"Walter Jon Williams - The Last Ride of German Freddie" - читать интересную книгу автора (Williams Walter John)

He had felt the migraine coming on earlier, but he was playing against a table of drunken stockmen
who were celebrating the sale of their beeves and who were losing their money almost as fast as they
could shove it across the table. Freddie was determined to fight on as long as the cards fell his way.
By the time he left the Occidental he was nearly blind with pain. The clink of the winnings in his pocket
sounded in his ears like bronze bells. The Arizona sun flamed on his skull. He staggered two
blocks—people turned their eyes from him, as if he were drunk— and then collapsed as the cramp seized
his stomach. People hurried away from him as he -emptied the contents of his stomach into the dust. The
spasms racked him long after he had nothing left to vomit.
Freddie heard footsteps, then felt the firm touch of a hand on his arm. "Freddie? Shall I get a doctor?"
Humiliation.burned in his face. He had no wish that his helplessness should even be acknowledged—he
could face those people who hurried away; there could be a pretense that they had seen nothing, but he
couldn't bear that another person should see him in his weakness.
"It is normal," he gasped. "Migraine. I have medicine in my room."
"Can you get up? I'll help you."
He wiped his face with his handkerchief, and then her hand steadied him as he groped his way to his
feet. His spectacles were hanging from one ear, and he adjusted them. It didn't help—his vision had
narrowed to the point where it seemed he was looking at the world through the wrong end of a telescope.
He shuffled down Toughnut toward his room—he rented the back room of a house belonging to a mining
engineer and his family, and paid the wife extra for meals that would not torment his digestion. He groped
for the door, pushed it open, and stumbled toward the bed. He swiped off the pyramid of books that lay on
the blanket and threw himself onto the mattress. A whirlwind spun through his head.
"Thank you," he muttered. "Please go now."
"Where is your medicine?"
He gestured vaguely to the wooden box by his washbasin. "There. Just bring me the box."
He heard her boot heels booming like pistol shots on the wooden floor, and fought down another attack
of nausea. He heard her open the velvet-padded box and scrutinize the contents. "Chloral hydrate!" she
said. "Veronal! Do you take this all the time?"
"Only when I am ill," he said. "Please—bring it."
She gasped in surprise as he drank the chloral right from the bottle, knowing from experience the
amount necessary to cause unconsciousness. "Thank you," he said. "I will be all right now. You can go."
"Let me help you with your boots."
Freddie gave a weary laugh. "Oh, yes, by all means. I should not die with my boots on."
The drug was already shimmering through his veins. Josie drew off his boots. His head was ringing like
a great bell. Then the sound of the bell grew less and less, as if the clapper were being progressively
swathed in wool, until it thudded no louder than a heartbeat.


8
 Freddie woke after dark to discover that Josie had not left. He wiped away the gum that glued his
eyelids shut and saw her curled in his only chair with her skirts tucked under her, reading by the light of
his lamp.
"My God," he said. "What hour is it?"
She brushed away an insect that circled the.lamp. "I don't know," she said. "Past midnight, anyway."
"What are you doing here? Shouldn't you be with Sheriff Behan?"
"He doesn't own me." Spoken tartly enough, though Freddie suspected that Behan might disagree.
"And besides," Josie said, "I wanted to make sure you didn't die of that medicine of yours."
Freddie raised a hand to his forehead. The migraine was gone, but the drug still enfolded his nerves in
its smothering arms. He felt stupid, and stupidly ridiculous. "Well, I did not die," he said. "And I thank
you—I will walk you home if you like."
She glanced at the book in her hands. "I would like to finish the chapter."