Лучшие романы Томаса Майна Рида / The Best of Thomas Mayne Reid

It was a piece of a cabriesto[97 - cabriesto – a kind of rope] – usually employed for tethering horses – though it was not for this purpose it was now to be used.

Having carefully scrutinised the grass within a circumference of several feet in diameter – which a shining moon enabled him to do – he laid the rope with like care around the spot examined, shaping it into a sort of irregular ellipse.

Stepping inside this, and wrapping the old blanket around him, he quietly let himself down into aВ recumbent position.

In an instant after he appeared to be asleep.

And he was asleep, as his strong breathing testified: for Zeb Stump, with aВ hale constitution and aВ quiet conscience, had only to summon sleep, and it came.

He was not permitted long to indulge his repose without interruption. A pair of wondering eyes had watched his every movement – the eyes of Phelim O’Neal.

“Mother av Mozis!” muttered the Galwegian; “fwhat can be the manin’ av the owld chap’s surroundin’ himself wid the rope?”

The Irishman’s curiosity for a while struggled with his courtesy, but at length overcame it; and just as the slumberer delivered his third snore, he stole towards him, shook him out of his sleep, and propounded a question based upon the one he had already put to himself.

“Durn ye for a Irish donkey!” exclaimed Stump, in evident displeasure at being disturbed; “ye made me think it war mornin’! What do I put the rope roun’ me for? What else wud it be for, but to keep off the varmints!”

“What varmints, Misther Stump? Snakes, div yez mane?”

“Snakes in coorse.

Durn ye, go to your bed!”

Notwithstanding the sharp rebuke, Phelim returned to the cabin apparently in high glee. If there was anything in Texas, “barrin’ an above the Indyins themselves,” as he used to say, “that kept him from slapin’, it was them vinamous sarpints.

He hadn’t had a good night’s rest, iver since he’d been in the counthry for thinkin’ av the ugly vipers, or dhramin’ about thim. What a pity Saint Pathrick hadn’t paid Tixas a visit before goin’ to grace!”

Phelim in his remote residence, isolated as he had been from all intercourse, had never before witnessed the trick of the cabriesto.

He was not slow to avail himself of the knowledge thus acquired.