"Children's Books - Steinbeck, John - The Red Pony" - читать интересную книгу автора (Children's Books)

dogs trotted around the house corner hunching their
shoulders and grinning horribly with pleasure. Jody pat-
ted their heads-Doubletree Mutt with the big thick tail
and yellow eyes, and Smasher, the shepherd, who had
killed a coyote and lost an ear in doing it. Smasher's one
good ear stood up higher than a collie's ear should. Billy
Buck said that always happened. After the frenzied greet-
ing the dogs lowered their noses to the ground in a
businesslike way and went ahead, looking back now and
then to make sure that the boy was coming. They walked
up through the chicken yard and saw the quail eating
with the chickens. Smasher chased the chickens a little to
keep in practice in case there should ever be sheep to
herd. Jody continued on through the large vegetable
patch where the green corn was higher than his head.
5
John Steinbeck
The cow-pumpkins were green and small yet. He went
on to the sagebrush line where the cold spring ran out
of its pipe and fell into a round wooden tub. He leaned
over and drank close to the green mossy wood where the
water tasted best. Then he turned and looked back on
the ranch, on the low, whitewashed house girded with
red geraniums, and on the long bunkhouse by the cypress
tree where Billy Buck lived alone. Jody could see the
great black kettle under the cypress tree. That was where
the pigs were scalded. The sun was coming over the ridge
now, glaring on the whitewash of the houses and barns,
making the wet grass blaze softly. Behind him, in the tall
sagebrush, the birds were scampering on the ground,
making a great noise among the dry leaves; the squirrels
piped shrilly on the side-hills. Jody looked along at the
farm buildings. He felt an uncertainty in the air, a feel-
ing of change and of loss and of the gain of new and un-
familiar things. Over the hillside two big black buzzards
sailed low to the ground and their shadows slipped
smoothly and quickly ahead of them. Some animal had
died in the vicinity. Jody knew it. It might be a cow or it
might be the remains of a rabbit. The buzzards over-
looked nothing. Jody hated them as all decent things
hate them, but they could not be hurt because they made
away with carrion.
After a while, the boy sauntered down hill again. The
dogs had long ago given him up and gone into the brush
to do things in their own way. Back through the vegetable
garden he went, and he paused for a moment to smash a
green muskmelon with his heel, but he was not happy
about it. It was a bad thing to do, he knew perfectly well.
He kicked dirt over the ruined melon to conceal it.
Back at the house his mother bent over his rough