"Carol Emshwiller - Water Master" - читать интересную книгу автора (Emshwiller Carol)

"What children?"

Well, that's a relief. Though he could still have a wife somewhere. Maybe she didn't want to bring
children into such a muddy world, and where they might fall into the raging river just as her husband had.
Or did she jump in and he jumped in to rescue her but couldn't save her?

"Is your wife going to be safe?"

"There's no wife."

But of course not. Who would marry such a countrified, sheep-herder kind of man who lives in a shack
with a mud floor and has stunted lupine for flowers.

"Do you actually live in that little hut?"

"Where else?"
"Isn't this a bad place to bring up children? I mean in case you have some sometime. Your wife would go
crazy what with the mud and the danger and nobody to talk toтАФthough of course there's you."

"Then I guess it's a good thing I have no wife."

And a good thing his hat is low again (though at a rakish angle this time).

Then here comes the posse, out from the fogтАФwell, one of them, anyway, carrying a rifle and with pistols
at his sides. Goodness knows what's in his backpack.

"This has happened before," Amos Acularius says.

"They'd prefer finding you deadтАФguarding your dam to the death."

He looks over at me. Smiles. I'm all right this time because I'm looking at his lips. I'm already thinking (I
can't help it) how I'm too old to have any little Water Master babies that would have eyes like that or V
shaped smiles. Then I'm thinking: Will he mind тАж about not having any children? And then I'm thinking:
I'd mind.

He says, "I would."

He's talking about dying for his dam though it takes me a minute to realize it.

"I don't want you to." I'm blushing again.

He actually puts his sweaty bony arm across my shoulders. I suppose it's a kindness for the blushing.
Thank goodness we mostly keep looking down at the dam.

"I may have to," he says. "It depends."

We watch the man go into the hut. When he comes out, he has the pistols from the back of the door. He
holds them by their cartridge belt and looks all around as if to hand them to the Water MasterтАФas if he
doesn't want to shoot an unarmed man.