the words and followed afterward. Then there were the burials in the churchyard, which began with hymns, followed by more words and more hymns, even as the bodies were lowered into the grave. Potluck dinners frequently followed. Slater had eaten a few of those too. He remembered the food was goddamned good.
But Slater was running out of time, and the rats were closing in. Their shrieking and scurrying—along with the creaking of shoring timbers, the jolting crack of the collapsing deadfall, and the dripping of the mine water—were the closest things Luis would have to a church choir. Screeching rats would serenade his unceremonious demise.
Still there had to be words.
“Luis, you were mi amigo—mi amigo bueno. Whatever we done—robbin’ banks or blowin’ trains or stackin’ time—you held up your end. You were always there. But that ends now. Adiós, compadre, y vaya con diabla.”
Placing a hand over Luis’s eyes, he quickly slit his friend’s throat from ear to ear.
Grabbing the big ore sacks, he began crawling backward, making his way out of the mine, careful not to knock down any of the shoring timbers, laboriously dragging the two thick bulging sacks full of gold behind him.
Chapter 22
Like Mateo, Richard was now attired in gray fatigues and a matching military shirt and cap. They both sat at a dark, dirty workbench in a corner of one of the Sonoran rurales’ black powder factories. A former warehouse with thirty-foot-high ceilings, its hundred-foot-by-fifty-foot concrete floor was now covered with other filthy benches and worktables as well. Men and women sat at the tables grinding wet gunpowder.
“We have a fairly elaborate gunpowder industry in Sonora,” Mateo said. “We’ve been battling Sinaloa and Chihuahua for so long we always need industrial quantities of the stuff.”
“Fine,” Richard said, “but you have a couple of problems with all this black powder. It’s not potent enough to power your artillery pieces, and it’s so dirty it quickly fouls all your pieces, especially your Gatling guns. You need a cleaner, better explosive if you want to stop a broad-front offensive by two combined armies, which is what your intelligence says you’re about to confront.”
“What do you suggest?” Mateo asked.
“Do you keep a tally of all your military equipment?”
Mateo nodded.
“I want to see your lists,” Richard said, “including all the equipment you currently have in storage but have considered useless. I want anything and everything you have related to the manufacturing of guns—all kinds of guns—and I don’t care how old the ordnance and the component parts are. This is arid country. Those things won’t corrode quickly. They’re probably in good shape. Maybe you have old, forgotten factories that once manufactured components and ammunition.”
Mateo stared at him, curious.
“Here in Sonora can you get me nitric acid?” Richard asked.
“That is one thing we have not figured out how to make.”
“Sulfuric acid?”
“We have that.”
“We’re also going to need other things—a lot of brass shell casings, as many as we can locate. I know you have percussion caps for your black powder cartridges. We’re going to need a hell of a lot of those.”
“May I ask why?” Mateo said.
“You told me your forces are so depleted they cannot repel another all-out Sinaloan-Chihuahuan combined attack without adequate weapons. I intend to get them for you.”
“How?”
“We’re going to deploy land mines and Gatlings.”
“Didn’t anyone tell you our black powder jams our Gatlings? It’s too dirty. It clogs the breech, barrel, and auto-feeders. Our weapons jam almost immediately.”
“So I’ll make you powder that won’t foul their feed-loading mechanisms.”
“How?”
“Let me worry about that.”
“But I do worry.”
“You got no problem.” Richard gave Mateo a hard, ebullient slap on the back. “You and I are going into the war business.”
Chapter 23
When Antonio returned to the flatcar, he found two soldados dragging their Gatling out of the back of the boxcar. Sonora’s biggest, most profitable company, the Conquistador Gold Mining Consortium, was shipping the train’s gold, and they had brought the gun along to secure their gold shipment. Antonio smiled to himself. It was a weapon he knew well. You had to fire it in short bursts or else the black powder would foul the breech. Still it was an overpowering weapon if used properly. Antonio knew how to use it properly.
Weighing only sixty pounds, it was less than four feet in length, so the soldados had little trouble hauling and hoisting it up to the roof of the boxcar. Aided by a man inside, they quickly bolted it into the roof through predrilled holes.
Antonio felt a little better. The Gatling would provide some cover for Rachel, Eléna, and himself.
He climbed the neighboring boxcar’s end-ladder and helped the soldados lock down the big gun. The gold company’s Gatling was in good shape—clean and well oiled. It fired its rounds through a cycle of eight one-inch-diameter revolving barrels, arranged in a circle. The gunner turned a crank, the barrels revolved, and when one came under the hammer, it fired. The shell casing was instantly ejected, and another bullet—from a hopper full of rounds—was dropped into the receiving mechanism, which fed the round into that barrel’s empty chamber. The next loaded barrel then came under the hammer. The entire operation was automatic—untouched by human hands—save for the gunner’s turning of the crank.
Everything was in order. After checking the weapon out, Antonio was finished. He climbed down the boxcar’s end-ladder onto the flatcar below.
“How does it look?” Eléna asked. She was still sitting on the bed of the flatcar, cradling Rachel’s head.
“The Gatling’s in good shape,” Antonio said, “and the men up there seem to know what they’re doing.”
“Why do they need two men up there?” Eléna asked.
“Reloading the Gatling is fast and simple, but having a loader working alongside you speeds up the process,” Antonio said, glancing around the side of the boxcar, trying to get a glimpse of the men in front of the locomotive, struggling to clear the fallen cottonwood from the track.
He turned to Eléna and handed her the first weapon.
“If they come at you, start with the twelve-gauge double-barrel Greener.”
He handed her the shotgun first.
“You kept it behind the cantina bar,” Antonio said, “and you know how to use it. Sawed off just above the breech, it’s chambered for shells and fully
