The Last Bullet MacKinlay Kantor

 

Jameson thought he saw something stirring on the burnt sullenness of the desert's face. He thought he saw a quiver among the furious slopes of brown and red.

He opened his dry, cracked mouth; his mouth had been open for a long time, but he opened it wider. He tried to say, weakly, "Posse”.

It wasn't a posse. Jameson never thought he'd be glad to have a posse come smoking up to him; but he reckoned that if a man lived long enough he saw different days from those he had expected to see.

No quiver in the blue, no twisting and dividing in the brown ... Jameson turned his head and felt the vast, round, hot flame of sky searing his eye­balls. He managed to lift his hand, and in the scant shade granted by the swollen fingers, he tried to find some buzzards. He couldn't find any buzzards. Nothing lived on this dry pan of desertion-nothing lived here but Jameson and Poco.

The man twisted the upper part of his body, and sighed. Poco's head lay against the burning shale a few feet away; when Jameson stirred, the little horse moved his neck with the agony of a movement five hundred times repeated.

"How you doing?' Jameson wanted to ask his horse.

Poco wasn't doing so well, now. He had done well, for the five years Jameson had ridden him. He had taken Jameson hustling out of towns, slapping along narrow mountain roads when the bullets squealed around them. And there was that night in Dundee* when the wise little horse waited silently beside a dark doorway, aloof from the stampede of pursuing hoofs, and carried Jameson away with two bullets in his arm.

Jameson said: "Reckon you'd like a drink. So would I."

He stole Poco from the Maxwell ranch, clear over south of the Estella Plata range, when Poco was only a colt; and he left him with a Mexican at a mountain shack for months after that. Jameson had raised Poco on a bottle, so to speak- taught him to blow his nose and keep his clothes buttoned. He was the only kid Jameson had ever had.

Now the heat-warped fingers of the man's hand stole down to find his revolver butt, as they had stolen a dozen times before. He thought. Nothing in this country. Nothing for fifty miles. 1 ought to have known better than try to ride across. But we made it, other times. No water."

His hand trembled as he exposed the cylinder and saw the solitary undented cartridge cap that reposed on the hot surface of powder-grimed steel.

The blue sky came down and struck him across the face. It was a red sky-now it was yellow-now white. "Old sky," he wanted to say, "do you see any posses? 1 sure would like to see one."

Poco's ears fluttered, and he tried to whinny. Still there was moisture in his muzzle, and one bubble formed there, and then it went away. It was mighty strange that here could be any moisture in either of them, after the hot day and the cold night, and the day before that.

Jameson said one of us went wrong. That was a bad slide.

I reckon you might have seen that crack in the rocks…

I ain't blaming you. You've seen plenty I've never seen."

His mind went away from him for a while, and came speeding back amid the hearty hoofs of phantom horses. There were men in this fantasy, enemies who came to gather him in, and all the time they laughed at him.

The mystic enemies said, "Why did you do it, Jimmy Jameson? You ain't never killed anyone. Time was* when you were mighty charitable with what you took off the road. You're a bad man; but a lot of people like you."

They said, in this parched dream that formed within his mind, "It wouldn't have been hanging. We're the Law now. We've burned powder and shoved lead at each other, but you ain't really got a bad name. Maybe you'd have spent a couple years behind bars, but that's all. You shouldn't have tried the Llano Diablo." No water in the Llano Diablo. Nobody goes there.

He thought that the posse circled him. "You're an awful idiot," said the posse. 'Here you are: your horse has got a broken back, and it looks as if both of your legs is busted," too. Can't either of you move. Can’ t even crawl. Not even coyotes go out on the Llano Diablo."

Now he awoke from his dream, and he had the gun in his hand. Twice he put the muzzle against his own temple, and twice thought, "1 can't! It's hell for me, but I reckon it's double hell for you.

The sky changed from white back into yellow and orange. The shadow of the steep stone ridge grew longer.

"Not another night," said Jameson. "1 can't stand it. Pity there ain't two Jameson breathed softly. "Okay," he croaked. He remembered something about the Bible and a merciful man being merciful to his beast, but Jameson would never call Poco a beast.

He inched forward, suffering horrors until he felt the metal barrel sinking against Poco's ear cavity, soft and warm and silky despite all endurances.

"Be seeing you," he said, and pulled the trigger.

The gun jumped loose from his hand, after it was over…

Не didn”t know how many dreams possessed him, not many the night came closer every second. And then his ears picked out a faint scrambling, a sound of sliding grave Hoof rims scraped the burnished gray rocks.

They rode up; they were angels in leather and flannel; they wore guns. They would carry Jimmy Jameson behind the ban. But still they were angels.

The sheriff was on his knees beside him.

Can't understand it,* Jameson whispered. "So late. Nobody comes ... Llano Diablo."

The sheriff looked at the dead horse. He shook his head, even while his hands moved to his water bottle.

"One shell," Jameson said. "It was him or me. Poco needed a break."

"I guess you got a break yourself, this time," the sheriff said. "We hadn't come across your trail, I and we agreed to ride back to Dundee. We were just turning our horses, behind that hill, when we heard you shoot.

 

 

Commentary

MacKinlay Kantor is a famous American writer whose marsrtpiece is ANDERSONVILLE. AWARDED THE PULITZER PRIZE FOR FICTION 1956.

REGARDED IN AMERICA AS THE GREATEST OF THEIR CIVIL WAR NOVELS, OUTSTRIPPING EVEN GONE WITH THE WIND, ANDERSONVILLE IS THE STORY OF A NOTORIOUS CONFEDERATE STOCKADE WHERE 50,000 YANKEE PRISONERS OF WAR WERE HERDED IN HORRIBLE CONDITIONS FOR 14 TERRIBLE MONTHS.

THIS STORY OF A MOST TRAGIC EPISODE IN AMERICAN HISTORY IS MORE THAN JUST A RECORD OF A 19TH CENTURY HELL ON EARTH. IT IS THE STORY ALSO OF A CROSS SECTION OF HUMANITY FACING UP, OR GIVING WAY TO APPALLING CONDITIONS SUCH AS NO MAN SHOULD HAVE TO EXPERIENCE.

 

· “a posse” is a group of men gathered together by a sheriff in past times to help to catch a criminal;

· “smoking” has a slang meaning of “furious”

· How you doing – col.

· Dunbee – is a fictional town, as are all the other place names in the story

· Jameson had raised Poco on a bottle, so to speak- taught him to blow his nose and keep his clothes buttoned – a sustained metaphor suggesting a comparison with bringing up a child.

· In was mighty strange – “mighty” (col.) is an emphatic synonym of “very”

· One of us went wrong – a pun on the literal & figurative meaning of “to go wrong”

 

 

Words & word-combinations to be memorised:

 

Cracked mouth, reckon, to sear, swollen fingers, buzzard, shale, colt, squeal, muzzle, parched dreams, croaked, endurance, pull a trigger, to pick out, to need a break, shoot.

 

 

III. TEXT EXERCISES:

 

1. Translate the first paragraph of the text

2. Find synonyms & antonyms in the text

3. Describe the situations in which the words & word-combinations are used in the text under study

4. Paraphrase the italicized words & expressions from the text:

· Jameson thought he saw something stirring on the burnt sullenness of the desert's face. He thought he saw a quiver among the furious slopes of brown and red.

· No quiver in the blue, no twisting and dividing in the brown ... Jameson turned his head and felt the vast, round, hot flame of sky searing his eye­balls.

· The man twisted the upper part of his body, and sighed.

· Jameson had raised Poco on a bottle, so to speak- taught him to blow his nose and keep his clothes buttoned. He was the only kid Jameson had ever had.

· His hand trembled as he exposed the cylinder and saw the solitary undented cartridge cap that reposed on the hot surface of powder-grimed steel.

· His mind went away from him for a while, and came speeding back amid the hearty hoofs of phantom horses.

· Time was when you were mighty charitable with what you took off the road.

· He inched forward, suffering horrors until he felt the metal barrel sinking against Poco's ear cavity, soft and warm and silky despite all endurances.

· "We hadn't come across your trail, I and we agreed to ride back to Dundee.

 

5. Give the definitions of the following words from English-English dictionary

 

To reckon, swollen, to squeal, endurance, to trigger.

 

6. Translate into English

 

· Джеймс открыл пересохший, с потрескавшимися губами рот.

· Он полагал, что если человек живёт достаточно долго, с ним может случиться то, чего совсем не ожидаешь.

· Он стремительно мчался по узким горным дорогам, и пули свистели вокруг него.

· В воспалённом сознании бедняги продолжали звучать голоса.

· Ему казалось, что враги окружают его, но когда он открывал глаза, видение исчезало.

· «Хорошо» прохрипел Джеймс, я сделаю так, как ты хочешь.

· Несмотря на все испытания, этот удивительный человек продолжал работать и жить, и он любил всё человечество.

· Ночь надвигалась всё быстрее, и вдруг слух его уловил едва различимый шорох.

· Жизнь давала ему последний шанс. Сможет ли он им воспользоваться?

· Я не люблю стрелять в животных. Гораздо лучше фото охота. Я предпочитаю её.

 

 

II.HOME EXERCISES

 

1.Make up 10-15 sentences with the new words & expressions

2.Give the gist of the story

3.Define the composition of the text under study

4.Try to define the massage of the story

5.Try to find the stylistic devices used in the text

6.Express the main idea & theme of the story

7.Draw a conclusion

8.Compose your own story including all the components of composition

 

III. LABORATORY EXERCISES

1.Work in pairs with the new vocabulary of the story

2. Discuss the stylistic devices used in the text

3. Analyze the whole text.