"Joe Haldeman - Manifest Destiny" - читать интересную книгу автора (Haldeman Joe)

your face off. Also, the Hall used interchangeable parts, which meant you didn't have to find
a smith when it needed repairing.)
Back at the house I told Mrs. Carranza I had to quit and would get a new boy for her.
Then Harris and me had a steak and put ourselves outside of a bottle of sherry, while he
filled me in on the details of the operation. He'd put considerable money into buying
discretion from a dockmaster and a Brit packet captain. This packet was about the only boat
that put into Tampico from New Orleans on anything like a regular basis, and Harris had the
idea that smuggling guns wasn't too much of a novelty to the captain. The next Friday night
we were going to load the stuff onto the packet, bound south the next, morning.
The loading went smooth as cream, and the next day we boarded the boat as paying
passengers, Washington supposedly belonging to Harris and coming along as his
manservant. At first it was right pleasant, slipping through a hundred or so miles of bayou
country. But the Gulf of Mexico ain't the Mississippi, and after a couple of hours of that I
was sick from my teeth to my toenails, and stayed that way for days. Captain gave me a
mixture of brandy and seawater, which like to killed me. Harris thought that was funny, but
the humor wore off some when we put into Tampico and him and Washington had to off-
load the cargo without much help from me.
We went on up to Parrodi's villa and found we might be out of a job. While we were on
that boat there had been a revolution. Santa Anna got kicked out, having pretty much
emptied the treasury, and now the moderado Herrera was in charge. Parrodi and Harris
argued for a long time. The Mexican was willing to pay for the rifles, but he figured that
half the money was for our service as spies.
They finally settled on eight thousand, but only if we would stay in Tampico for the next
eighteen months, in case a war did start. Washington and I would get fifty dollars a month
for walking-around money.
The next year was the most boring year of my life. After New Orleans, there's just not
much you could say about Tampico. It's an old city but also brand new. Pirates burnt it to
the ground a couple of hundred years ago. Santa Anna had it rebuilt in the twenties, and it
was still not much more than a garrison town when we were there. Most of the houses were
wood, imported in pieces from the States and nailed together. Couple of whorehouses and
cantinas downtown, and you can bet I spent a lot of time and fifty bucks a month down
there.
Elsewhere, things started to happen in the spring. The U.S. Congress went along with
Polk and voted to annex Texas, and Mexico broke off diplomatic relations and declared war,
but Washington didn't seem to take notice. Herrera must have had his hands full with the
Carmelite Revolution, though things were quiet in Tampico for the rest of the year.
I got to know Harris pretty well. He spent a lot of time teaching me to read and write
Spanish—though I never could talk it without sounding like a gringo—and I can tell you he
was hellfire as a teacher. The schoolmaster used to whip me when I was a kid, but that was
easier to take than Harris's tongue. He could make you feel about six inches tall. Then a few
minutes later you get a verb right and you're a hero.
We'd also go into the woods outside of town and practice with the pistol and rifle. He
could do some awesome things with a Colt. He taught me how to throw a knife and I taught
him how to use a lasso.
We got into a kind of routine. I had a room with the Galvez family downtown. I'd get up
pretty late mornings and peg away at my Spanish books. About midday Harris would come
down (he was staying up at the General's place) and give me my daily dose of sarcasm.
Then we'd go down to a cantina and have lunch, usually with Washington. Afternoons,
when most of the town napped, we might go riding or shooting in the woods south of town.
We kept the Galvez family in meat that way, getting a boar or a deer every now and then.