Chapter 14

This chapter is dedicated to Landrious1, who supplied the inspiration and information for the modified Gatling guns

"What a fiasco! How did you manage to make such a mess, Johnson? It will take us weeks, if not months, to recover. I swear that I cannot understand how a few people, even in a sturdy adobe building could so easily withstand an attack by 120 experienced bandits."

"But Sir, they had some sort of very accurate artillery. We were not expecting that and had no way to counter it. Perhaps we could attack the building with dynamite charges similar to those used by the sappers in the British army."

"Very well, Johnson, but look into it very carefully before you commit us again."

I felt that we needed to put more pressure directly on the Brotherhood. We must be more active; we could not continue to simply react to their aggression, but we must become more aggressive, ourselves. To that end, we must find who Johnson's supervisor reports to. If we knocked off Johnson and the other trainees and Johnson's supervisor now, we would be left in an information vacuum. We had to know the identity of the next step up in the hierarchy before we eliminated a level.

We had to get Jake's Alamogordo operative to put a twenty-four hour, seven day tail on Johnson's supervisor until we found out who he reported to. This may not be easy. More assets might have to be devoted to this than we can manage right now. But we have to try! We have to stop Johnson and his supervisor as soon as possible, but we can't do it yet.

We might never put a permanent stop to the harassment we are getting from the Brotherhood, but we must lighten it. This harassment had put a psychological strain on all of us; I certainly was feeling it.

We had to have a list of all of the supervisor's contacts. This was going to be a fantastically long list, I knew. But I could not think of any other way to start. Once we had a comprehensive list, we could start weeding out people until we got the list down to something manageable. In the beginning, we could not even ignore menials; the swamper could be the supervisor's contact in disguise. On the other hand, with seniority and oneupmanship a primary concern with this type of personality, I was sure that the contact would have to be somebody visited by the supervisor (we had to get him a name); I was certain that the supervisor's contact would never come to him.

Roland has shown himself to be an absolute mechanical genius! He has improved every device he has touched! A few days ago, he mentioned that he had been following the news of developments in machine guns. He noticed that a patent had been issued and assigned to the US Army for a recoil/gas operated mechanism for the Gatling gun. This meant that the shooter only had to pull a trigger to shoot and not crank the handle. This would make the gun easier to aim and shoot, and it would reduce the required crew from four to two men. The use of the "Bruce" loading system would also make the gun shoot as long as it had ammunition and not have to pause every twenty shots for reloading. He had obtained a copy of the patent and announced that he could design and build one for the same .45 ammunition the dragoons currently used.

If we wished, he would contact Wayne Landry, the gun smith in Julesburg, for assistance in obtaining parts and building a prototype for our use. The committee was unanimous in asking him to follow up on this.

Roland and some dragoons went into Julesburg the next day and talked to Wayne. They both got so interested in the project that they had to be pried away to eat. They finished a rough design that day and ordered the parts not on hand.

I asked Roland how he expected to finish the job quickly enough to do any good and he admitted that he had five unofficial helpers. Five teen aged boys from the ranch had been following him around and helping out as they could. I asked if they really were of any value and, when he said that they were, I told him to sign them up, officially as employees and as his assistants. He said that he could train them as if they were apprentices and that would save him and Wayne a lot of the drudge work with the new gun. Roland had the boys build the gun mount as their first project while they were waiting for the ordered parts to arrive.

Meanwhile, Roland and Wayne worked on the details of the design so that they could use many of the parts that Wayne had on hand. They finally settled on a six-barrel design using the .45 caliber carbine barrels that Wayne had. This would cut the weight of the gun and the shorter barrel would not affect the accuracy within the intended range. It took only two more weeks for the seven mechanics to complete their prototype and have it ready for testing. They moved it to the ranch shooting range and tried it out without an audience. It worked pretty well, but there were a few tweaks necessary. These minor problems were fixed and an official presentation was set for the next day.

Practically the whole ranch showed up and were awed by the demonstration. The new gun spit out bullets so fast that they considered trying to slow its rate of fire to keep from wasting bullets. However, it was decided that training and practice would allow the operators to gain enough control so that things could be left as they were. One thing was obvious, the loader would be kept busy with much sustained fire! Everybody, including the women, volunteered to be gunners! There was talk that this might even make the shotgun obsolete.

A meeting was held after the demonstration and it was decided to build eight more guns: nine would give eight for the fort and one for the construction site. We would find the money, somewhere.

At this point, Roland introduced a new idea: a mobile fighting platform for the new gun. He had recently heard that Rudolph Diesel had demonstrated a new engine at the Exhibition Fair in Paris, France in 1898. This engine was much more efficient than the steam engine and would run on just about any liquid fuel. This engine was now for sale and Roland wanted to get one from Busch-Zulger Brothers Diesel Engine Company, the US manufacturer. He proposed to mount the engine in such a way that it could propel a steerable wagon loaded with one or more machine guns; this way we could carry the fight to the enemy. He already had some preliminary designs. He could work on it while Wayne Landry and the assistants completed the remaining guns.

Needless to say, this proposal sparked some lively debate. Everybody thought that it was a great idea, if it would work. The motion finally carried when Roland pointed out that even if it didn't, we could still find plenty of uses for the engine. In a burst of enthusiasm, it was decided to build eleven more machine guns!

Roland's main worry was what to use for fuel. Diesel had designed the original engine to run on peanut oil, but that was not common in NMT. It looked like kerosene or coal oil would probably work OK.

We were getting lucky! Johnson's supervisor, John Alden, went to Santa Fe for three days. This was his only trip out of Alamogordo in seven weeks. We dropped all other leads and asked Jake to follow up on the Santa Fe outing. Jake went to work with a bang. Jake found that this contact, Asa Gooding, went to several meetings at a law office near Saul Jakob's bank; this may or may not be useful information. A contact in Santa Fe suggested a high echelon connection, possibly near the top.

If this latest development panned out, we had the information we needed to let us eliminate Johnson and the other trainees and Alden. All we could do now was wait for developments.

There was no moon that night, so the three trespassers felt reasonably safe as they sneaked up to the wall of Fort York. One dragged a bag containing four dynamite charges. These were placed, evenly spaced, against the left side wall and a long fuse was connected to each in such a way that the charges would explode in a ripple effect. It was hoped that this would insure that the wall collapsed completely, bringing down part of the roof. They lit the fuse and ran to their horses to make their escape.

The peace of the night was shattered when the four charges went off. Fortunately, though the wall was heavily damaged, it didn't fall, neither did the roof. Practically everybody at the ranch came running to see what was the cause of the loud noise, but there was nothing that could be done until daylight. There was no fire, so there was no emergency. However, it was obvious to all that the only reason for Fort York's survival was that larger charges were needed.