"Clayton Emery - Joseph Fisher - Inwardly Ravening Wolves" - читать интересную книгу автора (Emery Clayton)

Macintosh spat. "Let the wolves have 'im!"

Paul turned to his friend, but Joseph had already
started on their backtrail. Rob Macintosh and three
more villagers followed. Paul tilted branches aside
with his musket, but they snapped back, whisked off
his tricorn, scratched his face. "Bloody wonderful.
Off to a fine start."

Consumptive or not, Joseph tracked at a dogtrot,
skirting hemlocks on a winding trail no wider than a
deer's flanks. The colonists puffed after flicking
branches and the gray of Joseph's socks. As the
ground became bony, he trod silently from root to
root and slid under dead branches, while the
Mainers thrashed and clawed sweat and bugs and
evergreen needles from their faces.

A quarter-mile on, they left low ground and entered
climax forest. Two-hundred foot pines with nothing
growing below made a cathedral of green-filtered
light cold as firefly glow. Their footsteps were
muffled by moss and shed needles.

Paul jogged up, "Joe, you're queer as a -- six-legged
cat! One minute -- you're half-asleep, the next --
you're shooting along -- like grain through a goose!
Can we rest?"

Joseph nodded, squatted on his heels with
Opechee's musket, watched the forest in all
directions, including up and down. Pine mist soothed
his aching lungs. After the death, the Mainers were
wary, and spread out with levelled muskets.
Tobacco chewers spat often. Joseph thought the
chance of ambush slim where the line of sight was
furlongs, not like back amidst the tight-knit
hemlocks, but said nothing. Rob Macintosh stalked
ahead to track the wolf.

"That bloody Macintosh! Boils me like a lobster! And
lies like a gypsy, the bastard! I'd believe a dead
skunk over him!" Paul squatted, grunting. "You
know how to handle that trade gun? Looks French."

"Dutch."

"Hunh? How d'ya know that?"

"The design is from Tulle, a fusil de chasse, but the