"S. M. Stirling - Shikari in Galveston" - читать интересную книгу автора (Stirling S. M)

"Of course," Robre said. "I have six bearskins—one brown bear, seven feet 'n' not stretched."
The contents of the packs came out, all but one. They dickered happily, while the shadows grew longer
on the rough pine planks of the walls; the prices weren't much different from the previous season. They
never were, for all that Banerjii always complained prices were down, and for all that Robre kept talking of
going to the coast and the marts of fabled Galveston on his own—that would be too much trouble and
danger, and both men knew it. Robre smiled to himself as the Imperial's eyes darted once or twice to the
last, the unopened, pack.
"Got some big-cat skins," he said at last.
Banerjii's sigh was heartfelt, and his big brown eyes were liquid with sincerity. "Alas, my good friend,
cougar are a drug on the market." Sometimes his use of the language was a little strange; that made no
sense in Seven Tribes talk. "If you have jaguar, I could move one or two for you. Possibly lion, if they are
large and unmarked."
Robre nodded. Jaguar were still rare this far north, though more often seen than in his father's time. And
there were few lion prides east of the Westwall escarpment. Wordlessly, he undid the pack and rolled it out
with a sweeping gesture.
Banerjii said something softly in his own language, then schooled his face to calmness. Robre smiled as
the small brown hands caressed the tiger-skins. And not just tiger, he thought happily. Both animals were
some sort of sport, their skins a glossy black marked by narrow stripes of yellow gold. And they were huge,
as well, each nine feet from the nose to the base of the tail.
"Got 'em far off in the east woods," he said. That was a prideful thing to say; those lands weren't safe,
what with ague and swamp-devils. "You won't see the likes of those any time soon."
"No," Banerjii said. "And so, how am I to tell what their price should be?"
Robre kept his confident smile, but something sank within his gut. He would neverget the price of what
he craved. He was an only son, his father dead and his mother a cripple, with no close living kin—and his
father had managed to quarrel with all the more distant ones. Most of what he gleaned went to buy his
mother's care and food; oh, the clan would not let her starve even if Robre died, but the lot of a friendless
widow was still bitter, doubly so if she could not do a woman's work. The price of the rifle was three times
what he made in a year's trapping and trading . . . and if he borrowed the money from the merchant,
he'd be the merchant's man for five years at least, probably forever. He'd need ammunition, too, not
just for use but for practice, if the weapon was to do him any good.
The Imperial smiled. "But perhaps there is another thing you might do, and—" He dipped his head at the
rifles. "I think, my good friend, you have put me in the way of something even more valuable than these
pelts." He rubbed his hands. "Another of my countrymen has arrived. A lord—a Jefe— :not a merchant like
me, and a hunter of note. He will need a guide. ..."


II: The Lord in His Glory

"And I thought Galveston was bad," Lt. Eric King of the Peshawar Lancers said to his companion,
laughing. "This—what do they call it, Dannulsford?—is worse."
Both were in the field dress of the Imperial cavalry: jacket and loose pyjamy trousers of tough
khaki-colored cotton drill, calf-boots, leather sword-belts around their waists supported by a diagonal strap
from right shoulder to left hip; their turbans were the same color, although the other man's was
larger and more bulbous than his officer's, which was in the pugaree style with one end of the fabric
hanging loose down his back.
"Han, sahib," Ranjit Singh grunted in agreement as they stood at the railing of the primitive little
steamboat. "It is so, lord. These jangli-admis"—jungle-dwellers—'live like goats."
The lands along the river had been pretty enough to his countryman's eye, in a savage fashion; swamp
and forest on the banks, giving way to a patchwork of wood and tall-grass savannah to the west, with the
occasional farm and stretch of plowed black soil. The settlements of the barbarians were few and