"Dalmas,.John.-.Lion.Of.Farside.2.-.Bavarian.Gate.v1.1" - читать интересную книгу автора (Dalmas John)

hadn't learned English yet. Said she's taking them around with her to learn
about America. When they talked, I kind of thought they might be Eye-tahan."
"Big hard-looking men?" Curtis asked. "Hair somewhere between carrot and bay?"
"I guess you know them."
"Probably not them specifically. But they're not Eye-talian." He spoke a line of
Yuultal then, ending with, "It sounded like that, right? Their part of the world
is full of old rivalries, with people trained to kill. Finally I had enough of
it. More than enough."
Charley nodded, not knowing what to say, his hands still pumping milk into the
four-gallon pail.
Curtis continued. "And Varia's not dead. Her family traced us from Evansville to
Illinois, and stole her back. She never imagined I could find her, so she ran
away from them, and ended up married to someone else, a man who saved her when
her kinfolks caught her again. So I joined another group, separate from either
of those, and married a woman whose name translates out to Melody. It was Melody
fell through the ice, a good good woman, that I came to love maybe as much as I
had Varia."
Charley's aura had shrunk from doubt and concern, shrunken halfway to his skin.
He'd even slowed his milking, looking over at his youngest son.
"But Varia wouldn't have come here with two men," Curtis went on. "If she'd come
after me, it would have been alone and it would have been enough."
Soon the jets of milk thinned. After another half minute, Charley rose from the
stool, picking it up with one hand and the pail with the other. Together the two
men walked to one of the ten-gallon cans, and Charley emptied the pail into it.
"What are you going to do now?" he asked.
"Leave. Go somewhere they won't have a notion of. Or you either; that's the way
it's got to be." He paused, his eyes intent on his father's. "Did it ever seem
to you that Varia was-a little bit witchy?"
Charley nodded. "In a manner of speaking. A time or two. Ask your ma."
"Liiset's got her own witchy powers, so I need to be gone before you go back in.
I'll saddle Blaze and ride to Max and lie's. Leave Blaze with them, tell them
I'm in trouble, and borrow some money; maybe twenty dollars. That you promised
to pay it back for me. My money belt's in my top dresser drawer, with about
sixty dollars. It's yours; I dasn't go in for it."
Charley blinked; sixty dollars was a lot of money.
"Max can drive me into Salem," Curtis went on, "and I'll take the train to
Louisville. After you've finished milking, phone up Bob and ask if he knows
where I'm at. He'll tell you I started home after supper. Liiset will figure
something's fishy, but there'll be nothing she can do except hope I show up
later."
Leaving his father staring after him, Curtis went to the horse shed on one end
of the barn, saddled Blaze and rode away, keeping the barn between himself and
the house. When he came to the lane along the fence line, he rode north through
the beginning of dusk to the Maple Hill Road. He wasn't totally sure this was
necessary. Perhaps he could just go in and talk to the clone, tell her he wasn't
interested. But the two men with her? They'd kidnapped Varia that day in Macon
County; they might kidnap him. And if the men were tigers, burn the house to
cover the kidnapping. The bones in it would be his parents' and Ferris's.
He wished, though, that he could have gone in and gotten his own money, and the
heavy sheath knife Arbel had given him, that had saved his life in the Kullvordi