"A. E. Merritt - Dwellers in the mirage" - читать интересную книгу автора (Merritt A. E)

between us and the tribes. My height, my yellow hair, blue eyes and
freakish strength, and my facility in picking up languages were of
never-ending interest to them. Tartars, Mongols, Buriats, Kirghiz--they
would watch while I bent horseshoes, twisted iron bars over my knees
and performed what my father used to call contemptuously my circus
tricks.

Well, that's exactly what I was to them--a one-man circus. And yet I was



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more than that--they liked me. Old Fairchild would laugh when I
complained that I had no time for technical work. He would tell me that
I was worth a dozen mining engineers, that I was the expedition's
insurance, and that as long as I could keep up my act they wouldn't be
bothered by any trouble makers. And it is a fact that they weren't. It
was the only expedition of its kind I ever knew where you could leave
your stuff unwatched and return to find it still there. Also we were
singularly free from graft and shake-downs.

In no time I had picked up half a dozen of the dialects and could
chatter and chaff with the tribesmen in their own tongues. It made a
prodigious bit with them. And now and then a Mongol delegation would
arrive with a couple of their wrestlers, big fellows with chests like
barrels, to pit against me. I learned their tricks, and taught them
ours. We had pony lifting contests, and some of my Manchu friends
taught me how to fight with the two broadswords--a sword in each hand.

Fairchild had planned on a year, but so smoothly did the days go by
that he decided to prolong our stay. My act, he told me in his sardonic
fashion, was undoubtedly of perennial vitality; never again would
science have such an opportunity in this region--unless I made up my
mind to remain and rule. He didn't know how close he came to prophecy.

In the early summer of the following year we shifted our camp about a
hundred miles north. This was Uighur country. They are a strange
people, the Uighurs. They say of themselves that they are descendants
of a great race which ruled the Gobi when it was no desert but an
earthly Paradise, with flowing rivers and many lakes and teeming
cities. It is a fact that they are apart from all the other tribes, and
while those others cheerfully kill them when they can, still they go in
fear of them. Or rather, of the sorcery of their priests.

Seldom had Uighurs appeared at the old camp. When they did, they kept
at a distance. We had been at the new camp less than a week when a band
of twenty rode in. I was sitting in the shade of my tent. They dismounted
and came straight to me. They paid no attention to anyone else.