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

and mules.
Consuelo stepped from the door when Miriam and Adam came down from the moutain. She
held a rifle in her hand. "Somebody comes?" she asked.
"Apaches," Miriam said. "And a white man."
Consuelo laughed. "It is Tom Sanifer. He comes for me, just like he said."
"Then he'd better watch his hair," Adam replied dryly. "He's in a fair way to lose
it."
"He will come. You see. Tom Sanifer loves me."
Adam placed his rifle beside the door and dipped a gourd
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dipper into the wooden bucket beside the door. He looked across it at his wife. "And
you'd go?"
She returned his look mockingly. "Who knows? Maybe you keel him. Maybe he keel you,
and then I must go with him." "I think you'll stay," Adam said quietly.
"Here?" Her temper flared. "You think I like this place? You think this is good place
for woman? Just give me one chance and I go ... queeck!"
She took her rifle and walked to the mouth of the canyon to keep watch while Miriam
and Adam ate. When Adam had finished he lighted his pipe and, taking his rifle, went
out to relieve Consuelo.
She came back, and began the work of cleaning up while Miriam went on with her meal.
As she ate, she read from one of their carefully hoarded books.
Consuelo stared at her. "Always you read . . . you no want a man, you want a book.
You want even to sleep with a book!" "It might be better than some men," Miriam replied
dryly. "And you don't have to wash socks for a book."
When she had finished eating she walked to the end of the canyon. Adam stepped down
from the rocks. "I believe they've gone on," he said, "but we can't be sure."
She went up among the rocks and found her place-a place that allowed her to hear
anyone approaching, yet her own shadow was lost against the blacker shadow of the
rocks.
Night had come while she ate. Darkness lay now like velvet upon the land, and overhead
the sky was midnight blue and scattered with stars, with only an occasional cloud.
She knew the desert night, knew the amazing clarity of it, and all the little sounds
the desert had that belonged to it, and she loved these hours beneath the stars.
They rarely stood watch, and that only when someone had been seen in the vicinity,
and on those occasions they often stood guard most of the night. On one occasion
they stood watch for three days and nights.
When Stark went back and entered the house, Consuelo
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turned to face him. "When we go, Adam? How much longer do we 'ave to stay here?"
"Two months ... a little less or a little more."
"You know what I think? I think we never go. I think we die here in this canyon.
I think so."
"The gold is richer now."
She ignored the comment. "You know what Apache do to man they catch? I have seen
it. They tie him to a cactus with strips of green rawhide, and when it dries it tightens
and pulls the thorns into a man. He dies ... after a long time and much pain. "
"You saw that?"
"I saw ... and what they do to a woman I have seen. Before I was six, I have seen