"TAGGART" - читать интересную книгу автора (L'Amour Louis)

It was a risky thing to try, and he would need food, which meant either trapping
or shooting game, and shooting was likely to attract Apaches. He must find a place
with water for himself and grass for the gelding.
When half an hour had gone by he rolled and lighted a cigarette to still the gnawing
of hunger. Hunger, however, was not new to him, and he was not a man who pampered
himself.
When a full hour had passed he climbed to the rim of the arroyo and sat among the
rocks to study the country. There should be springs somewhere around the mountain
to the east, which was Rockinstraw, for run-off water had a way of coming to the
surface. Any spring would be a danger, for the Apaches were almost sure to know of
it and visit it from time to time.
As he started to rise, a rabbit jumped up and he seized a rock . . . the rabbit was
gone. Probably couldn't have hit it, anyway. He had never been much good at throwing
things ... except lead once in a while.
The Apaches had gone off to the south. His own way led to the east, so he mounted
and started on.
Desert though it was, the country was brushy. There was prickly pear, pin oak, and
a variety of desert growth, so that a man riding slowly to raise no dust, and taking
advantage of the brush and juniper, could keep under cover at least half the time.
With Rockinstraw Mountain looming ahead of him, he worked his way slowly across country,
stopping frequently, constantly aware of danger from Apaches, but equally ready to
observe the slight touch of green that might mean a spring or small seep.
Ahead of him in a canyon bottom was a heavy stand of brush, and pushing up to it,
he noticed that some of the brush was dead. He paused, studying the situation. What
it was that first arrested his attention he did not know, and anyone riding less
cautiously than he would have noticed nothing, but something about the area disturbed
him.
33
TAGGART 29 The patch of thick brush lay in the shallow opening of the
canyon, and Taggart skirted the brush warily, trying to decide what it was that bothered
him. Dismounting, he walked into the brush leading his horse. Glancing from time
to time at the steeldust, he noticed nothing. If there was anything alive around,
the horse was as unaware of it as he himself.
His eye caught the abrasion before his attention came to a focus on it. He had taken
a step past when he suddenly became aware of what he had seen, and turning back he
looked again.
The trunk of a twisted mesquite tree had been bruised by some heavy object. Nor was
the bruise in such a place that it might have been caused by a horse's hoof . . .
the abrasion was higher, but not fresh. He studied it, knowing that his life now
hung precariously and any slight mistake could mean its end.
Squatting, he turned his head and looked around, and so it was that he saw the wheel.
It was a wagon wheel, almost entirely concealed in brush, but beyond it there was
another wheel. Ducking under the brush, crawling on his knees, he reached the wagon.
A wagon concealed in such a manner meant that whoever concealed it meant to find
it again, but intended that it should not be found by anyone else. How anybody had
gotten a wagon this far was more than he could conceive, yet the wagon was here.
The presence of a wagon must mean the presence of men. He studied the bottom of the
wagon as much as he could in the concealing brush. There were some threads that must
have come from burlap sacking ... and caught on a sliver of the wagon-board was a
cotten thread. He scowled ... from a woman's skirt? It seemed ridiculous, and yet