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

but suddenly he was so peaceful it worried me.
"You better hunt yourself a hole before he comes out of it," Fetterson said.
"He'll stretch your hide."
By that time I had my pants on and was stamping into my boots. Believe me, I
sure hate to face up to trouble with no pants on, and no boots. So I slung my
gun belt and settled my holster into place. "You tell him to draw his pay and
rattle his hocks out of here. I ain't hunting trouble, but he's pushing, mighty
pushing."
The three of us walked across to the Drovers' Cottage for a meal, and the first
thing we saw was Orrin setting down close to that blond girl and she was looking
at him like he was money from home. But that was the least of it. Her father was
setting there listening himself ... leave it to Orrin and that Welsh-talking
tongue of his. He could talk a squirrel right out of a walnut tree ... I never
saw the like.
The three of us sat down to a good meal and we talked up a storm about that
country to the west, and the wild cattle, and how much a man could make if he
could keep Comanches, Kiowas, or Utes from lifting his hair.
Seemed strange to be sitting at a table. We were all so used to setting on the
ground that we felt awkward with a white cloth and all. Out on the range a man
ate with his hunting knife and what he could swab up with a chunk of bread.
That night Mr. Belden paid us off in the hotel office, and one by one we stepped
up for our money. You've got to remember that neither Orrin or me had ever had
twenty-five dollars of cash money in our lives before. In the mountains a man
mostly swapped for what he needed, and clothes were homespun.
Our wages were twenty-five dollars a month and Orrin and me had two months and
part of a third coming. Only when he came to me, Mr. Belden put down his pen and
sat back in his chair.
"Tye," he said, "there's a prisoner here who is being held for the United States
Marshal. Brought in this morning. His name is Aiken, and he was riding with Back
Rand the day you met them out on the prairie."
"Yes, sir."
"I had a talk with Aiken, and he told me that if it hadn't been for you Back
Rand would have taken my herd . . or tried to. It seems, from what he said, that
you saved my herd or saved us a nasty fight and a stampede where I was sure to
lose cattle. It seems this Aiken knew all about you Sacketts and he told Rand
enough so that Rand didn't want to call your bluff. I'm not an ungrateful man,
Tye, so I'm adding two hundred dollars to your wages."
Two hundred dollars was a sight of money, those days, cash money being a shy
thing.
When we walked out on the porch of the Drovers' Cottage, there were three wagons
coming up the trail, and three more behind them. The first three were army
ambulances surrounded by a dozen Mexicans in fringed buckskin suits and wide
Mexican sombreros. There were another dozen riding around the three freight
wagons following, and we'd never seen the like.
Their jackets were short, only to the waist, and their pants flared out at the
bottom and fitted like a glove along the thighs. Their spurs had rowels like
mill wheels on them, and they all had spanking-new rifles and pistols. They wore
colored silk sashes like some of those Texas cowhands wore, and they were all
slicked out like some kind of a show.
Horses? Mister, you should see such horses! Every one clean-limbed and quick,