"Lavie Tidhar - The Gunslinger of Chelem" - читать интересную книгу автора (Tidhar Lavie)

The Man With No Name laughed, and he put a coin into the man’s hand and
walked towards the square. The clock at the top of the tower showed a minute to
twelve. The sun was high in the sky. There was no shade.
The gunslinger waited for him in the square. The Man With No Name stepped
towards him and stopped in the distance.
A firing distance.
“You!” said the gunslinger. “You can’t!”
“By the rules,” Raphael said, and the Man With No Name repeated his words
aloud.
“I assume you’re good,” the gunslinger said, and he was talking now directly
to Raphael.
“The best,” Raphael said through the man he had dreamed into being.
“Then it would be an honour for me to kill both you and him,” the gunslinger
said.
The Man With No Name smiled and chewed on an unlit cigar. “You can try,”
Raphael said, “but no one beats Eastwood.”
 The second hand ticked, ticked, ticked again ... was that sweat on the
gunslinger’s face?
The hand moved.
Tick.
Tick.
“Wait,” the gunslinger said.
The hand had stopped. One second to noon.
The Man With No Name looked at the gunslinger and spat on the ground.
“Interesting,” Raphael said, “but the whole nature of your dream is in the
passing of these seconds towards the fight. You can’t stop the clock forever.”
“If you shoot me,” the gunslinger said, and now it was his turn to smile, “I’ll
kill her.”
The whistle of an approaching train sounded in the distance, and rail tracks
appeared in the middle of Main Street and passed through the square. On the track,
tied to the rails, was Michal.
****
What are you doing here?” Raphael shouted.
“She can’t speak,” the gunslinger said, “her mouth is gagged.” He shrugged.
“She tried to challenge me to a fight. They always do. The women especially. I
thought that instead of killing her I could use her as insurance. Against you.”
“So what happens now?” Raphael said. The Man With No Name moved
impatiently. Let me handle this, he seemed to say.
“Now?” the gunslinger said. “The train is on its way here. Can you see it,
coming towards us? In a short while—a very short while—it will arrive. I’ll be able
to control the time element until then. Until a second before it hits your girlfriend. In
the last second, the clock will strike twelve, and then ... you can try killing me, or try
saving your sweetheart. And if you try to shoot me now, I’ll shoot her.”
“Colleague,” Raphael said.
“What?”
“Colleague, not girlfriend. Or sweetheart.”
“Not in this dream,” the gunslinger said.
The smoke from the train appeared above the houses. Raphael looked
towards the train. The Man With No Name pulled a matchbox out of his poncho and
lit his cigar.