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

Back then, Calamity had no idea what “There, there,” meant, but it worked. It didn't work now.

Butch's eyes popped wide, wild sparks in the whites reflected from the campfire light, as he raised up on
his shoulders, stout arms twitching, spastic.
"What, Butch? What?"

Butch sighed, relaxed, and closed his eyes.

And died.

It took Calamity a few minutes to get her mind around Butch's new condition. The poultice hadn't helped.
Her tender ministrations hadn't helped. “There, there,” hadn't helped either.

"Well goddam you, Butch Parker, anyways."

Crickets churruped, and a coyote howled.

The night smelled of burnt sagewood, old blood, and tobacco. And Butch.

A comet passed among the stars.

Nobody saw Calamity Djinn cry. She cried till dawn.
****
The creekbank ground a hundred yards away afforded better digging, so Calamity decided to bury Butch
there. She dug with her hatchet, and her toad sticker, and a good pole she found, and with her fingers.
She dug without let up, wanting to be sure Butch was deep enough that no goddam coyote dug him up.
She dug as the sun rose above the Winds, sweat soaking her buckskins, making her stink and itch.

Then she rolled Butch's huge corpse onto a makeshift travois—he was still wrapped in her buffalo
robe—and tied it down with rawhide rope. She dragged the contraption across the grassy meadow to
the grave.

Beside the hole, she caught her breath before speaking. “I ain't said a prayer in thirty—I mean
twenty-nine—years. Sorry, Lord. Been too busy, I reckon, to pay you no social calls.” She sniffled, and
blew her nose on her sleeve.

"But I expect you know all that, about me, about the beaver trade going to the dogs in these parts—hell,
fifteen years ago, and more—about me wanting to settle, have kids. About this here miserable, no good,
ornery, son-of-a-bitch—"

She anchored fists on narrow hips and addressed the Winds, as if God lived there, and could hear her
from where she stood a good four days west.

"Well, never mind. This here's Butch Parker, and maybe he never amounted to much—I guess you
know—but I loved him anyway. I—I—"

She burst out crying again.

Wiping away tears, she undid the ropes that secured the robe-clad corpse to the travois, and heaved
Butch toward his grave.