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

"Hmph!" snorted the horse. "And what'd you know?" But he settled
enough to let his rider dismount and loop the reins around the
hitching rail pegged to the porch supports.

"I find speakin' with 'em helps the beasts behave, sometimes,"
said Old Nathan, truthfully enough, to the man who watched him in
some puzzlement and more pure fear. He didn't know the fellow,
not truly, but from his store-bought clothes and the lines of his
smooth-shaven face he had to be kin to Newt Boardman. "Reckon
you're a Boardman?" the cunning man prompted.

"There's a cat here, too," said the shaggy, blond-haired dog who
had ambled out of the woods to intersect with the more deliberate
horse at the porch rail. The dog sniffed the edge of the puncheon
step to the porch and wagged her tail.

"I'm John Boardman, that's a fact," said the visitor with a hardening
of his face muscles that made him look even younger. "But I'm
here on my own account, not my daddy's."

Old Nathan knelt and held out the clenched knuckles of his right
hand for the dog to sniff. "You leave the cat alone and we'll be fine,
hear me?" he said to the bitch firmly.

"Sure, they're not the fun uv squirrels t' chase nohow," the dog
agreed.

The old man stared at the visitor. Boardman's ramrod stiffness
gilded the fear it tried to conceal.

"Scared to death, that one," said the dog and licked the offered
knuckles.

"Come in and set, then, John Boardman," Old Nathan said with
enough of a pause that his visitor could see there had been one. "I
got coffee."

The coffee boiled on the coals in an enameled iron pot. Old
Nathan had roasted the green beans in his frying pan the night
before and had ground them at dawn when he rose. He lifted the
pot's wire handle with a billet of lightwood while the dog padded in
quickly to snuffle the interior of the cabin and the Boardman boy
followed more gingerly.

"I will claw yer eyes out!" shrieked the cat from the roofbeam,
reaching down with one hooked paw in a pantomime of intention.

"Bag it, now, damn ye!" snarled Old Nathan from the chimney
alcove, twisting to face the cat and add the weight of his glare to
his tone, as savage as that of the animal itself.