"ROWDY RIDES TO GLORY" - читать интересную книгу автора (L'Amour Louis)

She was tall, slender, yet beautifully built. He wondered instantly who she was.
He had never seen her before. Her dark hair was drawn to a loose knot at the nape
of her neck, and her eyes were big and dark. She was riding a splendid palomino mare,
with an old-fashioned Spanish-type saddle.
He swept off his hat and she flashed a quick smile at him. "You are Rowdy Horn?"
she inquired.
"That's right, ma'am, but you've sure got the best of me. I thought I knew every
girl in this country, and especially all of the pretty ones, but I see I don't."
She laughed. "You wouldn't know me," she said sharply. "I'm Vaho Rainey."
His interest quickened. The whole South Rim country knew about this girl, but she
had never been seen around Aragon. The daughter of French and Irish parents, she
had been left an orphan when little more than a baby, and brought up by old Cleetus,
a wealthy Navaho chieftain. When she was fourteen she had been sent to a convent
in New Orleans, and after that had spent some time in New York and Boston before
returning to the great old stone house where Cleetus lived.
"Welcome to the Slash Bar," Rowdy said, smiling. "I met old Cleetus once. He's quite
a character." He grinned ruefully. "He sure made a fool out of me, one time."
He told her how the old Indian had come to his cabin one miserable wintry night,
half frozen and with a broken wrist. His horse had fallen on the ice. Rowdy had not
known who he was just any old buck, he had thought-but he had put Cleetus to bed,
set the broken bone, and nursed the old man through the blizzard. Returning to the
cabin one day after the storm, he had found the old man gone, and with him a buck
skin horse. While the old man was still sick, Rowdy had offered him a blanket and
food when he left. These Cleetus had taken.
Over a year later, Rowdy Horn had discovered, quite by accident, the identity of
the old man he had befriended. And he had learned that Cleetus was one of the wealthiest
sheepmen among the Navahos, and one of the first to introduce Angora goats into the
lonely desert land where he lived.
Vaho laughed merrily when she heard the story.
"That's like him. So like him. Did he ever return the horse?"
6
"No," Rowdy said drily, "he didn't. That was a good horse, too. "
"He's a strange man, Rowdy," she said. He was glad, some how, that Vaho did not stand
on ceremony. He liked hearing her call him by his first name.
"Maybe he could use a good man with his flocks," Rowdy suggested, a little bitterly.
"I'm sure going to be hunting a job soon.,,
She looked at him quickly. "But you have this ranch? Is that not enough?"
Rowdy did not know just why he had an impulse to tell this girl, a stranger, his
trouble-but he did.
7
`hrugging, Rowdy explained and Vaho Rainey listened at tentively, watching him with
her wide dark eyes. She frowned thoughtfully at the receding water.
"There must be a reason for this," she said. "There has always been water here. Never
in the memory of the Navaho has this water hole been so low."
"Sure, there's a reason," Rowdy said glumly, "but what is it? Maybe there's somebody
takin' water before it gets to this pool, but who and where? I always figured this
water came off the Rim, somewhere."
"Or from under it," Vaho said thoughtfully.
That remark made no impression on Rowdy at the moment, although he did recall it
later, and wondered what she had meant. Right now, his interest in this tall, dark