"Richard McKenna - The Secret Place" - читать интересную книгу автора (McKenna Richard)

revenge. A few days later old Dave Gentry told me how.
He was a lean, leathery old man with a white mustache and
I sat next to him in my new place at the "town" table. Those
were grim meals. I heard remarks about healthy young men
skulking out of uniform and wasting tax money. One night I
slammed my fork into my half-emptied plate and stood up.
"The army sent me here and the army keeps me here," I
told the dozen old men and women at the table. "I'd like to go
overseas and cut Japanese throats for you kind hearts and
gentle people, I really would! Why don't you all write your
Congressman?"
I stamped outside and stood at one end of the veranda,
boiling. Old Dave followed me out.
"Hold your horses, son," he said. "They hate the govern-
ment, not you. But government's like the weather, and you're
a man they can get aholt of."
"With their teeth," I said bitterly.
"They got reasons," Dave said. "Lost mines ain't supposed
to be found the way you people are going at it. Besides that,
the Crazy Kid mine belongs to us here in Barker."
He was past seventy and he looked after horses in the local
feedyard. He wore a shabby, open vest over faded suspenders
and gray flannel shirts and nobody would ever have looked
for wisdom in that old man. But it was there.
"This is big, new, lonesome country and it's hard on
people," he said. "Every town's got a story about a lost mine
or a lost gold cache. Only kids go looking for it. It's enough
for most folks just to know it's there. It helps 'em to stand the
country."
"I see," I said. Something stirred in the back of my mind.
"Barker never got its lost mine until thirteen years ago,"
Dave said. "Folks just naturally can't stand to see you people
find it this way, by main force and so soon after."
"We know there isn't any mine," I said. "We're just proving
it isn't there."
"If you could prove that, it'd be worse yet," he said. "Only
you can't. We all saw and handled that ore. It was quartz, just
rotten with gold in wires and flakes. The boy went on foot
from his house to get it. The lode's got to be right close by
out there."
He waved toward our search area. The air above it was
luminous with twilight and I felt a curious surge of interest.
Co'onel Lewis had always discouraged us from speculating on
that story. If one of us brought it up, I was usually the one
who led the hooting and we all suggested he go over the search
area with a dowsing rod. It was an article of faith with us that
the vein did not exist. But now I was all alone and my own
fie'd boss.
We each put up one foot on the veranda rail and rested our
arms on our knees. Dave bit off a chew of tobacco and told