"Philip Jose Farmer - WOT 3 - A Private Cosmos" - читать интересную книгу автора (Farmer Phillip Jose)

bird, smiled while he watched it. That night, he put an arrow into the first to approach his camp
and a knife into the other three minutes later.
He was tempted to go fifty miles out of his way to hurl a spear, to which the braves' scalps would
be attached, into the middle of the Wakangishush encampment. Feats such as this had given him the
name of Kickaha, that is, Trickster, and he liked to keep up his reputation. This time, however,
it did
A PRIVATE COSMOS 3
not seem worthwhile. The image of Talanac, The City That Is A Mountain, glowed in his mind like a
jewel above a fire.
And so Kickaha contented himself with hanging the two seal pie ss corpses upside down from a
branch. He turned his stallion's head eastward and thereby saved some Wakangishush lives and,
possibly, his own. Kickaha bragged a lot about his cunning and speed and strength, but he admitted
to himself that he was not invincible or immortal.
Kickaha had been born Paul Janus Finnegan in Terre Haute, Indiana, U. S. A., Earth, in a universe
next door to this one. (All universes were next door to each other.) He was a muscular broad-
shouldered youth six feet one inch tall and weighing 190 pounds. His skin was deeply tanned with
slightly copper spots, freckles, here and there, and more than three dozen scars, varying from
light to deep, on parts of his body and face. His reddish-bronze hair was thick, wavy, and
shoulder-length, braided into two pigtails at this time. His face was usually merry with its
bright green eyes, snub nose, long upper lip, and cleft
chin.
The lionskin band around his head was edged with bear teeth pointing upward, and a long black-and-
red feather from the tail of a hawk stuck up from the right side of the headband. He was unclothed
from, the waist up; around his neck was a string of bear teeth. A belt of turquoise-beaded
bearskin supported dappled fawnskin trousers, and his moccasins were lionskin. The belt held a
sheath on each side. One held a large steel knife; the other, a smaller knife perfectly balanced
for throwing.
The saddle was the light type which the Plains
4 A PRIVATE COSMOS
tribes had recently adopted in place of blankets, Kickaha held a spear in one hand and the reins
in the other, and his feet were in stirrups. Quivers and sheaths of leather hanging from the
saddle held various weapons. A small round shield on which was painted a snarling bear's head was
suspended from a wooden hook attached to the saddle. Behind the saddle was a bearskin robe rolled
to contain some light cooking equipment. A bottle of water in a clay wicker basket hung from
another saddle hook.
The second horse, which trotted along behind, carried a saddle, some weapons, and light equipment.
Kickaha took his time getting down out of the mountains. Though he softly whistled tunes of this
world, and of his native Earth, he was not carefree. His eyes scanned everything before him, and
he frequently looked backward.
Overhead, the yellow sun arced slowly in the cloudless light green sky. The air was sweet with the
odors of white flowers blooming, with pine needles, and an occasional whiff of a purpleberry bush.
A hawk screamed once, and twice he heard bears grunting in the woods.
The horses pricked up their ears at this but they did not become nervous. They had grown up with
the tame bears that the Hrowakas kept within the village walls.
And so, alertly but pleasantly, Kickaha came down off the mountains onto the Great Plains. At this


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