America 1881: Legend of the West

"Mr. Chen! It's you! You are Mr. Chen!"

Lai Gubei looked at the person in front of him, rubbing his hands excitedly, a little incoherent for a moment.

"Why, do you know me?"

Chen Jianqiu looked at the young man with a smile.

"How could I not know you? Almost every Chinese in Cuba knows your name. It can be said that it is like thunder."

Lai Gubei thought about his words and finally chose an idiom his father had taught him.

"Then why don't you come to me directly? What do the Cuban Revolutionary Army mean?"

Chen Jianqiu is still smiling.

Lai Gubei shook his head:

"No, this batch of arms is used to arm a group of Chinese volunteers led by my father."

Chen Jianqiu was even more confused.

He didn't quite understand why the Chinese in Cuba would go to the U.S. government instead of seeking help from himself, since they knew his name.

If Lai Gubei is a mixed race and doesn't know the situation, his father Lai Hua should know.

The young man looked a little embarrassed and hesitant, as if he had something to hide.

"But it doesn't matter." Chen Jianqiu waved his hand, signaling Lai Gubei not to worry too much.

"Actually, there is also controversy within the Chinese Volunteer Army. The Chinese in Cuba are mainly Hakkas. They think that you are from HM and should be from Guangfu or relatively close to the Cantonese, so they did not come to visit you in the end. "

Lai Gubei said.

Chen Jianqiu laughed, and the laughter echoed on the river bank.

Lai Gubei was a little uneasy. He thought he had said something wrong and searched over and over in his mind what he had just said.

"They think too much about the grievances between the Cantonese people and the Hakka people. Let me talk about it when I see them later."

Chen Jianqiu did not elaborate on this matter.

Don't try to persuade others to do good things before they have suffered. These things cannot be explained clearly in one or two sentences.

That's not what he's concerned about right now.

"Come with me first, let's talk about weapons."

Chen Jianqiu took Lai Gubei into the town along the river and came to a tavern.

It had been a long time since he had set foot in a small town tavern.

Unlike those places in the western towns that are crowded and have a "pornographic, gambling and drug" nature, the taverns in New England have much simpler folk customs.

Local residents gathered here after work, drinking beer and chatting.

Chen Jianqiu ran to the bar smelling of alcohol and threw a ten-cent silver coin on the bar.

The boss understood, took two glasses of beer from behind and handed them to Chen Jianqiu's hand.

Chen Jianqiu handed one of the cups to Lai Gubei.

The two found an empty table and sat down.

"How many Chinese soldiers does your father have with him now?" Chen Jianqiu took a sip of beer and asked.

"More than fifteen hundred." Lai Gubei also took a sip of beer and frowned.

He obviously wasn't used to the high alcohol content of the beer.

"Where's the equipment?" Chen Jianqiu asked.

"The rebel army first obtained some lever-type repeating rifles, but they gave priority to the main force for use, so the only ones that fell into our hands were some old-fashioned single-shot rifles." Lai Gubei replied, "Our early battle situation At a better time, some Spanish rifles were also seized, but the supply of bullets could not keep up, so they had to be thrown away."

"Where are the heavy weapons?"

"There are basically no heavy weapons. Even if there are, the amount of ammunition cannot keep up." Lai Gubei sighed.

Chen Jianqiu placed the beer glass on the table in front of him, leaned back on the chair, and fell into deep thought.

After a while, he sat up from the chair and pointed two fingers at Lai Gubei.

"Twenty guns?" The young man's heart skipped a beat, and he couldn't hide his disappointment.

Twenty guns are really a drop in the bucket for their current situation.

Chen Jianqiu almost couldn't help laughing.

This young man is quite interesting, he shows everything on his face.

He shook his head.

"Two hundred?" Lai Gubei's mood improved instantly, and a smile appeared on his face.

Two hundred guns, if equipped with enough bullets, can also bring some increase in firepower to my father's troops, or at least replace those broken front-loaded guns.

This would save a lot of deaths.

Otherwise, they can only fill it with human lives.

However, Chen Jianqiu still shook his head.

He leaned back in the chair again and straightened his clothes.

"I will equip you with two thousand new bolt-action rifles and enough bullets, and I will send people to teach you how to use them." Chen Jianqiu said lightly.

This time the young man was completely confused.

The happiness came so suddenly that he couldn't believe it was true for a moment.

Oh my God! Two thousand new rifles, aren't you just dreaming?

But Lai Gubei soon realized a problem, and his expression became melancholy again.

"Mr. Chen, we don't have that much money," he said sadly.

Although the late former Cuban rebel leader Martí raised a lot of funds before the uprising, these funds were gradually exhausted as the war progressed and the Spanish Governor-General Virrell's strategic policy of "strengthening the walls and clearing the country" was adopted.

Even less money can be distributed to the Chinese Volunteer Army.

The money to buy guns this time was raised internally by the Chinese in Cuba. It was not enough to buy two thousand rifles, let alone bullets.

This is too much luxury for them.

"Don't worry about money." Chen Jianqiu waved his hand casually, "As long as the battle is won, someone will pay for it."

"Oh, that's great!" Lai Gubei became excited again.

"I have only one request, and that is that these guns and bullets will only be provided to Chinese volunteers for the time being, and will not be supplied to other insurrectionary armies." Chen Jianqiu made a request of his own.

Lai Gubei understood this request.

But soon he raised another question and frowned again: "But what about the federal order prohibiting arms exports?"

"This is not your concern." Chen Jianqiu stared at the young man in front of him, "I will arrange to leave from the port in Mexico."

The two of them were separated by a table, but Lai Gubei felt an invisible pressure.

"Your blood also flows with the blood of descendants of the Yan and Huang Dynasties. I am a few years older than you, so I would like to say a few words as a person who has been through this. Young people should move forward without hesitation and not look forward and backward. Since I promised you, I must have a way to do it. "

"Okay, I understand." Lai Gubei sat up straight and nodded seriously.

The next day, when Lieutenant Rhodes woke up from a hangover, he found that Chen Jianqiu himself had left the town of Rock Spring, leaving only a lawyer and the arsenal to sign the agreement.

The lawyer told Lieutenant Rhodes on behalf of Chen Jianqiu:

Thank you for the hospitality. The wine is delicious.

As for the reason for Chen Jianqiu's departure, Rhodes asked several times, and the lawyer said that he was not very clear. Maybe it was because Boss Chen had something urgent to deal with in New York.

Of course Chen Jianqiu is in an emergency.

After arriving in New York, he asked the financial center to send the order to Roswell. The factory prepared the goods, shipped them out of Juarez, and then transported them by rail to the port for shipment.

Two thousand bolt-action rifles do not put much pressure on the Roswell Ordnance Factory, not to mention that they are delivered in batches.

As for the operation itself of exiting customs, it is also familiar and there are no problems.

The main reason why Chen Jianqiu was in such a hurry was that he wanted to go to Cuba in person.

The reason why he was not in a hurry to take out all the advanced stuff from his family was because he had to see what Cuba's Second War of Independence was like now.