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

her brother."

Men swore as the road dissolved into a wallow of
lacy hemlocks where black flies swarmed. The party
hopped over puddles and tripped over knobby roots,
dancing as they slapped and swatted. It was four
miles yet to the village when a choked cry rang from
the front. "Good lord! It's -- Elias Somers!"

White-faced villagers stumbled backwards. A boy
turned from the trail to be sick. Paul cursed. Joseph
shouldered to the fore and learned what the lone
wolf had feasted upon.

Elias Somers sprawled in the road in two halves.
Ribs and backbone shone white where the wolf had
scavenged organs and cracked bones for marrow.
His blood-smeared musket and hunting tackle lay
scattered about. A porcupine had gnawed the
musket grip for the salt-sweat.

Despite a lifetime of butchering livestock and game,
these hardened pioneers swore and prayed as they
swatted flies. Yet Joseph squatted over the remains
and opened his clasp knife. Propped by his musket,
Opechee scooched to watch.

"For chrissake, Joe," Mister Hopkins growled, "don't
muck about with your eternal questions. It ain't right
to desecrate a body."

"`The physicist is a ripper-up of natural bodies and
of nature.'" The student poked the ribs into order.
"We needs determine what killed him."

"What?" barked several. "It's pretty damned
obvious! The wolf et him!"

Squinting in black flies, Joseph plied his knife. "No,
sir. A starving pack may pull down a man, but a lone
wolf would never attack a man in full fettle,
especially one with a gun." He repeated this to
Opechee in Algonquin.
The Indian grunted neither yes nor no. "Perhaps the
man set his gun aside to relieve himself. Or tripped
and struck his head. Malsum might risk attack then.
He is hungry after a long winter. Perhaps he smelt
the gun was empty."

"Indians, likely." A man looked sidelong at Opechee.