Read Online News of the World: A Novel by Paulette Jiles - Free Book Online Page A

abandoned the saloon, they slipped out of various unnamed establishments, they ran through the rain from their firelit homes, they left the cattle circled and bedded beside the flooding Red to come and hear the news of the distant world.
    And now he took them away to far places and strange peoples. Into mythic forms of thought and the structures of fairy tales. He read from the Philadelphia Inquirer of Dr. Schliemann’s search for windy Troy somewhere in Turkey. He read of the telegraph wires successfully laid from Britain toIndia, an article in the Calcutta Times forwarded to the London Daily Telegraph, a technological advance that seemed almost otherworldly. As he glanced up it seemed to the Captain that he saw the blond man again or at least the glint of ash-blond hair just at the borders of his light. This went into his mind and then out of his mind as he grappled with the big four-sheets of the Boston Daily Journal. To finish, he read of the unfortunate Hansa crushed in the pack ice in its attempt on the North Pole, the survivors rescued by a whaler. This was proving the most popular as he could see by the small gestures of the audience; they bent forward, they fixed their eyes upon him to hear of undiscovered lands in the kingdoms of ice, fabulous beasts, perils overcome, snow people in furry suits.
    Simon came in the rear door of the Masonic Lodge just as he was replacing his newspapers into the portfolio.
    Sir, the girl’s gone.
    Nothing galvanizes people like news of a missing child. The Captain swept everything into his portfolio, his newspapers and eyeglasses, the bull’s-eye lantern with its smoldering wick, and the money tin; jammed his silk hat on his head; and ran to the door and straight out into the rain.
    They had fallen asleep, he and Doris, sitting on the shot box and the flour keg, leaning together against the big rear wheel in front of a good fire. Something made Simon wake up and she was gone.
    She had left on foot. The doll was gone too.
    It is easier to track a barefoot person than somebody with shoes. The toes dig in with four distinct marks and the big toe like a misplaced thumb broad alongside. The bull’s-eye lanternbeam picked up her prints on the sloppy, red-clay road going out of Spanish Fort, east toward the river. The river which was joyous in its escape from banks and boundaries, which had become a rolling inland sea. They could hear it from half a mile away. The rain increased, lightning came cracking down out of the northwest as the new storm front moved in on them in the night. The lantern lit the million billion drops that came down in colors of steel and ice. She had followed the ruts in the wagon road that led to the river. The track wound about among the post oak and bur oaks, twisted trees with fright wigs of dry leaves and soon the track would come to the edge of the flood.
    The Captain walked bent over and rained upon. His joints hurt. He needed to find somebody younger to take her south and deal with this kind of thing. Somebody agile and patient and strong.
    He and Simon the fiddler soldiered on.
    She’s gone and it’s my fault! Simon slapped himself on the thigh. It made a wet smack. Captain, I am so sorry!
    He had to shout over the noise of the rain. He gripped his hat brim and ran alongside the Captain.
    Never mind! the Captain shouted back. Can’t be helped!
    He would as soon have Simon with him as anybody. Despite his short stature the fiddler was very strong and a hard fighter and a good shot. They ran on into the rain as if into a thicket. They bulled their way through. They tripped over the cut stumps where someone had cleared ground and tangled themselves in the parasitic love vine. They came upon Pasha and Fancy grazing, and were snorted at. The Captain felt himself growing thinner even as they walked. A man his age shouldhave more weight on him, he should be in a hotel room in Spanish Fort after a good supper and leaning on the sill with tobacco smoke rolling out