CHAPTER 4
GIDEON’S WORKSHOP
Leaving the decaying frame of the church behind them, the silent march cut through the dark.
The black coffin, heavy and full of the secrets of war, swayed lashed to the back of a pack mule whose hooves made a muffled echo in the dry mud.
Elena held the rear, her dark and watchful eyes sweeping the corners of the main avenue, while Nero led the way through the black alleys to the forgotten industrial edge of Bitter Creek.
There, where the lanes died out near abandoned mills and the iron skeletons of old mines, the atmosphere changed all at once.
The air in that borderland smelled of cast iron, burnt whale oil, and the heavy ash of mineral coal. This was Gideon’s workshop.
Unlike the rest of the town, which hid cravenly beneath the silence and the shadows imposed by Colonel Vance, the windows of that machine shop were always clouded, coated with a thick layer of soot and grease.
The violent, rhythmic sound of heavy hammer blows on the anvil would carry on well into the small hours, like the mechanical heart of a hidden monster.
Nero came up to the immense reinforced metal door and, without hesitating, used the brass pommel of his cavalry sabre to strike the iron three times.
A hollow, deep, metallic echo rang across the deserted yard.
The door swung open all at once, screeching on its heavy hinges.
Before them stood the imposing figure of Gideon.
He was a middle-aged man with broad, thickset shoulders, wearing protective goggles with heavy lenses pushed up onto a sweating forehead.
His arms, strong as cordwood, were entirely blackened with grease up to the elbows, and an apron of rawhide, badly scorched by the sparks of the forge, covered his chest.
He was holding a heavy wrench of solid iron, but his eyes flared as he recognized the tall silhouette, the long coat, and the glacial blue eyes cast in shadow under the brim of the hunter’s worn hat.
Gideon looked at Nero for a long moment, then shifted his focus to Elena, and at last stopped on the black coffin tied to the mule.
A broad, cynical, coal-smeared grin split his rough features.
“Well, well… The lead sang in the saloon a few minutes ago and I knew, in my heart, that a trail of blood like that could only end up knocking on my door,” Gideon said, stepping aside and opening room enough for all three of them to enter that stronghold of metal.
The Mechanical Heresy
The inside of the workshop was a labyrinth of bronze gearing, pedal-driven lathes, gigantic leather bellows, and disassembled rifle parts scattered across oak benches.
The heat in there was almost palpable, kept alive by the red coals of the main forge.
Gideon walked with heavy steps to the middle of the cleanest workbench, where a dark wooden case rested, lined on the inside with bright red velvet.
With an exaggeratedly dramatic flourish, the inventor pulled away the protective linen cloth that covered the thing.
“Your order… that absurd modification you drew on that torn, crumpled scrap of paper is perfectly finished,” Gideon whispered, his voice mixed with an almost insane pride.
“To be honest with you, my dear Nero, I thought death would find you before you could come back to collect it.” Laid out on the scarlet velvet was the mechanical revolution Nero had conceived.
In an age when firearms were primitive and men needed agonizing minutes to reload a Colt Paterson revolver — forced to strip the whole barrel off and lock the cylinder before they could insert powder, wad and lead — Gideon’s creation broke every law of the military physics of the day.
What Gideon had done to those Patersons had no name in any gunsmith’s manual.
A tilting lever fitted to the lower frame opened the entire weapon with no tool at all; a spring mechanism spat the empty cylinder out with a push of the thumb; and, lined up in the bottom of the case like eggs in a nest, six spare steel cylinders waited, charged and sealed against damp, ready to drop onto the arbor.
Nero came up to the bench with slow steps.
He put out his right hand, took one of the modified Patersons, and tested the mechanical fit of the new cylinder.
With a quick push of his palm the spare drum slid onto the arbor and locked into place.
CLICK. The metallic sound, clean and surgically precise, rang through the workshop like music in the bounty hunter’s ears.
That mechanical heresy cut the reloading time from five minutes to under two seconds.
It was an unjust and lethal advantage over any shooter on the frontier.
“Time is only a matter of perspective, my friend,” Nero answered, his voice low, his eyes fixed on the blue gleam of the new steel. “And I already have the perfect targets to test your invention on.”
The Renegades’ Pact
Gideon wiped the excess grease off his fingers with a piece of old burlap, his eyes staying nailed to the hunter’s calculating coldness. Excitement mixed with tension in his words.
“I heard the talk that ran through the lanes…” the inventor murmured, leaning his body forward.
“They said Kurt and the men Vance sent to the canyon turned to dust in your hands. Let me go with you, Nero. I need to see the practical result of my work out in the open. I want to see those gears spitting fire and tearing the flesh of the Colonel’s devils.
” Nero finished settling the new steel cylinders into the extra leather pouches ranged along his heavy belt.
He raised his face sidelong and met the machinist’s eyes with the bluntness of a man who can see what is coming.
“You can come,” Nero pronounced, arranging the heavy folds of the long coat over his guns. “But you’ll probably be dead before daylight.”
Gideon let out a harsh laugh, cynical and loaded with desperation, reaching for a repeating rifle on the wall whose barrel he had lengthened and modified himself. He threw a heavy bandolier of large-calibre cartridges over his left shoulder with a dull thud.
“Living in this hole of a town, crawling under the boots of that miserable old Colonel, is already a far worse punishment than death itself, Nero. At least, if I have to go down to hell tomorrow, I’ll die with a clean soul, watching my creation sing in the middle of a gunfight. Let me get the rest of my gear.”
The inventor moved quickly to the corner by the forge and lifted a smaller coffin, a kind of heavy oak crate reinforced with thick straps of rawhide.
He ran his arms through the straps, hoisted the burden, and cinched it firmly onto his back like a military pack.
The contents inside rattled with the heavy sound of tools and reserve ammunition.
“I’m ready,” Gideon assured him, slapping his leather-covered chest.
Elena, who until then had watched the entire scene in absolute silence near the iron door, adjusted with precision the grip of the small pistol hidden in her clothing.
Her dark, sharp eyes took in, one by one, the components of that profane alliance: the bounty hunter with the glacial blue eyes, the mad inventor armed to the teeth, and herself — a survivor thirsty for the blood of the tyrants of Bitter Creek.
The storm of lead was ready to break over the Cross Ranch.
◆◆◆