The War Wagon (A Gatling Western #5)

By Jack Slade

In Mexico, the governor of a rebel state had hijacked a shipment of Lee-Enfield rifles and enough ammunition to start a small war. The president of Mexico was worried, the president of the U.S. was worried—Gatling didn’t give a damn. But his boss, the colonel, told him to get those rifles back or get another job. Gatling couldn’t afford a drain on his gold reserves, so he agreed. On one condition ...

• Language: English
• Publisher: Piccadilly
• Release date: Apr 1, 2023
• ISBN: 9798215348321

Jack Slade

Peter J. McCurtin was born in Ireland on 15 October 1929, and immigrated to America when he was in his early twenties. Records also confirm that, in 1958, McCurtin co-edited the short-lived (one issue) New York Review with William Atkins. By the early 1960s, he was co-owner of a bookstore in Ogunquit, Maine, and often spent his summers there. His westerns in particular are distinguished by unusual plots with neatly resolved conclusions, well-drawn secondary characters, regular bursts of action and tight, smooth writing. If you haven't already checked him out, you have quite a treat in store.McCurtin also wrote under the name of Jack Slade and Gene Curry.

Book preview

The Home of Great

Western Fiction!

Master armorer, dead shot and expert in death, Gatling tested automatic weapons from all over the world-on living bodies. Paid in gold for his bloody work, he was probably the single most dangerous man in the Old West. For at his command was more firepower than a cavalry regiment and more deadly force than the Grim Reaper. He would need every ounce of skill to take on ...

THE MISSION

In Mexico, the governor of a rebel state had hijacked a shipment of Lee-Enfield rifles and enough ammunition to start a small war. The President of Mexico was worried, the president of the U.S. was worried—Gatling didn’t give a damn. But his boss, the Colonel, told him to get those rifles back or get another job. Gatling couldn’t afford a drain on his gold reserves, so he agreed. On one condition ...

GATLING 5: THE WAR WAGON

By Jack Slade

First published by Dorchester Publishing in 1989

Copyright © 1989, 2023 by Peter McCurtin

First Electronic Edition: April 2023

Names, characters and incidents in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons living or dead is purely coincidental.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information or storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the author, except where permitted by law.

This is a Piccadilly Publishing Book

Series Editor: David Whitehead

Text © Piccadilly Publishing

Published by Arrangement with the Author Estate.

Chapter One

THE MEXICAN MOB that came out of the darkness wanted to lynch him redneck style. Two men were out in front of the others. One carried a noosed rope, the other two cans of kerosene. Hang and burn ...

The fires in Del Rio’s Mexican Town were all but burned out when he got off the train ten minutes before, but the station agent told him some rioting greasers were still prowling their own section, down by the river. Some greaser-loving Yankee schoolteacher had been shot, something like that, the station agent said. The station agent wore a six-gun and had a shotgun on his desk. Gatling asked him where he could find the Sam Houston Hotel.

Other side of the square, the man said. Sam Houston Street. It’s marked. We got the taco-eaters pretty much under control and State Guard’s been sent for. But watch yourself.

Heading for the hotel, Gatling wondered what the hell Colonel Pritchett was doing in Del Rio, Texas. The colonel bossed the U.S. headquarters office of the Maxim Arms Company. His office was in New York City, and that was where he could be found most of the time. His telegram hadn’t explained a damn thing. It had reached Gatling in El Paso, and all it had said was: REPORT IMMEDIATELY SAM HOUSTON HOTEL DEL RIO TEXAS.

Whatever it was, it had to be trouble or the colonel wouldn’t have sent for him. He did special jobs for the colonel, mostly testing the latest weapons in combat against men who got on the bad side of the Company or had to be put to bed with a shovel for the public good. The men he killed deserved to be killed, and there was nothing personal in it. He would keep on doing it as long as he got paid.

Now, crossing the darkened town square, he couldn’t even guess what this latest job was. It couldn’t be putting down a bunch of rioting Mexicans. The Rangers and the militia could do that without outside help. But it had to be important. He took big jobs for big money, and none of them were easy.

There was no one in the square, which served as a sort of town park. It had benches and a bandstand, and if there were any homeless rum pots or bedless lovers in the sun-withered shrubbery they weren’t making any noise. The fires in Mexican Town were about five hundred yards south of the square, and although the night air was thick with smoke, no fires burned in the American end of Del Rio. Just the same, he took the Mauser 9mm autoloading pistol from his belt and checked the magazine before he put the weapon back under his coat. The Mauser loaded the magazine forward of the trigger, and was the latest weapon imported into the United States by the Maxim Company. A fast-firing, dependable semiautomatic, it could be fitted with a wooden stock that also did duty as a holster.

He carried his favorite weapon, a modified .303-caliber Maxim light machine gun, in a leather case that looked much like a salesman’s sample case. With the light gun were three 300-round canvas ammunition belts and ten magazines for the Mauser. Following his specifications, Maxim gunsmiths in the New York warehouse had modified the light gun until it could be fired on the move, even at a dead run. The seat and tripod had been removed and a short bipod fitted to the end of the barrel. A rear pistol grip and a forward grip made the weapon completely portable. The gun was so short and light that it could be held one-handed at arm’s length by a man of average strength ...

He heard a sound, and then they came at him from behind the bandstand, moving fast and quiet in straw sandals. A woman shouted, Mueran los gringos (Death to the gringos), and they started to close in, two groups of Mexicans that joined together as they came around the sides of the bandstand. Maybe there were twenty-five to thirty Mexicans, but he knew the two men leading them were no border-crossing melon-pickers. They had the cocky look of pistoleros. There would be gunbelts under the floppy shirts. One had a noosed rope, the other two cans of kerosene. The mob behind them were just raggedy-ass Mexicans worked up on mescal, but some of them had rifles and shotguns. Those who didn’t had machetes. The woman sounded young but he couldn’t see her. She kept screaming in Spanish, "He is the killer! He killed Magruder! Hang him! Burn him!

Now he could see their faces, sweaty and smoke-streaked in the half dark. They were fanning out, trying to get him in a circle. If he tried to run, he’d get it in the back. Hell with that! He pulled the Mauser from his belt and exploded the kerosene cans with a hail of bullets. The cans blew up with a bright orange flash that sent flaming kerosene raining back into the mob. The pistolero with the cans was writhing and screaming on the ground as the blazing kerosene burned him to ash. The other pistolero’s clothes were on fire, but he managed to get his pistol out and fire one shot before Gatling put three bullets in his chest.

Suddenly there was no more mob. They ran, some with their clothes on fire, and he let them run. He fired over their heads until they disappeared into the dark. Then he pushed another magazine into the Mauser, stuck it in his belt, picked up the carrying case, and headed for the hotel.

Turning into Sam Houston Street he saw three men with Ranger badges running from the other corner. One of them shouted at him, What the hell’s going on in the square?

Bunch of Mexicans shooting off guns, Gatling shouted back.

The three Rangers looked at him as they ran past, but that’s all they did. Gatling walked past the hotel, waited a few minutes, then turned back and went inside. The colonel was waiting in his room.

The colonel went back to his easy chair after he let Gatling in. Beside him on a table were a bottle of brandy, a siphon of soda water, a bucket of ice. It was a hot night but he was dressed in a grey hopsack suit, stiff white shirt, and black silk tie. Heat never bothered him, he always said. He had spent most of his life in the British Army in hot countries. His black eye patch made him look like an elderly pirate.

I heard explosions, he said in his imperious British voice. Are they using artillery on those dagos?

The colonel didn’t like dark-skinned people because he had been kicked out of the British Army for ordering his men to shoot down several hundred Afghans who were coming in to surrender. He liked his fellow Britishers even less than dagos, blacks, ragheads, and Indians.

Gatling took off his coat and told him about the dustup in the square. Then he fizzed some soda water into a glass, added ice, and sat on the edge of the bed. He seldom drank anything stronger than beer.

The colonel didn’t like any of it. Good Christ, man, couldn’t you have used some discretion? The Company is in enough trouble as it is.

Gatling drank soda water and waited. He knew the colonel didn’t give a shit if he had gunned down the entire mob. But where the Company was concerned ...

Well, I don’t suppose McNelly will be too concerned about a lot of charred dagos, the colonel said. Except that he’s been getting rather shirty about the way we lost that shipment of rifles.

Gatling wished he had a bottle of cold beer. After the colonel told him what the trouble was, he’d go downstairs and get one.

I keep forgetting that you’ve been away for a month, the colonel said irritably, as if Gatling could be blamed for not knowing what the hell he was talking about. Here it is, and it’s a rotten bloody show. Ten days ago we dispatched a shipment of five hundred Lee-Enfield rifles to the Governor of Coahuila. Actually, Governor Zelaya is more a regional dictator than a governor, but no matter. Our agent here in South Texas—Duryea—was on hand to receive them when they arrived in Del Rio by rail. Since there is no rail link to Coahuila, Duryea and six armed guards took the rifles across the border in wagons. Fifteen miles on the other side of the river they were ambushed by the bandit Juan Cortinas. Duryea and the six men were killed, the rifles stolen. You know this Cortinas, don’t you?

Not lately, Gatling said. It had been many years since he’d seen Cheno Cortinas. He wondered how the colonel knew about it. Probably he’d gotten it from the goddamned Pinkertons. The colonel used the detective agency to pry into the lives of the people who worked for him.

Cortinas also got fifty thousand rounds of .303 ammunition. The colonel frowned and tugged at his bristling gray mustache, a sure sign that he was seething inside. The mad bastard has enough small arms to start a real war this time.

You’ll probably just have to take the loss, Gatling said, thinking it wasn’t such a big loss to the Maxim Company, which made millions selling small arms all over the world.

The colonel belted back some brandy. "That’s not the point, man. McNelly—Texas Ranger Captain McNelly—thinks we sold the rifles to Cortinas, and he’s threatening all sorts of reprisals if we don’t get them back or destroy them. I’m talking about political reprisals, pressure from Washington. Of course, he can’t put the Company out of business in this country, but Washington can. Now do you get the point?"

Now I do, Gatling said. You just told me.

Fine, wonderful, most perceptive of you, the colonel snapped. We are to have a meeting with McNelly as soon as he arrives in Del Rio. A good thing for the Company Cortinas didn’t get the Maxim Motor War Car.

A real stroke of luck, Gatling said. What the hell is it? Does it run on rails?

The colonel gave Gatling a fearsome look. No, it flies. It’s a torpedo boat with balloons attached to it. Damn it, man, don’t you know what a motor car is?

I know what an automobile is. Gottlieb Daimler made and drove one in Paris a few years ago. Would that be the same thing?

It would. The French call it an automobile, but Mr. Maxim prefers to call his armored vehicle a motor car. In fact, the first crude gasoline-powered motor car was demonstrated by an American, George B. Selden, in 1879. But let’s not quibble. Mr. Maxim’s Motor War Car is not for carrying passengers but is an instrument of war. It has a rather boat-shaped body with rams fore and aft, six-millimeter-thick armor, and mounts one quick-firing Maxim pom-pom one-pounder and two Maxim .303-caliber machine guns, water cooled, with detachable shields. The normal crew is four, but twelve more men can be carried. Its fully laden weight is five and a half tons. It is powered by a sixteen-horsepower engine, has a four-speed gearbox, and its top speed is ten miles per hour. When fitted with extra-wide cleated wheels it can be driven over broken ground.

The colonel lay back in his chair and sighed. Do you understand any of this?

Most of it, Gatling said. I guess all of it. You were going to sell a thing like that to the Governor of Coahuila?

It has been sold but hasn’t been delivered. The British Was Office is mildly interested, the Americans not at all. The War Car we hoped to sell to Washington is now the property of Governor Zelaya.

Why wasn’t it sent south with the rifles? Gatling asked.

It was shipped on a different train at a later date. It’s here now in Del Rio under heavy guard. Poor Duryea convinced Governor Zelaya that it would make him invincible, so he bought it sight unseen.

Gatling wondered if Governor Zelaya hadn’t been sold a ninety-nine-year lease on the Grand Canyon. The colonel was capable of anything if it meant making money for the Company. Where, for instance, was Governor Zelaya going to get gasoline for this iron monster? He asked the colonel.

From Texas, of course, the colonel said blandly. I gave him my word that regular oil shipments would be made. Do you doubt my word, you blackguard?

Sure I do, Gatling said. How do you plan to deliver it?

I have written a letter asking him to send a detachment of soldiers. And as soon as I can find a good man to drive it south.

Don’t look at me.

Nobody’s looking at you, you conceited fellow. Your job is to get the rifles back from Cortinas or destroy them. I’d rather you recovered them. Cortinas must be punished at all costs. Duryea was our representative, the six guards were local men and not our Company employees. However, we must assume responsibility for all of them. Even a scoundrel like Cortinas must learn that no one murders our people with impunity. Bad for business.

Gatling gave the colonel a sour smile. As the old lady said, the man was a caution. Bad for the men that got killed.

The colonel tried to look sympathetic. That too, he said. But what about Cortinas? What are you going to do about him?

I don’t know. Let me think about it.

The colonel rattled the ice cubes in his glass. For Christ’s sake, there isn’t time. McNelly has been a regular swine about this. I must have something to tell him.

Gatling stood up. You don’t have to tell him tonight. Right now I’m going to get a room, lie on a bed, and drink beer. I always think better over a few bottles of good cold Pearl Beer. I said I’d think it over and I will. Talk to you in the morning.

The colonel was about to let loose with a string of army obscenities when somebody with a heavy foot came to the