Andromeda Gun by John Boyd Read Free Book Online Page B

sometimes took politeness as a sign of weakness, particularly young buckaroos like Billy Peyton.
    Morning brought a misting rain. Driving south in a rented buggy toward the widow’s ranch, Ian enjoyed the snugness and comfort of the enclosed vehicle and found himself looking forward to seeing Gabriella in her Sunday finery. If it weren’t for the long hours and low pay, he thought, it might be pleasant to be a law-abiding citizen.
    Widow Stewart’s ranch house was a frame building with a vine-shaded front porch standing near the bluff of a cottonwood—bordered ravine. Besides the ordinary appurtenances of a ranch house—stable, corral, pump house, privy, washpot, and clothesline—a row of hen houses sat twenty yards behind the house in a chicken yard. When Ian knocked, the Widow Stewart answered the door.
    Aproned and smiling, she beckoned him in, saying, “Welcome, Ian McCloud. Daughter’s still primping. She’ll be in the parlor directly, and I’d like to tell you, now, you’ve made an impression on that girl, and her mother’s not so old she can’t see why.”
    Widow Stewart must have had her daughter while still very young, and Ian wasn’t so old he couldn’t see why. Her high-piled hair was dark and wavy, with pink ears protruding below. Her skin was fairer than Gabriella’s with no freckles marring its whiteness. Though no taller than Gabriella, she was wider, except around the waist, and much thicker in places. Her bubbling speech matched her figure. As she took Ian’s hat to hang on the coat tree, she bubbled fore and aft.
    Whirling to face him again, in several disparate but enchantingly liquid movements, she said, “Have a seat and make yourself comfortable. Do you like your eggs scrambled or fried? One thing we have here is fresh eggs. Folks say the only way to get fresher eggs than the Widow Stewart’s is to lay them yourself.”
    “Scrambled will be fine, ma’am.”
    “I scramble them with a little cream to give them lightness, and I can drop in some chopped green onions to give them a he-man flavor.”
    “Just the cream, ma’am. I don’t want any man flavor spoiling a hen’s eggs.”
    She threw him a sidelong, coquettish smile, and said, “You sound appreciative, Ian. They say the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach, and maybe that’s true for both sexes, one way or the other.”
    Turning with a wide swing to her well-rounded bottom, she bubbled into the kitchen.
    G-7 was overwhelmed by the widow’s voluptuousness, vivacity, and contrasting colors, but there was a quality to the woman, observed and dismissed by Ian with maddening superficiality, that almost sent G-7 into a flux; Mrs. Stewart had about her an aura of waiting and wanting, like the plowed loam of springtime, a quality which though apart from her beauty, reinforced it like the pauses in music.
    Nothing cowardly or hypocritical impeded the flow of the widow’s love system. Through the fibers of its host, G-7 had felt the woman’s pull, and, more than its host, it appreciated the electromagnetic vortices swirling around breast gravities whose amplitudes left Ian unstirred. Perhaps McCloud, because of his professional reliance on fast horses, was more appreciative of lean flanks, G-7 mused, whereas itself, a star rover, was more aesthetically aware of world lines. Whatever the cause, it was apparent to G-7 that on this planet it was a breast angel while its host was a thigh man.
    “Good morning, Ian.”
    Ian was brought to his feet by the appearance of Gabriella. Framed in the doorway, she wore a pink gown which flowed to her ankles from a sash of white ribbon around her waist and a hat, wide-brimmed and yellow. Almost gasping at the vision, Ian managed to stammer, “Good morning, Miss Stewart.”
    Not unaware of his reaction, she blushed slightly.
    “I tried on a new hat for you. It’s glazed straw, and I thought it might be best for rainy weather. Do you like it?”
    “Ma’am I ain’t seen no hat half so