"THE BROKEN GUN" - читать интересную книгу автора (L'Amour Louis)

lobby. He heard me talking about coming up this way, and mentioned it. Said it was
the best water anywhere around." I was lying, and I hoped lying smoothly. "Said he
used to punch cows up this way."
The driver was irritated. "Must've been a mighty old man. There's not many know Lost
River, and that water hasn't been important for years. Not since we drilled all those
wells."
"Must be pretty wild over there."
"It is. Ain't changed a mite in fifty, sixty years. I work this range all the time,
and I haven't been over there since year before last." He looked off toward where
Lost River must lie. "Only three or four times in the past five years," he added.
It was hot. Looking through the shimmering heat waves at the far-off mountains, I
found myself wishing for a long cool drink and a cold shower. The mountains were
gathering blue mist in the hollows and canyons.
Suddenly I was uneasy. Why had I come away out here? What kind of a fool was I to
start tracing down
10
some ninety-year-old mystery when there were stories to be done with less trouble?
And suppose there was no mystery at all?
My eyes turned in the direction of Lost River. Why did I believe that the answer
lay over there?
My uneasiness would not leave me. Was it a result of that unfortunate killing in
town? Or was it that sharp look the driver had given me when I mentioned Lost River?
It had all begun in New Orleans when I bought a broken Bisley Colt in a second-hand
store. Stuffed into the barrel, which nobody had attempted to clean, were some pages
torn from a notebook or diary. They were rolled tightly, and had stayed hidden in
the gun barrel.
Those pages were a strange document. Why these particular pages? Why were they hidden
as they were? The gun was broken, so nobody would try to fire it, and whoever had
hidden the pages must have hidden them in a hurry, in fear of being searched.
The mystery was compounded by the disappearance of John and Clyde Toomey. After driving
four thousand head of cattle into the country, twenty-seven men had simply dropped
off the edge of the world.
John Toomey had been no writer, but there was a consciousness of destiny in the man,
and even a vein of poetry. He was aware that there might not always be such cattle
drives, and he wanted to record his for whoever might read.
I might have dismissed the thing as a hoax but for the little points of fact and
incident that could not have been known by anyone who was not present ... or by a
skilled researcher. They were the things a hoaxer would not think of, and they were
evidence of authenticity to me.
The Texas end checked out easily. The Toomey family records were complete right up
to the day of their departure. There were deeds, wills, jury and coroner's records.
Old-timers recalled stories about the family and the tough Toomey boys.
There had been four brothers. The oldest had been killed fighting for the Confederacy.
Clyde and John had gone north to fight for the Union because they believed in the
country, and returned to find themselves objects of hatred. It was this that caused
them to sell out and leave Texas.
Theirs had been an active, prosperous, and prominent family, important to the community
in which they lived. They were definitely not the sort of men to be overlooked, wherever
they might be, and they were sure to leave their mark upon the land.
Yet they had vanished. There were no records of them that I could find in Arizona.