water to keep the gun from overheating. Turns out the air cools it enough.”
The men took a couple of wheels from one of the mules and mounted a metal crosspiece between them. Two men held the wheels upright while another man fastened a curved wooden beam to the crosspiece. It extended out several feet to the back and the other end rested on the ground to form a brace that supported the wheeled carriage. Then two more men lifted the body of the Gatling gun out of the crate and bolted it into place on the carriage.
“Once it’s set up, it’s pretty mobile,” Lundy said. “A couple of men can pick up that tongue in the back to turn it around or wheel it from place to place. You don’t have to have horses to pull it or even to transport it. Several men can do the job if they have to, once the gun’s broken down, and you can see for yourself that it doesn’t take all that long to set it up again.” The man shrugged. “Anyway, if you set it up where you want to do your shooting, you shouldn’t have to move it much.”
Joseph frowned. “You brought ammunition?”
Lundy pointed to one of his men and ordered, “Get those sticks of bullets.”
The man brought out a pair of long, narrow metal magazines that fit into loading slots on the top of the weapon. The magazines held bullets that fed into the chambers as the barrels revolved and the gun fired.
“Once your loaders get the hang of it, the thing’ll fire four hundred rounds a minute without much problem,” Lundy said. “The gun can actually handle close to a thousand rounds a minute without jamming or overheating, but men can’t reload that fast. You’ll need three men on each gun, a couple to load and one to turn the firing crank.”
Lundy pointed out the wooden-handled crank attached to the body of the weapon.
“Set up four of them around a target, and you can pour more than fifteen hundred rounds a minute into it,” he went on. “That’ll shoot holes in just about anything and blow it to hell in a hurry. And it’ll mow down the Mounties like wheat in a field.”
Joseph’s voice was grim as he said, “They used a Gatling gun against my people the last time we tried to fight for our rights. It’s only fair that we use such weapons against them.”
“That’s none of my business,” Lundy said. He waved a hand at the gun. “Well, there it is. How about that gold?”
“Does it work? I have to see how it works.”
Lundy smiled. “Try it yourself.”
“You mean it?”
Lundy motioned Joseph toward the gun. “It’s loaded and ready to go. Just turn that crank, like I said.”
Joseph couldn’t resist the temptation. He glanced over at Charlotte. She looked apprehensive, as if she didn’t like this at all, but she didn’t shake her head to tell him he shouldn’t. Joseph approached the Gatling gun carefully, as if it were a wild animal that might attack viciously without any warning.
As he grasped the crank’s handle, he bent down and squinted along the barrels to see where the gun was pointing. It was aimed across the valley at a stand of pines. There might be some small animals and birds in those trees, he thought, but that was their misfortune.
He took a deep breath and turned the crank, hard and fast.
The noise was incredible, slamming against his ears again and again. The shots roared out, coming so close together that it was hard to tell them apart. The rear brace shuddered from the recoil. The rate of fire slowed slightly and then picked up again, depending on how fast Joseph turned the crank. Across the valley, branches jerked and chunks of bark flew as the bullets chewed into the trees with ferocious power.
Abruptly, the gun fell silent. The quiet sounded odd after that terrible racket. Lundy said, “You’re empty.”
Joseph turned toward the outlaw in amazement. He had heard stories about these weapons, of course, but he had never seen one in action until now. It was awe-inspiring in its devastation. He peered across the valley and saw the scattered branches and the huge holes that the bullets had gouged into the tree trunks.
If those trees were men, they would be lying dead on the ground now in bloody heaps, shot to pieces.
Joseph turned to his sister. Charlotte still had her hands over her ears, where she had clapped them when the shooting started.
“Do you want to try it?” he asked her.
She lowered her hands and shook her head. She was pale and looked a little sick.
“No. I don’t mind guns, but this … this is … evil.”
“Nonsense,” Joseph said. “This is exactly what we need.” He looked at Lundy. “Can we reload it and shoot it again?”
The outlaw grinned. “Sure. This time, my boys’ll show you how to load it, and you can do it yourself.”
Joseph spent a while familiarizing himself with every part of the gun’s apparatus. He found himself fascinated by it. He thought not so much about the bloody havoc it was capable of wreaking, but more about what a mechanical marvel it was. He had to learn all he could about it so he would be able to teach his comrades among the Metis how to use the weapons.
“We brought plenty of ammunition, but you don’t need to be wasting it,” Lundy cautioned.
“One more magazine,” Joseph said eagerly.
He cranked through those shells as well, watching with avid interest as several large branches fell off the pines. The hail of bullets had sawed them loose.
When the Gatling gun fell silent again, Lundy said, “All right. You’ve seen what this thing can do. It’s time for you to keep your part of the bargain, Marat. Where’s our gold?”
Before Joseph could answer, Palmer said, “That fella you sent out to scout the area is coming back,
