Читать книгу Hands Up! онлайн

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I did learn too.

At the end of the first week the boss called to me and one of the Italians and told us to lift a log that lay by the railway track and throw it down the further side of the embankment.

I stooped to lift one end; the Italian stooped to the other. I lifted the log to my right shoulder; but the Italian, who was a left-handed man, lifted by the left and eased his end on to his left shoulder. Thus we were back to back; and when I started off in a slow step, never thinking of left-handed men, I headed one way and he the other way. Thus he fell backwards. I felt the jar, and looking round smartly, saw him also looking round, off his balance. Instead of trying to hold the log—though, just at that, he regained his balance, with legs spraddled like a slack pair of compasses—he flung it from him. My shoulder and collar-bone received a pretty jar, for I—still unlike the "Dago Push," as they were called by the Black Kettle section gang—was bent upon, as I would say, being "decent," and was clutching the log to save the Italian. Down went his end thud, and he called me what no man may call another in earnest.