Αποσπάσματα από το «Tombstone»

Ένα κοιμισμένο παιδί αλλάζει τη στιγμή για τον άντρα που το βρίσκει.

John Slaughter stepped inside a wickiup. Something that, in the shadowy light, looked a little like a sack of flour caught his eye. Curious, he reached out the muzzle of his rifle to give the thing a poke. The sack of flour gave a sudden little tossing movement. It was a baby—a tiny Apache girl perhaps a year old, fast asleep on a deerskin. Black hair was tousled on the little head; long black eyelashes lay against the cheeks of dusky rose; the breath came and went as peacefully as if the child were sheltered in its mother’s arms. All the noise of the attack and flight had left the baby’s slumbers undisturbed.

Τι κάνει ένας άνθρωπος όταν αποκτήσει όσα ήθελε;

For twenty years since he had stood in thrilling triumph beside his newfound riches in the Tombstone hills, he had heard the still small insistent voice of the wilderness calling him back. He had assayed civilization and found only disillusion. The pleasures of wealth were not in its possession, but in the adventure of finding it. Society, with its pride, pretense, jealousies, and vainglory, was for others. Sweeter far to him were camp fire bacon and coffee in a desert than the luxuries of cities. One lonely purple mountain was worth all the world’s Broadways. So the rich man laid off his fine raiment, put on his old corduroys and his old red flannel shirt, buckled on his old canteen, and, with his old pick on his shoulder, went home to the wilderness.

Τι θα πει να αφήνεις τα χαρτιά και να φεύγεις χαμογελώντας.

The game of life and the game of pool both over. Life for him had been in truth a game, and he had played it with the spirit of a cavalier adventurer, gaily, carelessly, recklessly, bravely—above all, bravely. He had cashed in his chips, shoved back his chair, and gone out with a smile into the eternal silence.

Ένα κουνέλι στην έρημο γίνεται σημάδι τύχης.

Float was plentiful. The fragments scattered along the sides of the wash were like markers left to guide him. He entered the vestibule of the hills; the wash divided. Which branch should he take? One possibly led to poverty; the other to wealth. While he paused in momentary quandary, a cottontail rabbit darted from a covert, scurried across the wash from the left, and disappeared up the right-hand gulch, leaving a trail of tiny footprints in the sand. It seemed an augury. Schieffelin staked his mule in the brush and on foot followed the cottontail. Destiny at the crossroads was determined by a trifle.

Μια πόλη ξεφυτρώνει μονομιάς, σαν ξαφνική μπόρα.

Tombstone, magic city of the desert, was born in April, 1879. Where the Hills of Silver stretch out a lion’s paw into the mesa to the east, the town blossomed flowerlike as a cluster of white tents. No faint presage of the future glimmered in this shabby genesis. But beyond the desert’s rim, the tidal wave of destiny was curling to its crest. Evolution became the swift process of a dream, and the town, in swirling metamorphoses, rushed to full development. A twinkling camp fire on the mountain grew into a splendour of lights; a miner’s canvas shelter changed into streets and homes and marketplaces. A year was compressed into a minute; a century was packed into an hour. Daybreak surged to blazing noon; while the dawn was still red, the clock struck twelve. A city suddenly stormed into being out of a clear sky.

Η θλίψη ενός ήπιου ανθρώπου σε μια βίαιη πόλη.

Johnny Behan was a good man misplaced in a tough mining camp, his life and character twisted by circumstances into which he had been hurled by one of destiny’s unfortunate accidents. In a happier environment, he would have been considered a splendid character. He was sunny, companionable, kindly, honest, generous, loyal. But in Tombstone he was a twenty-two calibre man in a forty-five calibre town. Tombstone thirsted for strong waters; John Behan had only sarsaparilla and lemon pop on tap.

Ένας ετοιμοθάνατος αστειεύεται με την αρρώστια του.

He was, after a kind, a cynical philosopher, and his passing observations were spiced with a dry, acrid humour. Life seemed a bitter joke to him. He was reconciled to tuberculosis, he said, because it had left him so thin that it took mighty good shooting to hit him. He was still ready to bet, however, that in the homestretch drive, a bullet would nose out consumption at the wire.

Γιατί ο ανώνυμος τάφος έχει τον μεγαλύτερο λιθόσωρο;

The flat-topped mound of large, loose rocks that marks Ringo’s grave is twelve feet long, four feet wide, and as high as a man’s thigh. The stones, obtained from the creek that flows with a soft, plashing murmur at the foot of the embankment, are water-worn and smooth and in colour, brown and gray. No earth or cement holds them in place; the least among them is of a weight of four or five pounds, and a huge boulder unmarked by inscription of any sort is built into the head of the mound. Deeply impressive is this crude, lonely tomb without name or epitaph. It suggests, in its immense size, the cairn of some old giant of a lost, heroic age.

Κάθε θρύλος της Άγριας Δύσης κάποτε συναντά έναν υπάλληλο μεταφορών.

A visitor ships a burro to his home in Philadelphia for his small son to ride. The animal is billed as a burro, but the shipping clerk in Philadelphia, never having heard of such a beast and finding no furniture in the consignment, thinks a mistake has been made and turns in a report which reads: “One bureau short, one jackass over.”