"Paine, Lauran - Blue Basin Country" - читать интересную книгу автора (Paine Lauran)

leading upward before Foster fished in a croaker sack and handed around
a bottle of pop skull and ten minutes later had insulated each man
against the chill. Then they covered the areas of rumour and gossip.

The year before, John Holbrook who owned thousands of acres, ran
red-back cattle, kept four full-time riders and was known to be both
wealthy and short-tempered had been operated on for an obsidian
bird-arrow that had been lodged in a vertebra for over fifteen years.
What intrigued the woodcutters was Holbrook's decision to have the
surgery when the best doctors up in Denver had told him if it failed,
he might never walk again.

The woodcutters were Holbrook's age or thereabouts; each of them knew
him and, as Abel said, before the operation old John hadn't been able
to straddle a horse or work at the marking grounds in years. Nor had
he ever been entirely free of pain. Abel also said, "Course a man
can't come right out an' say what he'd do but I think he did exactly
right."

Alex, who was favouring the big horses that were all the family he had,
nodded thoughtfully. "Yes, he done right. It seems to me when a man
gets old enough to know something's not goin' to get better, only maybe
worse, and he's already done everything at least once when he's no good
to himself or anyone else takin' that kind of a risk don't measure up
to but one choice. An' if he'd come out of it paralysed from the
middle down, well, there's worse things than suicide." No one
replied.

Alex did not take his one good eye off his horses when he said, "I'm
still cold. How about you fellers?"

Abel punched Foster in the ribs. He leaned, groped in the sack again,
and handed Alex the bottle.

The pop skull made another circuit as Alex said, "Old John had a good
year. Got his back patched, married that pretty girl of his to that
horse breaker who's got a scrub-ranch west of the Holbrook place a few
miles ..." Alex interrupted himself to call quiet encouragement to the
big horses; they had one last hard pull up over the lip of the slope to
the big meadow.

Foster Bullard screwed up his face. "I can't remember that horse
breaker name."

"His name is Bart Templeton," the harness maker said. "Decent feller.
Works hard, pays on the barrelhead, turns out good horses."

Alex tooled the team a short half mile before stopping to rest them
their heads pointing southward away from the cold air coming from the
high northward mountains.