"Dalmas,.John.-.Lion.Of.Farside.2.-.Bavarian.Gate.v1.1" - читать интересную книгу автора (Dalmas John)

Occasionally, at some high plains village, the train paused. Cars would be
shunted onto a siding-empties to be filled or laden cars to be emptied. The men
kept out of sight then, grateful when the train began moving once more without
their car having been cut from it.
By midmorning, Macurdy had seen his first big mountains, bigger and more abrupt
than any he'd seen in Yuulith. By noon they were hemmed in by them, and several
large locomotives-"Mallies" Roy called them-had been added to. drag the train
over the continental divide. Macurdy got a look at the massive black engines,
spouting gritty black smoke as they passed their own freight cars on a hairpin
curve.
That evening their car was part of a string cut out in the yard at Missoula. By
then they were glad to get out; they were out of water, and their stomachs
complained constantly. Other 'boes were disembarking too, and Roy quickened his
pace.
"We got to be first," he told Macurdy. "Find a restaurant or grocery store and
see what they got in their garbage. You can always find something, but after
other guys have picked through it, it's kind of bad." They were in the lead when
they saw a cafe ahead. It was closed. "Let's find one open," Macurdy said. "I've
got a little cash. We can eat a real meal."
They walked several blocks before they found one. Gilt letters on the window
spelled "Sig's Cafe." A middle-aged couple sat at a table, and two working men
sat side by side at the counter. The two hoboes went in, filthy with coal soot
from locomotive smokestacks. The cafe's owner, a tall, rawboned, blond man, got
instantly to his feet, scowling. Two steps took him to the revolver he kept on a
shelf beneath the cash register. Macurdy read his aura. "Are you Sig?" he asked.
The man nodded. "I've got money," Macurdy told him. "You got a place we can
sit?"
He could almost see the man's mind considering. Business was poor, but two bums?
They were so dirty he'd have to clean the chairs they sat on. "Let's see the
money," he said in accented English.
From a shirt pocket, Macurdy removed a grubby one-dollar bill. The man pointed
to a small round table in a back corner, two chairs beside it, and when they'd
seated themselves, he brought a menu. Macurdy looked it over. "I'll take a pork
chop with mashed potatoes," he said. "And buttermilk."
"The same for me," Roy added. "The buttermilk's extra."
"We'll have it anyway," Macurdy answered. "We only ate twice in two days, and
then not much." The man's aura still reflected distrust, so Macurdy handed him
the dollar bill. "Take it out of this. Maybe we'll have something else when
we're done."
The meal came with bread, butter, and rice pudding with canned milk, but before
they were done, they'd each had another serving of potatoes. It used up the
whole dollar. In Sig's eyes they were customers now, not bums, and pulling
another chair over, he talked with them briefly. There was no work to be found
in Missoula. The sawmills that were running at all were down to one shift a day,
running on inventory; almost no logging camps were manned. "I heard it ain't no
better in Spokane," Sig added. "Maybe on the coast."
Macurdy and Roy went back to the railyard with stomachs and canteens filled.
They were not heartened by what they'd heard. Roy said if they needed to, they
could stay with his family till something broke for them. But he didn't sound
terribly confident; his family would be hard up at best, trawling salmon for a