"Burroughs, Edgar Rice - The Oakdale Affair" - читать интересную книгу автора (Burroughs Edgar Rice)

deep straw beside the stack. With courage radiating
from every pore he strode toward the stack. His walk
was almost a swagger, for thus does youth dissemble
the bravery it yearns for but does not possess. He al-
most whistled again; but not quite, since it seemed an
unnecessary provocation to disaster to call particular
attention to himself at this time. An instant later he was
extremely glad that he had refrained, for as he ap-
proached the stack a huge bulk slowly loomed from be-
hind it; and silhouetted against the moonlit sky he saw
the vast proportions of a great, shaggy bull. The burglar
tore the inside of one trousers' leg and the back of his
coat in his haste to pass through the barbed wire fence
onto the open road. There he paused to mop the per-
spiration from his forehead, though the night was now
far from warm.

For another mile the now tired and discouraged
house-breaker plodded, heavy footed, the unending
road. Did vain compunction stir his youthful breast? Did
he regret the safe respectability of the plumber's appren-
tice? Or, if he had not been a plumber's apprentice did
he yearn to once again assume the unharried peace of
whatever legitimate calling had been his before he bent
his steps upon the broad boulevard of sin? We think he
did.

And then he saw through the chinks and apertures
in the half ruined wall of what had once been a hay
barn the rosy flare of a genial light which appeared to
announce in all but human terms that man, red blooded
and hospitable, forgathered within. No growling dogs,
no bulking bulls contested the short stretch of weed
grown ground between the road and the disintegrat-
ing structure; and presently two wide, brown eyes were
peering through a crack in the wall of the abandoned
building. What they saw was a small fire built upon
the earth floor in the center of the building and around
the warming blaze the figures of six men. Some reclined
at length upon old straw; others squatted, Turk fash-
ion. All were smoking either disreputable pipes or rolled
cigarets. Blear-eyed and foxy-eyed, bearded and stub-
bled cheeked, young and old, were the men the youth
looked upon. All were more or less dishevelled and
filthy; but they were human. They were not dogs, or
bulls, or croaking frogs. The boy's heart went out to
them. Something that was almost a sob rose in his
throat, and then he turned the corner of the building
and stood in the doorway, the light from the fire playing
upon his lithe young figure clothed in its torn and ill-