I had to figure him for a professional like me. He was good. A couple of hours later, one of the cattlemen said a few words his mother never taught him and stood and stomped away, and the other one was digging a coin from his coat pocket, maybe about to try one last hand before admitting he was beaten. But he never had a chance to bet. The door to the street slammed open and a gust of cold air blew in, followed by a man whose clothing was sopping wet. Even in the bad light from the kerosene lamps, I could see that he was pale and in need of a shave and that he was toting a double-barreled shotgun, a 12 gauge. He looked around and stopped looking when he saw me.
“Holliday!” he shouted and crossed the room, and I knew I had trouble. “I come for you, Holliday.”
The odds were poor. I had a shotgun barrel four feet from my head. I considered trying to jump him, but I never got the chance. I began to cough, bad, my eyes watering and my chest heaving. Fighting was out of the question. But having my head blown off sure as hell wasn’t.
Then I was looking at the underside of the table, cards and currency flying every which way. The edge of the table caught my would-be killer beneath his chin and the 12 gauge boomed and sent shot into the wall behind us. That was when I saw a grey blur and when my vision cleared, the shotgunner was lying on this back and the Britisher was standing over him, rubbing his right knuckles with his left hand.
I helped the Britisher stare down at the sorry lump on the floor.
“You kicked the table?” I asked.
“It seemed propitious.”
“And you punched him?”
“That was perhaps unnecessary, but I thought it wise to err on the side of caution.”
“Much obliged.” I squatted and got a handful of shirtfront and hauled the Britisher’s target to his feet.
He mumbled something and I told him to speak up.
“T’warn’t fair,” he said and I slapped him.
“Now I recognize you,” I said. “You’re one of the Clantons. A second cousin? You hightailed it when the fun started in Tombstone.”
“I din’t feel good.”
“But you figured on evening the score today?”
The Clanton kept his mouth shut. I thought I saw a tear in his eye, but it might have been a raindrop.
I stepped close to him and said, “If I ever catch sight of you again, anywhere, any time, I will kill you.”
“Does this town have a sheriff?” the Britisher asked.
“It does,” I said. “Him and me had a little talk a while ago. We’ll never be best friends.”
The Britisher smiled which proved that he could and said, “I’ll deliver our obstreperous friend to him and then perhaps we can share a meal.”
I shrugged. The Britisher grabbed the Clanton’s upper arm and steered him out into the rain. I set the table to rights and sat and shuffled cards to let any interested parties know that I’d be willing to play a hand or two. After a while that got boring and I was about to head back to my bed of straw when the Britisher came in and stood dripping water on the floor. He saw me and let go with another smile and walked over to the table.
“Allow me to buy you dinner,” he said, and I nodded.
He bought two plates of slumgullion from the man behind the bar which we choked down because it was as close to dinner as we were going to get and then we settled in for what turned out to be a long talk. Seems I’d been wrong about him. He wasn’t a professional gambler like me. Fact is, before he joined our game he’d never played poker before. He’d learned the game during the hour I was lightening the wallets of my victims by watching us.
“The tall chap had a habit of tugging at his ear when he was pleased with the cards and his friend stared down at the floor in similar situations,” he said.
“Exactly right,” I told him. “And what did I do?”
“Absolutely nothing.”
“Glad to hear it. You didn’t give anything away either. Mind telling me your name?”
“I am Sherlock Holmes of London, England. And you?”
I answered him and asked “What line of work are you in, Sherlock Holmes of London, England?”
“I am a consulting detective.”
“Like the Pinkertons?”
“I fancy that my methods are a bit more refined than those of the estimable Mr Pinkerton and his colleagues and my clientele perhaps a bit more genteel.”
“Not a whole hell of a lot of genteel folks round these parts. So if you don’t mind my asking, what brings you here?”
“I am in the United States to conclude an assignment for someone in Buckingham Palace. I’m afraid I can say no more, except that my efforts have been successful.”
“You headed back home?”
“If all goes as planned, and the weather permits, I will be on a schooner bound for the United Kingdom early next week.”
“Well, Sherlock Holmes of London, England, I’m in your debt. Without you, I’d be splattered all over the wall. If there’s anything I can do for you—”
“If you have an hour to spare, I would be grateful for more information about the American frontier in general and your profession in particular.”
“Hell, I’ll give you two hours.”
I ended up giving him a lot more than that. While the wind howled and rain gusts slapped the roof, I showed Holmes how to cheat at cards—second dealing and bottom dealing and marking the aces with a thumbnail and a few other tricks—and how to win at poker without cheating and the fine art of killing the other man before he kills you and he told me about the difference between just seeing and really observing and how, when you’ve eliminated all the other possibilities, whatever loco thing is left has got to be the truth. It must have been near midnight when we decided we’d talked enough and I stood and looked behind the bar. The bartender was stretched out on the floor, on a blanket, fast asleep. I turned to Holmes, but before I could say anything, I commenced coughing and spitting blood. I went on for what seemed like hours with Holmes standing by, hands hanging at his sides, looking helpless.
When I finally stopped and wheezed, trying to catch my breath, he asked, “Am I correct in assuming that you suffer from tuberculosis?”
I wiped blood from my mouth on the back of my hand and said, “That’s what they tell me.”
The barkeep poked his head above the bar and said, “You wanna sit down?”
I did that and had another coughing spell.
Holmes put a hand on my shoulder and said, “I shall accompany you to your room.”
“Won’t be necessary. I don’t much want to go out into the wet just now, so if our friend over there has no objection, I’ll sleep here in this chair for a while.”
“Don’t see no harm in it,” the barkeep said. He ducked behind the bar and probably got back to his snooze.
Holmes nodded, turned on his heel, and made for the door.
I closed my eyes. If I had any dreams, I don’t remember them.
When I woke up, something was wrong. I sat until I realized what it was. No sound of rain and wind. The storm had quit and pale sunlight was streaming through the window. Morning in Keppel’s Crossing. Time for me to get busy, but doing what? I began by walking around the room. My host was still asleep and nothing else was going on, so I strolled outside. Even before I felt the barrel of a Spencer repeating rifle punch into my temple I knew there was trouble. A body was lying face down in the middle of the muddy street and from the britches and boots I knew it was the Clanton, gone to meet his Maker. From the corner of my eye, I could see that the rifle belonged to the Sheriff.
“You gonta hang,” he said.
“Any particular reason?”
He waved his gun toward the corpse. “Him.”
“Hard to tell from here,” I said, “but I’ll allow that he’s dead. But what makes you think I made him that way?”
“I suppose you mean me,” Holmes said, coming around the corner of the building. A few steps behind him, shuffling and snuffling, here came the raggedy, smelly little man I’d talked to the previous day on the way to Yellow Rosie’s.
Holmes turned to him and said, “You seek the local sheriff? There he is.”
The raggedy man stepped around Holmes and spoke to the lawman. “You the shurf?”
“You know I am.”
“She’s dead.”
“Tell him who is dead,” Holmes suggested.
The raggedy man stomped his foot and yelled “Sally, ya dang fool.”
“Sally is, or was, his mule,” Holmes said to both the sheriff and me. Some early risers were coming from the buildings that lined the street. A few were edging closer to us and the rest were hanging back, taking it in.
“How do you figure into it?” the sheriff asked Holmes.
“At times it is useful to be outdoors while considering a problem. I was having a stroll in the predawn mulling the circumstances that brought me to America when I encountered our friend here.”
“He always talk like that?” the sheriff asked me.
I shrugged.
“Fella offered to help me look for Sally,” the raggedy man said.
“I confess that I acted more from boredom than charity,” Holmes said. “We found the unfortunate creature at the crossroads outside the town boundary.”
“Shot dead,” the raggedy man whispered, and then he snuffled. “She wuz my onliest friend.”
“Pity,” said a stout woman who had drawn near. “The Lord loves animals, too.”
“Shut up,” the sheriff said, swivelling his rifle so it pointed at her, which was a relief to me. “Get on outta here. The rest of you too. Ain’t nothing to see.”
“On the contrary,” Holmes said. “If these gentlefolk do not mind lingering for a while, they may observe justice being served, which is always an edifying experience.”
“They stay long enough they’ll see this bastard hang.” The sheriff swung his rifle until it was again aiming at me. I let loose a sigh. The respite was nice while it lasted.
“Highly doubtful,” Holmes murmured. He moved closer to the sheriff. “We were discussing the evidence you have against Doctor Holliday. You mentioned the altercation between him and the poor fellow lying in the street. Is that all you have?”
“Hell no.”
“Please! The language!” That was from the stout lady.
The sheriff ignored her. He was busy shifting the rifle and tugging a small pistol from his pocket and thrusting it under my nose. “You gimme this? Yours, ain’t it?”
“Mine or one just like it,” I admitted.
“Well, I found it layin’ ‘longside the body. You musta dropped it after you shot him.”
Holmes nodded and smiled. “The game is afoot.” He faced the crowd, which now numbered more than a dozen. “By any chance, were any of you people stirring during the middle of the night?”
“What you mean, ‘middle’?” someone called.
“The dark hours. Three or four a.m.”
The man who had spoken stepped forward. “I was down to the outhouse takin’ care of business ’bout then.”
“And what, pray tell, was the weather like?”
“The rain done let up some. Didn’t last long, though. It commenced to come down again ’fore I got back to bed.”
Holmes rubbed his hands together and his smile stretched into a grin. “Most satisfactory. Sheriff, may I examine the weapon?”
“You think I’m gointa hand you a gun—”
“No, no. By all means, keep it firmly in your possession. But I should like to see the ammunition.”
“Nothin’ doin’.”
“Then will you kindly tell us if the weapon contains two bullets?”
The sheriff snapped open the derringer and then snapped it closed.
“You testify that the pistol contains two bullets?” the Britisher asked, loudly enough for everyone to hear.
“A full load,” I said.
“What if it does?” the sheriff asked.
“Will you agree that if the weapon is fully loaded, the bullet that claimed the unfortunate Mr Clanton could not have come from it?”
The sheriff jabbed me with the Spencer for no reason and said, “He coulda reloaded.”
“We shall soon see why that was impossible,” Holmes said. He faced the crowd.
“Now, we come to the ugly part. I shall need the bullet which struck down the victim. Are there any physicians present? What about you, Holliday?”
“I’m a dentist, not a sawbones, but I watched an autopsy or two in my day, and I don’t figure the corpse’ll complain if I make any mistakes.”
Holmes said, “Perhaps you’ll accompany us, Sheriff?”
I noticed that a few of the crowd were departing as Holmes, the Sheriff and went to the dead man.
Holmes shouted to the crowd: “You’ll note that there are no footprints in the earth around him and the ground is still damp from the rain.”
“You don’t haveta be standin’ next to a man to shoot ’im!” said the sheriff.
“No indeed,” Holmes murmured. “You most certainly do not. But it is useful to be close to a target if you plan to hit it.”
I placed myself between the Clanton and the crowd, in case any of them might be upset by a little butchery, opened my clasp knife and got to it. My slicing party didn’t take much more than a minute. I handed what I’d dug out, a sticky nugget of metal, to Holmes. I’d begun to understand where all his might be going but I had no idea how it might get there.
We left the body and moved toward the crowd. The bunch that had gone must have gone to get friends because we were now facing a mob. Cowboys, merchants, a few laborers, ladies with youngsters and ladies without youngsters, overfed swells in fancy suits, farmers who were sitting on wagons and, standing off by himself, the raggedy man, owner of the late Sally.
“Can’t we be more private about this?” I whispered to Holmes.
“The presence of witnesses will prove to be of advantage to us,” Holmes said to me. To the sheriff, he said, “Will you kindly remove one of the bullets from the small firearm?”
“What the hell for?”
“Humor me.”
The sheriff spat, took out the derringer, broke it open, picked out a shell, and gave it to Holmes.
Holmes turned to the crowd and raised his hands, displaying between thumbs and forefingers the slug I’d extracted from the dead man and the one from the derringer.
He explained what they were, his voice raised so everybody could hear him, and continued: “You’ll observe that the bullets are noticeably dissimilar, different in size and color. Now, if the Sheriff will oblige me by firing the remaining bullet at…let us say, the bottom limb of the oak tree?”
“Hell no on this foolishness. We’re wastin’ time. Holliday’s guilty and he’s gonna pay the price.”
“Perhaps, then, you’ll allow one of your townsfolk to fire the shot?”
The sheriff looked ready to have a fit. His face reddened and that rifle of his was again pointed at me. “I tole you—”
Holmes interrupted him. “Will one of you gentlemen volunteer?”
A number of voices answered him all at once: “I’ll do it”…“ain’t gonna hit ’er ”…“li’l sumbitch is useless…”
“They’re right,” I said. “The gun’s maybe useful from across a card table, but best not try for something across the room.”
“In that case, perhap
s the sheriff will stipulate that the small pistol’s range is limited to a few yards.”
“What the hell’s stippalate?”
“For ‘stipulate’ put in ‘agree’ and you’ll get the sense of it,” I said.
“And am I correct in positing that the crossroads where the unfortunate Sally meet her demise is much further than a few yards?”
Someone said, “dern tootin’” and someone else said, “gotta be near a half mile.”
The sheriff prodded me with his Spencer and said, “I had enough. Holliday’s going to jail.”
“Excellent!” Holmes shouted. “We shall accompany you. I was about to suggest a visit to the jail. Come.”
He marched across the street and the pack of us fell in behind him like the rats in that Pied Piper story I once read. We all stopped in front of the jail, which also housed the sheriff’s office.
“I call to your attention the matter of direction,” Holmes said, stepping onto the boardwalk that fronted the hoosegow. He looked out over the street. “I am now facing south, the direction of the crossroads.”
There were grumbles of assent.
“Let us remember the small pistol. If fired from here it could conceivably hit something in the street, but could it hit something at the crossroads—could it, in fact, be the agent of poor Sally’s demise? Surely not. I mention this only to put to rest, once and for all, the supposition that the small pistol was somehow involved in the murder. Now consider another possibility, which is that someone fired a much larger weapon from where I am standing, missed its intended victim, and fired again, this time accurately. The result you see sprawled in the dirt. All this may have occurred during the brief interval of quiet in the storm described by the user of the outhouse. What follows is the merest speculation, but let us conjecture that our murderer welcomed the interval as an opportunity to coax his victim outside. The storm may have begun again and an unexpected flash of lightning or rumble of thunder upset his aim.”
Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Was Not Page 5
