"Manly Wade Wellman - Can These Bones Live" - читать интересную книгу автора (Wellman Manly Wade)

Can These Bones Live?

by Manly Wade Wellman

I'd dropped my blanket roll and soogin sack and guitar and sat quiet on the granite
lump as those eight men in rough country clothes fetched their burden along. It was
a big chest of new-sawed planks, pale in the autumn afternoon, four men on each
side.
As they tramped, they watched me. I got to my feet. I reckoned I was taller than any
of them, probably wider through the shoulders. I wore old pants and boots and
rumply hat, but I'd shaved that morning and hoped I looked respectable.
They came close to me amongst those tree-strung heights and set the chest down
with a bump. I figured it to be nine feet long and three feet wide and another three
high. Rope loops were spiked to the sides for handles. The lid was fastened with a
hook and staple, like what you use on a shed door. One of the eight stared me up
and down. He was a chunky, grizzled man in a wide black hat, bib overalls, and a
denim jacket.
"Hidy," he drawled, and spit on the ground. "What you up to here?"
"I was headed for a place called Chaw Hollow," I replied him.
They all stared. "How you name yourself?" asked the one who had spoken.
"Just call me John."
"What do you follow, John?" asked another man.
I smiled my friendliest. "Well, mostly I study things. This morning, back yonder at
that settlement, I heard tell about a big skeleton that had been turned up on a Chaw
Hollow farm."
"You a government man?" the grizzled one inquired me.
"You mean, look for blockade stills?" I shook my head. "Not me. Call me a truth
seeker, somebody who wonders himself about riddles in this life."
"A conjure man?" put in another of the bunch.
"Not me," I said again. "I've met up with that sort in my time, helped put two-three
of them out of mischief. Call that part of what I follow."
"My name's Embro Hallcott," said the grizzled one. "If you came to poke 'round
them bones, you're too late."
I waited for him to go on, and he went on:
"I dug them bones up on my place, a-scooping out for a fish pond. Some of us
reckoned that, whoair he was, he should ought to be buried in holy ground, yonder
at Stumber Creek church house. So we made him a box, and that's where we're
a-going with him now."
"Let me give you a hand," I said, and slung my guitar and other things to my
shoulders.
"He's a stranger man, Mr. Embro," said the scrawny man.
"Sure, but he looks powerful for strength." Hallcott raked me with his eye. "And you
feel puny today, Oat. All right, John, grab a hold there where Oat's been a-heaving
on this here thing."
I shoved my hand through the loop and we hoisted the coffin. It was right heavy, at
that. I heard the others grunt as we took the trail through the ravine. On the trees,
autumn leaves showed yellow, different reds, and so on, like flowers. Half a mile,
maybe, we bore our load along.
"Yonder we are, boys," said Hallcott.
We came out into a hollow amongst shaggy heights that showed rocky knobs. One,