"Robert A. Heinlein - Between Planets" - читать интересную книгу автора (Heinlein Robert A)

BETWEEN PLANETS -- Robert A. Heinlein -- (1951)

I
NEW MEXICO

"EASY, boy, easy."
Don Harvey reined in the fat little cow pony. Ordinarily Lazy lived up to his
name; today he seemed to want to go places. Don hardly blamed him. It was such
a day as comes only to New Mexico, with sky scrubbed clean by a passing
shower, the ground already dry but with a piece of rainbow still hanging in
the distance. The sky was too blue, the buttes too rosy, and the far reaches
too sharp to be quite convincing. Incredible peace hung over the land and with
it a breathless expectancy of something wonderful about to happen.
"We've got all day," he cautioned Lazy, "so don't get yourself in a lather.
That's a stiff climb ahead." Don was riding alone because he had decked out
Lazy in a magnificent Mexican saddle his parents had ordered sent to him for
his birthday. It was a beautiful thing, as gaudy with silver as an Indian
buck, but it was as out of place at the ranch school he attended as formal
clothes at a branding -- a point which his parents had not realized. Don was
proud of it, but the other boys rode plain stock saddles; they kidded him
unmercifully and had turned "Donald James Harvey" into "Don Jaime" when he
first appeared with it.
Lazy suddenly shied. Don glanced around, spotted the cause, whipped out his
gun, and fired. He then dismounted, throwing the reins forward so that Lazy
would stand, and examined his work. In the shadow of a rock a fair-sized
snake, seven rattles on its tail, was still twitching. Its head lay by it,
burned off. Don decided not to save the rattles; had he pinpointed the head he
would have taken it in to show his marksmanship. As it was, he had been
forced, to slice sidewise with the beam before he got it. If he brought in a
snake killed in such a clumsy fashion someone would be sure to ask him why he
hadn't used a garden hose.
He let it lie and remounted while talking to Lazy. "Just a no-good old
sidewinder," he said reassuringly. "More scared of you than you were of it."
He clucked and they started off. A few hundred yards further on Lazy shied
again, not from a snake this time but from an unexpected noise. Don pulled him
in and spoke severely. "You bird-brained butterball! When are you going to
learn not to jump when the telephone rings?"
Lazy twitched his shoulder muscles and snorted. Don reached for the pommel,
removed the phone, and answered.
"Mobile 6-J-233309, Don Harvey speaking."
"Mr. Reeves, Don," came back the voice of -- the headmaster of Ranchito
Alegre. "Where are you?"
"Headed up Peddler's Grave Mesa, sir."
"Get home as quickly as you can."
"Uh, what's up, sir?"
"Radiogram from your parents. I'll send the copter out for you if the cook is
back-with someone to bring your horse in."
Don hesitated. He didn't want just anybody to ride Lazy, like as not getting
him overheated and failing to cool him off. On the other hand a radio from his
folks could not help but be important. His parents were on Mars and his mother