Читать книгу Nameless River онлайн

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The owner of Sky Line walked down the veranda to her living-room door. At its lintel she stopped and stood, drawing the heavy quirt through her fingers, looking back at Big Basford. He had watched her progress and now the hard, bright, sparkling gaze of her dark eyes seemed to force him to movement, so that he picked up his hat, set it on his head and turned away toward the corrals at Rainbow’s foot, swinging with a rolling gait that further made one think of jungle folk.

But the lips in the flaring beard were twitching.

Kate Cathrew went in and hung the quirt on its smooth pegs, then sat down and took up her interrupted work just where she had left it.

“Three hundred head,” she said, “prime on hoof—at thirteen-fifty——” and her pen began to travel evenly across the page before her.

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The spring sailed by like a full-rigged ship on a windy sea, bright with sun, sweet with surging airs, a thing of swiftness and delight.

On the rich flats of Nameless, Nance Allison tilled her soil and her blue eyes caressed the land. She loved every sparkling ripple of the whispering stream, every cloud-shadow on the austere slopes, each jutting shoulder of ridge and spine. The homestead was a fetish with her. It had been her Pappy’s dream of empire. It was hers. He had stuck by and toiled, had secured his patent, made the good start.