Читать книгу Painted Ponies - Alan Le May - Страница 14

The visitors, together with Happy Bent—a lean, freckled lad of eighteen or less—were bedded down for the night in the little bunkhouse. Morgan’s bunk was a section of the floor against the wall, shallowly boxed off with boards to keep the mattress of loose hay from scattering. Except for two second-story bunks built across the cabin’s end, the other beds were like his own.

After the lantern had been put out Morgan lay awake for a long time wondering what to do with the heavy freight of gold pieces that he had won at the wheel of the Happy Chance.

His fingers felt cautiously about the slab floor under the hay, and when he had located a good-sized crack he began dropping gold coins into it. He could not drop many in one place, because of the sound made when one coin fell upon another; but cracks in the floor were plenty, and little by little he was able to dispose of most of his wealth.

As nearly as he could judge in the dark he possessed nearly four thousand dollars—a sum well short of Jake Downey’s estimate of ten thousand, but a nice stake nevertheless. Whenever a crack in the floor had received its full quota of gold, Morgan stuffed it full of hay, a slow business, hard to accomplish quietly.

By the time that Slide at last let himself sleep, most of his fortune was under the floor slabs of John Chase’s bunkhouse.