"Louis L'amour - sackett06 - The Daybreakers" - читать интересную книгу автора (L'Amour Louis)

when I was wet all over, Reed Carney came out of the saloon. My gun was close by
but my shirt had fallen over it and there was no chance to get a hand on it in a
hurry.
So there I was, naked as a jaybird, standing in a barrel two-thirds full of
water, and there was that trouble-hunting Reed Carney with two or three drinks
under his belt and a grudge under his hat.
It was my move, but it had to be the right move at the right time, and to reach
for that gun would be the wrong thing to do. Somehow I had to get out of that
tub and there I was with soap all over me, in my hair and on my face and
dribbling toward my eyes.
The rinse water was in a bucket close to the barrel so acting mighty unconcerned
I reached down, picked it up, sloshing it over me to wash off that soap.
"Orrin," Carney said, grinning at me, "went to the hotel and it don't seem
hardly right, you in trouble and him not here to stand in front of you."
"Orrin handles his business. I handle mine."
He walked up to within three or four feet of the barrel and there was something
in his eyes I'd not seen before. I knew then he meant to kill me.
"I've been wonderin' about that. I'm curious to see if you can handle your own
affairs without that big brother standing by to pull you out."
The bucket was still about a third full of water and I lifted it to slash it
over me.
There was a kind of nasty, wet look to his eyes and he took a step nearer. "I
don't like you," he said, "and I—" His hand dropped to his gun and I let him
have the rest of that water in the face.
He jumped back and I half-jumped, half-fell out of the barrel just as he blinked
the water away and grabbed iron. His gun was coming up when the bucket's edge
caught him alongside the skull and I felt the whiff of that bullet past my ear.
But that bucket was oak and it was heavy and it laid him out cold.
Inside the saloon there was a scramble of boots, and picking up the flour-sack
towel I began drying off, but I was standing right beside my gun and I had the
shut pulled away from it and easy to my hand it was. If any friends of Carney's
wanted to call the tune I was ready for the dance.
The first man out was a tall, blond man with a narrow, tough face and a twisted
look to his mouth caused by an old scar. He wore his gun tied to his leg and low
down the way some of these fancy gunmen wear them. Cap Rountree was only a step
behind and right off he pulled over to one side and hung a hand near his gun
butt. Tom Sunday fanned out on the other side. Two others ranged up along the
man with the scarred lip.
"What happened?"
"Carney here," I said, "bought himself more than he could pay for."
That blond puncher had been ready to buy himself a piece of any fight there was
left and he was just squaring away when Cap Rountree put in his two-bit's worth.
"We figured you might be troubled, Tye," Cap said in that dry, hard old voice,
"so Tom an' me, we came out to see the sides were even up."
You could feel the change in the air. That blond with the scarred lip—later I
found out his name was Fetterson—he didn't like the situation even a little.
Here I was dead center in front of him, but he and his two partners, they were
framed by Tom Sunday and Cap Rountree.
Fetterson glanced one way and then the other and you could just see his horns
pull in. He'd come through that door sure enough on the prod an' pawin' dust,