"Mike Resnick - THE LIGHT THAT BLINDS, THE CLAWS THAT CATCH" - читать интересную книгу автора (Resnick Mike)

to spare!_
And, miraculously, she _does_ draw strength from him. Her
breathing becomes more regular, and some thirty minutes later he
sees her eyelids flutter. He yells for the doctors, who come up
the stairs, expecting to find him holding a corpse in his arms.
What they find is a semi-conscious young woman who, for no earthly
reason, is fighting to live. It is touch and go for three days and
three nights, but finally, on February 17, she is pronounced on
the road to recovery, and for the first time in almost four days,
Roosevelt sleeps.

* * *

And as he sleeps, strange images come to him in his dreams.
He sees a hill in a strange, sun-baked land, and himself riding up
it, pistols blazing. He sees a vast savannah, filled with more
beasts than he ever knew existed. He sees a mansion, painted
white. He sees many things and many events, a pageant he is unable
to interpret, and then the pageant ends and he seems to see a life
filled with the face and the scent and the touch of the only woman
he has ever loved, and he is content.

* * *

New York is too small for him, and he longs for the wide open
spaces of his beloved Dakota Bad Lands. He buys a ranch near
Medora, names it Elkhorn, and moves Alice and his daughter out in
the summer.
The air is too dry for Alice, the dust and pollen too much
for her, and he offers to take her back to the city, but she waves
his arguments away with a delicate white hand. If this is where he
wants to be, she will adjust; she wants only to be a good wife to
him, never a burden.
Ranching and hunting, ornithology and taxidermy, being a
husband to Alice and a father to young Alice, writing a history of
the West for Scribner's and a series of monographs for the
scientific journals are not enough to keep him busy, and he takes
on the added burden of Deputy Marshall, a sign of permanence, for
he has agreed to a two-year term.
But then comes the Winter of the Blue Snow, the worst
blizzard ever to hit the Bad Lands, and Alice contracts pneumonia.
He tries to nurse her himself, but the condition worsens, her
breathing becomes labored, the child's wet nurse threatens to
leave if they remain, and finally Roosevelt puts Elkhorn up for
sale and moves back to New York.
Alice recovers, slowly to be sure, but by February she is
once again able to resume a social life and Roosevelt feels a
great burden lifted from his shoulders. Never again will he make
the mistake of forcing the vigorous outdoor life upon a frail
flower that cannot be taken from its hothouse.