America 1881: They Call Me Legend

Chapter 547

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

But Li Sifu swept a bar in front of him and smashed the boxes on the carriage behind the quartermaster.

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

"Misunderstanding, it's all misunderstanding." The quartermaster said with a smile on his face, "We are just in a hurry and have to leave overnight."

"I have to pay for the departure overnight."

Under the firelight, Li Sifu said with a smile on his face.

The quartermaster gritted his teeth, moved to Li Sifu's side, and said in a low voice:
"Sir, I have something important to tell you, follow me."

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

"Sir, we are in small business, please hold your hand high and let us go."

The quartermaster's flesh hurts when he pays for it.

It was all his own money, and he must find a way to ask Wiltord to reimburse him later.

However, his outstretched hand was caught.

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

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

Li Sifu raised his head and shouted into the darkness:
"Boss, this man stuffed me with 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 walked slowly to the quartermaster, took the stack of money from Li Sifu, counted it, and put it back into Li Sifu's pocket:

"A little thought from others, just accept it."

Chen Jianqiu said.

The quartermaster was overjoyed, and turned his head to greet his soldiers to pack up their things 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 to Li Sifu's pocket, and then to Chen Jianqiu.

"I've given you all the money, and you've all come here. We have to do our best as landlords. How could we just let you leave like this. How embarrassing." Chen Jianqiu said.

He waved at Li Sifu and the soldiers with guns.

The soldiers rushed up, those who unloaded their guns unloaded their guns, those who detained people arrested them, and those who drove cars drove their cars.

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

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

Every day he would walk up to the observation deck of the camp and look in the direction of Roswell.

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

With hundreds of mouths, no matter how frugal they are, the food in the warehouse will soon bottom out.

Finally, those big soldiers under him finally couldn't bear it anymore.

"There was still a loaf of bread yesterday! There is only half a loaf left today! You don't want us to live!"

Still in front of the shed where the food was distributed, an angry soldier raised half a piece of bread in his hand and roared angrily.

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

He sighed: "You can also go to the surrounding area to find some wild goods to satisfy your hunger. I'm stuck here every day, and I can only starve to death."

The rioting soldiers looked at each other.

"Don't make sarcastic remarks here, and see for yourself what there is to eat around this ghost place, even lizards and rattlesnakes have been caught!" A soldier stood up and said, "Hurry up and let the quartermaster come out! He I have to give everyone an explanation!"

"He has been out buying food for a few days, and he has not been seen yet. You want to find him, and I still want to find him."

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

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

The soldiers had no choice but to threaten them when they saw the munitions soldiers like this.

"Go, remember that if you find food, if you see that they are all serving in the same barracks, share it with me."

The munitions soldier felt tired sitting and answering, so he simply lay down on the table.

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

Seeing what he said, the soldiers rushed to the warehouse in groups and aggressively.

The warehouse door is locked.

The soldiers holding the keys were surrounded and tried the keys one by one.

But firstly, he was not familiar with it, and secondly, under the watchful eyes of everyone, the soldier's hands were a little trembling, and his movements were not very agile.In addition, my luck was relatively bad, and I failed to get the key right after trying for a long time.

The soldiers behind were in a hurry.

"Get out of the way, I'll come!"

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

It didn't hit a few times, only a "boom" was heard.

The lock was broken and fell to the ground.

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

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

The warehouse was empty with nothing but a few sacks of potatoes sitting in the corner.

The soldiers were outraged.

They felt that their IQs had been fooled, and they returned to the greenhouse angrily.

The bearded leader took a step forward, grabbed the collar of the munitions 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 should I ask?" The munitions soldier didn't show any fear at all, with a look on his face, "It was like this when I got the key, if you want to ask, just ask the officer, what's wrong with embarrassing me hero."

The bearded man was right.

He let go, raised the gun in his hand, turned around and shouted to the soldiers behind him:
"Brothers, let's go to Wiltord 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 a single movement.

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

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

"Are you looking for me?"

The Colonel turned out from the back of the room, looking very composed.

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

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

However, as a daring gambler, his first reaction was not to run away, but he felt that this was an opportunity to take revenge on Chen Jianqiu and his Chinese community.

"Our food was robbed by the Chinese!"

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

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

The colonel sighed: "Originally, because some of them are American citizens, I didn't want to embarrass them, but the bad nature of these Chinese made them ignorant of good and bad."

He pointed in Roswell's direction:
"The Chinese occupied our land and planted food on our land to feed their locusts that came from the east. If you want to eat, you can follow me to find them and ask for some."

Wiltord's rhetoric for deflecting contradictions is corny, but effective.

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

As the saying goes, soldiers are not as good as bandits.

Without restraint, the hungry and green-eyed soldiers even dared to rob their own villages, not to mention that there was an officer with malicious intentions fighting against them.

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

"I'm your officer, what reason do you think I have to deceive you?" The colonel's palms were sweaty, but his face was still calm.

"Kill those Chinese! Take back our food!"

I don't know who shouted in the crowd.

The rest of the people also shouted.

The slogans shouted for a while became fragments and echoed in the barracks.

Wiltord was very satisfied as he looked at the agitated soldiers in front of him.

"Tonight, I will ask the logistics to distribute all the food left in the barracks. After eating, I will set off. The goal is the farm south of Roswell!"

He announced to the soldiers.

"Tomorrow morning, we will have dinner there!"

Hearing what the colonel said, the soldiers blocking the house gradually dispersed.

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

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

Seeing him, the colonel snorted angrily:
"I thought who it was, it turned out to be you, secretly hiding in the corner, did you want to see my joke?"

Burke didn't retort.

Although he disagreed with Wiltord's ideas, they were still working together after all, and he was still the colonel's deputy in name.

"Are you really planning to take this group of people to Roswell? You should understand that the security there is heavily guarded, and Chen Jianqiu and his militia are very strong. If you do so rashly."

"Enough!" Wiltord shouted suddenly, furiously.

He pointed at Burke with a grim expression:
"I've had enough of your so-called 'sensibility'! In the south of the border, if you hadn't taken away the main infantry, we would have had a chance to wipe out Chen Jianqiu in the Juárez Valley!"

"Because the army and the federal government are full of weak-willed people like you, Chen Jianqiu and his yellow-skinned scum have a chance to gain a firm foothold in New Mexico!"

"We should kill them like we killed Indians! Instead of being at their mercy here and there!"

When Burke saw his officer say this, he turned around and left without saying a word.

He knew that the person in front of him had been dazzled by hatred and extreme racial views, had lost the most basic judgment of the situation, and was unable to communicate at all.

"Trash! Shame on white people!"

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

That night, the logistics soldiers boiled all the remaining potatoes and distributed one to each of the soldiers.

Wiltord stayed in his room.

He drank the last half bottle of whiskey that was left in the cupboard behind him, and stuffed his stomach with a lot of extremely nasty biscuits.

The colonel packed his clothes, checked his weapons, and was ready to go.

"The orderly! The orderly!"

He shouted twice.

However, no one agreed.

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

"The messenger!"

He yelled loudly towards the door.

After a while, a soldier ran over.

This soldier is considered a member of his guard, but because of his low position, he has never spoken to the colonel:
"Report to the officer. Captain Burke withdrew with a group of soldiers. They said they didn't want to follow you to die."

When Wiltord heard this, he was instantly enraged.

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

The soldier hesitated for a moment, but said it anyway:
"But some soldiers couldn't bear it and set off for Roswell first. 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 he seemed to have no other choice but to keep going and take the rest of the team with him.

"Bring my horse here, let's go!" Wiltord finally resisted his urge to tear Burke into pieces, and gave the order.

On the other side, Roswell Farm.

"The one on the left, move the machine gun inward, no one can hit you at this angle!"

Li Sifu danced and gestured, directing the position of the machine gun.

And Chen Jianqiu stood beside him, smoking a cigar, looking at the distant horizon.

"Boss, how do you see the positions of these firepower points?" Li Sifu said to Chen Jianqiu.

"You can arrange it, don't ask me."

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

He is not a master of micromanipulation, and has no interest in whether the machine gun moves a few centimeters to the left or right on the field.

The farm's trade was temporarily suspended, and a five-kilometer radius around the farm was designated as a restricted area. It was said that the militia was going to conduct exercises and that unrelated people were prohibited from entering.

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

Instead, more than 800 militiamen.

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

Along with these militiamen, sixteen Maxim heavy machine guns and a dozen boxes of new products from Roswell arms engineers were deployed on the farm.

grenade.

Although there were prototype grenades modified from artillery grenades during the Civil War, the trigger mechanism was immature and the filling was black powder, so both its power and safety were questioned.

Coupled with the changes in the battlefield environment, the development of grenades was put on hold in the United States.

However, Chen Jianqiu tried his best to restart the research on the improvement of this weapon.

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

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

After setting up the personnel, Li Sifu walked to Chen Jianqiu's side and asked.

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

(End of this chapter)