"Scott O'Dell - Sing Down The Moon" - читать интересную книгу автора (O'dell Scott)

"It does not matter what others think," White Deer said. "Tall Boy will marry her only because she is pretty and obedient."
"And eats so little," Running Bird said.
My sheep were grazing nearby. I listened to the sound of their teeth as they sheared the long grass. I looked up at the sky which was blue and listened to the far-off sound of moving water. My friends waited for me to answer them. They wanted me to talk about Tall Boy, who in the morning would be riding west with our warriors.
White Deer grew impatient at my silence. "Tall Boy is very brave," she said.
"Sometimes he is too brave," Running Bird said.
They were goading me to speak, but still I kept silent. I got up and caught one of my sheep that was straying and chased it back into the flock. When I sat down again my friends were whispering to each other. They acted as though I was not there.
"In the land of the Utes, the girls are beautiful," White Deer said. "I have heard this from my father and brothers who have traveled there."
"It is true," said Running Bird. "Once I saw a girl from that land. I was a child then, yet I have never forgotten."
"Perhaps Tall Boy will bring one home," White Deer said.
"It is possible," said Running Bird.
I raised my knees under my chin and rested my chin on them and watched the flocks grazing. After a while I said to White Deer, "Three of your sheep have strayed." To Running Bird I said, "One of yours is eating poison weed." Then I felt better.
Early the next morning our young warriors left for the west country. They gathered in the night, riding from their homes nearby. All night they danced and sang and beat on drums. It was a big wonder that they had enough strength left to climb into their saddles when daylight came. But as I went out to build the breakfast fire, they sat astride their horses, ready to leave.
There were twelve warriors. They wore red paint and in their hair gray eagle feathers. Tall Boy, the leader, rode among them, making certain that everything was in order. I glanced up at him as I stirred the supper ashes alive and set fresh wood. Cedar smoke rose and drifted across the meadow. He must have smelled it, but he did not glance in my direction. He looked very tall in the dim light.
I thought what a good name he had taken for himself. It was better than his first name, River Boy, which his father had given him. He had carried it now for two springs and a summer, since the day he killed the brown bear beyond Rainbow Mountain. He had brought the skin home and said
Tall Boy had taken it, pointing to himself. After that, everybody called him by this name.
With the first flash of sun on the canyon wall, the men rode out of the meadow. Tall Boy led the way, moving briskly on his white pony. He did not look to either side, nor at those who had come to wish the warriors farewell, nor at me. He looked straight in front of him, his bold chin thrust out and his mouth drawn tight.
My mother watched him go by, then she said, "I hope that he does not kill another bear. If he does he will call himself Very Tall Boy and we will have much trouble with him."
My mother did not like him, but I did not mind his haughty ways. For his sake I wished he would kill another bear.
The warriors reached the end of the meadow and Tall Boy led them across the stream. On the far bank he turned for a moment and glanced over his shoulder, then raised his hand. I thought he might be waving at me, so I waved back. I watched until he disappeared and the sound of hoofs died away.
After breakfast I drove my sheep to the mesa. White Deer and Running Bird were already there with their flocks. When the sheep had settled down we sat under a tree and talked about the warriors. We talked and laughed together all the morning. At noon the two girls left to move their flocks.
An eagle was soaring overhead on a wind that did not blow here on the mesa and I watched until it drifted out of sight. A herd of white-tailed
antelope came to graze among my sheep. I was driving them away when I heard Running Bird call. She was standing on a ledge that jutted out over the canyon. She pointed down, down with two quick thrusts of her hand. As I ran toward her I heard the sound of a gun.
I went to the ledge where she stood and gazed down into the canyon.
Far below, moving along the river, was a line of horsemen. There were ten of them. They were not Indians. They carried long rifles slung to their saddles and their hats were broad brimmed and turned up at one side. They were white soldiers who lived to the south of our canyon, at Fort Defiance. I knew them because they had ridden through our canyon on a day last summer.
"What shall we do?" Running Bird said. She was frightened. "Shall we hide?"
I was frightened, too, but I said calmly, "No, let us stay here and watch."
"Last summer they threatened to come back and burn our village," Running Bird said. "They are back."
"They would burn our village if we did not keep the peace is what they told us. We have kept the peace."
"But our warriors are away now on a raid," said Running Bird.
"They have gone to raid our enemies, the Utes," I said. "That is different from raiding the white men."
As we watched, the first of the soldiers came to the village. He got off his horse and went to the hogan where Old Bear lived. Dogs were barking but there was no other sound in the village. Then Old Bear came out of the hogan and greeted the soldier and they went inside. The other soldiers sat on their horses and waited, with their rifles held across their laps. On the barrels of their rifles were fastened long, sharp-looking knives. That is why we always called them the Long Knives.
The sun crawled up the sky. It was a long time before the Long Knife came out of the hogan. We watched while he mounted his horse and the ten rode away, one by one out of the canyon. Not until they were far out on the plain, until they were a small cloud of dust, did my people come out of their houses.
Running Bird said, "I want to go down and learn what the Long Knife told Old Bear."
She grasped my arm. I held back, remembering the time I had left the sheep when the storm came.
"You go," I said. "I will watch your sheep until you return."
She ran across the meadow and disappeared. I heard the clatter of stones as she went down the trail. Her sheep were wandering and with the help of my black dog I gathered them in. Running Bird did not return until it was time to drive the sheep home. She was out of breath from the long climb and did not speak until we were half-way down the trail. I had to ask her twice what the Long Knife had said to Old Bear before she answered me.
"He asked Old Bear," she said, "'where are your warriors?' Old Bear told him that they were in the north, hunting in the North Country. And the Long Knife said that was good, but if they were not hunting, if he learned that they were on a raid somewhere, he would come back and burn the houses and kill everyone in the village. Even the women and children he would kill, even the sheep and the dogs. That was the last thing he said to Old Bear."
"What did Old Bear say?" I asked her.
"He said that he would keep the peace. He would keep it unless our village was attacked by the Utes or the Spaniards or our other enemies. Then he would fight as he had fought before when they had come to plunder us."
"I hope Tall Boy does not raid among the Utes," I said.
"Or if he does," White Deer said, "the soldiers will never hear of it."
We had reached the stream and the sheep were wading toward the far shore. Suddenly Running Bird put her arm around my waist.
"Tall Boy is very brave but not foolhardy," Running Bird said. "He will come back safely and he will not bring back a Ute girl. You will see that I am right."
She gave me a squeeze and we walked on through the river in silence. Dusk was falling and
blue smoke rose from all the hogans. I drove my sheep into the corral and dosed the gate and sang to myself as I walked homeward.
Our hogan was quiet that night. All the hogans in our village were quiet. The Long Knives' threat hung over us. Had our young warriors been home there would have been much talk and chanting and threats against the Long Knives. But there were only women and children who had nothing to say and old men who had seen the power of the white man and feared it.
The evening fires went out early. The night was long and I was glad when dawn came. At the first gray light I opened the gate and drove the sheep across the river and up the trail. As the sheep bells tinkled in the silent canyon, I sang little songs to myself. Some were happy and some were not, but all of them were meant for the ears of the gods who listen.
When I reached the mesa the sky was gold along the edges and pink overhead. With my black dog I drove the flock beyond the aspen grove to a place where the grass was uncropped.
Running Bird came soon and the two flocks grazed together. My sheep were easy to find because they were marked with red dye, a red cirde on each ear. That afternoon when the sun was hot I would make the ten sheep my mother had given me, using two red circles to show that they were mine.
Running Bird began to talk about the soldiers. I listened to her, nodding and making polite sounds, but I was thinking about my sheep all the time. The ewes my mother had given me would lamb in the summer. When spring came again I might have twenty or thirty sheep of my own to drive to the mesa. Thirty sheep! The thought made me dizzy with happiness. Right at the moment Running Bird asked me what my father had said about the soldiers I jumped up and began to dance. I could not help it, thinking of thirty sheep grazing in the meadow, each one with two red circles on its ears.