Henry did not consider cooperating with others to ambush the McKinley cavalry because his fighting style had too many secrets, making cooperation unsuitable.
Moreover, these were targets he intended to release with his own hands.
As for informing the people on the Farm in advance, it was unnecessary; they would naturally become vigilant upon hearing gunshots once the fighting began.
So, the remaining question was where to ambush these cavalrymen.
Henry was not particular about food; carrots and other vitamin A-rich foods were common in America, so he did not suffer from night blindness.
And Henry had just discovered that after a Constitution increase, his night vision improved significantly, though he still couldn't see in complete darkness.
In Denver during this season, sunset begins at 8 PM and sunrise is at 5:30 AM, so the daylight hours are very long.
Therefore, Henry could depart around 4:30 AM.
Having made his calculations, Henry began preparing various supplies, including cleaning and filling ten canteens, a tent, a sleeping bag, insect repellent, and so on.
Next, he inventoried his weapons and ammunition.
First were 47 Winchester 1873 rifles, two of which were the "one-in-a-thousand" high-precision version, with 4,240 rounds of .44 ammunition.
Second were 47 Colt 1873 single-action revolvers, sharing ammunition with the rifles.
Third were 8 Colt 1878 double-action revolvers, with 897 rounds of ammunition.
There were also 52 skill Flying Daggers and 49 various daggers and military knives.
Finally, there was the peculiar revolver belonging to the bandit leader who attacked the town.
This LeMat revolver was unique for its combined design of a revolver and a shotgun; its cylinder held 9 chambers, each capable of holding one pistol round, for a total of 9 rounds fired through the pistol barrel.
Below the pistol barrel, aligned with the cylinder's central axis, was a large-bore smoothbore barrel designed to fire a single shotgun shell.
The shooter only needed to flick the hammer up for revolver mode or down for shotgun mode.
The pistol barrel of this LeMat revolver also had a .44-inch caliber, and the shotgun barrel's caliber was set at 20 gauge, meaning it fired shotgun shells of 15.6 mm caliber.
The 20-gauge shotgun shells were incredibly powerful, effectively turning it into a 'scattergun'.
Its drawbacks included its heavy weight, which hindered aiming, firing, and reloading; in practice, loading this gun was extremely difficult, almost impossible during combat.
However, one shot was enough when powerful firepower was needed.
Unfortunately, the various high-power shotguns of later eras had not yet appeared.
Henry spent over an hour loading all the firearms, disengaging their safeties, and then storing them in his spatial inventory.
Then he took out the large copper pot and found that the water inside was still scalding hot.
This indicated that items placed in the Storage Space likely remained in a static state.
Henry set his alarm and quickly went to sleep, as he only had 5 hours to rest.
At 4:30 AM, Henry was woken precisely by his alarm. About ten minutes later, he was at the police station's stable, saddling his Quarter Horse police mount and gathering some forage.
By 5:00 AM, he had ridden the police horse out of town. At this time, the sky was already showing a hint of dawn, and the wilderness was vaguely visible, no longer pitch black.
Henry galloped on his horse, traversing grasslands, canyons, and mountains, inhaling the fresh scent of grass and trees carried on the morning air, feeling the free and cool breeze, and a sense of heroic chivalry arose within him.
Meanwhile, at a temporary camp ten miles away, a group of heavily armed cavalrymen were preparing to depart.
Commander Oliver loudly gave instructions: ".Kill all the men. Be careful not to get carried away and be killed by the women; ensure they are incapacitated. Leave the two women or half-grown children from the Farm. All valuables will be distributed uniformly. After ambushing Henry, do not desecrate Henry's body; he is still a true Western man."
On the other side, after more than ten minutes, Henry had reached a chosen hill. He tied his horse's reins with a slipknot to a Colorado Blue Spruce, took out a small amount of forage, and let the horse eat alone.
He stood at the top of the hill, looking down at the vast, hazy wilderness below.
Dawn was approaching; the desolate land of the West was breathing deeply, awaiting the sun's rise once more.
Immersed in the wild, vast, and majestic expanse of the boundless West, Henry suddenly pondered a profound question—his future life goals.
Since he had come to such a magnificent time and space, and possessed such a powerful golden finger, he had to do something, right?
Henry recalled that when he was Zhang Tianyuan, his parents, ordinary laborers, died in a car accident when he was in junior high school, leaving him, from a small town, with little wealth.
Fortunately, his only elder sister, Zhang Tianfang, had just graduated from senior high, and the siblings had a very close relationship.
She didn't go to a second-tier university but instead went to work early in a third- or fourth-tier city to support his studies.
It wasn't until he was in his third year of university that she married his brother-in-law, who also went to work in the city.
Zhang Tianyuan studied Architectural Engineering at Tongji University, a key university in Shanghai. Because he was academically excellent and quite handsome, he started dating a junior schoolmate from the same university in his second year.
However, after graduation, her parents strongly objected.
Eventually, after his girlfriend's fierce resistance, her parents agreed to observe Zhang Tianyuan for three years.
However, it wasn't easy to make a living in Shanghai. A year later, his girlfriend graduated from university and entered a government agency arranged by her parents, widening the gap between them.
Just then, a large company's engineering team approached Zhang Tianyuan to join infrastructure construction projects in Africa. With salary and subsidies, he could earn 200,000-300,000 yuan a year, with a minimum commitment of three years, and even higher benefits for longer durations.
After discussing with his girlfriend, Zhang Tianyuan resolutely embarked on the path to earn money in Africa, aiming to save 900,000 yuan in three years to marry his girlfriend.
However, in the first year he was there, his girlfriend's contact noticeably decreased, and by the second year, it was very rare. When Zhang Tianyuan finally managed to take half a month off and rushed back to Shanghai to find her, she broke up with him.
It can only be said that after starting work, the girl's values and outlook on life underwent significant changes compared to when she was studying.
And indeed, physical distance often leads to emotional distance.
After several failed attempts to reconcile, a disheartened Zhang Tianyuan returned to Africa.
After working for another four years, Zhang Tianyuan returned home to visit his sister's family and suffered another huge blow—his sister and brother-in-law had misappropriated all of the more than 1.3 million yuan he had saved in his bank savings card over the years!
His brother-in-law used it to buy a house, a car, and open a small supermarket.
His bank savings card was set up by his sister using his ID after his college entrance exam, so she could transfer living expenses to him each month.
For all these years, he never thought of changing the password. Before going abroad, he had also given the card to his sister for safekeeping, telling her to use it if she needed to.
He himself had opened a new card abroad for daily expenses, and most of his money was transferred to the old card.
His brother-in-law later avoided him.
Looking at his sister, who appeared much older than her actual age and was filled with guilt and unease, and his two young nephews, Zhang Tianyuan didn't say much. He told her to live well and returned to Africa alone.
Soon after, he was unlucky enough to be abducted by local armed thugs, and was later coincidentally rescued by a group of French mercenaries, even shedding some blood himself.
Coincidentally, he had learned French during his years in Africa, and combined with his weariness of a mundane, worker-bee-like existence, he became a mercenary through a twist of fate.