"Kenneth Robeson - Doc Savage 076 - The Flaming Falcons" - читать интересную книгу автора (Robeson Kenneth)

would have adored. He was nice to children and dogs, and both frequently followed him.

As Hobo Jones walked down a road in Arizona, he noticed it was getting dark, and almost
simultaneously, he perceived a haystack.

"There," he remarked cheerfully, "is my hotel."

Which was very unfortunate.



HOBO JONES was ever afterward somewhat uncertain about exactly what did happen during the next
few moments. Not that his eyes didnтАЩt clearly see, and his body painfully feel, what occurred. But the
trouble was, his brain refused to accept it as reasonable. Hobo Jones was a very reasonable,
level-headed young man. It was hard for him to believe such events as began occurring.

There was nothing extraordinary about the haystack, except that as he drew closer, it began to look
more like a strawstack. So much the better. Straw didnтАЩt have seeds that got down your neck and
scratched, the way this Arizona hay did. It was just a strawstack.

The strawstack stood in a dense thicket of mesquite and yucca and assorted varieties of cacti, so Hobo
Jones was surprised he had noticed it. Truthfully, he was surprised he had seen anything, because he
hadnтАЩt observed a house in miles. As a matter of fact, he was beginning to suspect that he had gotten off
the road to Flagstaff, and was gandering off into the desert.

Hobo Jones came to a high wire fence. This seemed to surround the strawstack. The fence was of
woven wire, but that didnтАЩt surprise him, because you probably had to use woven wire to keep herds of
Arizona jackrabbits away from strawstacks.

Hobo Jones was feeling good at finding the strawstack, so when he saw a long piece of two-by-four
lying on the ground, he picked it up on impulse. He decided to vault the fence, using the two-by-four for
a pole. It was just coltish playfulnessтАФHobo Jones was full of that.

He took a run, vaultedтАФand didnтАЩt make it over. He lit on his feet on the top wire. Things happened.
Sparks, mostly. Green ones, that sounded like spitting tomcats. He would have sworn some of the
sparks were a yard long. They seemed to run up his trouser legs.

Hobo Jones landed flat on his back inside the fence.

"IтАЩve been electrocuted!" he thought.

The fall had knocked his breath out. He was tingling all over from electricity. He was surprised. Other
than this, he found upon gaining his feet, he was as good as before, except for his dignity, which was
distinctly not the same.

He scowled at the electrified fence.

"Well, I got over the thing, anyway," he reflected.
An electrified fence was not exactly the usual item to be found on the Arizona desert, so Hobo Jones
looked around to see why and wherefore. He noticed that the fence seemed rather extensive, obviously