"John Varley - Persistence Of Vision2" - читать интересную книгу автора (Varley John)

grass so green I wanted to go over and roll in it. The wall enclosed a rectangle of green.
Outside, where I stood, it was: all scrub and sage. These people had access to Rio Grande
irrigation water.
I rounded the corner and followed the wall west again. `
I saw a man on horseback about the same time he spotted me. He was south of me, outside
the wall, and he turned and rode in my direction.
He was a dark man with thick features, dressed in denim and boots with a gray battered
stetson. Navaho, maybe. L
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don't know much about Indians, but I'd heard they were out here.
"Hello," I said when he'd stopped. He was looking me over. "Am I on your land?"
"Tribal land," he said. "Yeah, you're on it."
"I didn't see any signs."
He shrugged.
"It's okay, bud. You don't look like you out to rustle cattle." He grinned at me. His
teeth were large and stained with tobacco. "You be camping out tonight?"
"Yes. How much farther does the, uh, tribal land go? e' Maybe I'll be out of it before
tonight?"
He shook his head gravely. "Nah. You won't be off it,_. tomorrow. 'S all right. You make a
fire, you be careful, huh?" He grinned again and started to ride off.
"Hey, what is this place?" I gestured to the wall, and he pulled his horse up and turned
around again. It raised a lot .' of dust.
"Why you asking?" He looked a little suspicious.
"I dunno. Just curious. It doesn't look like the other places I've been to. This wall..."
He scowled. "Damn wall." Then he shrugged. I thought that was all he was going to say.
Then he went on.
"These people, we look out for 'em, you hear? Maybe we don't go for what they're doin'.
But they got it rough, you know?" He looked at me, expecting something. I never did get the knack
of talking to these laconic Westerners. I always felt that I was making my sentences too long.
They use a shorthand of grunts and shrugs and omitted parts of speech, and I always felt like a
dude when I talked to them.
"Do they welcome guests?" I asked. "I thought I might see if I could spend the night."
He shrugged again, and it was a whole different gesture.
"Maybe. They all deaf and blind, you know?" And that was all the conversation he could
take for the day. He made a clucking sound and galloped away.
I continued down the wall until I came to a dirt road that wound up the arroyo and entered
the wall. There was a wooden gate, but it stood open. I wondered why they took all the trouble
with the wall only to leave the gate like that. Then I noticed a circle of narrow-gauge train
tracks that came out of the gate, looped around outside it, and rejoined itself. There was a small
siding that ran along the outer wall for a few yards.
I stood there a few moments. I don't know what entered into my decision. I think I was a
little tired of sleeping out, and I was hungry for a home-cooked meal. The sun was getting closer
to the horizon. The land to the west looked like more of the same. If the highway had been
visible, I might have headed that way and hitched a ride. But I turned the other way and went
through the gate.
I walked down the middle of the tracks. There was a wooden fence on each side of the road,
built of horizontal planks, like a corral. Sheep grazed on one side of me. There was a Shetland
sheepdog with them, and she raised her ears and followed me with her eyes as I passed, but did not