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Taylor Roberts

------- Forwarded Message

Date: Mon, 22 May 1995 20:57:07 -0400 (EDT)
From: [log in to unmask]
To: [log in to unmask]

        Still there, Taylor?  Just wanted to let you know there's a
Twain story in the June '95 Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine. Didn't
catch it at first - about two old geezers having one last adventure,
ala Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.  'Cept it was Tom and Huck.

        Here's an excerpt from "Drifting Off The Coast Of New Mexico", by
Steven R. Boyett:

        "Another slug goes whooting past my leg.  Maybe it has my name
wrote on it, but they done spelt it wrong.  Anyways their shots are
killing Mexican dirt more than anything else; Carranza's troops are
pretty near out of range and don't shoot all that commendably to begin
with.  I ain't sure they been allowed to have ammunition till recently,
and if I was Carranza I'da found that a sound policy myself.

        Now we're heading uphill and the going ain't hardly fun at all.
My lungs are on fire but I'm in pretty good shape for an old war horse
if you don't check my teeth.  Tom's having a tough go of it though.
Sometime in them soft big-city years he done swallered a cannonball and
has been lugging it around ever since, and right now he's red-faced as a
naked preacher and sweating like his hat's squeezing it out of his head.

        Tom sees me looking at him and I guess he reads my worried look.
Can't hardly have a thought to yourself when you're with a body too long;
you may as well get married and have done with it.  He nods, probably'cause
talking is pretty much out of the question.  Then he glances at Bierce and
back at me, and I know what he is thinking and I shake my head no, and my
look says Shame on you for thinking it.  Tom kind of shrugs - which is his
reply to plumb near everything anymore - and hauls on."
...
        It's a "commendably" written story.  Worth a look.

CK