"S. M. Stirling - Draka 05 - Drakas!" - читать интересную книгу автора (Stirling S. M)

Yet life there was. Trooper Caston found that out on the third day, when he went to relieve his bowels
next to a clump of thornbush and surprised a black mamba.

***

"I don't like it," Custer said as they rode away from the crude grave. "We never left our dead behind on
the Plains."

"We have no choice," Luther Boss pointed out. "Carry a dead man along, in this heat? Impossible."

"It'll be all right," Decurion Shaw added. "When we get back the Commandant will send out a party to
recover the remains."

That was nonsense and they all knew it. All the rocks they had piled on top of the grave had represented
nothing more than extra exercise for the menтАФand for the brown Kalahari hyenas, who would have the
body exhumed before it was dark.

"It was so fast," Custer said wonderingly.

Luther Boss grinned, big yellow crooked teeth surrounded by bristling white whiskers. "A mamba's a
bad customer," he said. "Just another reason to be careful in this country. You don't get but one mistake."

***

Two days later they found the Bushman camp.

There was no question of moving into position and making a textbook attack; no one, certainly not white
men with horses, could hope to sneak up on Bushmen in their own country. The only possible tactic was
to move in fast and strike before the quarry could escape.

Even so, the Bushmen were already scattering as the riders charged, little yellow-brown forms vanishing
into the tall yellow-brown grass. The slower ones, the elders and the women who paused to snatch up
children, were less lucky.

It was over in a very short time. The troopers swept in, yipping like wild dogs, firing their pistolsтАФthe
Drakia T-2 rifle was an excellent infantry weapon, but much too long and clumsy for horseback useтАФor
simply riding the Bushmen down. Custer saw a pregnant woman trip and fall in front of Decurion Shaw's
horse; her mouth opened as the hooves struck her, but her shriek was lost in the racket. Another woman,
running fast despite the baby slung on her back, almost made the cover of the grass, but Pace reined his
horse to a stop and held his revolver in both hands and took careful aim and knocked her over with a
single shot.

Custer's own sidearm remained unfired, almost forgotten in his hand. He watched the butchery from the
shade of a lone acacia tree, paralyzed by unexpected memories, pictures flashing in his mind like a
magic-lantern show: the Cheyenne camp on the Washita, the troopers firing and the Indians running out
of the teepees and being shot down in the snow while the band played "Garryowen."And the old man,
white hair hanging to his shoulders, who had materialized suddenly through the falling snow, eyes full on
Custer's face, pointing a long bony finger, calling out something in Cheyenne just before a .45 slug cut him
down. . . .