"Kenneth Robeson - Doc Savage 101 - The Green Eagle" - читать интересную книгу автора (Robeson Kenneth)

The sheriff looked over the scene briefly. He told the coroner, "I guess it’s just a job for you, Henry."
The coroner nodded. He had two saddlebags full of instruments. "If you people have weak stomachs,
you better go off where you can’t see," he said.

D’Orr demanded in an astonished voice, "Don’t you have to have some kind of legal paper before you
perform an autopsy?"

"This ain’t no autopsy," the coroner said. "This is just an examination."

The sun had fallen low in the west, so that jagged hills threw long shadows. The shadows were gloomy
and cold. At this altitude, the days were hot and the nights astonishingly cold.

Ben Duck rode up in the twilight. Dust had caked on the flanks of his pinto. Ben looked tired.

"Well?" he asked the sheriff.

"Hello, Ben," the sheriff said. "Henry here"—he nodded toward the coroner—"is just finishing up."

"I’ll tell you what he died of in a minute," the coroner said, and went on working.

Ben slid off Patches and loosened the cinches. The pony hung his head and pulled at a tuft of buffalo
grass without enthusiasm.

"Ben, did you backtrack him very far?" the sheriff asked.

"Bout five miles," Ben Duck explained. "Then I lost the trail. He come across those lava beds south of
here, where nobody on earth could track him."

"Would a bloodhound do any good?"

"I doubt it," Ben said. "A bloodhound is all right where there is a little moisture to hold the scent. But the
sun would bake the trail right off that lava."

D’Orr said abruptly, "It seems foolish to me to waste time trying to find the poor fellow’s back trail."

Ben looked at him. "Does it?" he said dryly.

The coroner straightened. He wiped his hands on an old undershirt he was using for a towel. "Starvation
and thirst," he said. "That’s what killed him."

Ben stared at him. "Starvation and thirst?"

"Uh-huh. He ain’t had either food or water for two weeks, I should judge. He had some grass and cactus
meat in his stomach, and something I think was a ground squirrel or a rat. He had eaten some dirt, too."

"Dirt?"

"They eat dirt in the advance stages of starvation," the coroner explained.