"Louis L'amour - sackett02 - To The Far Blue Mountains" - читать интересную книгу автора (L'Amour Louis)

"Serve me how?"
He was hidden still, used as were my eyes to darkness, yet now my ears caught
some familiar note, some sound that started memory rising.
"Ah!" It came to me suddenly. "Black Tom Watkins!"
"Aye." He came now from the shadows, "Black Tom it is, and a tired and hungry
man, too."
"How did you know me then? It is a time since last I traveled this road."
"Don't I know that? Yet it is not only I who know of your coming, nor your
friend William, who farms your land. There are others waiting, Barnabas, and
that is why I am here, in the damp and darkness of the forest, hoping to catch
you before you ride unwitting into their company."
"Who? Who waits?"
"I am a wanted man, Barnabas, and the gallows waits for me, but I got free and
was in the tavern yonder studying upon what to do when I heard your name spoken.
Oh, they kept their voices low, but when one has lived in the fens as you and I
... well, I heard them. They wait to lay you by the heels and into Newgate
Prison."
He came a step nearer. "You've enemies, lad. I know naught of them nor their
reasons, but guilty or not they've a Queen's warrant for you, and there's a bit
in it for them if they take you."
A Queen's warrant? Well, it might be. There had been a warrant. Yet who would
know of that and be out to take me? We were a far cry from London town, and it
was an unlikely thing.
"They are at the cottage?" I asked.
"Not them. There's a bit of a tavern only a few minutes down the road, and they
do themselves well there while waiting. From time to time one rides to see if
you are about at the cottage, and I think they have a man in the hedgerow."
"What manner of men are they?"
It was in my mind that my enemy, Captain Nick Bardle of the Jolly Jack, was out
to take me, but he himself was a wanted man, and he'd have no thought of
Newgate.
"A surly lot of rogues by their looks, and led by a tall, dark man with greasy
hair to his shoulders and the movements of a swordsman. He seems the leader, but
there's another who might be. A shorter, wider man ... thicker, too ... and
older somewhat if I am to judge."
My horse was as restive as I. My cottage was less than an hour away ... perhaps
half that, but the night was dark and no landmarks to be made out. My situation
was far from agreeable.
My good friend and business associate, Captain Brian Tempany, was aboard our new
ship, awaiting my return for sailing. It was off to the new lands across the
sea, and for trade with whom we could. And perhaps, for Abigail and me, a home
there.
A Queen's warrant is no subject for jest, even if he who had sworn to it was
dead and the occasion past. The warrant should have been rescinded, but once in
Newgate I might be held for months and no one the wiser.
Once back in London, Captain Tempany might set in motion the moves to have the
warrant rescinded, or my friend Peter Tallis might, but to do that I must first
reach London and their ears.
"Go toward the cottage, Tom, and be sure all is quiet there, and along the hedge
as well. Then come back along the track and meet me. Lay claim to a boat."