"gp08w10" - читать интересную книгу автора (Parker Gilbert)

spotting it with rose and yellow, and three horses and their riders
fighting what cannot be fought?--What could I do? They would have got
the girl and spoiled her life, if I had not led them across, and they
would have killed me if they could. Only one cried out, and then but
once, in a long shriek. But after, all three were quiet as they fought,
until they were gone where no man could see, where none cries out so we
can hear. The last thing I saw was a hand stretching up out of the
sands."

There was a long pause, painful to bear. The Trader sat with eyes fixed
humbly as a dog's on Pierre. At last Macavoy said: "She kissed ye,
Pierre, aw yis, she did that! Jist betune the eyes. Do yees iver see
her now, Pierre?"

But Pierre, looking at him, made no answer.






A LOVELY BULLY

He was seven feet and fat. He came to Fort O'Angel at Hudson's Bay, an
immense slip of a lad, very much in the way, fond of horses, a wonderful
hand at wrestling, pretending a horrible temper, threatening tragedies
for all who differed from him, making the Fort quake with his rich roar,
and playing the game of bully with a fine simplicity. In winter he
fattened, in summer he sweated, at all times he ate eloquently.

It was a picture to see him with the undercut of a haunch of deer or
buffalo, or with a whole prairie-fowl on his plate, his eyes measuring it
shrewdly, his coat and waistcoat open, and a clear space about him--for
he needed room to stretch his mighty limbs, and his necessity was
recognised by all.

Occasionally he pretended to great ferocity, but scowl he ever so much,
a laugh kept idling in his irregular bushy beard, which lifted about his
face in the wind like a mane, or made a kind of underbrush through which
his blunt fingers ran at hide-and-seek.

He was Irish, and his name was Macavoy. In later days, when Fort O'Angel
was invaded by settlers, he had his time of greatest importance.

He had been useful to the Chief Trader at the Fort in the early days, and
having the run of the Fort and the reach of his knife, was little likely
to discontinue his adherence. But he ate and drank with all the dwellers
at the Post, and abused all impartially. "Malcolm," said he to the
Trader, "Malcolm, me glutton o' the H.B.C., that wants the Far North for
your footstool--Malcolm, you villain, it's me grief that I know you, and