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

knew and that was all that
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TAGGART 3
mattered. A man was part of it, but a man for Miriam must be stronger than she, and
she was a strong woman. He would have to be a lot of things, and Miriam was not one
to accept less than her desires.
Adam Stark turned his thoughts to the immediate problem. Their supplies, if augmented
by game and what herbs they could gather, would last them, at most, two months. Connie
knew the plants the Indians used for food, and whatever faults she might have, she
was not lazy. She was, as old Fritz at Tucson had said, "a lot of woman."
The first requirement was shelter, a place of concealment, relatively close to water;
and the second thing was to eradicate, so far as possible, the tracks left by their
wagon and horses and mules. And then he must establish a pattern of operation.
Adam Stark was a man of method, and half of his success here would result from proper
habits of work and movement. He must plan for their protection and their food, and
for getting out the gold itself. It was too easy to become careless, and to become
careless in the desert, in Apache country, meant one would die suddenly.
The desert can be a friendly place, but the rules of life in the desert are harsh,
calling for understanding of certain fundamentals. Without that understanding, death
could come quickly from heat, from thirst, from exhaustion, from rattlesnakes or
Apaches. The rule of desert survival was to live with
the desert and not against it, for all desert life is an accommodation to conditions
that exist.
Rising from the place where he sat, Adam Stark climbed Rockinstraw Mountain.
It was the highest point in many miles. To the west the great mesas of Redmond Mountain
and Squaw Peak dominated the landscape, but neither was as high as the mountain upon
which he took up his position.
To the northwest and just beyond the Salt River was the ominous-seeming bulk of Black
Mesa. To the north, and less
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4 Louis L'AMOUR
than three miles away, the Salt River took a deep horseshoe bend into which several
dry washes opened.
The western approaches to his position were walled off by the mesas except for two
gaps, through one of which the Salt River flowed. To the east the country was broken
by many canyons, most of them small, but from the top of Rockinstraw an observer
could study most of the country in that direction. He started to turn away when his
eye caught an odd shape among the canyons to the east, and not far off.
Getting out his field glasses, over the end of which Stark had arranged a hood of
stiff leather to prevent the sun from reflecting off the glass, he directed them
at the canyon where he had seen that odd, straight-edged rock.
The canyon itself was narrow, scarcely more than a wide crack in the earth, and nondescript
in appearance, but from his place on top of the mountain he could see what appeared
to be not a rock but the edge of a roof, and beyond it something that might be a
church tower.
He was suddenly excited. It was absurd, but there were stories of the Lost Mine of
the Padres supposedly somewhere in this area. The Southwest was filled with stories
of lost mines, and most of them pure myth, yet there was gold here, and this was
supposed to be the proper area ... although it might be anywhere in a vast region
several hundred miles square, some of the roughest country in the world.