"BretHarte-LegendsAndTales" - читать интересную книгу автора (Harte Bret)

snuffed the air suspiciously, and declared that it smelt of
sulphur. So the first day of their journey wore away, and at night
they encamped without having met a single heathen face.

It was on this night that the Enemy of Souls appeared to Ignacio in
an appalling form. He had retired to a secluded part of the camp
and had sunk upon his knees in prayerful meditation, when he looked
up and perceived the Arch-Fiend in the likeness of a monstrous
bear. The Evil One was seated on his hind legs immediately before
him, with his fore paws joined together just below his black
muzzle. Wisely conceiving this remarkable attitude to be in
mockery and derision of his devotions, the worthy muleteer was
transported with fury. Seizing an arquebuse, he instantly closed
his eyes and fired. When he had recovered from the effects of the
terrific discharge, the apparition had disappeared. Father Jose,
awakened by the report, reached the spot only in time to chide the
muleteer for wasting powder and ball in a contest with one whom a
single ave would have been sufficient to utterly discomfit. What
further reliance he placed on Ignacio's story is not known; but, in
commemoration of a worthy Californian custom, the place was called
La Canada de la Tentacion del Pio Muletero, or "The Glen of the
Temptation of the Pious Muleteer," a name which it retains to this
day.

The next morning the party, issuing from a narrow gorge, came upon
a long valley, sear and burnt with the shadeless heat. Its lower
extremity was lost in a fading line of low hills, which, gathering
might and volume toward the upper end of the valley, upheaved a
stupendous bulwark against the breezy North. The peak of this
awful spur was just touched by a fleecy cloud that shifted to and
fro like a banneret. Father Jose gazed at it with mingled awe and
admiration. By a singular coincidence, the muleteer Ignacio
uttered the simple ejaculation "Diablo!"

As they penetrated the valley, they soon began to miss the
agreeable life and companionable echoes of the canyon they had
quitted. Huge fissures in the parched soil seemed to gape as with
thirsty mouths. A few squirrels darted from the earth, and
disappeared as mysteriously before the jingling mules. A gray wolf
trotted leisurely along just ahead. But whichever way Father Jose
turned, the mountain always asserted itself and arrested his
wandering eye. Out of the dry and arid valley, it seemed to spring
into cooler and bracing life. Deep cavernous shadows dwelt along
its base; rocky fastnesses appeared midway of its elevation; and on
either side huge black hills diverged like massy roots from a
central trunk. His lively fancy pictured these hills peopled with
a majestic and intelligent race of savages; and looking into
futurity, he already saw a monstrous cross crowning the dome-like
summit. Far different were the sensations of the muleteer, who saw
in those awful solitudes only fiery dragons, colossal bears and