Читать книгу Painted Ponies - Alan Le May - Страница 23

They were on the prairie at last, riding southward at a steady trot; the muffled hoof-beats of the led horses, added to those of their mounts, gave the two-man outfit the sound of a cavalcade. It was curious to Morgan that by his side rode Talky Peters, the gangling, ribby fellow with the quizzically homely face, riding all night in the hope of rendering service to a man whom he scarcely knew. It added to the unrealness that shrouded everything about this night.

It was a strange thing to him, Cade’s death by his hands. Perhaps if it had happened anywhere else than at the Arrow C he would have been able to regard it in a different light. But the nearness of the thing to Nancy Chase gave it weird colors. He tried to picture horror upon the girl’s softly rounded face, but could not. It was terrible to know that the work of his hands had brought the death rattle to her ears, filled the cabin that sheltered her with the horrors of the unknown....

The beat of the horse’s hoofs began to drum a single word into his brain, over and over, until he broke into careless song to drown it out:

“Easy swing, easy slide,

Easy eat, easy ride,

Let the leather in the saddle take the wear;

Easy come, easy go,

Spend it fast, get it slow,

One place is like another, anywhere.

Anywhere, anywhere, anywhere!

One place is like another, anywhere.”

The song drifted onto the breeze with a lilting semblance of gayety; there was a lifting swing to it that brought the gray horse temporarily into a light lope. Yet, presently, when the song had died away, that chanting word crept into the rhythm of the hoofs again: “Murderer ... Murderer ... Murderer. ...”