"Ken Rand - Calamity Djinn" - читать интересную книгу автора (Rand Ken)

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Calamity tore up the petticoat she'd got a few days before from a Mormon pushcart company that had
been led astray—too far north—by a drunken so-called guide named Big Nose Jack. Calamity beat the
tar out of Jack, sent him on his way mostly still alive, and redirected the company back onto the Lander
Cutoff, where they were supposed to be. In reward, one of the three women in the company—the one
as tiny as Calamity—traded her, in secret, the petticoat for a pint of whiskey.

Calamity wanted the lacy white undergarment for her wedding night. Which she hoped to enjoy right
soon with her beloved Butch.

Truth be told, she envied those Mormon women. Nine kids, she'd counted, among them. And one
woman heavy with number ten.

She'd have children of her own, too—soon—by God, and by Butch Parker.

As soon as he regained consciousness.

Now the petticoat was tattered, bloody. Its cedarwood scent had been lost. She used it to staunch the
blood gushing from Butch's head and bandage the wound. The blood stopped by noon, and he'd rested
until sundown, and beyond, slipping in and out of consciousness.

He moaned a lot and cussed some when he woke up, but Calamity figured he'd live.

She gave him whiskey—from his parfleche, not hers—when his bellyaching got too loud. By midnight,
he'd quieted down some but not much, so Calamity concocted a poultice made from boiled Jimsonweed
she found near the creek that bordered the meadow.

She stayed up through the night, smoking her corncob pipe, stoking the fire, tossing rocks at the
occasional nosy coyote, and swearing to God and the goddam Great Spirit that if Butch was still alive
come morning, she was going to kill him for scaring her so.

"I almost blew your head off, you damn fool,” she said. “Can't hardly marry me a corpse, now can I,
huh?"

Butch snorted under the buffalo robe Calamity had tossed over him to help keep out the chill. She had
hoped they'd both be under that robe this very night, snuggled together, enjoying the bonds of holy
matrimony, but—

Preacher Avery Morgan ministered to the good folk of Three Pines, white and Indian, a half days hike
southwest, over on the west bank of the Green where they had a ferry. Calamity could have been Mrs.
Parker by now, but no.

Butch snorted loud and Calamity knelt at his side. “What?” she said.

"I don't feel so good,” he said.

"There, there.” Calamity stroked Butch's stringy beard with her tiny fingers, remembering her mother
gently touching her cheek the same way that long ago, back in Missouri when she'd come down with the
chicken pox. “There, there,” her mother had said. Just like Calamity did now.