Читать книгу Nameless River онлайн

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However, as the seasons passed, each with its promise and its inevitable blight, her face had became graver, less smiling. There had been the hay fire then—the fire in the night where no fire was or had been. There had been the six fat steers that disappeared from the range and were never heard of, though Bud rode Buckskin to a lather in a fruitless search for them. There had been the good harness cut to pieces one night when Bud had forgotten to lock it up.

All these had been disasters in a real sense to these people living so meagerly with their scant possessions.

And this year they were more than poor, they were in debt to McKane for the new harness that had to be bought to replace the other. But Nance looked at her field of corn coming in long rows of tender green on the brown floor of the well worked land and hoped. She was prone to hope. It was part of her equipment for the battle of life, her shield before the lance of her courage, her buckler of energy.

“It looks like a heavy crop, McKane,” she told the trader honestly, “and I’ll have far and away more than enough for you—I think I’ll have enough left for my winter stake.”