"Sean McMullen - Slow Famine" - читать интересную книгу автора (McMullen Sean)

game of billiards. I feigned being suspiciously at ease with the locals, laughing, drinking ale and asking
after a fictional debtor who might live at Brighton.
***


The next day, an hour before dawn but in bright moonlight, I roused the punt operator and crossed the
Yarra River with my horse. The track south was all ruts, mud, deep sand and tree stumps, and the
surrounding country was thickly grown with gum trees and scrub. I saw nobody else as I rode, and by
the time the sun was up I was perhaps a mile from the house where James Salter resided. Like war,
hunting the undead is months, even years of tedium culminating in a moment of intense terror. That
moment was near, and my heart was already pounding.
I noticed a pony gig approaching, driven by a well-kempt but nondescript man with a woman beside
him. She was muffled against the cold winter air, and I did not recognise her as we passed-- but she
knew me.
"Pete, that's him, that's the cove who was askin' about Mr. Slater!"
The driver was caught as much by surprise as I was. We continued on until perhaps fifty feet apart
before he thought to draw a carbine from under the seat and take aim as I sat half-turned in the saddle.
"Pete, no!" the woman screamed, seizing his arm as he fired. I was hit just below the ribs. My horse
reared and I was flung into long grass beside the track. I lay still.
"Damn yor eyes!" the man roared.
"Please Pete, I didn't mean it, honest I didn't." Her voice was shrill with terror. "I thought you'd lost
your senses."
"Shut up and don't move!" His accent was Cockney, his voice hoarse and breathless.
I drew my Colt Patent Revolver with my right hand, slowly, smoothly, then thumbed the striker back
until the trigger clicked free of the stock. There were five shots in the chamber, but the first would count
most. Pain burned like hot coals in my intestines, and I could feel my hands shaking as I listened to
footsteps approaching. He was coming straight over, he might not have reloaded his carbine.
I wrenched myself up through a boiling spasm of pain and fired-- but missed! He flung a knife aside
and drew a Derringer from his coat as I fanned the Colt's hammer back and fired two, three, four, five
times. Half-deafened by the blasts, I watch the man fall, his right eye obliterated by my single hit. As I got
to my knees the woman just sat there with her arms held tightly against her breasts and her fists beneath
her chin.
"I seen it all, guv'ner," she suddenly blurted in a quavering voice. "I'll tell Judge Willis that Pete Hooper
took a shot at you an'-- "
"That's enough! Help me get him to the gig."
With blood seeping between the fingers of my left hand I helped her heave the body across the poles
of the gig behind the pony. My own horse, which seemed suspiciously at ease after such an exchange of
gunfire, was grazing nearby and the woman easily caught him and tied the reins to the gig. I had her scuff
sand over the blood on the road before we left. It was only as she climbed up beside me that I realised
she was one of Mother Newberry's 'arrangement' nymphs. Letitia was a laundress. She was in her
forties, but she had a plump, pleasant figure and pretty face after what had obviously been a hard life. I
turned off into a nearby break in the bush and the pony managed to force its way through a hundred
yards of scrub until we reached a clearing. We dragged the body off the poles then Letitia stood back,
her hands clasped and her shoulders hunched as I drew my argentor dagger.
"Oh Lord, no guv, I'm not ready-- "
"Quiet, this is not for you," I snapped, doubled over with pain and with my vision starting to blur.
"Unbutton his shirt, all the way down."
***