Читать книгу The Dark River онлайн

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"What do you think of that old lizard-neck letting me unload all that stuff at the wrong place?" he said.

"Didn't he say anything?" Hardie asked.

"Not a word till we was all through. He musta thought I was making him a present of it." Tihoni grinned, good-naturedly. "I called him seven kinds of sons-of-bitches, in native. But it was my own fault. I ottua ast him first." He winced and started at the sound of a loud report and the unmistakable hissing of a burst tire. "Sacré nom de Dieu!" he exclaimed. "And I ain't got no spares with me!"

He had no jack, either, but with a boulder for a fulcrum and a lever of four-by-four pine borrowed from the lumber that was part of the freight, the wheel was soon raised. Two or three of the heaviest passengers sat at the end of the four-by-four, including the old lady who had halted the bus while she finished her bath. Méa removed the inner tube while Tihoni made an anxious search for a patch among the odds and ends of gear under his seat. At last he found one, and after prolonged scrapings of the rubber with a bit of rough coral and squeezings of an almost empty tin of cement, the patch was pressed into place and allowed five minutes to set; then the pumping began. Hardie and McLeod took their turns at this with the other men passengers, for the pump was as old as the bus itself and very little air went into the tube. But at last Tihoni thought the tire would do. The wheel was carefully lowered, but no sooner was the weight upon it than a dejected hissing was heard, the sound of which seemed to deflate Tihoni at the same time. "I ain't havin' no luck to-day," he said. But such emergencies were, apparently, everyday affairs with him, and his usual passengers thought nothing of this one. The wheel was raised again; meanwhile children scattered along the road and into the near-by plantations to gather fallen palm fronds, stripping the leaflets from the central ribs. Armfuls of these were brought to Méa, who stuffed them into the empty tire and rammed the mass tight with a stick. Tihoni stood by to inspect the job, giving the tire a tentative kick from time to time with the ball of his bare foot.