"John Dalmas - Farside 1 - The Lion of Farside" - читать интересную книгу автора (Dalmas John)

This book is for
Jerry Simmons and Sarge Gerbode
and for the
Spokane Word Weavers
My thanks to (alphabetically) Eileen Brady, Mary Jane Engh, Jim Glass and David Palter, for their
perceptive critiques. And most especially to Hank Davis at Baen Books, for a critique which will prove
of lasting value to me as a writer.




PART 1: To Waken The Lion
1: Varia
None of my family knew where Aunt Varia really came from. Evansville, we figured—that's what she'd
let on. Uncle Will had met her at Salem, at the Washington County Fair, and it was love at first sight, he
told me once. For him, anyway. "And at second sight and third," laughing when he said it. He claimed she
was the best wife a man ever had.

Sometimes she seemed a bit peculiar, but of course she wasn't the only peculiar one in Washington
County. Not even the only peculiar Macurdy. Fact is, she had to be a little strange to have married Will.
For one thing, from his eighteenth birthday on, the only time he stuck his nose inside church was for his
own wedding. Unless you count his funeral, and I don't think he had any nose then. Of course, Ma and
Gramma were the only ones in the family that were really churchy; most of us were semi-churchy.

Plus he'd get strange notions from time to time. One time Max tells about, before Varia came on the
scene, he and Will were helping Dick Fenton butcher steers, and Will caught some hot blood in a tin cup
and drank it down like milk. Said it was good for the muscles and glands. Dick said considering how Will
didn't have any girl friend, his glands weren't doing him much good anyway, unless he was servicing the
livestock. Strong as the Macurdies are, especially Will, we had a reputation as easy going, which no
doubt was why Dick figured he could get away with saying that. But just then Will took another notion:
He punched Dick right between the eyes, which also broke his nose.

But whenever the family gathered on a holiday, or Ma and Gramma would be feeding a harvest crew,
Aunt Varia would be in Ma's big kitchen, or sometimes Julie's in later years, helping do the things women
do when a big feed is getting fixed. Fact is, Gramma and Ma both said Varia was a magician in the
kitchen. And she was always easy to get along with. When folks were gathered around the table or in the
sitting room, Varia would sit there not saying much. Not shy; only quiet and watchful. She'd just sit there,
the really really pretty one, listening and smiling.

She had two smiles, actually. The usual one was purely friendly and cheerful, but the other one, which I'd
only see now and then, seemed kind of spooky to me. As if she knew things other people didn't, and
sometimes I wondered what they might be.

I wasn't the only one. I remember Ma saying once she wondered what Varia thought about behind those
peculiar eyes. Not the Bible, she'd bet; Aunt Varia didn't go to church any more'n Will did. She did read
a lot of books, though. Library books about history and science, Will said. I remember once he laughed
and said that if he died, she could go off to Bloomington and be a professor, after all she'd read. He told
me she'd even read Darwin's book on evolution, but not to tell Ma or Gramma or he'd kill me.