"Chad Oliver - The Winds of Time" - читать интересную книгу автора (Oliver Chad)

eVersion 1.0 - click for scan notes

THE WINDS OF TIME
Chad Oliver
To Chuck Beaumont and Bill Nolan; Because the world is like a falcon.


ONE
The cabin was a neat compromise. For the man, fed up to the gills with the stinks of the city and
afflicted with the annual back-to-nature bug, it had yellow pine walls with prominent rustic knotholes. For
the woman, resigned to another season of losing her husband to a series of glassy-eyed trout, it offered
an electric refrigerator, a moderately efficient gas stove, a shower with hot water, and innerspring
mattresses on the beds.
Weston Chase, pleasantly fueled with ham and eggs and three cups of coffee, had only one immediate
aim in life: to get out of the cabin. He sat on the unmade bed and tied the laces of his old tennis shoes,
then clapped a stained mouse-colored felt hat on his head and shrugged into a supposedly waterproof
jacket. He stuffed chocolate bars and cigarettes into his pockets and picked up his tubular rod case and
his trout basket.
Now, if onlyтАФ
"Will you be long, hon?"
Too late, he thought. Now came the Dialogue. He knew what he would say, and he knew what his
wife Joan would say. The whole thing had the massive inevitability of Fate.
"I'll be back as soon as I can, Jo."
"Where are you going?"
"Up the Gunnison, I think. Pretty rough going that way. Sure you wouldn't like to go?"
"Wes, there's nothing to do up there."
Weston Chase edged toward the cabin door.
Joan sighed audibly, shoved back her fourth cup of black coffee, and put down the paper with a
flourish. (It was the Los Angeles Times, which caught up with them two days late.)
"Run along, hon," she said. "Mustn't keep the trout waiting."
He hesitated, smothering his guilt feelings. It was sort of a dirty deal for Jo, he supposed. He looked
at her. With her blonde hair uncombed and without her make-up on, she was beginning to show the
years a little. She had refused to have any children, so she still had her figure, but her good looks were
blurring a bit around the edges.
"I'll be back early," he said. "Tonight maybe we can go see Carter and Helen, play poker or bridge or
something."
"Okay," Joan said. It was a neutral noise; she was Being a Good Wife, but not pretending to be
ecstatic about it.
Wes kissed her briefly. Her mouth tasted of sleep and coffee.
He opened the door, stepped outside, and was a free man.
The thin air was clean and cold, and it hit him like a tome. It was still early, with the Colorado sun
wrestling with the gray morning clouds, and the deep breaths he took tasted of the night and stars and
silence. He got the engine of his car running on the third tryтАФthe carburetor wasn't adjusted for mountain
driving yetтАФand then switched the heater on.
He pulled out of the Pine Motel drive, vaguely annoyed by the two wagon wheels at the entrance, and
drove back through Lake City. Lake City wasn't much to look at but, as always, it filled him with a
nameless longing, a half conscious summer wish to get away from the smog and the traffic and settle
down in a place where the world was fresh. His eyes told him the truth: Lake City was not precisely a
ghost town, but the coffin was ready and the hole was dug. It was just a pale collection of wooden stores
and houses at the foot of Slumgullion Pass, kept more or less alive by tourists now that the silver mines