held almost two hundred rounds, a vast improvement over the low-capacity clips that had been the limiting factor on earlier Gatlings.

  He worked that first day without noticing he hadn’t eaten, though he emptied three pitchers of water. It was only when he stopped, half-blind in the smoky lantern light, that he realized how hungry he was. They refused to let him out of the cabin, but the girl, Conchita, brought him a tray of food: a plate of steaks, two fried eggs, some thick cornpones and a couple of wrinkled apples. Cato ate the lot and drained the coffee pot. When the girl came to collect the tray he asked her to bring him some tobacco or cigarillos. She seemed a little afraid of him but returned with a linen sack of Bull Durham tobacco and a part-packet of wheatstraw papers. He built a cigarette right away and she struck and held the match for him. He looked at her through the cloud of smoke.

  “I guess this is your cabin,” he said, gesturing to the worn dresses hanging around the walls.

  “Si ... But I have moved in with a ... friend,” she said, a little uneasy in his presence. “Your head and stomach ... they were not too bad this morning?”

  “After the dope you slipped into my tequila? Well, I’ve felt better. But I’m okay again now, except my throat feels sore. No hard feelings, if that’s what’s botherin’ you, señorita.”

  She flashed him a smile. “That is good ... And my name is Conchita ...”

  “Yeah. I remember you tellin’ me last night.”

  “And you are Johneee,” she told him, still smiling, broadening the last syllable.

  “Tell me, Conchita,” Cato said casually. “Do you know why Edge wants that Gatling gun ...?”

  Her smile disappeared instantly and she stood up, pulling her hand away as he made to grab it and restrain her. “I have to go ... Buenos noches, Johneee.”

  And she hurried out of the cabin, leaving Cato to smoke his cigarette alone. Edge sure had them all scared of him, he thought.

  Jake Edge went right ahead with his plans, on the surmise that he would certainly have the Gatling gun to back him up. He didn’t even consider that there might be a hitch of any kind.

  He was only taking a half-dozen men on the train raid; the remainder of the town’s inhabitants were either permanents or men on the run and wanted for various crimes, hiding out in Conchos until the trouble had blown over. But Jake had a hard core of tough rannies he could call on at any time for such a job as robbing the gold train.

  There would be Jethro Kidd, Arnie, Hackamore, a Mexican named Garcia, a man called Nitro who liked nothing better than setting off explosions with dynamite sticks, and a killer who had had the trigger fingers of both hands cut off and who now used his gun by thumbing the hammer. He
was called Slip. And, of course, Jake Edge himself.

  “I’ll be workin’ the Gatling gun,” he told them in the dingy room he used as a meeting place. “It’s already on a tripod and Cato said it won’t be able to be moved around as easily as if it was on wheels. So we do what the army did in the first place. We bolt it to a wagon-bed and run alongside the train. It’ll be better than movin’ it by hand from a fixed position, anyway.”

  “Need someone to drive the wagon, Jake,” Kidd pointed out.

  “I’ll get someone ... Rest of you can lie low, three each side of the track. When the train stops, you get aboard and unhitch that express car pronto. I’ll keep the guards’ heads down with the Gatling gun.”

  “How do we stop the train where we want it?” Slip asked.

  “You leave that to me,” Edge said. “I know just where I want it and I’ll stop it right there. Once we get the express car unhitched, we got no problems. They open up or Nitro blows ’em to kingdom come.”

  The lean, lantern-jawed Nitro grinned, rubbing his bony hands together in anticipation.

  “Yeah, well that sounds all right,” Hack said slowly. “Fact it sounds damn good. But a mite too easy, Jake. I mean, supposin’ we don’t have the Gatling gun ...?”

  Edge looked at him sharply. “We’ll have it.”

  “But supposin’ somethin’ happens and we don’t get there on time?” Hack persisted.

  Edge’s eyes narrowed. “Then Cato’s dead.” He raked his eyes over Jethro Kidd. “And he’s gonna have company.” Kidd swallowed and licked his lips, giving a nervous smile.

  Six – Assassin

  Yancey Bannerman was having his troubles in both Pecos and Horsehead Crossing.

  The days went fast, with train departure time approaching rapidly. He had managed to talk Little Flower into letting him discuss the treaty with Red Dog again. She arranged the meeting for mid-morning on the Wednesday at the army post.