"Grey, Zane - The Rainbow Trail" - читать интересную книгу автора (Grey Zane)

sand.

"No savvy," replied the Indian girl.

"Where's the trader Presbrey?" asked Shefford.

She pointed straight down into the red valley.

"Toh," she said.

In the center of the basin lay a small pool of water shining brightly
in the sunset glow. Small objects moved around it, so small that
Shefford thought he saw several dogs led by a child. But it was the
distance that deceived him. There was a man down there watering his
horses. That reminded Shefford of the duty owing to his own tired and
thirsty beast. Whereupon he untied his pack, took off the saddle, and
was about ready to start down when the Indian girl grasped the bridle
from his hand.

"Me go," she said.

He saw her eyes then, and they made her look different. They were as
black as her hair. He was puzzled to decide whether or not he thought
her handsome.

"Thanks, but I'll go," he replied, and, taking the bridle again, he
started down the slope. At every step he sank into the deep, soft
sand. Down a little way he came upon a pile of tin cans; they were
everywhere, buried, half buried, and lying loose; and these gave
evidence of how the trader lived. Presently Shefford discovered that
the Indian girl was following him with her own pony. Looking upward
at her against the light, he thought her slender, lithe, picturesque.
At a distance he liked her.

He plodded on, at length glad to get out of the drifts of sand to the
hard level floor of the valley. This, too, was sand, but dried and
baked hard, and red in color. At some season of the year this immense
flat must be covered with water. How wide it was, and empty! Shefford
experienced again a feeling that had been novel to him--and it was
that he was loose, free, unanchored, ready to veer with the wind.
From the foot of the slope the water hole had appeared to be a few
hundred rods out in the valley. But the small size of the figures
made Shefford doubt; and he had to travel many times a few hundred
rods before those figures began to grow. Then Shefford made out
that they were approaching him.

Thereafter they rapidly increased to normal proportions of man and
beast. When Shefford met them he saw a powerful, heavily built young
man leading two ponies.