GATLING WAS FOUR blocks from the Maxim Company warehouse on Crosby Street when he heard the shooting. Gun battles were fairly common in the greasy, rubbish-strewn streets of the Lower East Side, where rival Jewish and Irish gangs, generaled by Monk Eastman and Shotgun Malloy, were forever warring over disputed territory. The ponce showed little interest in the constant bloodletting that went on between East Houston Street and Chinatown. Only the killing of somebody important, usually caught in a cross fire, could get them off their asses.
Gatling didn’t give a damn who was shooting or who was getting shot. It was none of his business. An hour earlier he had eaten a thick steak and had drunk a quart-sized stein of good German beer in Luchow’s Restaurant on Fourteenth Street. He didn’t like New York, but it did have the best restaurants in the country. Apart from that, it was the asshole of Creation.
The shooting continued and it was still going on when he got to the corner of Crosby Street. It was coming from down by the Maxim Company warehouse, and that made it his business because he worked for Colonel Harry Pritchett, chief representative of the famous arms company in the United States. He drew the Colt .45 from its shoulder holster; there was no need to check the loads because he always checked his gun before he walked the dark streets of the Lower East Side. Down there, an experienced thug with a knife or a lead pipe could kill and rob as silently as an Apache.
The Maxim warehouse took up most of the block, and the only illumination in the street came from the flaring naphtha light above the thick steel door. It was so bright that it turned night into day, and it burned from sunset to daylight. The colonel was ever aware that his warehouse, with its three floors of the latest weapons, could become a target for Cuban rebels, Irish revolutionaries, or ambitious criminals.
There were no sidewalks. Packing cases, wooden skids and old nail barrels were piled high on both sides of the street. Gatling climbed up on a stack of skids while bullets kicked up sparks from the cobblestones. From where he was he could see two men in dark suits, their backs to him, trading shots with three uniformed guards from the warehouse. The shooters on both sides had knocked packing cases into the street and were using them as cover. Gatling wondered what the hell was going on. Two men would hardly try to take over a heavily guarded warehouse—or maybe they would. Before he climbed down he got a quick look at Colonel Pritchett, his cropped white head and black eyepatch, and heard the crash of his heavy Webley .455 revolver.
Gatling edged closer after he got down from the crate. One of the dark-suited men was reloading, the other was aiming careful shots. Gatling shot the second man in the back, shattering his spine; he collapsed like a rag doll. The first man had finished reloading and he snapped the break top Webley shut and tried to turn. Gatling shot him in the side of the head, then moved forward to pick up their revolvers. The man with the broken spine was still breathing, and he finished him off with a bullet through the forehead. Let the colonel go through their pockets; it was his warehouse, his street.
The colonel and the guards had stopped shooting, and away from the big light the street was dark and quiet. Gatling yelled his name. He yelled it a second time. “It’s me, Gatling. Don’t shoot. I’m coming out.”
The colonel and the two guards came out to meet him. They had holstered their sidearms. “What the hell is going on?” Gatling asked. “Who were those men I killed?”
“British Secret Service agents,” the colonel answered. “That man over there”—the colonel pointed—“they were trying to get at him before he got to me. They shot him once and were set to shoot again, but my guards ran out and opened fire. They didn’t go far. No more talk. He may be badly wounded. We have to get him up to my office.”
The colonel snapped his fingers and pointed. “Get rid of the bodies,” he told the guards. A nod from the guards. They knew what to do.
Gatling and the colonel carried the wounded man into the warehouse and up the metal stairs that led to the office. He had been shot once in the back, probably with a dumdum or hollow-point bullet. The hole in his back was the size of a silver dollar and it was obvious that he was dying. Blood dripped all the way from the street to the leather couch opposite the colonel’s desk.
The colonel turned him on his side so he could look at the wound. Gatling knew it was a waste of time. Nothing could be done for him.
“He’s still alive,” the colonel said.
“Not for long,” Gatling said.
The bullet had penetrated a lung and was lodged there. Blood gouted from the dying man’s mouth with every breath he took. Under the electric light, Gatling was able to get a better look at him. He was short and swarthy and had crow-black hair. A mixed blood. There was a lot of Indian in him.
“Colonel ...” Gatling started again.
“This poor beggar is why I sent for you,” the colonel said. “A Canadian mixed-blood, one of Louis Riel’s agents. He came here to buy guns. The métis, Riel’s people, are preparing for a full-scale war against the Canadian Government.” The colonel nodded toward the couch. “His name is Rideau, some sort of cousin of Riel’s. Riel wrote me about him. He was to bring me a letter of credit and so on. I’ll see if I can bring him round for a moment.”
The colonel filled a small glass with brandy and poured a few drops into Rideau’s gaping mouth. He coughed violently and opened his eyes. Already they had the glaze of death. “In my pocket,” he whispered, and then he died.
The colonel took the letter of credit from the dead man’s pocket. With it was a letter and a list printed in capital letters. The colonel looked at the letter of credit before he read Riel’s letter. That’s the colonel, Gatling thought.
After going through the list, the colonel said, “Riel wants light and heavy machine guns. Maxims. Mauser rifles. Wonder where he heard about them. They’re so new we just got our first shipment. You’ll be testing the Mauser.”
“Not on Canadians,” Gatling said. “According to the papers, they’re calling up the militia before they send in regulars. I’m not going to shoot a lot of farmers and storekeepers to test a new rifle. If Riel wants to take on the British Empire, that’s his funeral. Soon as I deliver the guns and show them how to use them, I’ll be heading back.”
“Yes. Yes,” the colonel said, getting back to the list. “He wants fifty Colt .45’s and Webley .455’s. Now listen to this. He wants five Hotchkiss Balloon Guns for shooting down observation balloons. The Balloon Gun is in the .70 caliber and fires an incendiary bullet that brings them down in flames. Last on the list: ten Hotchkiss 37-millimeter Revolving Cannons. A good list. Look it over.”
The colonel handed Riel’s letter and the weapons list to Gatling. The letter was brief and matter-of-fact. Riel said the bearer was Jean-Francois Rideau, one of his most trusted men. The letter of credit was to be presented at the Merchants Bank of New York, a private institution owned by a Mr. Garrett O’Brien.
“O’Brien is a Fenian,” the colonel explained. “The Fenians want to drive the British out of Ireland. O’Brien started out as a boy teamster and now, thirty years later, he’s a multimillionaire. He owns a huge department store on Sixth Avenue, among other things. He’s been financing anti-British activities for years. He was the money behind the Fenian uprising in Ireland in 1867. A disaster, but it wasn’t his fault. Now he sees a chance of getting back at Britain by backing Riel. O’Brien would back the Australian aborigines if he thought it meant trouble for Britain.”
Gatling gave the list and letter back to the colonel, who took another look at the list before he put it in a drawer. “A routine shipment,” he said. “Well, actually, not so routine. The Canadian and British authorities will be watching the border.”
The dead man on the couch might not have been there. “I’m thinking about that,” Gatling said.
“Well, they can’t watch every inch of it,” the colonel said. “I’ve been looking at railroad maps, and Fortuna, North Dakota, might not be a bad place to cross. It’s not actually on the border but eight miles below it. A branch line of the Northern and Fargo goes there. Big wheat country. The line does carry passengers, but its main business is hauling freight. However, it’s your decision and your responsibility. We can’t risk having the shipment seized. What do you think, my boy?”
Gatling was thinking of the long prison term he faced if the Canadians caught him with the guns.
“You know we’ll be in violation of the Neutrality Act,” he said.
“Correction,” the colonel said. “You’ll be in violation of the Neutrality Act. But have no fear. Certain senators and very influential businessmen have guaranteed that there will be no problems, legal or otherwise, on this side of the border. Not all of these men belong to the Annex Canada movement, but most of them do.”
“Are those crackpots still around?”
“They most certainly are, and they would not be pleased to hear themselves described as crackpots. They are men of vision, something you couldn’t possibly understand. Those who don’t belong to the movement will be rushing to join. You know what they say about an idea whose time has come. These men believe the time is now. Mind you, these men had nothing to do with fomenting this rebellion, but as the conflict widens they believe the United States will have no choice but to enter—I nearly said invade—Canada to restore order. We can’t have a civil war in our backyard, can we? If this seems high-handed, you must realize that there is no valid reason why Canada should exist as a separate country. It has a tiny population and is backward in many ways. But how it will flourish when it becomes part of the Union!”
“These politicians and businessmen want to steal Canada, is that it?” Gatling was getting tired of the colonel’s speechifying. He knew the colonel had a long-standing grudge against Britain because he had been forced to resign from the British Army after many years’ service. But his willingness to sell guns to his native country’s enemies was something Gatling hadn’t expected.
“Did you say steal?” the colonel said. “A poor way to put it, and a mistaken one. The men I referred to want the very best for Canada. They want Canada to realize its potential, something that isn’t likely to happen under the present government or, to be candid, under any Canadian government. The dead hand of Great Britain lies heavy on that magnificent land—”
Somebody came to the door and knocked. It was one of the three guards who’d been in the shootout. He said, “Kelly and Mullins are taking care of what you said.”
The colonel nodded. “Good,” he said. “But spare me the details.”
“I went through their pockets before they were taken away,” the guard said. “They had money and good watches and keys, but no identification papers of any kind. Nothing to say who they was. No labels in their clothes neither. Their shoes, no maker’s mark.”
The colonel smiled after the guard left. “Those Secret Service bastards! They did for poor Rideau over there, shot the poor fella in the back. Heartless swine. They must have followed him from Saskatchewan, or they learned he was coming here and were waiting at the railroad station. Don’t ask me how they got on to him. My guess is they planted a man in Riel’s camp. One thing the bastards are is cunning. Watch out for them, Gatling, or they’ll put a bullet or a knife in your back first chance they get.”
“Thanks for the warning,” Gatling said dryly. “Anything else you want to tell me?”
The colonel took his foul-smelling pipe from the desk drawer and proceeded to fill it with shag tobacco. That took a while. “Well yes, there is,” he said. “For various reasons the Maxim Company must not be connected in any way with this enterprise. If the facts were revealed, it could be very awkward for Mr. Maxim.”
The colonel struck a wooden match and the room began to fill up with blue-gray smoke. It smelled as if he had put horsehair in the pipe instead of tobacco.
“It would be awkward and embarrassing,” the colonel said.
“Meaning the British might close his factories and kick him out of the country?”
“Crudely put but essentially correct.”
“Then why do it at all?”
“Business. Mr. Maxim is first and last a businessman. He invents, manufactures, and sells weapons. He fills a need. What people do with his guns, after they buy them, is no concern of his. Wars were here thousands of years before Mr. Maxim was born, and they’ll still be here thousands of years after he’s gone. But we’re straying from the point.”
“Which is?” Gatling said.
The colonel said, “The guns that go to the métis will originate with the Superior Arms Company of Chicago. It’s quite simple. They buy the guns here, from this very warehouse, then sell them at their own price.”
Gatling knew every weapons dealer in the country. “There’s no such company, Colonel.”
“There is now,” the colonel said. “And you are its sole owner. My lawyer went out there last week to set it up. He drew up the papers of incorporation, so it’s all legal and above board. There is even an office, small but quite all right for present purposes.”
Gatling didn’t like any of this. “Where’s the office? Behind the stockyards?”
“Certainly not,” the colonel said. “It’s on Division Street. An arms dealer doesn’t have to put on the dog. His weapons speak for themselves. Don’t fret about the bloody office. You won’t have to go there. It’s enough that you exist, the office exists, and the Superior Arms Company is legally incorporated. Why the sour face, Gatling?”
“Do I get a salary as president of this cardboard company?” Gatling enjoyed trying to put the bite on the colonel for additional money. It never got him anywhere, but it got the colonel mad.
The colonel said irritably, “You’ll get your usual fifty thousand, and that’s all. Good Lord, man, where else could you make that much money? I know you give most of it to your benighted Zunis, but that’s not my concern.”
What the colonel said was true. He gave nearly everything he made to the Zunis, the peaceful farmers and herdsmen who had taken him in and raised him after his parents were murdered and scalped by Apaches. He had returned to the Zuni pueblo in New Mexico after many years in the white world to wage a one-man war against other Apaches hired by ruthless mining operators who wanted to grab the Zunis’ copper-rich land. The colonel had come from New York to see how Gatling was doing with the Maxim Company weapons, and ended up fighting by his side. Before the war was won, the colonel had lost an eye.
The wall telephone shrilled and the colonel got up to answer it. “Be with you in a minute,” he said, but whoever was calling kept him on the line for much longer than that.
“All our weapons are in perfect condition,” the colonel told the caller.
Weapons! Gatling thought. Since he had come to work for the Maxim Company, his whole life had been weapons. It was a strange life, but he enjoyed it most of the time. He tested the latest weapons manufactured or distributed by Maxim. He tested them in combat, and got fifty thousand dollars for each assignment. He couldn’t say how many men he had killed, but he never killed anyone who didn’t deserve it. At the end of an assignment he had to write up a detailed report on how well the weapons worked, or didn’t work. If there were flaws in their performance, that too went into his report. So far he hadn’t tested a single dud.
“Bloody gas bag, that man,” the colonel complained, hanging up the telephone. “But he’s ready to buy one hundred thousand dollars’ worth of guns, and that’s the main thing. Where were we?”
“We were talking about the Superior Arms Company,” Gatling said.
The colonel snapped his fingers, a habit he had. “That’s all settled. Forget it.”
“What about Riel, Colonel? Nothing I’ve read about him in the papers gives a clear picture of the man.”
Lying back in his chair, the colonel blew smoke at the stamped-tin ceiling. “Riel is a bit of a mystery,” he began. “He’s a dreamer, but can be a practical man when he has to be. If you know his background, there’s no point to repeating it.”
“I know most of it,” Gatling said. “There was an earlier rebellion?”
The colonel nodded. “At the end of ’69. It lasted into ’70. But it was the Red River region, east of Saskatchewan. The circumstances were much the same. The métis had lived there for generations, keeping themselves aloof from the rest of Canada. A sort of separate country, you might say. Then the Canadian Government moved in, the métis rose up, but were finally defeated by a well-armed force of seventeen hundred men. Riel escaped to Montana, where he became a schoolteacher, an American citizen thirteen years later. The British Canadians insist he’s insane.”
“Is he?”
The colonel lurched forward in his chair, another of his habits. He lay back when he was at ease, lurched forward when he was agitated. “I don’t know if he is or not. He did spend some time in two asylums in Montana. But a lot of dreamers are high-strung and do strange things. I’m inclined to believe he was locked up because of what would seem to be his crazy ideas. I never met the man, but the Pinkerton Detective Agency has a thick file on him. Alan Pinkerton himself doesn’t think he’s crazy, and I have the greatest respect for Mr. Pinkerton’s opinion. ‘Dangerous and eccentric but definitely not insane,’ is how Mr. Pinkerton phrased it.”
The guard who had reported earlier came back to inform the colonel that Kelly and Mullins had returned.
“Good show,” the colonel said. “Now listen to me, Eberhart. No one is to enter this building for the rest of the night. The door is to remain locked and bolted. If men come and bang on the door and say they’re policemen, ignore them. I don’t care how many badges they display, you are not to open that door. After Mr. Gatling and I leave, don’t open the door until I return in the morning. Got it?”
The guard touched the peak of his cap in a sort of salute.
“Got it, sir.”
“Good man, Eberhart,” the colonel said, lying back in his high-backed chair. He glanced at Gatling. “Somehow I sense there is one question you haven’t asked me. What is it? Out with it, man!”
“Well it’s getting late, Colonel. I’ll see you in the morning.”
Gatling stood up. The colonel told him to sit down. Gatling remained standing.
The colonel lurched forward. “You’re wondering why I’m selling guns that will be used to kill British soldiers. Let me tell you, sir, that I don’t owe a goddamned thing to Great Britain or its pudding-faced queen.” The colonel’s tone was dry and bitter. “Will you please sit down, for Christ’s sake?”
Gatling sat down. Why not hear the old bastard out?
“Sons of bitches kicked me out of the Army after thirty years of loyal service simply because I ordered my men to open fire on a bunch of dirty Afghan ragheads pretending to come in to surrender. We were outnumbered ten to one, but of course we had machine guns.” The colonel showed his tobacco-stained teeth in a mean smile. “We had heavy Maxims and were ready for them. Oldest dodge in the world, that surrendering business. Get in close under the white flag, then out with the hidden weapons—and slaughter!”
Gatling knew Colonel Pritchett wasn’t telling the truth. He had given the order to machine-gun two hundred Afghans because Afghans had tortured and killed his only son, a nineteen year-old second lieutenant. It had happened years before, enough time for the colonel to reshape the truth, to believe what he wanted to believe.
Usually the colonel was gray-faced; now his face was red with anger. “The Liberals in Commons made such a stink over a mob of filthy, murdering savages. You’d think I’d turned my guns on a bank-holiday crowd in Blackpool. I was forced to resign or face a court-martial. No pension—nothing. That’s why I’m delighted to be able to send guns to Riel. A fine Irishman, that fella.”
Gatling stared at the colonel. “Riel is Irish?”
“Well, anyway, he’s quarter Irish,” the colonel said defiantly. “Quarter Irish, quarter Cree Indian, half French. But I’ll bet on his Irish blood any day of the week. The Irish know how to break the British Lion’s balls.”
The colonel realized he was talking too much, giving away too much, and he tried to cover his embarrassment by switching the subject to the guns Gatling was to deliver to the métis. “I know it’s getting late, but there is one thing we must get settled. I really can’t see how we can pay you fifty thousand dollars if you don’t test our weapons, especially the new Mauser rifle. A rifle that uses smokeless-powder ammunition is going to be very important, not just now but for years to come. Mr. Maxim thinks it will sell like hot-cakes.”
The hell with what Maxim thinks, Gatling decided. “I told you I won’t kill farmers and storekeepers just to test a German rifle. How much will I get if I just deliver the guns?”
“No more than ten thousand,” the colonel said. His anger had disappeared. “However, we’ll leave that open until you return. You may find yourself in a dangerous situation where you will have to kill to save your own life.”
Gatling knew what the colonel was thinking, but it didn’t make him angry. “Not if I can help it,” he said.
“Well you never know,” the colonel said in a silky voice. “As they say, circumstances alter cases. Good night, Gatling. I’ll see you in the morning. Now I must check Riel’s list against inventory.”
Gatling stood up. “What about him?” he asked, meaning the dead man Rideau.
“Don’t worry about it,” the colonel said.