"Manly Wade Wellman - Sin's Doorway" - читать интересную книгу автора (Wellman Manly Wade)

"I'm hungry," I said. "Faint with hunger. I wonder if you would—"
"Take that double-damned money away," he snapped, and his eyes blazed above
the hair on his face. "It's the devil's price for what you done. You're a man of sin,
young fellow, purely rotting away with the sins of Levi Brett you eaten just now. I
had nothing to do with him, and I'll have nothing to do with you."
I felt weaker than ever, and I began to plead. "Then, if you'll take no money, will
you be kind enough to—"
A woman came to the man's elbow. She must have been his wife, a tall, strong hill
creature. "Young sir," she said, "I never hoped to turn away a hungry creature. But I
can't give you food or comfort, less'n your sin may catch onto me. I daren't say
more than I pity you. Go on somewhere, where they'll feed you unbeknownst of
what you carry. That way, maybe, they'll not lose grace by you."
"Look," stammered a young girl, pointing. "Levi Brett's critter—"
The brown animal had risen from where it lay, on four legs that crooked strangely.
It pointed a long nose at me, like a trained hunting dog that shows the prey to its
master.
 "You've taken Levi Brett's sin indeed," said the bearded man, and the glare in his
eyes filmed over with terror. "That thing lived with him on Dravot Ridge, his only
family. When he was took sick at the preacher's house, it came and camped under
his window. It laid by his coffin—" He broke off and choked, then spat furiously.
"Now it's yourn. Go—please go! Then it'll go with you!"
Everyone drew away from me, toward the fence. Beyond the rails, the
coffin-carriers had lowered their burden into the grave, and three of them were
spading earth upon it. I felt icy cold, and tried to lie to myself that it was the assault
of hunger. I turned away.
Some children began to jabber a little cadenced sneer, to one of those universal
childhood tunes:

"Your soul to the devil,
Your soul to the devil,
Your soul to the devil—devil—devil—"
After all, I resolutely said in my heart, they didn't mean that. Maybe this was
originally an Irish community. I knew that Irishmen sometimes said "Your soul to the
devil" for nothing but a joke. I turned and walked, to get away from staring, repelling
eyes.
Beyond the clearing where stood the church and the burying-ground I could see
trees, denser thickets than those among which I had walked so far. Two trails led
into the depths of the timber, and I turned my steps toward one. Something sounded
beside me, pit-pat, pit-pat—the brown animal had joined me. It had a long thin tail,
and it seemed awkward on all fours, like a monkey. It looked up at me once, more
eloquently than dog or cat could manage, and headed for the other trailhead. I went
with it.
As the two of us entered the woods, along the dim green bough-roofed arcade
that was the trail, I sagely decided where I had seen something like my companion.
Charles R. Knight's paintings, as are to be seen in New York's Museum of Natural
History, or in books like Scott's History of Mammals in the Western Hemisphere,
include several things like that, particularly his restorations of the very early mammals
of a million years ago and more. Such things, as I consider them, were developed
amorphously, could be ancestors to the monkeys, the dogs, the cats, the hoofed
beasts, or to all of these.