Free Andromeda Gun by John Boyd Page A

averred.
    Still, Liza had a point. Billy Peyton’s dime novels and his jealousy toward Bacon had cost the Mormon a finger. Ian could not understand why John Milton would gun down the widow’s husband for reading a book—the widow, yes; John Milton, no—but he could understand that there might be indirect perils to the pastime. Reading in the half light of a cloudy afternoon might weaken a gunfighter’s eyes and eventually get him killed.
    Above and beyond Ian’s educational embarrassment, which was accompanied by a sense of futility—he realized that at this late date any attempt to shore up his ignorance would be the equivalent of a limber finger in a very porous dike—he was impelled to the Bible by a peculiar interest which, somehow, seemed natural. Ordinarily, his interest in celestial beings was equal to, but did not exceed, his interest in hagiology. Winchester’s description of angels as beings of light had stirred his curiosity, and, in effect, he was unconsciously checking Winchester’s sources for the preacher’s report on the halo effect.
    Now that he was getting the hang of reading, he skimmed through the “begats” of the Old Testament, finding few references to heaven and fewer to angels. In Genesis, however, he paused for a long moment to consider a passage:
And it came to pass… that the sons of God saw the daughters of men and found them fair; and they took them wives of all which they chose.
    The man’s eyes had found a clue to a mystery the man was not even aware of, and Ian thought he paused over the passage to consider the mechanical problems involved in such an arrangement. From his very limited knowledge of angels, he did not think they were equipped for marriage, but he was not one to argue against the Bible.
    Also, he did not know that he regarded the paragraph as a reliquary for an ancient truth.
    With varying degrees of interest he read on through twenty-one books of the Bible until, as the still-clouded sun moved toward setting and the day waned outside the window, he came to Solomon’s Song. He muttered aloud, “No wonder this hombre had a thousand wives.”
    Here was raw material aplenty for courting a schoolteacher, though some of it was a little too raw; he could never tell Gabriella his bowels were moved for her. Sometimes the language was a little too less or too much. Gabriella’s breasts were not like those of a young roe; she could give a few inches to any deer he had seen. And her face was not as terrible as an army with banners, not to a man who had lain behind the breastworks at Marye’s Heights and watched the blue-bellied Yankees climb the hill. Still, allowing for the lapses, Solomon was a master of sweet talk.
    Reluctantly Ian closed the book and laid it aside. Further reading would strain his eyes, and a lighted lamp in the room might reveal him to some Mormon sharp-shooter outside with a rifle. Laying his pistol atop the Bible, he spread-eagled on the pallet, hearing the beginning tinkle of Bain’s piano with the “plonk” on the middle D and thinking of the breasts of women. Whoever Solomon sang to must have been more like Gabe than Liza, else Solomon wouldn’t have spent so many compliments on thighs and navels. The widow’s bosom would have hogged the works, for verily, her breasts were like melons, Stone Mountain watermelons.
    Visions of watermelons flowed so naturally into Ian’s mind he found the thought no more unusual than his session with the Bible, or the after-feeling that he had been searching the Scriptures for something more definite than spiritual guidance or salvation. He yawned and stretched, thinking: Next to killing Colonel Blicket, there’s nothing I’d like better than a piece of watermelon.
    At six in the morning Ian awakened, resolved to carry out Sunday’s plan; get deputized this Monday; bust a bronc, rob the bank on Tuesday; then ride out of the deserted town on the fastest horse in Wyoming. He drank half a glass of water for