Alex_Winter: переводы

→In the aftermath of the great raid, much to her distress, Maggie's business increased. No one knew exactly where the Comanches were, but rumours of widespread carnage swept the town.

→"The poking, Woodrow," Gus said. "Pearl was large and large women are usually a pleasure to poke." "Well, you would think that," Call said.

→"Pearl must be a mighty good cook, for him to take on about her so before he even knows if she's dead." "No, she ain't," Augustus said. "I've et Pearl's cooking and it was only fair. I expect it's the poking." "The what?" Call asked, surprised.

→Pearl, though large, did not seem to him exceptional in any way. She had none of Clara's wit or spirit, nor Maggie's beauty of face.

→Call felt sorry for Long Bill Coleman. Seldom had he seen a man so broken by grief, though Pearl, the woman he grieved for, might well be alive and well.

→"Oh Saint Peterffwas they heard him exclaim. "Oh, Saint Paulffwas "I wish Billy would hear of some new saints to pray to," Gus said. "I'm tired of hearing him pray to Peter and Paul." "He can't read--I guess he's forgot the other saints," Call said. The grave diggers had paused for a moment--they were all exhausted, from hard travel and from fear.

→Long Bill had not come out with them to the grave site. They could see his tall form, pacing back and forth in front of the campfire, making wavy shadows.

→"We could start a hardware store with all the spades and axes scattered around out here," Gus remarked.

→"It ain't if we don't even see 'em," Gus said. "If we get away from all this watered country we won't happen on so many." It was a still, windless night, and very dark. The three young grave diggers had to bring burning sticks from the campfire, in order to determine if they had the grave deep enough. The spades they were digging with had belonged to the two men who were murdered.

→"Why?" Call asked. "There's always abundant water in the Brazos." "I know it--t's why," Augustus said. "Where there's water, there's farmers--or people who were trying to be farmers. It means more people to bury. Me, I'd like to get on home." "It's wrong to leave Christian folk unburied," Call told him.

→"Let's get off the damn Brazos tomorrow," Gus suggested.

→If Clara had left Austin before the big raid it was because she had married Bob Allen.

→"I mean to leave Texas forever, if Clara's dead," Augustus told him. "I wouldn't want to live here without my Clara. The memories would be too hard." Call refrained from commenting that the woman Gus was talking about wasn't his anymore.

→"I wouldn't have expected him to get this bad." "He's bad, Woodrow," Gus said. "I guess he's as crazy about Pearl as I am about Clara." The fact was, Call himself had had a number of disquieting thoughts about Maggie since hearing about the raid. Maggie had tried three times to talk about the baby she was carrying, a baby she claimed was his, but in his haste to round up his troop and get them started he had put her off, a rudeness he regretted. Now Maggie might be dead, and the child too, if there really was a child.

→"Bill's always been steady," Call said.

→"It's open country now." Later, Call and Augustus walked off from the group a little distance to discuss the problem of Long Bill, who was so distraught at the thought that his Pearl might have been killed or kidnapped that he seemed to be losing his mind.

→"You can't stop people from coming out here," Call said.

→Over and over, rangering, he and Augustus had come upon little families, far out beyond the settlements, attempting to farm country that had never felt the plow. Often such pioneers didn't even have a plow. They might have a churn, a spindle, a spade, and a few axes, an almanac, and a primer for the children. Mainly what they had, as far as Call could tell, was their energies and their hopes. At least they had what most of them had never had before: land they could call their own.

→"Why will people come out here, Captain?" Jake asked, as they were burying the two men who were travelling in the small wagon. "This ain't farm country ... what could you grow, out here?" Call had often wondered the same thing himself.

→Pea Eye was afraid to talk about the deaths for fear that he would cry and embarrass himself before the older men. The sight of dead people made so much sadness come in him that he feared he couldn't contain it. In death people looked so small--the dead adults looked like sad children, and the dead children looked like dolls. The fury that found them was so great that it reduced them as they died.