Beast of the Field Read Online Free PDF

think of something if she wanted to get in on this meeting they were having with her Pinkerton in there.
    "I can't see jack-shit.  Come on, Junior.  I got an idea."
    "H-y.”
    She moved around to be behind Junior, who tried to turn his body with her.  "Hold still, will you?  Stop fussing.  Face forward, like this."  She aimed his front side toward the jail, placed the palms of her hands flat on each of his buttocks.  After peering around one side of him to get her bearings, she dug in her heel, said to Junior, "Come on, now, stop fighting it,” and started pushing.  Junior resisted, but not for long, and soon they were plowing steadily through the crowd toward the jail.  "Beg your pardons, gentlemen!" she said as they moved through the shirts.  Men moved aside, some chuckling.  Millie grunted and cursed until Junior finally stopped fighting her.  When she had cleared the crowd, she gave Junior a final push, causing him to stumble forward, then sprinted away from him in a direction that made it impossible for him to follow.  She ducked in and out of men and went around the hotel to throw him off her scent, then back to the jail—this time around the back, to the single, high-up slat of a window.  She placed a wooden crate upside down, stood on it.  Not high enough.  She placed a rusty old spiked wheel on the crate and leaned it against the wall.  Carefully, she climbed the spokes of the wheel to stand on the highest part of the rim, until she had to crouch below the bottom sill of the window to not be seen.
    Inside Sheriff Jake's office there were a desk and three wooden chairs.  There was no cell.  A framed map of Kansas hung on the wall across from his desk, alongside an older map of the Kansas Territory, stretching to the Rockies one way and northward into Nebraska.  A big, open-mouthed bass with eyes that looked like spit wads was mounted on the wall over a pair of file cabinets.  Hanging between the two framed maps was a picture of the Neuwald brothers, as boys, on either side of the long legs of Buffalo Bill Cody.  In the picture, the boys are holding sticks like pistols and are shooting the photographer. 
    Her Pinkerton set his hat on the desk and took his chair.  Millie watched him as he looked around at the faces of the men of Price.  Millie began to understand there was something happening in this silence; but there was always something happening in the secret world of adults, even when it was quiet.  Sheriff Jake never had a nice face, what you could see of it from behind his thick black moustache and long black eyelashes, but now his face was downright mean.  Jonas Neuwald had the same features but the shape of his face was oftentimes so different, softer, pointier, like a lizard's face.
    "I'll get right to it, Mr. St—Sterno?  Sterno….That a Jew name?  Polack?"
    "I'm an American, Sheriff."
    "From Missouri…" the sheriff said under his breath.  His brother's shoulders bounced in a silent chuckle.  Millie suddenly felt sorry for her Pinkerton, near-sighted sot that he was.  She didn't know why, but she felt like she ought to go back around front and get Junior to stand over there behind him.
    "It doesn't matter if he's a Polack.  Now come on, Jake, it's nearly nine o'clock and I'm ravishing," said Mayor Greentree, rubbing his stomach with both hands.
    "Keep your belt on, Abner.  Looky, Mr. Pinkerton man, I'm sorry that you had to waste your time coming all the way here for nothing, but there aint no crime here for you to be investigating in the first place.  This whole thing is a bunch of silliness and wastefulness."
    Her Pinkerton pulled out a readyroll cigarette, lit it.  "This isn't a criminal investigation, Sheriff.  I'm not here to step on anybody's toes.  I was hired out privately, simply to check into the death of Thomas Donnan.  Even if I did find something I would call suspicious, chances of any charges getting filed are slim.  However, if I do discover foul play