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

Smoke puffed from the pan, burst from the barrel.
Opechee spun and slammed to the ground. He
kicked, writhed, flung out a hand, but before Joseph
could touch him, the Indian was dead.

Mister Hopkins ripped the warm musket from the
frontiersman's grasp. "Rob, what the hell are you
doing?"
"He killed Elias!" rasped the frontiersman. "Shot him
from ambush! Dead center from behind these
hemlocks!"

Confused and angry words. Paul Hopkins bellowed,
"You got no right to kill that man!"

"He ain't a man!" Macintosh's breath smelt of rum.
"He's an Indian! He murdered Elias!"

"There's murder, all right, and you done it!" Paul
roared back. "That Indian spent the night with us!
He was mild as milk!"

Macintosh shook his head as if at flies. "He must'a
been spyin'! Sent on ahead'a the war party! You was
lucky he didn't unbar the door to let 'em hatchet you
in your sleep! We're at war!"

"He was selling venison and buying ammunition!"
Paul Hopkins spat on the ground. "If Opechee killed
him, he'd'a taken his scalp and musket! But then
walk into town bold as brass? Walkin' the woods's
addled your brain, you Johnny-Come-Lately!"

"You go to hell! You ain't out here watching your
hair! You're locked in a safe-house where you don't
know nothin'!" The frontiersman whipped out a
scalping knife with a staghorn handle.

Thinking he was attacked, Paul trapped the man's
arm in a meaty fist. "Do your worst --"
Macintosh yanked free. "I'm taking his scalp! It'll
fetch twenty pounds in York, same as a wolf tail,
and I aim to have the money for Elias's kin!"

"Be damned to that! You ain't scalpin' no one, you
lousy lying --"

"Look out!" yelled half a dozen.