After Making Love Conversation
Won’t You Come Home, Bill Bailey, Won’t You Come Home?
On the Way to a Butler Possibility
Mr. Morgan, Requiescat in Pace
But Supper First, Then the Hawkline Monster
The Hawkline Monster in the Gravy
A Man’s Work Turned to Nothing
The Elephant Foot Umbrella Stand
The Hawkline Monster in 4/4 Beat
Father and Daughters Reunited (Sort of
The Passing of the Hawkline Monster
The Return of Professor Hawkline
An Early Twentieth-Century Picnic
Book 1
· Hawaii ·
· The Riding Lesson ·
They crouched with their rifles in the pineapple field, watching a man teach his son how to ride a horse. It was the summer of 1902 in Hawaii.
They hadn’t said anything for a long time. They just crouched there watching the man and the boy and the horse.
What they saw did not make them happy.
“I can’t do it,” Greer said.
“It’s a bastard all right,” Cameron said.
“I can’t shoot a man when he’s teaching his kid how to ride a horse.” Greer said. “I’m not made that way.”
Greer and Cameron were not at home in the pineapple field. They looked out of place in Hawaii. They were both dressed in cowboy clothes, clothes that belonged to Eastern Oregon.
Greer had his favorite gun: a 30:40 Krag, and Cameron had a 25:35 Winchester. Greer liked to kid Cameron about his gun. Greer always used to say, “Why do you keep that rabbit rifle around when you can get a real gun like this Krag here?”
They stared intently at the riding lesson.
“Well, there goes 1,000 dollars apiece,” Cameron said. “And that God-damn trip on that God-damn boat was for nothing. I thought I was going to puke forever and now I’m going to have to do it all over again with only the change in my pockets.”