CHAPTER 11
THE FORGING OF THE REAPER
Gideon looked at his own emptied whiskey glass, then at the line of New Mexico on the yellowed map. He shook his head and clicked his tongue in a way that expressed the full extent of a machinist’s frustration.
“Drawing a straight line on paper is easy, vaquera,” the inventor grumbled, facing Elena.
“But pushing two cast-iron wheels mounted under half a ton of oak through the soft sand of the desert? That’s asking to die.
At the first rocky gorge in the Sierra Nevada that dead man’s box will jam in the stones and turn into our own coffin for real.
The Russians travel on horseback, Nero. If we can’t run, we’re dead before we even cross the border. ”
Nero, finishing drying himself with the rough linen towel, did not blink.
He simply set his glacial blue eyes on the machinist. He did not have to say a single word.
The hunter’s silence carried a clear ultimatum: find a way.
Gideon snorted, shifting the tool crate on his back with a dull clank of metal.
“You two go on and finish that second-rate whiskey,” the machinist snapped, turning on his heel. “I’ll be at the shop. And don’t come calling for me unless the Colonel’s bunch rises from the dead.” The door of the room banged shut.
Gideon went down the saloon steps two at a time, ignoring the drunken shouts of the townspeople still celebrating around the bonfire on the main avenue.
He crossed the dark lane in long strides, driven by the creative fury that only mad inventors possess, and shut himself up once more in his sanctuary of soot, grease and mineral coal.
The Engineering of the Desert
In the workshop, the forge still held a red and pulsing bed of coals.
Gideon wasted no time. With the help of an iron pulley fixed to the wooden roof, he hoisted the enormous rotating gun out of the black oak coffin.
The plan was audacious. He needed to strip the weapon of all its dead weight.
With precise hammer blows and heavy wrenches, Gideon began taking the outer carcass apart.
The oak coffin that had hidden the gun beneath the floor of the church was discarded whole — seventy kilos of dead weight that were not going to cross any desert.
The cast-iron wheels and the central axle came off under the chisel.
What was left was only the heart of the machine: the carousel of ten steel barrels, the breech block, and the crank of polished bronze.
The great challenge was creating a stable mounting system.
An experimental rotating gun generated a brutal recoil that could break an animal’s spine if fired incorrectly, and could throw a mount off balance during a ride.
Working under the weak light of three oil lamps, sweat running down a face streaked with coal, Gideon began shaping plates of malleable steel on the anvil.
The sound of his hammer striking the metal set the rhythm of that night in Bitter Creek.
The Flank Mount
After three hours of cutting, welding and adjustments measured to the millimetre, the mechanical heresy had been reconfigured. Gideon had built a double articulated flank mount, designed specifically to be fitted to the side of the pack saddle of a sturdy horse.
The gun was fixed into a steel frame that ran down the animal’s right side, and the bronze crate full of ammunition became an exact counterweight on the left flank.
A bronze hinge allowed the muzzles of the barrels to be swung through a half-turn arc without dismounting anything, and two straps of buffalo hide with iron catches released the entire weapon from the saddle in under five seconds, in case it had to be set on the ground on a rough tripod.
The sun was beginning to cut the line of the horizon with a violent orange tone when the workshop door opened.
Nero and Elena came in, already dressed for the road.
The hunter’s canvas duster had been cleaned of blood, and his extra pouches were full with the spare drums Gideon had made.
The machinist was sitting on an upturned crate, drawing on a corn-husk cigarette with his eyes red from exhaustion, but with a cynical grin printed on his face.
Beside him, mounted on the saddle of a sturdy pack horse, the rotating reaper now rested compact and imposing and snug against the animal’s ribs, covered with a waterproof tarpaulin to protect it from the sand.
“The coffin stays behind, Nero,” Gideon said, letting the tobacco smoke go toward the ceiling. “From here on, your best friend rides at our side. The lead is ready to move as fast as the desert wind.”
Nero came up to the animal, touched the cold metal of the crank under the tarpaulin, and tested the firmness of the steel mount. The fit was solid as rock. Under the brim of his hat, the hunter’s blue eyes took in the open immensity of New Mexico waiting for them.
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