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

"The forest seems safer than the London streets, William, and there is land for
the taking—forests, meadows, and lakes. And there is game."
"Poaching?"
I smiled. "There are no lords there to bespeak the deer or the hare, William.
There is enough for all. I shall take seed to be planted, William, and tools for
working the land and cutting down the forest I shall build what I need. My hands
are fanning with tools, and necessity will add to their skill."
He shook his head, slowly. "No, Barnabas, it is for you to do this. I have not
the courage to risk all upon a chance. My own land is here. I shall plough my
own acres, sleep in my own cot."
"I wonder what it is?" I said. "I wonder what chooses between us, that I go and
you stay? Our situations are not too different, one from the other, nor is one
less or more the man than the other, it is only that we are different."
He nodded. "I have thought much upon this, Barnabas, and asked of myself the
reasons. I do not know. Perhaps it is something in the blood of each of us that
you go out upon the sea and I cling to my small holding here.
"You will allow me to say I think it a foolish thing you do? What will you do
for drink, Barnabas?"
"I will drink water."
"Water? But water is not fit for men to drink. For the cattle, for birds and
beasts, but a man needs ale ... or wine, if you are a Frenchman."
"The water of the new world is wine to me, William. I ask no more. The water of
the streams is cold and clear."
And so we parted, we two who were friends but strangers, we whose paths would
diverge, yet cling. As he waved good-bye from the island, I thought there was a
little of wistfulness in his face. Perhaps something deep within him longed to
follow me to the far lands. But that may have been my own pride in what I was,
and where I was going.

The route we took to London must be roundabout. I decided upon Thorney. It was a
lovely fenland village, a place I'd loved since boyhood when my father had told
me stories of Hereward the Wake, the last man to hold out against William the
Conqueror. Thorney had been one of the last places he defended. From here I
would ride on to Cambridge, and then London.
So easily made are the plans of men! We poled our clumsy craft down the watery
lane, reeds and willows tall about us. The dawn light lay gray-gold with the sun
and mist upon the fens, and around us there was no sound or movement but the
ripples of water around our hull and the small, ultimate sounds of morning birds
among the leaves. My horse had no liking for the scow, and the uncertain footing
worried him, yet the craft was strong if not swift.
Seated in the stern, I turned my eyes ever and anon toward our wake, but there
was no sign of pursuit. Nonetheless, I was uneasy. It disturbed me that I knew
not my enemies, for these were no common thief-takers. There was motive here.
Well ... soon I would be abroad upon the seas, and if they wished they might
follow me to Virginia and to those blue mountains that haunted my days and
nights with their unfathomable promise and mystery.
Unfathomable? No. For I would go there. I would walk the dark aisles of their
forests, drink from their streams, challenge their dangers.
The last shadows wilted away to conceal themselves shyly among the reeds and
under the overhanging branches to wait the courage that night would bring them.