"Alan Dean Foster - Lost and Found" - читать интересную книгу автора (Foster Alan Dean)

component he himself had once bid on) and some cold water, then slipped out of his clothes and into the
sleeping bag. Reaching up, he switched off the light, then the propane heater. It would get cold in the
tent, but not in the bag. Come morning, he would switch the heater on again before emerging. Anyway,
the cold didnтАЩt really bother him. He was from Chicago.

The territorial night owl began hoo-hooting again, and he wondered at its species. Certainly it was more
mellow than the night owls he was used to dealing with back home. Occasionally, something snapped
twigs or rustled leaf litter outside the tent. The first couple of nights, the furtive noises had kept him
awake. Initial worrisome thoughts of mountain lions and bears gave way to those of coyotes, then
beavers, and finally, mice and ground squirrels. Nothing nibbled at his toes. He was not the natural food
of the local predators, he reassured himself, and the tent not the kind of burrow they were used to
invading in search of prey.

Subsiding adrenaline had kept him alert on the road. Now, as he relaxed, its effects diminished while
those of the Russian lemonade grew stronger. Consciousness faded quickly, along with any lingering
concerns.




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 LostandFound




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The crunching woke him. Lying in the sleeping bag, half awake and half asleep, he struggled to revive
his muzzy mental faculties. Had he imagined the sound? Had he dreamed it?

Sss-crunchhтАФthere it was again. He raised himself up on one elbow, suddenly wide awake. The noise
had not been made by a mouse, or by one of the pushy pack rats that haunted his campsite keen on petty
theft. It was loud and distinctive and strongly hinted at significant weight being applied to the talkative
earth. Bear? he wondered as he sat all the way up inside the tent. Deer?

Or worseтАФone or more of the transalpine drunken troublemakers who habituated the sole drinking
establishment of metropolitan Bug Jump, California?

Parting words of reassurance notwithstanding, maybe just seeing off his besotted gravid sisterтАЩs
temporary gentleman friend hadnтАЩt been enough to satisfy Shorty SnakeyesтАЩs beleaguered ego. How had
they found him? Slipping out of the sleeping bag as noiselessly as possible, Walker dressed in silence,
working out of a crouch as he fought with the jeans that kept trying to trip him, staring through the
gauzy tent material at every imagined shape and shadow.

It wouldnтАЩt have been too hard to track him down. With Cawley Lake as deserted as it was now, close to
the end of the season, there were only so many places a visiting camper was likely to pitch a tent.
Doubtless a few local fishermen or hikers had seen him up here. In a small town, word about lingering
visitors would get around fast.