Threepersons Hunt Read Online Free PDF

attempting humor. “There’s an APB out of course. The mug shots have been circulated. In theory every police officer in the southwest is looking for him. But you’re the one who’ll be on the case exclusively. He’s important enough to warrant a one-officer cover but he’s not important enough to justify taking a whole squad of line detectives off work on more active cases. The bulletins have the Warning-This-Man-May-Be-Armed-And-Dangerous tag on them but I don’t really think he’s the type to go on a murder spree.”
    â€œWhat type is he?”
    â€œJust a no-account Apache.” Custis looked up from under his white eyebrows. “Don’t get stiff on me like that. The chairman of the Tribal Council up at Whiteriver used exactly those words to me. One Apache calling another Apache a no-account Apache. So take it up with him, not me.”
    â€œYou wouldn’t have called the chairman of the Tribal Council if you didn’t think the subject would head home. What did they tell you up there?”
    â€œSaid they hadn’t seen hide nor hair of him. I told them to put their Agency Police on it but I don’t trust those clowns to find their way to the bathroom.”
    â€œThen you figure he’s hiding out on the Reservation.”
    â€œIt’s the only home he knows. Only place he’d feel comfortable.”
    â€œSo you single out the only Indian in the department to go look for him.”
    â€œI figured maybe you’d be able to think the same way Threepersons thinks.”
    â€œDo you know how much cooperation I’m likely to get up there? I’m a Navajo. Maybe we all look alike to you, but before the Anglos came down here and unified the Indians by giving them a common enemy, Apaches and Navajos used to shoot each other for sport. If the Apaches are hiding him out they might not talk to a white man about it but they’d sure as hell not talk to a Navajo.”
    â€œThat’s ancient history. It’s all one big happy family now.”
    â€œYou’ve been talking to anthropologists.” Watchman used a tone on the word that he might have used in pronouncing the word “Custer.” “Maybe you go up to Flagstaff or Gallup for the big intertribal ceremonies and watch all that oozing brotherhood. That’s fine on white man’s turf, Captain, but right now we’ve got Hopis and Navajos murdering each other over the rights to a few useless acres of land and the Apaches are laughing themselves silly every time somebody gets killed there. A Navajo going onto the Apache land, that’s more of a foreigner than a white man.”
    â€œI guess you don’t want the job then.”
    â€œI didn’t say I was turning it down.”
    â€œYou just want to know what’s in it for you. Well I can answer that and the answer is, not much. It’s a lateral promotion, no pay raise. You’d be made temporary detective grade, but that’s not a civil service title and there’s no tenure. I don’t make permanent personnel assignments in that division, that’s Lieutenant Wilder’s job, and anyhow if the job was permanent you’d have to take the examinations and pass them. If you handle this job all right and Wilder likes your performance, I expect he’ll give you a crack at the exams. That’s all I can promise.”
    Custis didn’t have to finish the implied statement: But at least it’s a change from pushing a Plymouth around the boondocks giving out speeding tickets.
    Watchman gave it very brief thought. “This was really your own idea, was it?”
    â€œI talked it over with the A.G.”
    Then it had been the Attorney General’s idea and that made more sense. Up at the state capitol they were more sensitive to the effects of public relations. Setting an Indian cop to catch an Indian fugitive would have a nice ring to it and it would get the department a good