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

clobbered him with a short one.
I fetched him coming in on me, and his head
snapped back as if you'd laid the butt end of
an axe against it. He went into the dust and about that
time I heard Galloway saying, mild-like, "Go
ahead, if you're a mind to. I'm takin'
bets I can empty four, five saddles before you
get me."
Me, I'd held my own rifle in my left
hand this while, so I just flipped her up, my hand
grasped the action, and I was ready. The two of us
stood there facing the nine of them and it looked like
blood on the ground.
Only nobody moved.
The big handsome man who had been riding
point for the outfit looked us over and said, "I'm
Black Fetchen."
Galloway, he spoke over to me. "Black
Fetchen, he says. Flagan, are you sacred?"
"Don't seem to be, now that I think on it.
But I've been scared a time or two. Recall
that Comanche out there on the short grass? There for a
minute or two I figured he had me."
"But you fetched him, Flagan. Now, what
all do you figure we should do with this lot?"
"Well, he made his confession. He owned up
fair and honest who he was. He never tried
to lie out of it. You got to give credit to a man
who'll confess like that."
"Maybe"--Galloway was almighty serious--
"but I think you're mistaken in this man. He
owned up to the fact that he was Black Fetchen, but
there wasn't the shame in him there should have been. I
figure a man who can up and say "I'm
Black Fetchen"' should feel shame. Might at
least hang his head and scuff his toe a mite."
Black Fetchen had been growing madder by the
minute. "I've had enough of this! By the--ffwas
"Hold off, Black." That was Colby
Rafin talking. "I seen this two before, over nigh
the Gap. These are Sacketts. I heard tell
they'd come home from the buffalo range."
Now, we Sacketts have been feuding up and
down the country with one outfit or another for nigh
on to a hundred years, and nobody could say we
hadn't marked up our share of scalps, but
nobody could say that we hunted trouble.
When Rafin said that, we could just sort of see
Black Fetchen settling down into his saddle.
We weren't just a pair of green mountain boys