"Burroughs, Edgar Rice - The Mad King" - читать интересную книгу автора (Burroughs Edgar Rice)

these that the king must guard against. I could not help but
note that mein Herr spoke too perfect German for a foreigner.
Were I in mein Herr's place, I should speak mostly the
English, and, too, I should shave off the 'full, reddish-brown
beard.'"

Whereupon the storekeeper turned hastily back into his
shop, leaving Barney Custer of Beatrice, Nebraska, U.S.A.,
to wonder if all the inhabitants of Lutha were afflicted with
a mental disorder similar to that of the unfortunate ruler.

"I don't wonder," soliloquized the young man, "that he ad-
vised me to shave off this ridiculous crop of alfalfa. Hang
election bets, anyway; if things had gone half right I
shouldn't have had to wear this badge of idiocy. And to
think that it's got to be for a whole month longer! A year's
a mighty long while at best, but a year in company with a
full set of red whiskers is an eternity."

The road out of Tafelberg wound upward among tall
trees toward the pass that would lead him across the next
some excellent shooting. All his life Barney had promised
himself that some day he should visit his mother's native
land, and now that he was here he found it as wild and
beautiful as she had said it would be.

Neither his mother nor his father had ever returned to the
little country since the day, thirty years before, that the big
American had literally stolen his bride away, escaping across
the border but a scant half-hour ahead of the pursuing
troop of Luthanian cavalry. Barney had often wondered why
it was that neither of them would ever speak of those days,
or of the early life of his mother, Victoria Rubinroth, though
of the beauties of her native land Mrs. Custer never tired of
talking.

Barney Custer was thinking of these things as his machine
wound up the picturesque road. Just before him was a long,
heavy grade, and as he took it with open muffler the chug-
ging of his motor drowned the sound of pounding hoof
beats rapidly approaching behind him.

It was not until he topped the grade that he heard any-
thing unusual, and at the same instant a girl on horseback
tore past him. The speed of the animal would have been
enough to have told him that it was beyond the control of its
frail rider, even without the added testimony of the broken
bit that dangled beneath the tensely outstretched chin.

Foam flecked the beast's neck and shoulders. It was evi-