Читать книгу The Hawkline Monster - Richard Brautigan - Страница 13

· Gompville ·

The train only went as far as Gompville, which was the county seat of Morning County and fifty miles away by stagecoach to Billy. It was a cold clear dawn with half-a-dozen sleepy dogs standing there barking at the train engine.

“Gompville,” Cameron said.

Gompville was the headquarters of the Morning County Sheepshooters Association that had a president, a vice-president, a secretary, a sergeant at arms and bylaws that said it was all right to shoot sheep.

The people who owned the sheep didn’t particularly care for that, so both sides had brought in gunmen from Portland and the attitude toward killings had become very casual in those parts.

“We’re running it tight,” Greer said to Magic Child as they walked over to the stagecoach line. The stage to Billy left in just a few moments.

Cameron was carrying a long narrow trunk over his shoulder. The trunk contained a sawed-off twelve-gauge pump shotgun, a 25:35 Winchester rifle, a 30:40 Krag, two .38 caliber revolvers and an automatic .38 caliber pistol that Cameron had bought from a soldier in Hawaii who was just back from the Philippines where he had been fighting the rebels for two years.

“What kind of pistol is that?” Cameron had asked the soldier. They had been in a bar having some drinks in Honolulu.

“This gun is for killing Filipino motherfuckers,” the soldier had said. “It kills one of those bastards so dead that you need two graves to bury him in.”

After a bottle of whiskey and a lot of talk about women, Cameron had bought the gun from the soldier who was very glad to be on his way home to America and not have to use that gun any more.