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

was not of the night, and not of the desert. She knew the sound because she had heard
it many times before when she herself rode in the desert ... it was the brush of
cedar against a saddle . . . a rustle of sound she recognized at once.
The mysterious rider came up out of the lower draw and was for a moment or two outlined
sharply against the night sky, and then the horse walked into the open not far from
her.
Poised . . . half-frightened, she waited, fearing to move because he might hear the
slightest sound, but aware of something in the approaching figure that warned her
of an equal awareness in him.
The rider came toward her and then turned slightly to the right and stopped, not
fifty feet away from her. From where she stood he was partially in silhouette, a
big, fine figure of a man on a splendidly built horse.
She knew she was invisible to him, for more than once she had stood where he stood
and had been unable to see Adam standing where she now stood. Yet the rider had stopped.
Did he guess her presence? How could he? He had seemed to be searching for something,
coming on slowly as he had, and there was no trail he could be following here unless
it was some intangible trail, some sense of things in the night that drew him on.
It could not have been smoke from the evening fire, for that would be out now ...
unless some lingering aroma of it still hung in the air. The canyon had a way of
drawing smoke back up along its length and up the flank of the mountain, and none
of them had ever detected smoke in this place.
Yet the rider made no move to ride on. She heard the faintest rustle of paper and
knew he was rolling a smoke. She
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TAGGART 41 heard a match strike, and caught only a brief glimpse of a strongly cut
face in the brief flare of the match cupped in his hands. He drew deep on the cigarette
and she saw the end glow like a firefly in the night.
Who was he? What was he? Why had he stopped at this place?
He was without doubt the rider they had seen earlier when he crossed the Salt River
north of them, but where had he been in the meantime, and why was he here?
She dared not move, for she knew he would hear the slightest sound. Nor did she wish
to leave, for there was some intangible awareness of each other that held her still,
breathless and waiting in the night.
She saw him remove his hat and run his fingers through his hair. His horse stamped
impatiently, eager to be moving, and when he shifted his weight in the saddle, the
leather creaked. Suddenly she felt a wild desire to speak out, to question him, to
find who he was and where he was going, but most of all, why he had stopped here.
Yet she was hesitant to speak or to move for fear that the slightest sound or movement
would shatter the moment's spell and leave her with nothing. As long as they both
were silent, the intangible communion between them existed, and he remained for her
the stuff of dreams.
In the darkness, unknown as he was, she could clothe him with what personality she
would. He could be anyone ... the lover she had so long desired, the unknown rider
that she had known would come sometime, the man who would see her for what she was,
who would know her, and want her for his own.
In reality, he might be an outlaw, a thief, a murderer. He might be a renegade white
man living among Apaches; and if he was any of these things, to disclose her presence
here would be to place herself in jeopardy, and not only herself but Consuelo and
Adam.
Yet in the night's vast quiet there was between them this