# Read the first page of News of the World by Paulette Jiles Read the opening of News of the World by Paulette Jiles free, no signup. An aging veteran escorts a rescued captive girl across Texas. - Page: https://uncovered.ink/read/news-of-the-world-paulette-jiles - Genre: Western - Year: 2016 - ISBN: 9780062409225 - Read it blind (cover and title hidden): https://uncovered.ink/?b=9780062409225&s=read-page - Buy: https://bookshop.org/a/125786/9780062409225 - Borrow: https://search.worldcat.org/search?q=9780062409225 ## The opening Captain Kidd laid out the Boston Morning Journal on the lectern and began to read from the article on the Fifteenth Amendment. He had been born in 1798 and the third war of his lifetime had ended five years ago and he hoped never to see another but now the news of the world aged him more than time itself. Still he stayed his rounds, even during the cold spring rains. He had been at one time a printer but the war had taken his press and everything else, the economy of the Confederacy had fallen apart even before the surrender and so he now made his living in this drifting from one town to another in North Texas with his newspapers and journals in a waterproof portfolio and his coat collar turned up against the weather. He rode a very good horse and was concerned that someone might try to take the horse from him but so far so good. So he had arrived in Wichita Falls on February 26 and tacked up his posters and put on his reading clothes in the stable. There was a hard rain outside and it was noisy but he had a good strong voice. He shook out the Journal’s pages. The Fifteenth Amendment, he read, which has just been ratified on February 3, 1870, allows the vote to all men qualified to vote without regard to race or color or previous condition of servitude. He looked up from the text. His reading glasses caught the light. He bent slightly forward over the lectern. That means colored gentlemen, he said. Let us have no vaporings or girlish shrieks. He turned his head to search the crowd of faces turned up to him. I can hear you muttering, he said. Stop it. I hate muttering. He glared at them and then said, Next. The Captain shook out another newspaper. The latest from the New-York Tribune states that the polar exploration ship Hansa is reported by a whaler as being crushed and sunk in the pack ice in its attempt to reach the North Pole; sunk at seventy degrees north latitude off Greenland. There is nothing in this article about survivors. He flipped the page impatiently. The Captain had a clean-shaven face with runic angles, his hair was perfectly white, and he was still six feet tall. His hair shone in the single hot ray from the bull’s-eye lantern. He carried a short-barreled Slocum revolver in his waistband at the back. It was a five-shot, .32 caliber and he had never liked it all that much but then he had rarely used it. ## Books with a similar feel - [All My Friends Are Going to Be Strangers by Larry McMurtry](https://uncovered.ink/read/all-my-friends-are-going-to-be-strangers-larry-mcmurtry.md) - [As the Crow Flies by Craig Johnson](https://uncovered.ink/read/as-the-crow-flies-craig-johnson.md) - [The Island of Sea Women by Lisa See](https://uncovered.ink/read/the-island-of-sea-women-lisa-see.md) - [Gallows Thief by Bernard Cornwell](https://uncovered.ink/read/gallows-thief-bernard-cornwell.md) - [The Gunslinger's Widow by Amelia Maria Vergara](https://uncovered.ink/read/the-gunslingers-widow-amelia-maria-vergara.md) - [Shrines of Gaiety by Kate Atkinson](https://uncovered.ink/read/shrines-of-gaiety-kate-atkinson.md) --- Source: Uncovered (https://uncovered.ink). A short sample shown for reading and discovery. Rights holders can request removal at https://uncovered.ink/takedown.