A small soldier of the frontier army in the late Ming Dynasty

Chapter 30 Shocked
I saw Li Maosen leading the craftsmen, each holding a blunderbuss, he walked up to Wang Dou, and said to Wang Dou with a smile on his face: "My lord, it's a good luck for me, after a month of making , and finally completed the six gates of the bird gun, I came here to return to my lord."

"Oh."

Wang Dou was also very happy. Unexpectedly, Li Maosen really made the bird gun. He took a close look at the bird gun handed by a craftsman, and saw that the bird gun was black and thick, and the whole body was made of fine iron. The barrel of the gun is straight and long, and there are front and rear sights. The back of the gun is sealed with bolts, and the wooden support is slightly bent downward.

After estimating the weight, it looked like six or seven catties.

Wang Dou looked left and right, and glanced here and there from time to time. Han Zhong and others also surrounded him, discussing in the surrounding area.

Li Maosen said: "The bird gun is more than three feet long and weighs six catties. The mouth of the gun can hold three coins of lead and four coins of powder. It consumes a total of more than forty catties of iron."

The voice was quite emotional, and it must have taken him a lot of energy to make these bird guns.

Wang Dou played with it for a long time, seeing that the appearance of the blunderbuss was good, but he didn't know how it would play, so he said, "Let's try shooting it."

Now everyone found a wooden plank and erected it at a distance of eighty steps. Wang Dou had already bought a batch of lead ammunition, gunpowder and matchsticks from Dongjiazhuang Fort, and he took them one by one for Li Maosen to test fire.

Li Maosen skillfully took out the gunpowder from the medicine tank, and after estimating the dosage, put the gunpowder into the blunderbuss and poked it firmly with a cleaning rod.Then another piece of lead was taken out, and it was still fed in with a cleaning rod.Then open the fire door behind the blunderbuss, pour some gunpowder into it, and finally take out the matchlock and put it in the faucet, and light the matchlock.

Everyone stayed away from him, obviously the "reputation" that the gun is easy to explode is well known, and Wang Dou also walked a little farther, only Li Maosen looked calm.He held the gun body in one hand, and his eyes were only on the shining star. After a while, Li Maosen pulled the trigger, and with a "pop", white smoke rose, and the wooden board far away was smashed and splashed.

"it is good."

Wang Dou praised, and everyone cheered like thunder.

Li Maosen was full of arrogance. He personally brought the wooden plank to Wang Dou for inspection. Wang Dou looked at it over and over for a long time. According to his calculations with Han Chao and the others, this kind of bird gun can defeat an unarmored enemy from eighty paces away. The lethality of the army is huge, and it is also very lethal to the armored enemy army if they are fired at fifty paces.

Next, he tried to shoot the other bird guns, and they were all excellent. Wang Dou was very happy. He laughed and said, "Okay, Carpenter Li, you really lived up to my expectations. I decided to reward you. Each of you will give you a reward." For a bucket of rice, Carpenter Li, you add two catties of meat."

The craftsmen were all happy, and Li Maosen clasped his fists with a smile on his face and said, "Thank you, sir."

……

Wang Dou asked Li Maosen and others to continue their efforts, and the six shotguns that were made were just allocated to the remaining swordsmen of each team. After that, they were both birdgunners and long swordsmen.

The Chinese New Year will be in a little while, and from this twelfth lunar month, the Ming army in the frontier fortress will start to go out to burn the wasteland every year. However, in this Jingbian Fort, Wang Dou still let the three teams of soldiers train every day, If they practice well, they will be given extra meals, and if they do not practice well, they will be beaten.

Watching his army take shape every day, Wang Dou was not happy, it was fake, but as the year approached, he had another worry in his heart, that is, he didn't have much money left, and he saw that he had bought it several times. Rice, almost out of rice again.I heard that prices in various places in Bao'an are still high, and a stone of grain and rice still costs more than four taels of silver.

The food and expenses of these more than 200 people are not a small sum every day. With this little money in hand, even if they can celebrate the New Year, what will they do after the spring of next year?Without food, people in the fort will definitely lose their minds. In order to survive, maybe these military households will go out and become refugees again. Wang Dou can't bear the loss of population. Right now, every household in the fort is a precious resource to him.

In front of all the military households, Wang Dou is optimistic and calm, and is the backbone of everyone. Only a few people from the Han Dynasty understand the affairs in the castle, and their interests are all tied to Wang Dou. Only when Wang Dou develops smoothly can they have a future. rich.So Wang Dou is anxious, and they are also anxious.

On this day, Wang Dou discussed the affairs of the fort with Han Chao, Han Zhong, Yang Tong, Qi Tianliang and Zhong Rong.

In their Jingbian Fort, apart from the barracks of the military households, there is also a roughly built general banner official hall. Of course, everything inside is very simple, and everyone is discussing affairs in the hall at this time.

Everyone was discussing, Han Chao was silent all the time, suddenly he stood up and clasped his fists to Wang Dou and said, "Wang Tou, I plan to go to Zhoucheng for a while, and I will be back tomorrow."

Wang Dou was very surprised. What was Han Chao going to Baoanzhou City for? He looked at Han Chao, but found that Han Chao had been avoiding his eyes. Wang Dou stared at him for a long time, and suddenly said: "Brother Han, don't you will be……"

Wang Dou shook his head and said, "I was just joking with you that day, did you take it seriously?"

Qi Tianliang also understood, he quickly stood up and said: "Brother Han, Wang Tou and I really don't mean that, don't take it to heart."

Han Chaodao: "Why would I think too much, I just want to do my best for Tunbao."

Wang Dou calmly said: "I, Wang Dou, know Brother Han's intentions, but how can a man be like this? There must be a way for the car to reach the mountain, and there will always be a way. You don't have to worry too much."

Han Zhong, Yang Tong, and Zhong Rong couldn't understand what Wang Dou and the others said. Naturally, they couldn't ask Han Chao what happened that day. Only Han Zhong quietly asked Han Chao, and Han Chao glared at him. : "Talk out."

Han Zhong touched his head in embarrassment, so he couldn't ask any more questions.

Everyone was talking, when suddenly a military household came in and reported that it was Gao Shiyin, the chief of Jia who refused to accept Ludun, who had come.

……

Since Wang Dou and Gao Shiyin went to Dongjiazhuang to receive the report in September, Wang Dou has not seen Gao Shiyin again in the past few months.I heard that he has now been promoted to the head of the refusal dunjia, and he has a fierce fight with a sister from Zhoucheng Kiln. It can be said that he is very happy in the gentle village.

This Gao Shiyin also died with Wang Dou and others, now he came to Jingbian Fort, in order to welcome him, Wang Dou specially ordered a pot of mutton to be boiled and two pots of fine wine to serve him.

At this time, everyone was sitting in the hall. On the table was a pot of boiling mutton soup, steaming from time to time, and there was a red-burning fire next to it, with hot wine sizzling on it. Sitting, eating hot soup and sipping hot wine inside the house in this kind of freezing weather is very comfortable.

"Damn, it's so cold in this damn weather, it's still comfortable here."

Gao Shiyin gulped down the hot soup, poured the wine into his mouth, and picked meat from the pot with chopsticks to eat. He was wrapped in a thick leather jacket, and he also wore a thick leather cap on his head. He was still wearing fur, but after drinking some wine and getting hot, he simply tore off the fur around his neck.

Han Zhong looked at Gao Shiyin and said, "Gao Manzi, how are you going these days? I heard that you fell in love with a fresh and handsome woman? You guys are living a happy life."

Gao Shiyin suddenly put the bowl on the table, and the broth in it spilled out, and he shouted: "Don't mention that woman, people say that whores are ruthless and actors are meaningless, this is really true, I As soon as she ran out of money, she turned pages faster than a book."

The flesh on his face was trembling, as if remembering something that made him hate it so much.

Han Zhong was dumbfounded, and he shouted: "You have no money? I remember that you distributed more than 100 taels of silver that day, more than 100 taels, and you spent it all so quickly?"

He couldn't believe it: "Could it be that all your money was spent on that woman, she is so good at making money? Or is she inlaid with gold?"

Gao Shiyin sighed for a long time, and sat down on the chair somewhat decadently.

Wang Dou held the soup bowl in both hands to warm his hands. He just shook his head after hearing what the two said, and everyone else shook their heads in the same way.

Han Chaodao: "Gao Manzi, you have no money, what are you going to do?"

Gao Shiyin glanced at Wang Dou with some embarrassment, but just bowed his head and remained silent.The relationship between him and Wang Dou is quite strange, it seems that he wants to bow his head to Wang Dou, but he can't hold back that face no matter what.

Wang Dou smiled, picked up the jug to refill the glass in front of him, and said, "Brother Gao, if you don't dislike my shabby fort, let's stay here for a while. What about your cigarette pier? You But the head of a trick."

Gao Shiyin was overjoyed, he rubbed his hands, just thanked Wang Dou, he said: "Don't worry, Wangtou, there are people watching in the pier, besides, it's freezing cold, nothing will happen."

He tried his best to show a smile to Wang Dou, but his face was full of flesh, so the smile couldn't be gentle.

After a while, he seemed to think of something, and he flattered Wang Dou: "Wang Tou, have you heard?"

"What did you hear?"

Wang Dou said lightly, he took a sip of the wine, put another piece of mutton into his mouth, and chewed slowly.

Gao Shiyin said mysteriously: "Fangjiagou was slaughtered last night. I heard that it was a good thing done by the gangsters in Xishan. All the old and weak women and children in the whole village were spared. It's really tragic."

"what?"

Everyone was shocked, and Wang Dou was even more shocked. Fangjiagou, Yizhuang and Xinzhuang are all villages in Sangganli, but they are not like Xinzhuang. Fangjiagou and Yizhuang are just two small villages. There are not many households living in the village, and the walls outside the village are quite low. They didn't expect that they would encounter hardships as the New Year approached.

(End of this chapter)