"Eddings, David - High Hunt" - читать интересную книгу автора (Eddings David)

"I just want to be sure."

"You want to hear the story or not?" the Old Man threatened.

"Yeah," Jack said. "Shut up and listen, for cripes' sakes."

"It was back in the winter of 1893, I think it was," Dad started. "It was several years after the family came out from Missouri, and they were trying to make a go of it on a wheat ranch down in Adams County."

"Did Grandpa live on a real ranch?" I asked. "With cowboys and everything?"

The Old Man ignored the interruption. "Things were pretty skimpy the first few years. They tried to raise a few beef-cows, but it didn't work out too well, so when the winter came that year, they were clean out of meat. Things were so tough that my uncles, Art and Dolph, had to get jobs in town and stay at a boardinghouse. Uncle Beale was married and out on his own by then, and Uncle Tod had gone over to Seattle to work in the lumber mills. That meant that there weren't any men on the place except my dad and my granddad."

"He was our great-granddad," Jack told me importantly.

"I know that," I said. "I ain't that dumb." I leaned my head back against Dad's chest so I could hear the rumble of his voice inside my head again.

"Great-Granddad was in the Civil War," Jack said. "You told us that one time."

"You want to tell this or you want me to?" the Old Man asked him.

"Yeah," I said, not lifting my head, "shut up, Jack, for cripes' sakes."

"Anyhow," the Old Man went on, "Granddad had to stay and tend the place, so he couldn't go out and hunt. Dad was only seventeen, but there wasn't anybody else to go. Well, the nearest big deer herd was over around Coeur d'Alene Lake, up in the timber country in Idaho. There weren't any game laws back then  at least nobody paid any attention to them if there were  so a man could take as much as he needed."

The wind gusted against the house again, and the wood shifted in the heating stove, sounding very loud. The Old Man got up, lifting me easily in his big hands, and plumped me on the couch beside Jack. Then he went over and put more wood in the stove from the big linoleum-covered woodbox against the wall that Jack and I were supposed to keep full. He slammed the door shut with an iron bang, dusted off his hands, and sat back down.

"It turned cold and started snowing early that year," he continued. "Granddad had this old .45-70 single-shot he'd carried in the war, but they only had twenty-six cartridge cases for it. He and Dad loaded up all those cases the night before Dad left. They'd pulled the wheels off the wagon and put the runners on as soon as the snow really set in good, so it was all ready to go. After they'd finished loading the cartridges, Granddad gave my dad an old pipe. Way he looked at it, if Dad was old enough to be counted on to do a man's work, he was old enough to have his own pipe. Dad hadn't ever smoked before  except a couple times down in back of the schoolhouse and once out behind the barn when he was a kid.

"Early the next morning, before daylight, they hitched up the team  Old Dolly and Ned. They pitched the wagon-bed, and they loaded up Dad's bedding and other gear. Then Dad called his dogs and got them in the wagon-bed, shook hands with Granddad, and started out."

"I'll betcha he was scared," I said.

"Grown men don't get scared," Jack said scornfully.

"That's where you're wrong, Jack," the Old Man told him. "Dad was plenty scared. That old road from the house wound around quite a bit before it dropped down on the other side of the hill, and Dad always said he didn't dare look back even once. He said that if he had, he'd have turned right around and gone back home. There's something wrong with a man who doesn't get scared now and then. It's how you handle it that counts."

I know that bothered Jack. He was always telling everybody that he wasn't scared  even when I knew he was lying about it. I think he believed that growing up just meant being afraid of fewer and fewer things. I was always sure that there was more to it than that. We used to argue about it a lot."

"You ain't scared of anything, are you, Dad?" Jack asked, an edge of concern in his voice. It was almost like an accusation.

Dad looked at him a long time without saying anything. "You want to hear the story, or do you want to ask a bunch of questions?" It hung in the air between them. I guess it was always there after that. I saw it getting bigger and bigger in the next few years. Jack was always too stubborn to change his mind, and the Old Man was always too bluntly honest to lie to him or even to let him believe a lie. And I was in the middle  like always. I went over and climbed back up in my father's lap.

The Old Man went on with the story as if nothing had happened. "So there's Dad in this wagon-bed sled  seventeen years old, all alone except for the horses and those two black and tan hounds of his."

"Why can't we have a dog?" I asked, without bothering to raise my head from his chest. I averaged about once a week on that question. I already knew the answer.

"Your mother won't go for it." They always called each other "your mother" and "your father." I can't think of more than two or three times while we were growing up that I heard either one of them use the other's name. Of course most of the time they were fighting or not speaking anyway.

"Well, Uncle Dolph had loaned Dad an old two-dollar mailorder pistol, .32 short. Dad said it broke open at the top like a kid's cap gun and wouldn't shoot worth a damn, but it was kinda comfortable to have it along. Uncle Dolph shot a Swede in the belly with it a couple years later  put him in the hospital for about six months."