"Clayton Emery - Joseph Fisher - Inwardly Ravening Wolves" - читать интересную книгу автора (Emery Clayton)

"Malsum is brother to Glooskap, so also a trickster,
but without any goodness." Opechee spoke in
Algonquin, for he had no English.

"What's he say?" asked Paul.

"He said -- a shoemaker should stick to his last. And
a student to -- his books --" Tumbling in old leaves
set him coughing, and he doubled in pain as his
lungs spasmed and throbbed. Sallow,
sharp-cheeked, sunken-eyed, Joseph was cursed
with consumption.

Paul handed Joseph a pine canteen, then Opechee a
musket ball big as a hickory nut. Joseph sipped to
quiet his wheezing while his companions reloaded
with ramrods and horns. But when Opechee tried to
drop Paul's musket ball down the bore, he found it
too large by an eighth of an inch, so returned it. He
told Joseph, "Your friend is generous, not like most
white men."

"He shares because he owns little. Their good book
says, `Blessed are the poor, for they shall inherit
the earth.'"

Paul switched the musket ball for eight pellets like
dried peas. "Not surprised it don't fit. English guns
run .75 caliber, throw more lead'n anyone's. But
buckshot'll drop a deer, tell him." Without
understanding the words, Opechee nodded thanks.

Brush thrashed as the villagers of Hull gathered.
Paul's father, head of the wolf hunt, rasped, "It'd be
you beetlebrains the bung to spill the ale! Curse God
and die, one a head of wood and the other wool,
and now an Indian with worms in his skull!"

Joseph could understand the elder's petulance. The
marauding wolf had pestered the village for weeks,
filching lambs and chickens and cats, digging up
middens, scratching at doors, making dogs bark all
night. Finally fifty men and boys had come
a'hunting, beating the bushes and hallooing the day
long, sweeping from the forest towards the
seashore to drive and encircle the wolf. Joseph had
been the weak link in the chain.
Yet he was secretly glad. Up close, the student had
felt those golden eyes bore into his, sensed bravado