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

cannery that probably wasn't paying much at all.


Macurdy slept his way across the Idaho panhandle, waking when the train stopped
at Spokane, Washington, and again to the clash and jerk of couplings as it
started to leave. The next time he awoke, they were rolling across grassy hills
and bare rock washes. After they left Pasco, they never stopped at all, rolling
down the Columbia River Gorge through scenery that to Macurdy was beautiful
almost beyond comprehension.
So this is Oregon, he thought. God, Varia, if you could only see it! As
newlyweds, moving to Oregon had been a dream, nothing urgent, but something
they'd do someday. Now she was in another world with another man, and he was
here alone. That should, he thought, have spoiled it for him, but somehow the
beauty overrode such considerations.
They spent a day at Portland, swimming in the river with their clothes on to get
out most of the soot, then wearing them dry in the sunshine, eating on Macurdy's
money, and walking around. They took the elevator to an upper floor of a bank
building, where Macurdy stared in awe at distant snow peaks. The nearer, to the
east, was Mount Hood, Roy told him, and the one off north, Mount Saint Helens.
They spent that night with one of Roy's aunts, who treated Macurdy as a welcome
guest. The next day they hiked to the railyard and caught another freight, this
one on a branch line, headed for the sawmill town of Nehtaka, where Roy, not so
confident as he'd been fifteen hundred miles east, hoped they'd find work.
4
Severtson's Camp
They didn't go to the hiring hall. Instead they hiked a dusty road out of town,
past yards of great dark logs, and acres of fragrant lumber stacked in the sun
to dry. Past a sawmill, whose shrieking headrig and growling planers they could
hear from the road four hundred yards away. Above the mill, a tall stack trailed
a pennant of woodsmoke. A slab burner, like a fifty foot sheet-iron teepee,
leaked more of it, from the top and every seam. Like the visual scene, the
resinous pungencies charmed Macurdy. Oregon!
Roy led him to a large, shed-like building covered with asphalt siding. At one
end was an office, and it was there they entered. A tall, rawboned blond woman
sat at a desk, with a typewriter, a phone, and a pint-sized mug of coffee. On a
nearby table sat an electric burner- something Macurdy had never seen before-
topped with a large enameled coffee pot, robin's egg blue with black chips.
Within the woman's reach was a battered file cabinet, another novelty; Macurdy
didn't even know what it was.
"We come to see Axel," Roy told her. "We're looking for work."
This was a self-deprecatory Roy Klaplanahoo, figuratively with hat in hand.
White men had left Europe to avoid such servility for themselves. She looked
them over, then turned toward an open door. "Axel!" she called, "there's a
couple of jacks out here looking for work. One's a Klaplanahoo."
A moment later a tall, big-shouldered, middle-aged man came through the door. He
was bald as an egg, but a thatch of flaxen chest hair bushed from his open
collar. "Vhere you been?" he said to Roy. "I ain't seen you for a year or more."
"I been to Oklahoma. I'd heard it was real Indian country, and I wanted to see
it."
"Vas it? Indian country?"