"L'Amour, Louis - Sackett Family 11 - The Sky-Liners (a)" - читать интересную книгу автора (L'Amour Louis)

"Rock of ages, cleft for me, Let me
hide, myself in thee."
"Now you all turn around," Galloway
advised, "and ride slow out of town. I want
all these good people to know you ain't bad boys--j
sort of rambunctious when there's nobody about
to discipline you a mite."
"Your guns," I said, "will be in the bank when
it opens tomorrow!"
So James Black Fetchen rode out of town
with all that rowdy gang of his, and we stood with
our rifles and watched them go.
"Looks like we made us some enemies,
Flagan," Galloway said.
"Sufficient to the day is the evil
thereof," I commented, liking the mood, "but don't you
mind. We've had enemies before this."
We collected the guns and deposited them in
the bank, which was closing, and then we walked across the
street and settled Pa's account.
Everybody was chuckling over what happened, but
also they warned us of what we could expect. We
didn't have cause to expect much, for the fact was
we were going back to the buffalo prairies.
Back home there was nothing but an empty cabin,
no meat in the pot, no flour in the bin.
We had done well our first time west, and now
we would go back and start over. Besides, there were a
lot of Sackett kinfolk out there now.
We started off.
Only we didn't get far. We had just
reached the far end of town when we sighted a camp
at the edge of the woods, and an oldish man
walked out to meet us. We'd talked with enough Irish
lads whilst working on the railroad to recognize
the brogue. "May I be havin' a ^w wi' you,
boys?"
So we stopped, with Galloway glancing back
up the street in case those Fetchen boys came
back with guns.
"I'm Laban Costello," he said, "and
I'm a horsetrader."
More than likely everybody in the mountains
knew of the Irish horse-traders. There were eight
families of them, good Irish people, known and
respected throughout the South. They were drifting
folk, called gypsies by some, and they moved across
the land swapping horses and mules, and a canny
lot they were. It was in my mind this would be one of
them.