The Collected Short Stories Vol 1 by Louis L'Amour

Author:Louis L'Amour [L'Amour, Louis]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Usenet, C429, Kat, Exratorrents
Published: 2012-04-01T14:43:25+00:00

Alkali Basin

The stage rocked and rolled over the desert road, vainly pursued by a thick cloud of fine white dust. It plunged down a declivity into a dry wash, then swept up the other side and around a hairpin curve at the top, to straighten out on the long dash across the valley.

Price Macomber, vice-president of the Overland Stage Company, was heading west on an inspection tour accompanied by his niece and Pete Judson, the district superintendent. Price, a round man with a round pink face and round rimless spectacles, was holding forth on his pet theme,-useless expenditures.

“It has been my experience,” he was saying, “that given the slightest excuse each driver and each station operator will come up with a number of items of utterly useless expense, and such items must be eliminated.”

He braced himself against the roll of the stage and stared out the window for an instant as if collecting his thoughts. Then his eyes pinned Judson to his seat as a collector pins a butterfly. Judson squirmed, but there was no escape.

“You understand,” Macomber continued, “I’m not accusing these men of including items for their own advantage. No doubt at the moment they believe the item essential, yet when viewed logically it usually proves such claims were arrived at without due consideration.

“Take, for example, the ridiculous request of this man Wells, at Alkali Basin. Four times now he has written us demanding we send him blasting powder!

“Now think of that! Blasting powder, of all things! What earthly use would a station agent have for blasting powder? In our reply to his first request, we suggested he submit his reason for wanting it, and he replied that he wished to blast some rocks.

“Were the rocks on the road? No, they were not. They were some seventy yards off the road in the desert. The request was, without doubt, the whimsical notion of an uneducated man at a moment when he was not thinking. By now he no doubt realizes the absurdity of his notion.

“It is such items as this that can be eliminated. And I observed,” Macomber added severely, “that you recommended his request be granted. I was surprised, Judson. Needless to say, I was very surprised. We expect better judgment of our district superintendents.”

Judson mopped his brow and said nothing. In the past one-hundred-and-ten miles he had learned it was wiser to listen and endure. Price Macomber’s voice droned on into the hot, dusty afternoon with no hint of a letup. The best arguments Judson had offered had been riddled with logic, devastating and inescapable. He would have liked to say that sometimes logic fell short of truth, but lacked the words, and no argument of his could hope to dam the flow of words that poured over the spillway of Price Macomber’s lips.

Molly Macomber stared wearily at the desert. Her uncle, so polished, immaculate, and sure of himself, had failed to materialize into the superman he had seemed in Kansas City and St. Louis. Against

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