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Майн Рид. Всадник без головы / Mayne Reid. The Headless Horseman

Адаптация текста, составление упражнений, комментариев и словаря И. С. Маевской

© Маевская И. С. , адаптация текста, упражнения, комментарии, словарь

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Chapter One

On the great plain of Texas, about a hundred miles southward from the old Spanish town of San Antonio de Bejar, the noonday sun is shedding his beams from a sky of cerulean brightness. Under the golden light appears a group of objects.

The objects in question are easily identified – even at a great distance. They are waggons. Slowly crawling across the savannah, it could scarce be told that they are in motion.

There’re ten large waggons, each hauled by eight mules; their contents are: plenteous provisions, articles of costly furniture, live stock in the shape of coloured women and children; the groups of black and yellow bondsmen, walking alongside; the light travelling carriage in the lead, drawn by a span of Kentucky mules, and driven by a black Jehu.

In the cortège that accompanies it, riding at its head, is the planter himself – Woodley Poindexter – a tall thin man of fifty, with a slightly sallowish complexion, and aspect proudly severe. He is simply though not inexpensively dressed. His features are shaded by a broad-brimmed hat.

Two horsemen are riding alongside – one on his right, the other on the left – a stripling scarce twenty, and a young man six or seven years older.

The former is his son – a youth, whose open cheerful countenance contrasts, not only with the severe aspect of his father, but with the somewhat sinister features on the other side, and which belong to his cousin.

There is another horseman riding near. The keel-coloured “cowhide” clutched in his right hand, and flirted with such evident skill, proclaim him the overseer.

The emigrating party is from the “coast” of the Mississippi – from Louisiana. The planter is not himself a native of this State. Woodley Poindexter is a grand sugar planter of the South; one of the highest of his class.

The sun is almost in the zenith. Slowly the train moves on. There is no regular road. The route is indicated by the wheel-marks of some vehicles that have passed before – barely conspicuous, by having crushed the culms of the shot grass.

Notwithstanding the slow progress, the teams are doing their best. The planter hopes to reach the end of his journey before night: hence the march continued through the mid-day heat.

Unexpectedly the drivers are directed to pull up, by a sign from the overseer; who has been riding a hundred yards in the advance, and who is seen to make a sudden stop – as if some obstruction had presented itself.