Dead Men Don't Lie. Jackson Cain
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Название: Dead Men Don't Lie
Автор: Jackson Cain
Издательство: Ingram
Жанр: Вестерны
Серия: An Outlaw Torn Slater Western
isbn: 9780786046287
isbn:
Chapter 28
The Señorita Dolorosa led her court ladies into her palatial bedroom suite.
“I have a special treat for you,” she announced. “A new lover. He’s going to be here in a few minutes. When he comes in here, you have to watch.”
The Señorita loved terrifying and humiliating her lovers in front of her ladies. They put on a good front and pretended to enjoy the spectacle. Their survival often depended on appearing happy and cheerful, even when they were frightened half to death.
Today, however, they were more sanguine than usual. The night before their Lady had presented them with new clothes. This was the first time they had a chance to try them on. Catalina was wearing her new toga of crimson silk, which played off her red hair, matching nail polish, and high-heeled sandals. Rosalita’s outfit was an ebony toga, and it perfectly matched her long raven tresses and sandals. Isabella was attired in bright canary yellow, which complemented her long blond hair, while Roberta’s turquoise robe, sandals, and necklace almost seemed to reflect the deep lustrous blue of her sapphire eyes.
None of her ladies favored white, knowing that it was the Señorita’s favorite color.
“Is this new one gifted in bed, My Lady?” Catalina asked. “Is that why you want us to meet him?”
“Oh, I don’t think it will get that far,” the Lady Dolorosa said. “I plan on having a different kind of fun with him.”
“What kind of fun?” Roberta asked.
“He is the most craven man I’ve ever seen. You should have seen him when I took him into our Inquisitor’s chambers. When he saw the Inquisitor thumbscrew a man—who was already moaning, sobbing, and hanging from a strappado—the new man’s bladder released. He started crying at the temple-pyramid when the High Priest ripped out the heart of another of my former lovers. I had to summon my guards and make them force him to watch. I’ve never had one so bloody sensitive before. Usually my paramours are more . . . manly.”
“What will you do with him, My Lady?” Isabella could barely choke out the words.
“I thought you’d guess. I’m going to terrify him out of his wits and then have him tortured half to death.”
“My Lady,” Catalina said, secretly sick with dread, “it sounds so delightful.”
“Oh, we’ll have some fun with this one.”
Then the Señorita’s eyes flashed with a merriment so macabre and her smile blazed with a malevolence so feral that her ladies visibly shook involuntarily, even as they struggled to suppress their trembling.
Her ladies of the court could not imagine what unexpected horror the Señorita Dolorosa planned to perpetrate next.
Chapter 29
Dressed in dark work clothes, Richard explained to Mateo what Sonora needed to defeat the Señorita’s and Díaz’s combined Sinaloan and Chihuahuan armies:
“The key to victory is in your ammunition. All our weapons at West Point and at the Rancho fire smokeless, cordite-based powder because it doesn’t foul our weapons after repeated use—especially the Gatling’s firing mechanism. It also doesn’t billow up smoke clouds that obscure your view of the battlefield and prevent you from sighting in on the enemies.”
“How do you make this smokeless powder?”
“Usually, we would make a mixture of two parts nitrocellulose, otherwise known as guncotton, to one part nitroglycerin. We don’t have the time or expertise, however, to make nitroglycerin in the huge quantities we’ll need. Instead we’re going to use single-base powder—nitrocellulose colloided with ether alcohol.”
“And where do we get nitrocellulose?” Mateo asked.
“It’s just cellulose exposed to nitric acid.”
“First, what kind of cellulose do we use?”
“Cotton or wood pulp will work.”
“Secondly, you said you knew how we could make nitric acid?” Mateo asked. “You sure we can do it? We can’t.”
“Sure, you can. Find a big porcelain crock, then you boil sulfuric acid and saltpeter in it. Distill the steam, and you’ll have nitric acid. You next soak the cellulose with nitric acid, then colloid the resulting powder with ether alcohol, which will stabilize it and keep it from spontaneously combusting in your faces.”
“It’s that unstable?”
“Not in colloid form. In fact, you use the same technique to make dynamite—you mix nitroglycerin with sawdust, and it will be safe to handle.”
“We also have tons of black powder. What do we do with it? Throw it away?”
“Oh, you’ll use it. You’ll dig fire trenches a hundred yards in front of your main trenches—where you’ll deploy your Gatlings—and man those breastworks with your riflemen. If the Sonoran soldados start to overrun them, instead of charging them with bayonets, your riflemen’ll drop back and deploy right beside your machine gunners.”
“What about our mortars?” Mateo asked.
“We’ll also use the black powder to power your smooth-bore mortars. The mortar shells will be filled with black powder but instead of projectiles, we’ll use thin metal cans packed with shrapnel. The cans will be sealed, airtight and watertight. They will have a trajectory of about three hundred yards, after which the heat and blast will disintegrate the shrapnel-filled can. When it hits, each one will blow scores of soldados to bits—depending how densely they’re clustered around the explosion. The Díazistes will have never seen anything. The Lady Dolorosa and her stepson will never know what hit them.”
Mateo gave him a mock salute. “Anything else, mi general ?”