"Dwellers In The Mirage" - читать интересную книгу автора (Merritt Abraham)

"Queer sort of sounds, Jim." I tried to speak casually,
He sat up. A stick flared up in the dying fire. Its
light etched his face against the darknessЧthin, and
brown and hawk-profiled. He did not look at me.

"Every feathered forefather for the last twenty
centuries is awake and shouting! Better call me Tsan-
tawu, Leif. Tsi' Tsa'lagiЧI am a Cherokee! Right
nowЧall Indian."

He smiled, but still he did not look at me, and I was
glad of that.

"It was an anvil," I said. "A hell of a big anvil.
And hundreds of people singing . . . and how could
that be in this wilderness . . , they didn't sound
like Indians. . . ."

"The drums weren't Indian." He squatted by the
fire, staring into it. "When they turned loose, something
played a pizzicato with icicles up and down my back."

"They got me, tooЧthose drums!" I thought my
voice was steady, but he looked up at me sharply; and
now it was I who averted my eyes and stared at the
embers. "They reminded me of something I heard . . .
and thought I saw ... in Mongolia. So did the
singing. Damn it, Jim, why do you look at me like that ?"

I threw a stick on the fire. For the life of me I couldn't
help searching the shadows as the stick flamed. Then
I met his gaze squarely.

"Pretty bad place, was it, Leif ?" he asked, quietly.
I said nothing. Jim got up and walked over to the
packs. He came back with Some water and threw it over
the fire. He kicked earth on the hissing coals. If he saw
me wince as the shadows rushed in upon us, he did not
show it.

"That wind came from the north," he said. "So that's
the way the sounds came. Therefore, whatever made
the sounds is north of us. That being soЧwhich way do
we travel to-morrow ?"

"North," I said.

My throat dried as I said it.

Jim laughed. He dropped upon his blanket, and