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Lewis Jon E - The Mammoth Book of Westerns / Льюис Джон - Большая книга вестернов [2013, EPUB, ENG]

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The Mammoth Book of Westerns / Большая книга вестернов

Название: The Mammoth Book of Westerns / Большая книга вестернов
Год выпуска: 2013
Под редакцией: Lewis Jon E / Льюис Джон
Издательство: Robinson Publishing LTD
eISBN: 978-1-78033-916-0
Формат: EPUB
Качество: eBook
Язык: английский

Описание:
Вестерн более известен как кино-жанр, но существует и как литературный. В этой антологии представлены образцы начиная с Марка Твена и Брета Гарта и до произведений конца 20-го века
The Outcasts of Poker Flat BRET HARTE
Way Out West MARK TWAIN
A Sergeant of the Orphan Troop FREDERIC REMINGTON
The Caballero’s Way O. HENRY
The Bride Comes to Yellow Sky STEPHEN CRANE
On the Divide WILLA CATHER
Bad Penny B. M. BOWER
All Gold Canyon JACK LONDON
The Last Thunder Song JOHN G. NEIHARDT
Under the Lion’s Paw HAMLIN GARLAND
The Ranger ZANE GREY
Wine on the Desert MAX BRAND
At the Sign of the Last Chance OWEN WISTER
Early Americana CONRAD RICHTER
The Wind and the Snow of Winter WALTER VAN THILBURG CLARK
When You Carry the Star ERNEST HAYCOX
The Young Warrior OLIVER LA FARGE
The Big Sky A. B. GUTHRIE
Command JAMES WARNER BELLAH
Burn Him Out FRANK BONHAM
The Colt WALLACE STEGNER
A Man Called Horse DOROTHY M. JOHNSON
Great Medicine STEVE FRAZEE
Emmet Dutrow JACK SCHAEFER
River Polak MARI SANDOZ
Blood on the Sun THOMAS THOMPSON
Beecher Island WAYNE D. OVERHOLSER
Desert Command ELMER KELTON
The Bandit LOREN D. ESTLEMAN
There Will Be Peace in Korea LARRY McMURTRY
C. B. & Q. EDWARD DORN
The Man to Send Rain Clouds LESLIE MARMON SILKO
The Waterfowl Tree WILLIAM KITTREDGE
Days of Heaven RICK BASS
Hole in the Day CHRISTOPHER TILGHMAN
MAX BRAND

Wine on the Desert

THERE WAS NO hurry, except for the thirst, like clotted salt, in the back of his throat, and Durante rode on slowly, rather enjoying the last moments of dryness before he reached the cold water in Tony’s house. There was really no hurry at all. He had almost twenty-four hours’ head start, for they would not find his dead man until this morning. After that, there would be perhaps several hours of delay before the sheriff gathered a sufficient posse and started on his trail. Or perhaps the sheriff would be fool enough to come alone.
Durante had been able to see the wheel and fan of Tony’s windmill for more than an hour, but he could not make out the ten acres of the vineyard until he had topped the last rise, for the vines had been planted in a hollow. The lowness of the ground, Tony used to say, accounted for the water that gathered in the well during the wet season. The rains sank through the desert sand, through the gravels beneath, and gathered in a bowl of clay hardpan far below.
In the middle of the rainless season the well ran dry but, long before that, Tony had every drop of the water pumped up into a score of tanks made of cheap corrugated iron. Slender pipe lines carried the water from the tanks to the vines and from time to time let them sip enough life to keep them until the winter darkened overhead suddenly, one November day, and the rain came down, and all the earth made a great hushing sound as it drank. Durante had heard that whisper of drinking when he was here before; but he never had seen the place in the middle of the long drought.
The windmill looked like a sacred emblem to Durante, and the twenty stodgy, tar-painted tanks blessed his eyes; but a heavy sweat broke out at once from his body. For the air of the hollow, unstirred by wind, was hot and still as a bowl of soup. A reddish soup. The vines were powdered with thin red dust, also. They were wretched, dying things to look at, for the grapes had been gathered, the new wine had been made, and now the leaves hung in ragged tatters.
Durante rode up to the squat adobe house and right through the entrance into the patio. A flowering vine clothed three sides of the little court. Durante did not know the name of the plant, but it had large white blossoms with golden hearts that poured sweetness on the air. Durante hated the sweetness. It made him more thirsty.
He threw the reins off his mule and strode into the house. The water cooler stood in the hall outside the kitchen. There were two jars made of a porous stone, very ancient things, and the liquid which distilled through the pores kept the contents cool. The jar on the left held water; that on the right contained wine. There was a big tin dipper hanging on a peg beside each jar. Durante tossed off the cover of the vase on the left and plunged it in until the delicious coolness closed well above his wrist.
“Hey, Tony,” he called. Out of his dusty throat the cry was “throw some water into that mule of mine, would you, Tony?”
A voice pealed from the distance.
Durante, pouring down the second dipper of water, smelled the alkali dust which had shaken off his own clothes. It seemed to him that heat was radiating like light from his clothes, from his body, and the cool dimness of the house was soaking it up. He heard the wooden leg of Tony bumping on the ground, and Durante grinned; then Tony came in with that hitch and sideswing with which he accommodated the stiffness of his artificial leg. His brown face shone with sweat as though a special ray of light were focused on it.
“Ah, Dick!” he said. “Good old Dick! . . . How long since you came last! . . . Wouldn’t Julia be glad! Wouldn’t she be glad!”
“Ain’t she here?” asked Durante, jerking his head suddenly away from the dripping dipper.
“She’s away at Nogalez,” said Tony. “It gets so hot. I said, ‘You go up to Nogalez, Julia, where the wind don’t forget to blow.’ She cried, but I made her go.”
“Did she cry?” asked Durante.
“Julia . . . that’s a good girl,” said Tony.
“Yeah. You bet she’s good,” said Durante. He put the dipper quickly to his lips but did not swallow for a moment; he was grinning too widely. Afterward he said: “You wouldn’t throw some water into that mule of mine, would you, Tony?”
Tony went out with his wooden leg clumping loud on the wooden floor, softly in the patio dust. Durante found the hammock in the corner of the patio. He lay down in it and watched the color of sunset flush the mists of desert dust that rose to the zenith. The water was soaking through his body; hunger began, and then the rattling of pans in the kitchen and the cheerful cry of Tony’s voice:
“What you want, Dick? I got some pork.You don’t want pork. I’ll make you some good Mexican beans. Hot. Ah ha, I know that old Dick. I have plenty of good wine for you, Dick. Tortillas. Even Julia can’t make tortillas like me . . . And what about a nice young rabbit?”
“All blowed full of buckshot?” growled Durante.
“No, no. I kill them with the rifle.”
“You kill rabbits with a rifle?” repeated Durante, with a quick interest.
“It’s the only gun I have,” said Tony. “If I catch them in the sights, they are dead . . . A wooden leg cannot walk very far . . . I must kill them quick. You see? They come close to the house about sunrise and flop their ears. I shoot through the head.”
“Yeah? Yeah?” muttered Durante. “Through the head?” He relaxed, scowling. He passed his hand over his face, over his head.
Then Tony began to bring the food out into the patio and lay it on a small wooden table; a lantern hanging against the wall of the house included the table in a dim half circle of light. They sat there and ate. Tony had scrubbed himself for the meal. His hair was soaked in water and sleeked back over his round skull. A man in the desert might be willing to pay five dollars for as much water as went to the soaking of that hair.
Everything was good. Tony knew how to cook, and he knew how to keep the glasses filled with his wine.
“This is old wine. This is my father’s wine. Eleven years old,” said Tony. “You look at the light through it. You see that brown in the red? That’s the soft that time puts in good wine, my father always said.”
“What killed your father?” asked Durante.
Tony lifted his hand as though he were listening or as though he were pointing out a thought.
“The desert killed him. I found his mule. It was dead, too. There was a leak in the canteen. My father was only five miles away when the buzzards showed him to me.”
“Five miles? Just an hour . . . Good Lord!” said Durante. He stared with big eyes. “Just dropped down and died?” he asked.
“No,” said Tony. “When you die of thirst, you always die just one way . . . First you tear off your shirt, then your undershirt. That’s to be cooler . . . And the sun comes and cooks your bare skin . . . And then you think . . . there is water everywhere, if you dig down far enough. You begin to dig. The dust comes up your nose. You start screaming. You break your nails in the sand. You wear the flesh off the tips of your fingers, to the bone.” He took a quick swallow of wine.
“Without you seen a man die of thirst, how d’you know they start to screaming?” asked Durante.
“They got a screaming look when you find them,” said Tony. “Take some more wine. The desert never can get to you here. My father showed me the way to keep the desert away from the hollow. We live pretty good here? No?”
“Yeah,” said Durante, loosening his shirt collar. “Yeah, pretty good.”
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