America 1881: Legend of the West

Chapter 547: The Bandits Are No Match for the Troops

The first reaction of the quartermaster and the soldiers around him was to draw their guns and fight back.

But Li Sifu swept a shuttle in front of him with a BAR, smashing the box on the carriage behind the quartermaster.

The quartermaster's soldiers glanced at the Krag-Jorgensen rifles in their hands and immediately gave up the idea of ​​resisting.

"Misunderstandings, all misunderstandings." The quartermaster said with a smile on his face, "We are just in a hurry and have to leave overnight."

"You have to pay for the overnight journey."

Under the firelight, Li Sifu said with a smile.

The quartermaster gritted his teeth, moved closer to Li Sifu, and whispered:
"Sir, I have something important to tell you. Come with me."

He walked to the side with Li Sifu, turned his head and looked behind him, then blocked the view of the people behind him with his left hand, took out his own stack of private money from his clothes with his right hand, and quietly put it into Li Sifu's pocket:

"Sir, we are running a small business, please be kind and let us go."

The quartermaster's flesh ached when he took out the money.

It was all his own money, and he would have to find a way to reimburse Wiltord later.

But his outstretched hand was caught.

Li Sifu looked at him and smiled:
"Presumptuous, huh?"

"Yeah" the quartermaster nodded like a chicken pecking at rice.

Li Sifu raised his head and shouted into the darkness:
"Boss, this guy is giving me money, so he wants me to let him go!"

While the quartermaster was stunned, a man walked out of the dark night with his hands behind his back.

He slowly walked to the quartermaster, took the stack of money handed over by Li Sifu, counted it, and put it back into Li Sifu's pocket:

"Just accept the little kindness from others."

Chen Jianqiu said.

The quartermaster was overjoyed and turned around to tell his soldiers to pack up and run away.

Unexpectedly, Chen Jianqiu spoke again:

"Did I tell you to leave?"

"But, this, that..." The quartermaster's eyes widened and he pointed at Li Sifu's pocket and then at Chen Jianqiu.

"The money has been given and you have come. We have to fulfill our friendship as landlords. How can I let you leave like this? I'm so sorry." Chen Jianqiu said.

He waved at Li Sifu and the soldiers holding guns.

The soldiers rushed forward, those who fired their guns, those who escorted the people, and those who drove the carriages.

An hour later, the goods on the car were returned to Zhao intact and returned to the farm's warehouse; the quartermaster and soldiers were "invited" into the camp next to the farm; and their carriages and pack horses were directly seized and rushed to the road. Enter the transport convoy to the farm.

In the camp on the border, Wiltord was still waiting for good news from the quartermaster.

Every day he walked up to the camp’s lookout point and looked in the direction of Roswell.

However, the convoy that the colonel expected never appeared, and the grain storage in the camp warehouse was decreasing day by day.

With hundreds of mouths, no matter how frugally they eat, the food stored in the warehouse will soon be exhausted.

Finally, the big soldiers under his command couldn't bear it anymore.

"There was a piece of bread yesterday! Today there is only half a piece left! You don't want us to live!"

Still in front of the food distribution shed, an angry soldier held up half a piece of bread in his hand and roared.

"If you don't want to eat it, you can give me the remaining half piece." The quartermaster soldier in charge of distribution said weakly, pointing to the half piece of bread, "I'm not full myself."

He sighed: "You can also go to the surrounding areas to catch some wild animals to satisfy your hunger. I am here every day, and I can only starve to death."

The troublemaking soldiers looked at each other.

"Stop making sarcastic remarks here. See for yourself what is edible around this damn place. Even the lizards and rattlesnakes have been caught!" A soldier stood up and said, "Hurry up and get the quartermaster out! He I have to give everyone an explanation!”

"He has been out buying food for a few days, and no one has been seen yet. You want to find him, but I still want to find him."

The quartermaster felt a little tired from standing and talking, so he planned to find a place to sit down, but he looked around and couldn't find a chair that he could sit on, so he had to lean on the table.

"He, if he doesn't come out, I, we will rob the warehouse!"

When the soldiers saw the quartermaster like this, they could only threaten him like this.

"Go and remember to find some food. Seeing that they are all serving as soldiers in the same military camp, share some with me."

The quartermaster felt tired even while sitting and answering, so he simply lay down on the table.

He took off the key chain from his waist and threw it to the leading soldier.

When the soldiers saw what he said, they gathered in groups and attacked the warehouse aggressively.

The warehouse door is locked.

The soldiers holding the keys were surrounded, trying the keys one by one.

But firstly, he was not familiar with it, and secondly, under the public gaze, the soldier's hands were trembling a little, and his movements were not very neat. Coupled with my bad luck, I couldn't get the key right after trying for a long time.

The soldiers behind were anxious.

"Get out of the way, I'll do it!"

A bearded soldier raised his gun and began to smash the lock on the door with the butt of his gun.

After a few hits, there was only a "dong" sound.

The lock was smashed open and fell to the ground.

Everyone couldn't wait to open the door and rushed in.

But when they saw the situation in the warehouse, they were stunned.

The warehouse was empty except for a few bags of potatoes in the corner.

The soldiers were angry.

Feeling that their intelligence had been fooled, they returned to the greenhouse angrily.

The bearded leader took a step forward, grabbed the collar of the commissary soldier who was lying on the table looking at the sky, and dragged him up.

"Where's the food?! Where's our food? And our military pay!" the bearded man roared angrily.

"You ask me, who am I going to ask?" The quartermaster soldier showed no sign of fear at all, with a look of arrogance on his face, "That's what happened when I got the key. If you want to ask, just ask the commander. There's no point in embarrassing me. hero."

The bearded man was right.

He let go of his hand, raised the gun in his hand, turned around and shouted to the soldiers behind him:
"Brothers, let's go to Wiltord and ask for an explanation!"

Under his leadership, the soldiers rushed to Wiltord's house like a tide.

"Wiltord! Come out!"

The bearded man stood up and shouted at the closed door.

However, there was no response from inside the room, not even any movement.

The bearded man turned his head and exchanged glances with the person behind him.

Didn't this guy run away early after hearing the noise?
"Wiltold! Come out! If you don't come out, we will rush in!" The bearded man shouted again.

"Are you looking for me?"

The colonel came out from the back of the room, looking calm.

The colonel had seen everything that had just happened clearly from the watchtower.

He knew that what he had worried about had finally happened.

However, as a daring gambler, his first reaction was not to run away, but to think that this was an opportunity to take revenge on Chen Jianqiu and his Chinese community. "Our food was taken away by the Chinese!"

Wiltord didn't even give the soldiers below a chance to speak and spoke directly.

"They attacked us in the desert and then seized our convoy when we were going to buy food."

The colonel sighed, "Originally, I didn't want to embarrass them because some of them are American citizens, but the bad nature of these Chinese people makes them ungrateful."

He pointed in the direction of Roswell:
"The Chinese have occupied our land and planted food on it to feed the locusts that are swarming from the east. If you want to eat, you can follow me and ask for some from them."

Wiltord's tactics of diverting conflict are old-fashioned, but effective.

Most of the soldiers joining the army these days are simple-minded and have not received much education.

As the saying goes, a wandering army is worse than a bandit.

The unrestrained and starving soldiers dared to rob even their own villages, not to mention that there was a malicious officer fanning the flames.

"You'd better tell the truth." The bearded man spat on the ground and looked at Wiltord viciously.

"I am your superior. Do you think I have any reason to deceive you?" The colonel's palms were sweaty, but he still looked calm on the surface.

"Kill those Chinese! Take back our food!"

Someone shouted in the crowd.

The rest of the people also started shouting.

For a moment, the slogans shouted became continuous and echoed in the military camp.

Wiltord was very satisfied when he saw the soldiers being incited in front of him.

"I will ask the logistics department to distribute all the remaining food in the barracks tonight. After we finish eating, we will set off. Our target is the farm south of Roswell!"

He announced to the soldiers.

"Tomorrow morning, we'll have dinner there!"

After hearing what the colonel said, the soldiers blocking the house gradually dispersed.

Wiltord felt his back was wet, he rubbed his hands on his trousers and wiped the sweat from his palms.

At this moment, Burke suddenly turned out from the side of the house.

When the colonel saw him, he snorted:
"I was wondering who it was, but it turned out to be you, sneaking around in the corner, are you here to laugh at me?"

Burke did not respond.

Although he and Wiltord had different ideas, they were still colleagues after all, and he was nominally the colonel's deputy.

"Are you really planning to take this group of people to Roswell? You should understand that the place is heavily guarded. Chen Jianqiu and his militia are very powerful. If you act rashly..."

"That's enough!" Wiltord suddenly shouted angrily.

He pointed at Burke with a ferocious expression:
"I've had enough of your so-called 'reason'! If you hadn't taken away the main infantry in the south of the border, we would have had a chance to eliminate Chen Jianqiu in the Juarez Valley!"

"It is precisely because the Army and the federal government are filled with weak-willed people like you that Chen Jianqiu and his yellow-skinned scum have a chance to gain a foothold in New Mexico!"

"We should kill them all like we killed the Indians! Instead of letting them boss us around here!"

When Burke heard his superior say this, he said nothing more and turned away.

He knew that the man in front of him had been so overwhelmed by hatred and extreme racial views that he had lost the most basic judgment of the situation and was simply impossible to communicate with.

"Trash! A disgrace to the white people!"

Wiltord spat at Burke's back, then turned and walked into his room.

That night, the logistics soldiers cooked all the remaining potatoes and gave one to each soldier.

Wiltord stayed in his room.

He drank the last half bottle of whiskey left in the cabinet behind him and stuffed his stomach with a lot of extremely disgusting biscuits.

The colonel straightened his clothes, checked his weapons, and prepared to set off.

"Messenger! Messenger!"

He shouted twice.

However, no one agreed.

The colonel opened the door and found the barracks unusually busy and chaotic, with people running around everywhere.

"Commander!"

He shouted loudly toward the door.

After a long while, a soldier came running over.

This soldier was considered a member of his guard, but because of his low position, he had never spoken to the colonel:
"Report to the commander. Captain Burke and a group of soldiers have withdrawn. They said they don't want to follow you to die."

When Wiltord heard this, he was immediately furious.

"Where are the others? Gather together! I'm going to kill this damn traitor first! Then I'll go settle the score with Chen Jianqiu!"

The soldier hesitated, but still spoke out:
"But some soldiers couldn't help themselves and set off for Roswell. If we chase them back, I'm afraid it will be too late."

The Colonel gasped.

He knew that he had lost control of the team, and now there seemed to be no other choice but to go all out and take the remaining people with him.

"Bring my horse here and go!" Wiltord finally resisted the urge to tear Burke to pieces and gave the order.

On the other side, Roswell Farm.

"The guy on the left, move your machine gun inwards. You can't hit anyone from this angle!"

Li Sifu gestured with his hands and directed the placement of the machine guns.

Chen Jianqiu stood beside him, holding a cigar and looking towards the distant horizon.

"Boss, what do you think of the locations of these firepower points?" Li Sifu said to Chen Jianqiu.

"Just arrange it, no need to ask me."

Chen Jianqiu didn't even bother to turn his head.

He was not a master of micro-manipulation and had no interest in whether the machine gun moved a few centimeters to the left or right on the position.

Transactions on the farm were temporarily suspended, and an area of ​​five kilometers with the farm as the center was designated as a restricted area. It was said that the militia was going to conduct an exercise and no unauthorized persons were allowed to enter.

All non-combatants on the farm had been evacuated, and flammable materials had been moved out of the warehouse and transported to the town of Roswell, five kilometers away.

Instead, there were more than 800 militiamen.

They were lying in ambush outside the farm, inside the house, on top of the warehouse, and some were hiding in the cornfield.

Deployed on the farm along with these militiamen were sixteen Maxim heavy machine guns and a dozen boxes of new products from Roswell Ordnance Engineers.

grenade.

Although there were prototype grenades modified from artillery shells during the Civil War, the trigger mechanism was immature and they were loaded with black powder, so both their power and safety were questioned.

Coupled with the subsequent changes in the battlefield environment, the development of grenades in the United States was shelved.

However, Chen Jianqiu rejected all objections and restarted the research on improving this weapon.

The first batch of improved grenades with delayed explosion effect rolled off the production line last week and were moved here at the request of Chen Jianqiu.

"Boss, are you sure they will really come?"

After arranging the personnel, Li Sifu walked up to Chen Jianqiu and asked.

Chen Jianqiu took the last puff of his cigar, threw the remaining piece on the ground, and said meaningfully:
"When a dog is desperate, it will jump over the wall, let alone a mad dog."

(End of this chapter)