"Hemingway, Ernest - Green Hills of Africa" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hemingway Ernest)

scars were all informal, some irregular and sprawling, others simply puffy
welts. I had one on my forehead that people still commented on, asking if I
had bumped my head, but Droop had handsome ones beside his cheekbones and
others, symmetrical and decorative, on his chest and belly. I was thinking
that I had one good one, a sort of embossed Christmas tree, on the bottom of
my right foot that only served to wear out socks, when we jumped two
reedbuck. They went off through the trees and then stood at sixty yards, the
thin, graceful buck looking back, and I shot him high and a touch behind the
shoulder. He gave a jump and went off very fast.
'Piga.' Droopy smiled. We had both heard the whunk of the bullet.
'Kufa,' I told him. 'Dead.'
But when we came up to him, lying on his side, his heart was still
beating strongly, although to all appearances he was dead. Droopy had no
skinning knife and I had only a penknife to stick him with. I felt for the
heart behind the foreleg with my fingers and feeling it beating under the
hide slipped the knife in but it was short and pushed the heart away. I
could feel it, hot and rubbery against my fingers, and feel the knife push
it, but I felt around and cut the big artery and the blood came hot against
my fingers. Once bled, I started to open him, with the little knife, still
showing off to Droopy, and emptying him neatly took out the liver, cut away
the gall, and laying the liver on a hummock of grass, put the kidneys beside
it.
Droopy asked for the knife. Now he was going to show me something.
Skilfully he slit open the stomach and turned it inside, tripe side, out,
emptying the grass in it on the ground, shook it, then put the liver and
kidneys inside it and with the knife cut a switch from the tree the buck lay
under and sewed the stomach together with the withe so that the tripe made a
bag to carry the other delicacies in. Then he cut a pole and put the bag on
the end of it, running it through the flaps, and put it over his shoulder in
the way tramps carried their property in a handkerchief on the end of a
stick in Blue Jay corn plaster advertisements when we were children. It was
a good trick and I thought how I would show it to John Staib in Wyoming some
time and he would smile his deaf man's smile (you had to throw pebbles at
him to make him stop when you heard a bull bugle), and I knew what John
would say. He would say, 'By Godd, Urnust, dot's smardt'.
Droop handed me the stick, then took off his single garment, made a
sung and got the buck up on his back. I tried to help him and suggested by
signs that we cut a pole and sling him, carrying him between us, but he
wanted to carry him alone. So we started for camp, me with the tripe bag on
the end of a stick over my shoulder, my rifle slung, and Droopy staggering
steadily ahead, sweating heavily, under the buck. I tried to get him to hang
him in a tree and leave him until we could send out a couple of porters, and
to that end we put him in the crotch of a tree. But when Droopy saw that I
meant to go off and leave him there rather than simply allow him to drain he
got him down on to his shoulders again and we went on into camp, the boys,
around the cooking fire, all laughing at the tripe bag over my shoulder as
we came in.
This was the kind of hunting that I liked. No riding in cars, the
country broken up instead of the plains, and I was completely happy. I had
been quite ill and had that pleasant feeling of getting stronger each day. I