"Louis L'amour - Sackett04 - Jubal Sackett" - читать интересную книгу автора (L'Amour Louis)

Why, in such a land of meadows, forests, and streams, were there no habitations?
Once it was not so, for there are earth mounds, and friendly Indians had told us
of a stone fort built they know not when nor by whom.
Who were those who vanished? Why did they come, build, and then disappear? What
happened upon this ground? What dark and shameful deed? What horror so great
that generations of Indians feared the land?
There was a legend of white men, bearded men who came to live along the rivers
in a time long past. All were killed. Some said it was done by the Cherokee,
some by the Shawnee, but it was an old memory, and old memories have a way of
escaping their origin, carried by word of mouth or by intermarriage from one
tribe to the next.
There are rumors, also, of a dark-skinned people who live in secluded valleys, a
people who are neither Indian nor African, but of a different cast of feature
who hold themselves aloof and keep strange customs and a different style of
living. But we know nothing beyond the rumor for their valleys lie far from
ours.
I do not come to solve mysteries, but to seek out the land.
My father was Barnabas, the first of our name to come to this place beyond the
ocean from the England of his birth. Of Barnabas I was the third son, Kin-Ring
and Yance born before me. My elder brothers had found homes among the hills. My
younger brother, Brian, and my one sister, Noelle, had returned to England with
our mother, my brother to read for the law, my sister to be reared in a gentler
land than this. I do not believe I shall see them again, nor hear of them unless
it be some distant whisper on the wind. Nor shall I again see my father.
I had been called the Strange One, like the others but different. I loved my
brothers and they loved me, but my way was a lonely way and I went into a land
from which I would not return.
Of them all my father understood me best, for with all his great strength and
magnificent fighting ability there was much in him of the poet and the mystic,
as there is in me.
Our last evening together I would not forget, for each of us knew it was for the
last time. Lila, who prepared our supper, also knew. Lila is Welsh and the wife
of my father's old friend, Jeremy Ring, and had been a maid to my mother ere
they departed from England.
My father, Lila, and I have the Gift. Some call it second sight, but we three
often have pre-visions of what is to be, sometimes with stark clarity, often
only fleeting glimpses as through the fog or shadows. All our family have the
Gift to some degree, but me most of all. Yet I have never sought to use it, nor
wished to see what is to be.
I knew how my father would die and almost when, and he knew also when we talked
that last time. He accepted the nearness of death as he accepted life, and he
would die as he would have wished, weapon in hand, trying his strength against
others.
We parted that night knowing it was for the last time, with a strong handclasp
and a look into each other's eyes. It was enough. I would keep his memory
always, and he would know that somewhere far to the westward his blood would
seek the lonely trails to open the land for those who would follow.
A faint patter of rain awakened me and I eased from under my blanket, preparing
a neat pack. Daylight, or as much as I was likely to see, was not far off. It
had been snug and dry where I had slept, but with only a few inches of overhang