"Cory Doctorow - Welcome to Hard Times" - читать интересную книгу автора (Dodd Christina)

snoring.

When I came West with the wagon, I was a
young man with expectations of something, I
don't know what, I tar-painted my name on a big
rock by the Missouri trailside. But in tune my
expectations wore away with the weather, like
my name had from that rock, and I learned it
was enough to stay alive. Bad Men from Bodie
weren't ordinary scoundrels, they came with the
land, and you could no more cope with them than
you could with dust or hailstones.
I found twelve dollars in Fee's bureau when the
sun came up and I gave them to Hausenfield, the
German. Hausenfield owned a bathtub, he had
brought it in his wagon all the way from St. Louis.
At the beginning of each month Hausenfield would
fill that tub with water from his well and sit right
down in back of his house and wash. He also
owned the stable.
After I gave him the money he went into his
stable and pushed out his wagon by the tongue and
hitched up his mule and his grey. The wagon was
an old stage with the windows boarded and the
seats torn out. It was black, the one painted thing
in town. He drove it over to Fee's door.
"Put him in dere please."
8 E. L. Doctorow
Jack Millay, who was standing by with his one
arm, helped me take Fee out and put him in the
wagon.
"Don't you have a casket Hausenfield?"
"He never build me vun. He said he would bufld
ten for me, but he never build even vun."
I closed the door on Fee and the wagon creaked
down the street and into the flats. It was cold and
early but nearly everyone was out watching it go.
A pickaxe clanked on top of the stage, one of the
wheels squeaked each time around, and the clank-
ing and squeaking was Fee's funeral music.
Hausenfield's grey pulled harder than his mule and
so the wagon turned eastward slowly in an arc.
About a mile out in the flats it stopped. Behind
the wagon, from the southeast, rain clouds were
coming up under the sky. I didn't know where
Florence was but Jimmy Fee began .to walk out
after, now, with his hands in his pockets. ^
"Look there Blue!"
Across the street, in front of the saloon, the
Bad Man's roan stood shivering where he'd been