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

bright, dry, and, as the morning advanced, hot in the white
sunshine. The actual, prosaic house in which the Pirates
apparently lived was a mile from a mining settlement on a beautiful
ridge of pine woods sloping gently towards a valley on the one
side, and on the other falling abruptly into a dark deep olive gulf
of pine-trees, rocks, and patches of red soil. Beautiful as the
slope was, looking over to the distant snow peaks which seemed to
be in another world than theirs, the children found a greater
attraction in the fascinating depths of a mysterious gulf, or
canyon, as it was called, whose very name filled their ears with a
weird music. To creep to the edge of the cliff, to sit upon the
brown branches of some fallen pine, and, putting aside the dried
tassels, to look down upon the backs of wheeling hawks that seemed
to hang in mid-air was a never-failing delight. Here Polly would
try to trace the winding red ribbon of road that was continually
losing itself among the dense pines of the opposite mountains; here
she would listen to the far-off strokes of a woodman's axe, or the
rattle of some heavy wagon, miles away, crossing the pebbles of a
dried-up watercourse. Here, too, the prevailing colors of the
mountains, red and white and green, most showed themselves. There
were no frowning rocks to depress the children's fancy, but
everywhere along the ridge pure white quartz bared itself through
the red earth like smiling teeth; the very pebbles they played with
were streaked with shining mica like bits of looking-glass. The
distance was always green and summer-like, but the color they most
loved, and which was most familiar to them, was the dark red of the
ground beneath their feet everywhere. It showed itself in the
roadside bushes; its red dust pervaded the leaves of the
overhanging laurel; it colored their shoes and pinafores; I am
afraid it was often seen in Indian-like patches on their faces and
hands. That it may have often given a sanguinary tone to their
fancies I have every reason to believe.

It was on this ridge that the three children gathered at ten
o'clock that morning. An earlier flight had been impossible on
account of Wan Lee being obliged to perform his regular duty of
blacking the shoes of Polly and Hickory before breakfast,--a menial
act which in the pure republic of childhood was never thought
inconsistent with the loftiest piratical ambition. On the ridge
they met one "Patsey," the son of a neighbor, sun-burned, broad-
brimmed hatted, red-handed, like themselves. As there were
afterwards some doubts expressed whether he joined the Pirates of
his own free will, or was captured by them, I endeavor to give the
colloquy exactly as it occurred:--

Patsey: "Hallo, fellers."

The Pirates: "Hello!"

Patsey: "Goin' to hunt bars? Dad seed a lot o' tracks at sun-up."