Holmes on the Range

by Steve Hockensmith

  Through the sheets of rain, an apparition appeared before me—a vision so unexpected I had to wipe away the water blowing into my eyes and stare a moment before I could accept it as something other than a trick of shadow and light. It was a man on horseback wearing not a wide-brimmed Stetson but a derby, and not a yellow slicker but a black frock coat.

  “Keep the cattle moving!” he was yelling.

  I recognized the voice before I saw the face, and my shock doubled. It was Perkins.

  I’d rarely laid eyes on the VR’s manager out of doors, and never on horseback. Yet there he was atop Puddin’-Foot, the tamest pony on the ranch. Puddin’-Foot was slow, but he was smart: Leave him blindfolded in any corner of the spread and you’d still find him at headquarters at the end of the day begging for sugar. He was the perfect mount for anyone without much horse sense—and Perkins certainly wasn’t displaying sense of any kind by venturing out of the castle on such a night.

  “Get them to high ground! High ground!”

  “Yessir!” I called back. “High ground!”

  Perkins nodded, gave me a sort of “Go about your business” salute, and rode off.

  That the man had risked life and limb to tell me to do exactly what I was already doing might have struck me as thickheaded indeed—if I’d had time to ponder it. But I was occupied with more pressing business. The ground was turning to thick black muck, and the pinto beneath me almost went down more than once as we struggled through it. Riding in a storm was a fine way to break a horse’s leg or a man’s back, and I was mighty curious to see which was going to happen first.

  After what could have been hours or days far as I knew, another lone rider appeared. It was Spider this time, and though what usually poured from his mouth was pure bile, this time it was sweetest honey.

  “Head in! We’ve done what we can! Go!”

  He got no arguments. Us Hornet’s Nesters dragged ourselves back to the bunkhouse and fell asleep still slimy as catfish. The next morning we stumbled outside into a world of sunshine and mud. Look up and everything was clear blue, look down and everything was nasty brown. The Swede whipped us up biscuits and ham, and we got to swapping tales of the storm we’d been too tired to tell the night before. I was waiting for the right moment to mention my encounter with our manager when Uly appeared and sped things up.

  “Any of you seen Perkins?” McPherson asked.

  “Not this mornin’,” I said, and the other boys shrugged and shook their heads.

  “What do you mean, ‘Not this mornin’ ‘?”

  “I ran across him yesterday in the storm.”

  “You what?”

  “I saw him, too,” Tall John threw in.

  “And me,” said Pinky Harris.

  “We was about four miles southwest of here workin’ cattle up out of the flats,” I explained.

  “What the hell was Perkins doin’ there?”

  I shrugged. “I guess he was tryin’ to help.”

  Uly gave me a long squint that let all of us know exactly what he was going to say next.

  “Well, I never saw him. And he ain’t in the house now.”

  We put down our plates and got our saddles without a word. We all knew what had to be done. Tall John, Pinky, and I led the rest of the boys out to the spot where we’d seen Perkins, then we fanned out.

  It didn’t take long. Someone squeezed off a shot, we all circled in on the sound, and there stood Tall John next to a streak of black, red, white, and yellow in the mud. The black was a frock coat.

  The rest of it—well, you already know about that.

  Just a few hours before, it had been a man.

  Six

  THE BURIAL

  Or, We Finish One Grave, Then Get Started on Our Own

  Anytime McCoy summed up what was left to see with his usual eloquence and sensitivity.

  “No need for a coffin,” he said. “We could bury that in a bucket.”

  But there was no call for either coffin or bucket, for Uly announced that Perkins would be plowed under on the spot. I was feeling sorry for whoever got fingered for this gruesome chore when Gustav piped up to volunteer us. Uly nodded, hollered at the other hands to get to work, then galloped off. Boudreaux lingered by the body while the rest of the boys rode away with McPherson. The albino was either making sure no one powwowed behind the boss’s back or fishing for a chance to pocket Perkins’s locket and gold chain and whatever other valuables he could pluck from the muck.

  “Say, Boudreaux,” Gustav said. “How long you been at the VR?”

  Boudreaux affixed his piss-yellow eyes on my brother, and I figured that stare was the only answer he was going to give. The albino wasn’t just tight-lipped with us. He had little to say to the McPhersons, giving them “Yes, boss” or “No, boss” as required but offering nothing else our ears ever caught. He sort of floated quietly above things, as if speaking might drag him down into the dirt with the rest of us. To men like Anytime, that made him an “uppity nigger freak.” But I think my brother almost considered him some kind of kindred spirit.

  “You don’t exactly seem broken up about Perkins here,” Old Red said after a moment of silence limped by.

  “Why should I be broken up?”

  The low rumble of the albino’s voice caught me off guard, like thunder on a sunny day.

  “You knew the man,” Gustav replied.

  Boudreaux shrugged. “Not really.”

  “Well, still—it’s a shame, ain’t it? Whether you were friendly with the man or not?”

  Boudreaux swept his gaze over the cornucopia of gore spilled out around us. “Yeah, it’s a shame alright,” he said, his voice as flat as the body. “A goddamn waste.” He looked off to the north, making sure all the Hornet’s Nesters had cleared out. Then he cleared out, too.

  “I wonder what Mr. Holmes would make of him,” my brother said as Boudreaux rode off. “That feller. . .he thinks his own thoughts.” Then Old Red clapped his hands on the horn of his saddle and unhorsed himself. “Well, you heard the man. I’ll get to gatherin’ up the bits. You head back and grab us a couple shovels.”

  And that circles us around to the spot where you, dear reader, came in. I took my time collecting the shovels, found Gustav treating the body like a jigsaw puzzle, and felt obliged to throw out a much-needed reminder.

  “Damn it, Brother. You’re a cowboy, not a detective.”

  Old Red was up to his ankles in entrails at the time, yet he curled the corners of his mouth into one of his little smiles.

  “That’s the real reason we’re out here, ain’t it?” I went on. “So you can play Sherlock Holmes?”

  “I wanted a gander at the body before it got planted,” Old Red said.

  “I ain’t talkin’ about out here out here! I’m talkin’ about out here at the VR, workin’ for the McPhersons. Them fellers are snakes, and you just had to find out what kind—so you went and threw us into the damn snake pit.”

  By the time I was done talking, Gustav’s grin had wilted down into a frown.

  “Where would you rather be right now, Otto?” my brother snapped. “Beggin’ for pennies back in Miles? Or out here with a full belly?”

  The words full belly gave my stomach the flip-flops—probably because Gustav was poking around in another fellow’s giblets when they left his lips. I turned away and occupied myself with digging.

  “What the hell are you lookin’ for over there, anyway?”

  “Wounds,” Old Red said.

  I wasn’t in a laughing mood, but I had to pop off a snort at that.

  “Sweet Jesus, Gustav—that body ain’t nothin’ but wound.”

  “I mean somethin’ a cow or coyote couldn’t do.”

  “Like what? A knife in his back? A rope around his neck?”

  “No. I’m lookin’ for clues, damn it. Like this here.”

  I glanced back to see Old Red waving a hand at me—and I don’t mean one of his own.

  “You notice anything peculiar about this?�
�� he asked, holding the hand up by one rosy-red finger.

  “I sure as hell do.” I turned my attention back to shoveling sludge. “I see a feller shakin’ hands with a hand, and that’s more than peculiar—it’s disgustin’.”

  My brother heaved a sigh. “If you’d bother to look at it, you’d see that Perkins was slippin’ out of the castle without us knowin’ it.”

  “How you figure that?”

  “The skin on this hand’s tanned,” Old Red said. “And another thing, there used to be a ring on this finger here.”

  “I never noticed any ring.”

  “You wouldn’t. Your eyes are about as sharp as an egg.”

  I ignored the dig but stopped digging. My brother was no detective, true enough, but he had eyes in his head and he could use them better than most men. If he said Perkins wore a ring, then Perkins wore a ring.

  “Maybe it came off when all them cows used him as a staircase,” I said. “If you haven’t noticed, he’s missin’ a few other things, too. Such as, oh. . .most everything from the chest up.”

  “Hooves can flatten a man. But tuggin’ off a gold band?” Gustav laid the hand back in place. “That’s work for fingers.”

  “Just what’re you sayin’?”

  Gustav shrugged and finally picked up his shovel. “Ain’t sayin’ nothin’. Just thinkin’.”

  Then my brother really wasn’t saying anything. He was digging, the faraway look in his eyes telling me the conversation was over. When Old Red gets lost in thought, Lewis and Clark couldn’t find him again.

  Before long we had the body—as much of it as we could find, anyway—under a hard-packed layer of earth. Once we were done, Gustav put down his shovel and started spiraling out in wider and wider circles, staring at the ground. My brother’s a top-rail reader of trail sign, but I wasn’t sure what he could hope to find, as the ground thereabouts had been churned to butter.

  Whatever he was in search of, he didn’t get to look for it long. The pounding of hooves rose up over a nearby ridge, and Spider appeared, charging at us at full gallop. He hadn’t been around when the body was found, but somehow I didn’t get the impression he was hurrying out to pay his last respects. He had his horse bearing down on Old Red just as he’d done a few days before. And again my brother didn’t flinch. This time he got splattered with mud for his nerve, Spider’s horse skidding to a stop practically chest to chest with him.

  “Where’s Perkins?” Spider spat.

  Old Red pointed at the spot where we’d bedded the man down.

  “Then why are you out here lollygaggin’?”

  “Just makin’ sure we didn’t miss anything,” I said.

  “Anything you missed’ll be buried in a coyote turd soon enough,” Spider snapped back. “Now get goin’.”

  The way Spider watched as we horsed ourselves made me think it wasn’t lollygagging he was worried about—it was snooping. Uly hadn’t caught on yet to my brother’s nosy nature, but Spider surely had. He rode behind us all the way in to HQ, and once again I felt an uncomfortable itch between my shoulders, like there was a bullet behind me just waiting to dig its way in.

  The rest of the day passed as normal as could be, aside from all the gossip. Every other word the Hornet’s Nesters spoke was Perkins. Yet anytime the McPhersons got close, the boys just took to whistling or talking about the weather. Whatever notions Old Red had—on Perkins, the weather, whistling, or anything else—he kept to himself.

  That evening after supper, Spider and Uly dropped in for a visit. They always took their meals separate from us, with their own little circle, and it was rare for us to see them after sundown. As one might expect from such men, they didn’t pretend this was some overdue social call.

  “Things ain’t gonna change around here,” Uly said, getting right down to business. “Perkins was nothin’ but a glorified clerk. I’ve been runnin’ this outfit, and until the owners see fit to send a new manager, I’ll keep right on runnin’ it.”

  Uly moved his gaze around the room, giving each man a chance to take issue with what he’d said. He seemed to give Gustav a few more seconds than the rest. When my turn came, I just stared back as friendly as the face in the mirror. Uly saved the Swede for last.

  “I’m sendin’ Spider into town tomorrow,” he said to the old cook. “You may as well go along and pick up whatever you need.”

  “Yessir, Misteer Ooly, I do that,” the Swede said, sounding none too enthused about a daylong wagon ride with the likes of Spider.

  Uly gave him a curt nod, then moved that hard-eyed stare of his around the room again. “Don’t keep yourselves up all night with useless gab. You’re gonna get called out early for work tomorrow, just like any other day. You understand me?”

  The yes-sirs he got were pretty halfhearted, but Uly was satisfied enough to move on. Once he and Spider had left, of course, the Hornet’s Nesters threw themselves right into the gab he’d warned against. The main topic of debate was whether things would be better or worse now that Perkins was gone. If put to a vote, worse would’ve won in a landslide.

  “There won’t be no rein on the McPhersons now,” said Swivel-Eye Smyth. He was the eldest of us—being thirty, he was considered an old man. He was usually one of the last fellows to get downhearted or riled up about our hardships, but now his cross-eyed gaze had lost its usual look of wry tolerance. One eye stared this way, one eye stared the other, and clearly, neither of them saw anything to be cheerful about.

  “Too right,” said Crazymouth Nick Dury. “Things’ll go arse-about-face with those nutters up our Khyber Passes. I’ve ‘alf a mind to scarper—and I would if I ‘ad the goolies.”

  In Crazymouth’s hometown—London, England—this might’ve passed for keen insight or high wit or something. But in Montana it meant about as much as a cricket’s fart, and Anytime McCoy jumped in as if the Englishman hadn’t spoken at all.

  “Yeah, those bastards’ll ride us harder than ever now.” Anytime’s perpetually angry eyes smoldered at the thought of insults that hadn’t even been hurled yet. “Well, they best not dig their spurs into me—them or their pet nigger. They do, and they’ll regret it.”

  “If we’re lucky, Uly and his boys’ll be too drunk to bother with us for weeks,” Pinky Harris said. “Y’all saw how much liquor Perkins had over in the big house. I bet the McPhersons are raisin’ a toast to Perkins’s memory at this very moment.”

  “Christ! What is this—a bunkhouse or a sewing circle?” Tall John cried out, a jeering grin cutting across his jut-jawed, crescent-moon face. “Just listen to you gossipy old hens! Why should it make one bit of difference whether Perkins is alive or not? He was always holed up in the castle anyway. The McPhersons’ll treat us the same as always—and I don’t think that’s been half-bad.”

  “Nope—it’s been all bad,” I said, unable to resist such an opening. “I’m inclined to agree with the rest of the fellers. With Perkins gone, the VR practically belongs to the McPhersons. The owners are halfway around the world. Who’s gonna tell Uly what he can or can’t do?”

  “Well, I agree with Tall John about one thing,” Old Red cut in. “Y’all talk too much.” And with that he stood, walked to his bunk, and started stripping down for bed.

  The rest of us did the same before long. Though we had plenty to think on, that didn’t stave off sleep for anybody, for soon enough the boys were singing a chorus of snores. I joined the choir, dreaming of the very things us punchers see so little of when awake—women, good food, women, good liquor, women, and women. I was just about to plant a kiss on one of those lovely ladies from the land of Nod when something clamped down on my lips in the real world. A dark shape leaned in close and whispered in my ear.

  “Grab your boots and meet me outside—and do it quiet.”

  Then the hand was gone, and I heard footsteps moving toward the door. I eased myself down silent as I could, snatched up my boots, and did my best to slip out of the bunkhouse without walking into a wall.

 
When I caught up with Gustav, he was set for my questions—I could see by the dim light of the moon that he had a finger up to his lips to shush me. He began pulling on his boots, so I did likewise, as it was clear we weren’t outside just to enjoy the fresh night air. And cold air it was, I assure you, for I had nothing covering my goose-pimpled hide but the flannel of my long johns.

  Once we were shod, Old Red set off toward the castle. I watched him go, weighing the opportunity to get shot against a good night’s sleep wrapped in warm blankets. In such moments of indecision, a memory comes to me that always tips the scales.

  The night the Cottonwood River got too big for its banks and swallowed up my family, my sister Greta and I found ourselves perched in the highest branches of an oak tree. We were there for hours, clinging to each other for dear life as the swirling waters swept debris and the dead past our dangling feet. Somewhere in the dark of night she and I both fell asleep, and I awoke in the morning to find Greta gone. I’d been so exhausted I’d let my sister go, and even the splashes of her drowning hadn’t been enough to wake me. I never found a body to bury.

  Only one Amlingmeyer was left to keep hold of now—and I aimed to keep my grip on him tight.

  I sighed and started after my brother.

  Seven

  BOTTLES

  Or, Old Red Finds That Ink and Alcohol Don’t Mix

  I figured we were a safe distance from the bunkhouses when we reached the back of the castle, so I gave voice to the question that was foremost in my mind.

  “What the hell are you up to?”

  My brother shushed me again, then turned and set to work on the back door with a short length of wire he’d pulled from his pocket.

  Normally Gustav doesn’t have any use for American magazine detectives—”all muscle, no method,” he calls them. But this lockpicking trick came straight from the pages of a Nick Carter dime novel. That Nick’s ever busting into dark mansions or escaping from steel vaults filling with water just by whipping out a toothpick and giving it a twiddle. Frankly, I never believed any of it—and apparently Old Red had doubts himself.