Longarm glanced the way they were headed to see that the north horizon, maybe three miles off, lay string- straight and oddly greener than the ripples all around.
Figuring they had at least half an hour to go, he asked her if she knew what sort of guns she had in mind for her running gunfight. When she told him the Mexican gunboats on the lower Colorado were mostly armed with Hotchkiss one-pounders outfitted with boiler-plate shields, he had to shake his head wearily and explain how her notion added up to a total waste of hope.
He said, “That Gatling fires cheap .45-55 rifle rounds. A good marksman can barely hope to stay on the target paper with his Springfield .45-70 at four hundred yards. Let’s say the Gatling can sprinkle out to thrice that range, with rapid fire and pure luck taking the place of aiming. A Hotckiss lobbing 37-millimeter shells back at you from behind an iron shield don’t add up to a gunfight. It’d be as one-sided as those Spanish bullfights you folks admire, no offense.”
She insisted, “Sometimes the bull wins, and have you forgotten that longer-ranging buffalo gun you brought aboard when we took this cutter?” Longarm sighed and said, “The Big Fifty can shoot straight about as far as their infernal deck gun, albeit way slower. Did you have an iron gun turret in mind for me to shoot from? That antique just ain’t a true field gun, Miss Irena. Did I bounce even seven hundred grains of solid lead off their iron shield, they’d just laugh and pay me back with a pound of exploding steel.”
He craned his neck for a better view forward as he added, “You did say you know your way through that big swamp we seem to be headed for, didn’t you?”
Before she could answer, the lookout shouted, “I can see her down to the waterline now! Is an armored gunboat and—Dios mio! Esos cabrones seem to be firing on us!”
The helmsman threw them hard left rudder without waiting for orders as the shell from the distant gunboat proved the lookout had guessed right about that big white puff of smoke he’d spotted. They heard the dull crump of the deck gun, followed by the whistle and far louder splash-bang when the shell went off under their wake to spout muddy water skyward.
Irena yelled up for their lookout to watch for shoal water as well, just as he let fly with another warning and they turned sharply the other way. When the second shell landed awfully close to where they’d just been, the war veteran among them grabbed the spyglass from Irena, snapping, “They ain’t ranging that tight by guesswork!”
Peering through the telescope at deck level, Longarm could only make out the smoke plume and top third of their mast. But that was enough for him to say, “They don’t have anyone in their crow’s nest! They’re aiming at our mast! It’s the only thing they can see at this range from their point of view!”
Irena proved herself the quick-thinking descendant of long-gone sea rovers by snapping out orders about fire axes. Longarm gazed in wonder as what looked like someone’s south forty of oats or barley moved across his vista at better than six knots. Then they were surrounded by more rule reeds than open water, and Irena was shouting a warning about falling timber.
The mast they’d chopped through crashed over the side with a mighty splash of muddy foam, and swung them broadside as its far end dug into the shallow bottom. But then swift machete strokes had severed every stay and, with Longarm’s help, the butt end was heaved overboard and they were on their way up a broad but twisting channel.
Hence, it took a spell to figure out what the other side was up to when another one-pound shell blasted a gout of mud and chopped-up tule from the bottom just to starboard.
Their own lookout had naturally come down before they’d chopped the mast through at deck level. Longarm took the spyglass from Irena again and aimed it at the far-off smudge of dirty oil smoke. He could see how they’d done it now. He told Irena, “they’ve sent their own lookout up. He can doubtless see all of us, even though we can only make out their infernal mast.”
Irena swore in Italian as well as Spanish before she pleaded, “Can you not reach them with your long-range buffalo rifle?”
To which Longarm could only reply, “No. They’re close to three miles away and the Big Fifty has its limits, even with full elevation!”
Then another one-pounder blasted a column of muddy water over the foredeck, and he added with a sigh, “Like Miss Mouse said to Froggie when he came a-courting, “This may not work but we can try,’ for they sure as shooting have our range!”
Irena tagged along as he strode forward to where he’d left the Big Fifty by that Gatling gun. The canvas tarp over the Gatling was leopard-spotted with fresh liquid mud. Longarm tore it off the .45-55-405 deck gun and spread it on the spattered planking as he got out that trading-post pocket knife and showed Irena how to cut oiled canvas patches the size of silver dollars before he went to work on both .50 and .45 ammunition on a far corner of the tarp.
Irena cut canvas with the skill of a born sail-patching gal, but she naturally asked him what in blue blazes they were doing.
Longarm explained, “My pistol balls ain’t heavy enough. But like Miss Goldilocks remarked on porridge, these 405-grain Gatling slugs might be just right. Heavier than this old .44-40 throws, but almost two hundred grains lighter than this Big Fifty, see?”
Irena replied, “No. I can see you can fit a smaller .45 bullet in the chamber meant for .50-caliber. Pero for how far can you hope to shoot with the gas escaping all around the most loose fit?”
Longarm used his teeth to pry a 600-grain Big Fifty slug from its brass cartridge before he explained, being careful not to let any black powder escape. “That’s how you figure to help me, with all those pretty patches. Hand me one and I’ll show you.”
She did. He centered the canvas over the open end of the Big Fifty shell and picked up a smaller Gatling round. He bit its head off, being careful not to dent the lead too deeply with teeth that were harder by far, and seated the 405-grain slug where six hundred grains had been.
It wasn’t easy. The oiled canvas didn’t want to let him. He had to really push, saying, “This stout patch puckered all around this lighter bullet ought to give us results something like you got with an old-time Kentucky rifle. They used to ram a .31-caliber ball down a .36-caliber bore with a cloth or deerskin patch. It was the patch, not the ball, as sealed the gasses and gripped the spiral lands as it tore on out the muzzle. Patch and ball part company within yards of the same, of course. But by that time the spinning lead is on its way to the target. So what the hell.”
