Vertical Run [antikvár]

PROLOGUEThen we began to ride. My soul Smoothed itself out, a long-cramped scroll Freshening and fluttering in the wind.-Robert Browning, "The Last Ride Together"Two young men on horseback.The taller, David Elliot, is lank and dark and long of limb. His brown eyes are solemn, but he wears a subtle smile. The shorter, Taffy Weiler, is squat as a bulldog; his wiry hair is as startlingly red as the tie-dyed T-shirt he wears, and his blue eyes sparkle with no small deviltry.Dave comes from Indiana. Taffy is a New Yorker bom and bred. They met in San Francisco, which, this summer, is the only place to be. Now they are fast friends.In September Taffy will start to work for a medium-sized electronics company near San Jose, an outfit called Hewlett-Packard; not many people at NYU have heard of it. Dave, having passed through Indiana State's R.O.T.C. program, is entering the Army; he will report for duty the third week of August. It is certain that he will be sent to Vietnam.This ride is their last journey together. Advdthood awaits them at summer's end.Today they are in the high Sierras, more than two hundred miles east of San Francisco. They crossed the mountain divide yesterday, picked up their horses and pack mule from a leathered-looking man who was waiting for them in a pickup truck, and began riding west into the mountain fastness.