Free Jack and the Beanstalk (Matthew Hope) by Ed McBain

personally responsible by virtue of being related to your son. I’m assuming you’d be the personal representative of his estate, but you’d best check that with your lawyer, too.”
    “How long do we have on this?”
    “We were supposed to close early next month. As soon as the title search and the other necessary...”
    “Why’d Jack get me into this stupid mess?”
    “He wanted to be a farmer,” I said.
    “That’s like wanting to be a shepherd !”
    “Well, talk it over with your lawyer. Please understand, Mrs. McKinney, I’m not taking an adversary position here. I was representing your son in this transaction, not Mr. Burrill.”
    “Of course,” she said. “I’ll call Erik as soon as we get back to the house. Those are our pens over on the left, would you like to take a look?”
    She pulled up the Jeep before a wooden fence that enclosed a labyrinthine maze of narrow, mud-churned passages similarly enclosed, a series of fences within fences.
    “This is where we work the cows,” she said. “You’ve come at a quiet time of the year, most of our activity is in the spring and the fall. In August, what we do mostly is mend the cross-fences between the pastures, chop down the thistle, burn off the palmettos—like that. We’ll work the cattle some, too—pregnancy testing, semen testing, and so on—but that’s on an as-needed basis. In August it’s mostly maintenance, a sort of holding action till October and November.”
    “Do you have one of these pens in each of the pastures?” I asked.
    “No, this one serves the whole ranch. We drive the cows over and put ’em in a crevice—that’s a small pasture, not a crack in a rock—the night before, and then pen ’em the next morning. Work one herd at a time that way.”
    “By work—”
    “Well, unless you’ve got all day,” she said, “it’s really too complicated to explain.”
    I felt I had been mildly discouraged from asking any further questions. There was a short, awkward silence.
    “This contraption here is the squeeze chute,” she said, “holds the cows while we’re working them.”
    I was looking at what appeared to be an instrument of torture, with sloping metal sides fashioned of three-inch-thick steel bars, and a curved metal plate that looked like the headrest on a guillotine. Above the mechanism was a row of levers with black plastic knobs on them.
    “Herd them in from where we unload them,” she said, and reached up for one of the black knobs. “I’m not too good at operating this thing,” she said, “the cowboys usually do it.” She pulled one of the levers down. The spread metal sides of the chute began closing. “It catches the cow in there and holds her fast,” she said. “There’s no way even a dozen men could hold aseven-hundred-pound cow when you’re drenching her or trying to find out if she’s pregnant. This one,” she said, and reached up for another lever, “lowers or raises the head—I think .” She pulled on the black knob, and the guillotine headrest at the front end of the chute began rising. “Yep,” she said, “that’s the one. Handy little machine,” she said. “Man who invented it probably makes more money than all the cattle breeders in the world put together. Shall we head on back to the house, Mr. Hope? I’ll give Erik a call, ask him how he thinks we should proceed. Erik Larsen,” she said, “do you know him? Of the law firm of Petersen, Larsen, and Rasmussen—all of Danish extraction, I would assume.”
    “I know the firm,” I said. “I don’t know him personally.”
    “Nice man,” she said, “and a good lawyer. Looks like I’ll need one if this farmer plans to sue, huh?”
    We got into the Jeep again. She backed it away from the fence, and then turned and drove onto another muddy side road. I realized all at once that we were making a big circle around the ranch. Drainage ditches ran alongside either side of the road. A small alligator, basking on the grassy bank,