Glory Road Read Online Free PDF Page A

until I returned tomorrow, or at the very least, to leave a note telling me how to find her. I left it with the postmistress along with a description—blond, so tall, hair this long, magnificent poitrine —and twenty francs with a promise of twice that much if she delivered it and got an answer. The postmistress said that she had never seen her but if cette grande blonde ever set foot in the village the note would be delivered.
    That left me just time to rush back, dress in off-island clothes, dump my gear with Mme. Alexandre, and catch the boat. Then I had three hours of travel time to worry through.
    The trouble was that Lucky Star wasn’t really a dog. My horse rated no farther down than fifth or sixth, no matter who was figuring form. So? Stop while I was ahead and take my profit?
    Or go for broke?
    It wasn’t easy. Let’s suppose I could sell the ticket for $10,000. Even if I didn’t try any fancy footwork on taxes, I would still keep most of it and get through school.
    But I was going to get through school anyway—and did I really want to go to Heidelberg? That student with the dueling scars had been a slob, with his phony pride in scars from fake danger.
    Suppose I hung on and grabbed the big one, £50,000, or $140,000—
    Do you know how much tax a bachelor pays on $140,000 in the Land of the Brave and the Home of the Free?
    $103,000, that’s what he pays.
    That leaves him $37,000.
    Did I want to bet about $10,000 against the chance of winning $37,000—with the odds at least 15 to 1 against me?
    Brother, that is drawing to an inside straight. The principle is the same whether it’s 37 grand, or jacks-or-better with a two-bit limit.
    But suppose I wangled some way to beat the tax, thus betting $10,000 to win $140,000? That made the potential profit match the odds—and $140,000 was not just eating money for college but a fortune that could bring in four or five thousand a year forever.
    I wouldn’t be “cheating” Uncle Sugar; the USA had no more moral claim on that money (if I won) than I had on the Holy Roman Empire. What had Uncle Sugar done for me? He had clobbered my father’s life with two wars, one of which we weren’t allowed to win—and thereby made it tough for me to get through college quite aside from what a father may be worth in spiritual intangibles to his son (I didn’t know, I never would know!)—then he had grabbed me out of college and had sent me to fight another unWar and damned near killed me and lost me my sweet girlish laughter.
    So how is Uncle Sugar entitled to clip $103,000 and leave me the short end? So he can “lend” it to Poland? Or give it to Brazil? Oh, my back!
    There was a way to keep it all (if I won) legal as marriage. Go live in little old tax-free Monaco for a year. Then take it anywhere.
    New Zealand, maybe. The Herald-Trib had had the usual headlines, only more so. It looked as if the boys (just big playful boys!) who run this planet were about to hold that major war, the one with ICBMs and H-bombs, any time now.
    If a man went as far south as New Zealand there might be something left after the fallout fell out.
    New Zealand is supposed to be very pretty and they say that a fisherman there regards a five-pound trout as too small to take home.
    I had caught a two-pound trout once.
    About then I made a horrible discovery. I didn’t want to go back to school, win, lose, or draw. I no longer gave a damn about three-car garages and swimming pools, nor any other status symbol or “security.” There was no security in this world and only damn fools and mice thought there could be.
    Somewhere back in the jungle I had shucked off all ambition of that sort. I had been shot at too many times and had lost interest in supermarkets and exurban subdivisions and tonight is the PTA supper don’t forget dear you promised.
    Oh, I wasn’t about to hole up in a monastery. I still wanted—
    What did I want?
    I wanted a Roc’s egg. I wanted a harem loaded with lovely