"Milo Talon" - читать интересную книгу автора (L'Amour Louis)

a soul."
When I came out on the street it was dark and empty, only three street lamps in its
four-block length and the lights from a few windows. The horses were gone from in
front of the saloon,
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and the rigs were gone also. My boot heels echoed hollowly on the boardwalk. How
many towns had I known? How many boardwalks and small hotels? Why was I here when
I could be back with my mother on the ranch in Colorado? Maybe by now Barnabas was
home again.
Glancing down a narrow alleyway between buildings, I saw a skewbald pony saddled
and ready to go, left where it was unlikely to be seen. There was a splash of white
on the rump.
Aside from the fact that I was carrying a considerable sum in gold I had no reason
to be uneasy, yet I was.
The hotel lobby was empty. The red mustached clerk dozed behind his desk, a newspaper
across his chest. Gathering a newspaper from the leather settee, I went up the stairs
to my room. A crack of light showed under a door not far from mine. Molly Fletcher,
perhaps?
Pausing at my door I hesitated uneasily. Why was I getting spooky all of a sudden?
Standing to one side I leaned over and turned the knob, pushing the door inward.
All was dark and silent. Gun in hand, I struck a match with my left hand. The match
flared . . . the room was empty.
Stepping in, I lighted the lamp. On the bed the contents of my saddlebags had been
dumped and spread out by a hasty hand, looking for something. My blanket-roll had
been unrolled, spread out.
A glance at the stuff on the bed showed nothing missing. A small sack of .44 cartridges,
a waterproof matchbox, a razor-sharp knife, two clean shirts which had been carefully
folded and rolled in my blanket-roll, clean socks, clean handkerchiefs, and some
boot polish. I had a thing about highly polished boots.
There was a sewing kit with a few spare buttons and a small packet of tinder I always
carried for starting fires when everything was wet.
Looking down at the scattered stuff on the bed left me feeling naked and exposed.
It was damned little to show for the years I'd lived, and there was nothing there
of the brutal days and nights of work, the sandstorms, stampedes, the swollen streams
I'd swam nor the times I'd gone hungry. What lay on the bed and a few ideas picked
up here and there was all I had to show for what would soon be thirty years of living.
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At my age Pa had built bridges, helped to build a couple of steamboats, and had come
all the way from the Gaspe Peninsula of Quebec. He had built something to mark almost
every step. If anything happened to me now, what mark would I leave? No more impression
than left by a dust-devil spinning across the prairie on a hot, still day.
Looking down at my gear all spread out like that griped me. A man wants a little
privacy, and nobody wants his home entered or his personal things all spread out
like that. I began to feel a deep, smoldering anger. Nobody had any right to force
his way into a man's private life that way.
Maybe . . . maybe if I found this girl it would be something worthwhile. After all,
she stood to inherit a fortune and she might be somewhere alone and in desperate