around there, with those sunset color rocks and the pines and the snow and all the pointed steeples—”
“Campaniles,” the Colonel said. “Like that one ahead at Ceggia. It means bell tower.”
“Well, if he painted any really good pictures of that country I’d sure as hell like to trade him out of some of them.”
“He painted some wonderful women,” the Colonel said.
“If I had a joint or a roadhouse or some sort of an inn, say, I could use one of those,” the driver said. “But if I brought home a picture of some woman, my old woman would run me from Rawlins to Buffalo. I’d be lucky if I got to Buffalo.”
“You could give it to the local museum.”
“All they got in the local museum is arrow heads, war bonnets, scalping knives, different scalps, petrified fish, pipes of peace, photographs of Liver Eating Johnston, and the skin of some bad man that they hanged him and some doctor skinned him out. One of those women pictures would be out of place there.”
“See that next campanile down there across the plain?” the Colonel said. “I’ll show you a place down there where we used to fight when I was a kid.”
“Did you fight here, too, sir?”
“Yeah,” the Colonel said.
“Who had Trieste in that war?”
“The Krauts. The Austrians, I mean.”
“Did we ever get it?”
“Not till the end when it was over.”
