"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 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. |
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