"THE RIDER OF THE RUBY HILLS" - читать интересную книгу автора (L'Amour Louis)

that it all had brought him nothing but grief and more riding. Now he was going to
ride for himself, to fight for himself.
His keen dark eyes from under the flat black brim of his hat studied the country
below with a speculative glint. His judgment of terrain would have done credit to
a general, and in his own way Ross Haney was a general. His arrival in the Ruby Valley
country was, in its way, an invasion.
He was a young man with a purpose. He did not want wealth but a ranch, a well-watered
ranch in a good stock country. That his pockets were empty did not worry him, for
he had made up his mind, and as men had discovered before this, Ross Haney with his
mind made up was a force to be reckoned with.
Nor was he riding blind into a strange land. Like a good tactician he had gathered
his information carefully, judged the situation, the terrain, and the enemy before
he began his move.
This was new country to him, but he knew the landmarks and the personalities. He
knew the strength and the weakness of its rulers, knew the economic factors of their
existence, knew the stresses and the strains within it. He knew that he rode into
a valley at war-that blood had been shed and that armed men rode its trails day and
night. Into this land he rode a man alone, determined to have his own from the country,
come what may, letting the chips fall where they might.
With a movement of his body he turned the gelding left down the trail into the pines,
a trail where at this late hour it would soon be dark, a trail somber, majestic in
its stillness under the columned trees.
As he moved under the trees, he removed his hat and rode slowly. It was a good country,
a country where a man could live and grow, and where if he was lucky, he might have
sons to grow tall and straight beside him. This he wanted. He wanted no longer the
far horizons. He wanted his own hearth fire, the creak of his own pump, the heads
of his own horses looking over the gate bars for his hand to feed them. He wanted
peace, and for it he came to a land at war.
A flicker of light caught his eye, and the faint smell of wood smoke. He turned the
gelding toward the fire, and when he was near, he swung down. The sun's last rays
lay bright through the pines upon this spot. The earth was trampled by hoofs, and
in the fire itself the ashes were gray but for one tiny flame that thrust a bright
spear upward from the end of a stick.
Studying the scene, his eyes held for an instant on one place where the parched grass
had been blackened in a perfect ring.
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THE RIDER OF THE RUBY HILLS 5
His eyes glinted with hard humor. "A cinch ring artist. Dropped her there to cool
and she singed the grass. A pretty smooth gent, I'd
say. Not slick enough, of course. A smarter man or a less confident one
would have pulled up that handful of blackened grass and tossed it into the flames.
There had been two men here, his eyes told him. Two men and two horses. One of the
men had been a big man with small feet. The impressions of his feet were deeper and
he had mounted the larger horse.
Curiously, he studied the scene. This was a new country for him and it behooved a
man to know the local customs. He grinned at the thought. If cinch ring branding
was one of the local customs, it was a strange one. In most sections of the country
the activity was frowned upon, to say the least. If an artist was caught pursuing
his calling, he was likely to find himself at the wrong end of a hair rope with nothing
under his feet.