"l'amour, louis - the first fast draw" - читать интересную книгу автора (L'Amour Louis)

or bird, for these were sounds I knew and had known since

childhood.

It was a rider coming, maybe two, and nobody I wanted to see, but that was why I'd put together my lean-to back over the knoll and hid down deep among the rain-wet trees.

This was a rider coming and I could only hope the rain had left no trail they could find, for if trouble was to come to me here, I wanted it to wait, at least until I had walked the old path to the well again, and seen where Pa was

buried. »

Standing there like that with the rain dripping down, me in my shabby homespun, wore-out clothes, I tried to figure if there was anybody hereabouts beyond a few Caddos whom I could call friend. I couldn't think of

anybody.

For a long time then there was no other sound but the rain, a whisper of rain falling among the leaves, and a far-off stirring of wind. And then I heard that sound again.

Behind me the raw-boned mule lifted his head and pricked his ears against the sound, so it wasn't only me heard the sound. No matter, the buckskin mule was ga'nted some and it would be a few days of rest he'd need before I could move on anyway, and maybe I just wasn't feeling right to move at all. Maybe I had come home to stay . . . whether they liked it or not.

Rising, I could just see across the top of the knoll is the forest, and the place I'd chosen to camp commanded a view of the trail at intervals along its course through the

swamp woods.

When at last they came in sight there were two riders and they rode as tired men ride, and there was that about them that was somehow familiar. Maybe it was only thai they were mighty near as shabby as me, unkempt and lonely as me.

r

THE FIRST FAST DRAW

Two riders walking their horses, two riders hunting something. That something could be me.

My Spencer carbine was behind me and so I reached s hand back for it and pulled it close against my side foi shelter from the rain. It was a new Spencer, caliber .56 and she carried seven shots—I'd picked it off a dead mar up hi the Nation. A brand-new, spanking-new, mighty slid piece of shooting iron.

Right there I stood with no notion of moving. Place ] stood was a hidden place where a body might pass withir six feet and never see it was there. Man like me, in unfriendly country, he can't be too careful. These past yean I had seen almost nothing but unfriendly country. Maybe it was my own fault, for I was a man rode careful and whe kept a gun to hand.

When I saw them first through the farthest gap in the trees, Fd seen nothing but a couple of men hunched it their saddles, one wearing a ragged poncho, the other i gray Confederate greatcoat

A moment only, a glimpse, and then they were gone from sight among the trees that lined the trail below, but ai the nearest point they would be no more than thirty yards away. So I waited where I was, trusting not to be seen, but keeping the Spencer to hand in case of trouble.

This was a place I knew, an arm of the swamp tc protect my right flank, an almost impassable thicket oi brush on my left, and the main swamp close in behind me, There was a trail came from the swamp into the tree! behind me, but anyone using that trail was likely to be i Caddo or someone as averse to trouble as myself.

The brush on my left could be got through, no question of that, but not without a sight more noise than anybodj was likely to make, coming easy to a strange camp.

The people of this northeast corner of Texas had noi liked me before, and with times what they were they hac

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4 LOUIS L'AMOUR

no reason to be friendly. The War between the States was' just over a few days past, and it was a wary time for strangers,