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Updated: May 2, 2025
Up there! Coulda been him knocked off and I'd ha' been in a mess! I'll see him tonight." The midget said something biting in his peculiarly cracked and brittle voice. The bus rolled and rolled and rolled. It was a long twenty miles to Bootstrap. The desert outside the bus windows was utterly black and featureless, but once a convoy of trucks passed, going to the Shed.
He was well into the thirties and his life's goal was still tantalizingly far before him, and he living on borrowed time. He said, "Why're you ... exception? How come you get right into the middle of it, like that time on the Panhandle Reservation. You coulda copped one there." Soligen chuckled abruptly, and as though in self-deprecation. "I did cop one there. Hospitalized three months.
If we'd hadda bugle we coulda sounded taps, and the musical accompaniment woulda been complete. "Napoleon One come up and shake hands with me like I'd won the Medeye Militaire, and, before I could side-step, the widow had her arms round my neck and was kissin' me on both cheeks.
"Mis' Hart, he ain't got anybody my folks I lost track of 'em years ago. You see to it git some learnin' in his head. When a man knows books it's like bein' heeled good gun plenty uh ca't'idges in a fight. When I got that gold it was like fightin' with my bare hands against a gatlin' gun. They coulda cheated me whole thing on paper I wouldn't know luck just luck they didn't.
The landlady stopped short and stared at her. "What? Oh, I won't go into details it was awful messy, and that's a fact. I didn't git over it for a couple of months. He coulda killed himself with a six-shooter; it's always been a mystery why he dug up that old shotgun, but he did. I always thought he wanted to show his nerve." She sighed, and drew her fingers across her eyes.
I beg your pardon but I have learned in Mexico that it's best to get the gun first and see who it is after that. Did you say something about being shot at?" "I did, but I could say more. Here I am down here without any gun but that cussed shotgun, and I didn't have that, even, when I coulda used it handy. And look what I got, up here on the hill!"
Why d'you think it?" "They blindfolded me," said Lockley briefly. A pause. Then the driver said vexedly, "That's a funny thing to make you think they was men! Hell! Excuse me, ma'm! they coulda had all kindsa reasons for blindfoldin' you! It coulda been part of their religion!" "Maybe," said Lockley. He was angry with himself for having said something which was needlessly dramatic.
"Yeah!" said Mike with fine irony, reverting to his topic. "I could show you plenty of figures! There are other guys like me! We've got as much brains as full-sized people! If the big brass had figured on us small guys, they coulda made the Platform the size of a four-family house an' it'd ha' been up in the sky right now, with guys like me running it.
They can get in cracks an' buck rivets an' so on. Useful. He's had 'em all hopped up on the fact that the Platform coulda been finished months ago if it'd been built for them, an' they could get to the moon an' back while full-sized guys couldn't an' so on. Remember?" "I remember," said Sally. "They've all been beefin' about it," explained Haney. "People know how they feel.
"Pah!" slurred Devereau. "Pah! I coulda done it myself." But Blair's quietness fooled him. "I'm not saying that it wasn't convincing." He thought it time to placate. "It was neat. I've gave you credit. Sure! You looked great. You looked like a world-beater, in there against Fanchette. But that's just what I'm trying to get at.
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