by Peter Grant
“We normally take a month to produce them,” Kaplan explained, “because a lot of miners need them. If you’re prepared to pay extra, we can do it in two weeks.”
“How about I pay you double, and you do it in three days?”
“Why, I… that would be very difficult. There are many other orders ahead of your own.”
“Triple? And I want a dozen of those stump socks, too.”
“Ah… Well, if this is an emergency…”
“It is.”
“In that case, we’ll accommodate you.”
“I’ll be back to collect them at the same time, three days from now. Thank you, doctor.”
Walt’s next stop was a first-rate shoemaker, whose services he’d used before, when he lived in Denver. He ordered two pairs of mule-ear boots, to be made with comfort and endurance in mind rather than fashion. He left a Remington Double Derringer pistol—the one he’d taken from the dead horse thief near the Divide—and a boot knife with the shop, so they could fashion holsters and sheaths for them inside the boots. The shop also sold gloves, so Walt took the opportunity to order four right-hand gloves, two in black leather and two in brown, sized slightly larger than he usually wore. They were to be fitted with small loops at the base, front and back, to make them easier to pull on with only a hook’s assistance. Paying extra also brought the promise that his purchases would be ready in three days.
Next morning, they went to Carlos Gove’s gun shop. Sam was like a child in a candy store, walking from display case to rifle rack, ogling the weapons while Walt talked business. The gunsmith, summoned from his workshop at the rear, displayed his handiwork proudly.
“I think you’ll find these the smoothest-shooting Derringers you’ve ever handled,” he promised, laying six of them in their boxes on the counter, plus three hat clips. “I’ve worked on them all, to lighten the action as much as possible. They have a terrible reputation for inaccuracy at anything beyond belly-to-belly range. Their sights are very poor, of course, but I think a bigger factor is that the factory trigger and hammer spring are heavy and gritty. You’ll find these a lot lighter. I think you’ll be able to get hits at out to fifteen, even twenty feet, once you’re used to them.”
“Not that the short .41 rimfire cartridge will do much damage, whether up close or further away,” Walt observed as he picked one up and tried its mechanism. “It’s very weak.”
“True, sir, but even so, a hit ought to get someone’s attention.”
“I can’t argue with that!” They both laughed.
The cut-down ten-gauge shotgun was ready, as were the three shortened .44 Russian revolvers and their shoulder holsters. Walt tried one on, and was impressed. It was slightly less quick to draw than his Army Colt with its shorter barrel, but he knew he’d improve with practice. Carlos had his assistants load everything onto Walt’s buckboard, plus several thousand rounds of ammunition in various calibers and cartridges. He knew he’d use most of it for training and practice within weeks, working with his new gunmen.
Walt drove the buckboard to a nearby mining supply house, and had Sam watch over its load while he went inside. He noted the emphatic signs forbidding smoking as he approached a small building at the rear of the property, some distance from the others. A white-whiskered man stood behind a bare counter, with a trapdoor to a cellar in the floor behind him.
“I want some of that new-fangled dynamite,” Walt requested, “as well as everything else I need to use it.”
“What are you going to use it for, sir?”
“Oh, getting tree stumps out of the ground, breaking up big rocks, that sort of thing.” I can hardly tell you I may have to kill people with it, he added mentally, with an inward grin.
“Do you know much about it, sir?”
“No. This will be my first time using it. Do you have any instruction sheets?”
“Yes, sir, we do.” He handed over a printed booklet. “We carry the Giant Powder Company’s dynamite. A whole stick is too powerful for small stumps and rocks, but you can cut it into half- and quarter-sticks with a sharp knife. It’s safe and reliable when it’s fresh, but I must caution you, sir: be very, very careful how you store it. It should be in a cool, dry, secure place, preferably well away from other buildings. We store ours in a basement beneath this shack,” and he stamped his foot lightly on the floor. “Store your blasting caps in a separate place. Putting them together is an invitation to trouble.”
“I can understand that.”
“You should turn the cases over every couple of weeks, to prevent the nitroglycerine seeping out of the sticks and pooling in the bottom of the case. Also, try to use it within a year of purchase. As dynamite gets older, nitroglycerine begins to crystallize out of the absorbent. Beads like sweat will begin to form on the outside of the sticks. As soon as you see one of those, or any liquid pooling in the case, dispose of all that dynamite at once, handling it very carefully. It’s very unstable in that condition. If you knock or drop a case with a pool of nitroglycerine in it, or a stick of dynamite with beads on it…”
“I get the idea. Bang-bang, bye-bye?”
“Very well put, sir. Another thing. If dynamite gets colder than about 45 degrees—and Colorado winters are much lower than that—it becomes unusable. If you need to use it in winter, you’ll have to warm it. You can do that in one of these dynamite warmers,” and he pointed to an open-topped, perforated can, with a socket for a candle below the solid base. “Otherwise, carry some sticks inside your coat, next to your body, to warm up slowly. Please, sir, don’t thaw out cold sticks of dynamite next to an open fire! Some have learned that lesson the hard way.”
Walt winced at the thought. “Don’t worry, I won’t. What about blasting caps and fuse?”
“You need to handle blasting caps even more carefully than dynamite, sir. I suggest carrying them in a hard container, so they can’t be accidentally crushed or bent. That would be very bad, if it happened in your pocket. I recommend Bickford’s fuse from England. It’s more expensive, but it’s very reliable, and it’s waterproofed. We carry their slow match, which burns at a tested rate of four inches per minute in still air, and quick match, burning at thirty yards per second. You crimp the fuse into a blasting cap with a tool like this, taking care to do so in the first quarter-inch of the cap.” He took a crimping tool from a drawer and laid it on the counter. “Don’t crimp it further down—that might set it off—and no matter what you see some reckless miners do, never ever crimp it by biting it! If you bite down in the wrong place, you’ll blow your teeth out. Push the fused cap into the end of the stick of dynamite, and you’re ready.”
“When would you use slow or quick match?”
“In a mine, you’ll usually run quick match from each hole charged with dynamite, to a central point. There you’ll tie them around a piece of slow match, cut long enough to give you time to get clear after you light it. When the flame reaches the lengths of quick match, it sets off all of them, so the explosions take place together.”
“I see. If you run out of fuse, can you set off a stick of dynamite by shooting at it?”
“With older, degraded dynamite, almost every time, but fresh dynamite isn’t always sensitive enough. If you put a blasting cap in the stick first, a bullet will set that off much more easily.”
“I see. Very well, I’ll take two cases of dynamite, four reels of slow match, eight reels of quick match, three hundred blasting caps, and eight of those crimping tools. I’ll collect them from you three mornings from now, if you’ll please have them ready. That way I can take them straight out of town, without needing to store them.”
The salesman looked surprised. “You must have an awful lot of stumps to blow and rocks to break up, sir.”
Walt was ready for that reaction. “Over a hundred acres.”
“Oh. I see.”
Sam rolled his eyes when he came back to the wagon with the dynamite booklet. “You plannin’ on blowin’ up somethin’, boss?”
�
�Yes, I am.”
“Not me, I hope?
“Not unless you make a really big mistake.”
Sam rolled his eyes. “I’ll sure try real hard not to do that, suh!”
* * *
When they got back to Pueblo, they found that Isom’s telegraph messages had borne fruit. Four new gunmen had arrived. Samson had rented a farm a few miles outside town. It had a house big enough to accommodate everyone, a barn for their horses, and open fields behind the buildings where they could practice with their guns. Walt had Samson send a work crew to dig a small cellar at the far end of one field, topped with a hastily-built but stout wooden shack. He stored the cases of dynamite there for safety, raised above the cellar’s dirt floor on piled bricks. The rest of their supplies were unloaded into the barn, or the house’s root cellar.
Isom introduced the new men to Walt that evening. “I knew Jack Moultrie here back in Fort Davis. When he was just sixteen, while he was out huntin’, four Comanches raided his parent’s place an’ killed them. He took out after ’em, alone. Killed three, wounded the last, an’ got back the hosses they stole.”
Walt was instantly impressed. Comanches were amongst the most renowned fighters of the Plains tribes. No-one took them lightly.
“I ran into him when my patrol followed their tracks,” Isom continued. “We found him drivin’ his stock back home. He moved to town after that, worked a few jobs, stayed honest. Had a couple of scrapes with men who thought they could push a youngster around. They learned different.” Short, hard laughter came from the others, while Jack flushed a little at such praise. “He’s young still, but he’s got guts, he works hard, an’ he’s good with his guns.”
Walt nodded. “Glad to have you along, Jack.”
“Glad to be here, sir. I remember how I felt when my folks was killed. It must be as bad, or even worse, to lose your wife. I made ’em pay for Ma an’ Pa. Reckon it’s only right for you to do the same.” A rumble of agreement ran around the room.
Isom went on, “This long drink o’ water is Nate Barger.” There was a ripple of amusement as they looked at the tall, lanky figure next to Jack. “Nate started out as a brush-popper down on the Nueces River, chasin’ ornery longhorns outta the thickets.”
The newcomer nodded. “Them ole ladinos sure didn’t take kindly to bein’ rounded up,” he said in a Texas drawl. “Give ’em half a chance an’ they’d spike your leg on their horns. Did it to two o’ my friends, so I got outta there as soon as I’d saved a bit o’ money, afore one of ’em could do it to me. Took a while, ’cause youngsters only earned ten dollars a month an’ found.”
“Hard to save much on that kind of money,” Walt agreed. “Where did you go?”
“Headed for the Big Bend country. Warn’t much better than on the Nueces. Heard that Charlie Goodnight was aimin’ to trail cattle to Fort Sumter in New Mexico, so I drifted up his way an’ hired on. Did a few cattle drives with him an’ his partner, Oliver Loving, two to New Mexico, one to Colorado. Meanwhile, Clay Allison had some trouble with cow thieves near Cimarron in New Mexico. He was offerin’ good money to cowpunchers who weren’t afraid of a fight. I hired on with him for a year.”
Walt was struck by the casual reference to Clay Allison. The man had a fearsome reputation as being very fast with his gun, and almost too ready to use it. If he hired someone, that was probably as good as a written guarantee that they were also handy with their guns.
Nate continued, “Trouble is, Clay’s real contrary. He can be friendly as all get-out one day, an’ mean as a drunken skunk the next. Got to where I wasn’t sure which Clay I was workin’ for, dependin’ on which day of the week it was.” Another chuckle ran around the room. Allison’s reputation was well known. “I got out o’ there an’ took on as a deputy sheriff in Torrance County. I was there for a year, but I got tired of the dust an’ the heat. I was lookin’ for a change when I got Isom’s message.”
“You’ll get tired of the cold winters here before we’re through,” Walt assured him. “In a few months, you’ll be hankering after that dust and heat again.”
Barger guffawed. “I guess I’ll have to see about that, boss.”
Isom turned to the third new arrival. “This here’s Tom Springer. I ran into him three years ago, durin’ a fight in a saloon. He put down six of my troopers, includin’ me, before someone hit him over the head with a gun barrel. He’s the strongest sonofabitch I ever tangled with! Turned out the fight wasn’t his fault. When we’d all woke up again, he bought drinks all round to show there was no hard feelin’s. By the time the saloon closed, we was friends.”
“You was pretty handy with your fists, too,” Springer complained. “I couldn’t eat steak for a week!”
“I saw Isom do the same to another man a few weeks ago,” Walt told him. “He had to have his jaw wired shut.”
“Tom punched cows for a few years, then drifted out to California,” Isom went on. “He was a guard on stagecoaches to the mining towns inland. Had him a few run-ins with robbers. They mostly came off second best. He was hit in the chest a couple o’ years ago, but killed the man who did it. Took him a while to get over it, then he drifted back east, workin’ here and there. I ran into him again in Denver, a few weeks before you hired me. He was workin’ as a guard on the stage to Breckenridge. I wired him an’ told him to come on down. He can make a shotgun sit up an’ talk. He’s real good with it.”
“I’m not so good with a handgun, but it’s like playing cards. A good shotgun trumps a good revolver,” Tom quipped, to general, amused agreement.
“We’ll work on your handgun skills,” Walt promised. “We’re all going to get better than we are, with every gun we can muster.”
“Knives, too, I hope,” a soft voice commented in a Mexican accent. They turned to look at the last man. He was short and wiry, dressed in black from head to foot.
“This is Pablo Gomez,” Isom introduced him. “I met him one time in El Paso when we escorted a wagon train there. He was bein’ pushed around by three drunken soldiers from Camp Concordia. I stopped ’em afore it came to gun or knife work, which same it would have done real soon.”
“It would,” Pablo admitted. “I do not take kindly to fools trying to push me around.”
“Mr. Ames won’t,” Isom promised him. “He don’t care who you are or where you come from. If you do the job he hires you for, an’ you do it well, that’s all he asks.”
“That sounds good to me, señor,” Pablo said, looking at Walt.
“What were you doing before you joined us?” he asked.
“I started out as a vaquero on the estancia of Don José Arriba, near Hermosillo in Mexico. I fell in love with a woman, but another man wanted her. He had more money than I. He taunted me. There was a fight. He was badly cut.” Pablo shrugged. “He had more friends than I, with more guns, so I had to run for the border. I worked at a cantina in El Paso for a while, then drifted into New Mexico, where I worked for a rancho near the Llano Estacado, what you Anglos call the Staked Plains.”
“I’ve heard of it,” Walt acknowledged.
“There was much trouble there with the Indians, señor, especially the Mescalero Apaches. I found myself fighting them more than herding cattle. I held my own, but a man can only fight Apaches for so long before they turn the tables on him. They are too dangerous.” Grim nods and grunts of agreement ran around the room. “I was looking for something new when I got Isom’s message.”
“This isn’t exactly going to be safe,” Walt warned.
“True, señor, but even so, the men who murdered your wife are Anglos, not Apaches.”
“There is that.”
“I wanted Pablo ’cause he can handle a knife better than anyone I’ve ever seen, holdin’ or throwin’ it,” Isom put in. “He’s also a real good tracker. We might find both things handy.”
Walt nodded. “I’d like you to teach me how to fight with a knife. I’ve never been properly taught—just picked up a few things here and there. As for
tracking, I was a cavalry scout in the East during the war, and I scouted for a wagon across Kansas on the way out here, so I know something about it; but I reckon you can probably teach me more.”
“I will be glad to do so, señor, if you will teach me how to use a revolver better. Isom says you are one of the best he knows.”
“It’s a deal.” He looked around the room. “It’s going to take a while to gather enough information to start moving. During that time, I want all of us to work together. Each of us probably knows things that others would like to learn. Anyone used dynamite before?”
“Dynamite?” Jack exclaimed excitedly. The others shook their heads, but their eyes gleamed with anticipation. “When do we start?”
Walt laughed. “You’re like a young kid with a new toy!”
“Yeah, yeah! So when do we start?”
“Later,” Walt said firmly. The others laughed. “We’re going to be real careful with it, too! Let’s teach each other all we can, practice what we’ve learned, and get ready for a fight. The people we’re up against are very good, so we’ve got to be better.
“You’ve all got horses. You’ll need to get them into top condition, or replace them if they aren’t good enough. If you can’t afford your own, I’ll buy them for you against your bonus. There’s a stock sale at the county fairgrounds next month. That would be a good place to look. I’ll provide pack horses, so we can carry all we’ll need. We’ll get all the horses re-shod at the blacksmith, and build them up on oats and hay.
“If you new men go to town, go on your own or in pairs, and don’t tell anyone we’re all together, or that you’re working for me. I reckon Parsons must have had people watching me. They may still be doing that. They already know about Isom, Jacob and Sam, but I’d as soon they didn’t learn about you. Don’t get drunk and talk about us, either. If Parsons knows we’re coming, he might arrange for us to find him on ground he’s prepared. I don’t want to risk that.”