"David Drake - Old Nathan (2)" - читать интересную книгу автора (Drake David)

"The Bull" previously appeared inWhispers Magazine , Whole Number 23-34, October 1987, edited
by Stuart Schiff.

"The Fool" previously appeared inWhispers VI, copyright (c) 1987 by Stuart Schiff.

First printing, October 1991

Distributed by

SIMON & SCHUSTER

1230 Avenue of the Americas

New York, N.Y. 10020

Printed in the United States of America



DEDICATION
To my late friend

Manly Wade Hampton Wellman



ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Among the people who made this book possible are my wife Jo; my parents, Earle and Maxine Drake;
Janet Morris; and Manly himself. My thanks to all of them.



THE BULL
The cat slunk in the door with angry grace and snarled to Old Nathan, "Somebody's coming, and he's
bringing a great blond bitch-dog with 'im." Then he sprang up the wall, using a chink in the logs at the
height of a man's head to boost himself the last of the way to the roof trestle.

"She comes close t' me, I'll claw'er eyes out," muttered the hunching cat. "See if I don't."

"Just keep your britches on," snapped Old Nathan as he rose from the table at which he breakfasted on
milk and mush.

Despite the chill of the morning, he wore only trousers tucked into his boot-tops and held up by galluses.
The hair of his head and bare chest was white with a yellow tinge, but his raggedly cropped beard was so
black that he could pass for a man of thirty when he wore a slouch hat against the sun.

There was nothing greatly unusual about an old man's beard growing in dark; but because he was Old
Nathan the Cunning ManтАФthe man who claimed the Devil was loose in the world but that he was the
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