"Well, it is luxurious. One of those gentlemen farmers, I guess you call them, built the place years ago. Acres and acres. A big house and big barns and a great fence all around it. It has hills and woods and a stream. I used to dream about living there. It stood empty for years, but a few months ago someone bought it. Not that we've seen anything of them." She sipped at her soda and smacked her lips. "I shouldn't be mean about them, though, because they did make one of their barns available to the road show that came to town. That was friendly enough."

"When was that?" Solo asked, knowing he'd soon have to stop the flow of questions or she would notice that she was giving all the answers.

"Right now," she said. "It's a big show and would have been such fun, only now we don't have the heart for it. With the trouble and all."

"Yes." Solo let his expression fall, "I've seen the fields around here."

"It makes you sick, doesn't it? Even my flower garden is gone. My daffodils and spring flowers were so beautiful, but my annuals - Sometimes I don't think I can stand to go out of the house and see the devastation."

"Do you suppose I could get a closer look at the land?"

"To gawk?" She was angry. "It's not nice to be curious about other people's tragedies, Mr. Solo. We've lost every thing we planted. We may even have to sell our dairy herd because we have no pasture for them."

"Sorry." And Solo was. He didn't mean to appear uncaring. Not to this girl with her special freshness and obvious misfortune. "Drink the last of that soda and I'll splurge for another. A double, if you like."

She forgave him with a quick laugh. "You'll make me fat. But I'll accept."

They sat in the soda parlor for a long time, talking about nothing in particular, but it wasn't wasted time for Solo. Gloryanna Piper was his link to the fields around Riverview and he had to make her consider him a friend. He had little in the way of solid leads, although the estate she had mentioned sounded interesting.

The door opened and out of long-trained habit he checked who was coming. It was Illya. He came in frowning. "Here you are! I've been looking everywhere. I thought you said three o'clock."

Solo looked at his watch and found it was three-thirty. "My apologies, Illya. You should have rung me up."

"I thought of it, and then thought better of it." Illya was looking at Gloryanna. Solo made quick introductions. "I should have known." Illya sat down. "Just follow the trail of the town belle and you find Napoleon."

"Always," Solo said. "But something more. Gloryanna is going to take us into her father's blighted farmland."

Gloryanna straightened, feeling herself maneuvered into a corner. "Now, I didn't say I'd do that, Mr. Solo."

"But you did. How about right now? While the light holds?" He softened the demand with a grin. "And call me Napoleon."

As she grinned back, he coaxed her to her feet, giving her no chance to refuse. "Men!" she growled, and led the way outside.

Chapter 9

"I Prefer the Yellow-Bellied Thrush"

GLORYANNA PILED them both into the front seat of her car - after Solo had unparked it for her - and drove them out of town into the brown desolation. She pointed out the gated entrance to the estate she had mentioned but there was nothing to see from the road since the buildings were set far back on the acreage. A mile further on she entered her own driveway and braked to a stop.

"Come on and see what you have to see," she called, striding ahead.

"Quite a girl." Illya fell into step beside Solo. "She reminds me of Russian peasant stock - sturdy, lithe, and fetching."

"There aren't any peasants around here, my friend."

"Right. But she reminds me."

They trekked off the brown lawn and away from her mangled flower beds into a lane normally used by the cows to reach their pasture. The ground was uneven, and on both sides it stretched away brown and ruined. Solo kept glancing at the woods to relieve his eyes. Something in the terrible death of the crops was depressing. It seeped into his soul and made him uneasy.

Gloryanna stopped to let them catch up. "Well, this is it."

Illya left the lane, going into the field and squatting down. He took up a stick and dug a bit in the earth, then picked up a handful of soil, squeezed it and let it run through his fingers. He looked expert, and Solo smiled at him. Illya was expert at everything, it seemed.

"It's beautifully fertile soil usually," Gloryanna told Illya. "It just seemed to turn on us. Almost like a plague from biblical times."

"It's a plague, all right," Solo said, "but not of locusts or borers. I'd call it a plague of thrushes."

She stared at him in astonishment. "You really don't know anything about farming, do you? Thrushes never hurt our crops. Have you ever even seen a thrush, Mr. Solo? Napoleon?"

"Too many," Solo said.

"Which one is your favorite then?" she pressed, trying to make him admit his ignorance.

"I'll always vote for the yellow-bellied thrush. They're easier to handle."

"There isn't any such thing!" she laughed. "I knew you'd hang yourself if I gave you enough leeway."

Illya stood up from his soil sampling. "He's teasing you, Gloryanna. Napoleon believes in the theory that if you don't know something, never admit it; just use your imagination."

Solo grimaced at Illya and stiffened. His eyes had picked up something else - strangers in the field, moving toward them with a steady pace. Two big men. "Is it my imagination that tells me two men are walking toward us across this field? And that they don't look especially friendly?"

Illya stepped a yard away, braced, as he took in the menacing appearance of their visitors.

'Those are just Agriculture men." Gloryanna was confused by their wary behavior. "I told you they weren't nice, but you don't have to look like you're going to attack them."

Solo watched the men approach. They were both tall and dark. One of them was familiar. "Check the one on the right, Illya."

"Got him," Illya said. "I've seen him before and he was in full feather."

A Thrush operative. Solo's right hand moved with a will of its own toward his coat, but he held it back. It was too early to pull guns. Maybe this particular Thrush wouldn't remember them, anyway.

Illya asked quietly, "Do we play innocent, or do I shoot? You give the word."

"Shoot?" Gloryanna gasped. "Those men are from the Department of Agriculture! You can't do anything. You have to let them have their way. And you have to be polite."

"We'll try," Solo said and relaxed his right arm.

"There's no trying about it, Mr. Solo. You simply have to, or you'll make trouble for my father. These men are in charge here now."

"All right." Solo surrendered to her worry. "Play it cozy, Illya. Back out gracefully."

The two men were twenty feet away and they came striding fast to stop in front of the little group. Their faces were pinched and ugly. "What's this supposed to be?" the one Solo had recognized demanded. A sight seeing trip?"

"Exactly," Solo answered. "Quite a sight, too."

"Unauthorized personnel aren't allowed in the fields."

"Yes, sir; sorry, sir," Solo said with mock subservience. "We didn't know that rule."