"Milo Talon" - читать интересную книгу автора (L'Amour Louis)

need right now.
Anyway, I started to gather my stuff and replace it, remembering that a man's life
always starts today. Every morning is a beginning, a fresh start, and a man needn't
be hog-tied to the past. Whatever went before, a man's life can begin now, today.
The irritation returned. What the Hell were they looking for? What did I have that
anybody wanted? Was somebody looking for money?
Maybe . . . just maybe for that brown manila envelope? If so, why?
Sitting down on the bed I pulled off my boots, then sat there rubbing the tiredness
out of my feet. Did I really think I could find that girl? Or was this just a way
to keep eating a little longer? Something a mite easier than punching cows?
An obvious beginning was St. Louis. That had been the last known address of the Henrys.
St. Louis had grown since then and such a family as the Henrys was unlikely to have
attracted much notice. Finding them would not be easy, yet I had to begin somewhere.
I'd taken the man's money and I never yet had taken a job where I didn't deliver
a day's work for a day's pay.
Hanging my gun-belt over the chair-back close to the bed, I thought about that expression
on Molly Fletcher's face when she saw that picture. Startled she surely had been,
but maybe frightened was a better word.
Why?
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Again I returned to the question of Jefferson Henry and why he was here, in this
particular place. Why had he chosen this town? And why had he selected me?
Who was Molly Fletcher and how did she happen to be here, a girl who apparently knew
the girl in the picture, at the same time Jefferson Henry was in town? Did they know
each other? Or about each other?
If she did not know the girl in the picture she might have known one of the others,
or even the place itself might have been familiar.
The pictures themselves might be a starting point. Photography was still a relatively
new art but already there were a number of itinerant photographers following in the
footsteps of Brady and Jackson.
Propping a chair under the doorknob and laying my six-shooter out on the bed, I settled
down to digest the material Jefferson Henry had given me. Clipped to the top of the
letter was a note:
Letters addressed to Harold 6-
Adelaide Magoffin, deceased. The enclosed letters were not in the possession of the
deceased at the time of death but in storage with to be claimed baggage. For access
to the baggage the sum of $20.00 was paid to Pier Van Schendel, expressman.
Deceased? Both at once or separately? The cause of death? The Pinkertons must have
considered the questions irrelevant. Or to be more accurate, the agent involved evidently
considered it so, and agents were of all kinds. Some were imaginative and perceptive,
others mere plodders. Each had his value, but in this case, had enough questions
been asked?
The term "deceased" bothered me. I wanted to know why. How? I wanted to know when
and where and if it had anything to do with the matter at hand.
No doubt, that agent had other cases to investigate and I had but one. There was
time for me to ask questions, to wonder and consider. I intended to do all of that.
What, I wondered, had become of that unclaimed baggage?
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20Louis l'amour