Читать книгу The Temptress (La tierra de todos) онлайн

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The lunch hour had passed, and still Celinda had not come in. Her father every now and then looked impatiently out of the door. He had no fears whatever on her account. Ever since she had come to Rio Negro, at the age of eight, she had fairly lived on horseback, treating the Patagonian plateau lands as her playhouse.

“No one is going to take any chances with Celinda,” her father used to say proudly. “She’s a better shot with the revolver than I am. And besides, there is no two-legged or four-legged beast can get away from her when she has her lassoo along. My girl is as good as any man!”

In one of his pauses at the door he caught sight of her, approaching rapidly along the dark line that plain and sky make where they meet. The little mounted figure running along the horizon looked like a small tin horseman escaped from a box of toys.

In front of her pony ran a diminutive steer. And now the group, at full gallop, was growing larger with amazing rapidity. Anything moving on that immense plain appears to the bewildered eye, unaccustomed to the optical tricks of the desert, to change its size without going through the customary gradations.