"Mitchell Smith - Snowfal" - читать интересную книгу автора (Smith Mitchell)

"Which you don't think is so?"
"No, I don't think they just came by and wanted the meat. They were waiting for us to come down. I'd say there
are maybe ten, maybe twelve of them, to start this killing trouble." Sam sighed, drew his long knife, and drove it into
the log in front of him so the elk-horn grip was ready to hand.
"They won't rush us," Jim said.
"Not till night."
Olsen's bony face was taut with anger. "It was a Cree moved a branch back there—and you mistook it for William
being clumsy."
"... Yes, I did."
"Your mistake—and likely to get us killed."
"When you're killed, Jim, you come complain about it." Sam crawled over to William. Someone had pulled the
arrow out of him. He gripped William's arm, turned him over, and saw he was dead. His eyes were half-open, shadowed
blue, and his tongue was hanging out of his mouth.
"Oh ... Jesus."
The arrows came in then—one, then two more hissing close over their heads and flicking away into the woods.
Sam and the Olsens bent their bows, looking for targets, but the spruce and hemlock stood so thick around them they
saw only rough tree trunks through dark green boughs, and here and there a narrow beam of fading light on the snow
of the forest floor.
It would soon be difficult to make out a man's shape. More difficult, if he was still. Sam and the Olsens knelt in
silence, waiting for the next arrow.... It came from behind Sam, where Chapman Olsen was watching, and whacked into
one of their guardian logs a foot from Jim's back.
Chapman returned the shot instantly, half rising to clear his bow-tip as he released. A man began to scream from
that direction, then came running, staggering, out of the trees toward the Trappers' shallow fort. He wore his clan's
sewn beast-suit of red fox fur and tail, and was masked in a false fox-head—its muzzle, of painted carved wood,
studded with elks' teeth filed sharp.
The fox-man stumbled and whined. Chapman's shaft had taken him just under his left arm, and was sunk in fox fur
to its feathers. The Cree called out in his language, gargling blood, and reeled first toward the Trappers, then away
from them.
Sam rose to his knees behind the tree trunk and shot the Cree through the heart—the arrow snapping right
through him—and the fox-man fell into the snow and pine needles, kicked, and died.
Then arrows came in like driven snow, sighing over the Trappers' low barricade, or cracking into the frozen logs,
knocking loose little patches of ice and crumbled bark.
Sam and the Olsens kept low and husbanded their arrows. They didn't speak to each other, as if the fighting was
making them too tired to talk.
Soon the sun sank past Mount Alvin. The mountain's shadow leaned over them and the light was almost gone.
The Olsens drew their knives as Sam had done, and stuck them in the snow or the logs in front of them, to be
handy when the Crees came rushing with the dark.
When the tribesmen stopped shooting so much—saving arrows, or settling to wait—Sam leaned back for a
moment to rest his cramped back. He stretched out his left leg to ease it, and an arrow flickered across his vision and
nailed his leg to the log he hid behind.
The pain was very bad. It felt as if his leg was lying in a fire. Sam sat up and started to yank the arrow out. It had
driven through his calf, caribou trousers and all, and pinned his leg firmly to the log. He gripped the arrow shaft to tear
it out, and to hell with the barbs.
Then he saw Jim Olsen watching him. Jim made a face, as if to say, "Will you look at this old asshole? Can't even
get his leg off an arrow."
Sweating, Sam took a deep breath and leaned forward to grip his leg at the knee and ankle, holding it as if it
belonged to someone else. Then, with a sudden heave, he jerked his leg up along the arrow's shaft and off, over the
feathers.
That hurt so fiercely that he fell back dizzy for a moment, sick to his stomach. And for the first time, as he lay
under the curve of the log, taking deep breaths of icy spruce-smelling air so he wouldn't vomit, he was certain he and