Holmes on the Range

by Steve Hockensmith

  Brackwell gaped at my brother, obviously not expecting philosophizing from a simple drover. “I see your point,” he said.

  “I know you do.” Old Red clapped his hands under Brackwell’s arms and pulled the young man up straighter. “I said I wanted you loose, not limp as a rag doll. You’re tryin’ too hard. Relax. Let it come natural.”

  Brackwell cocked an eyebrow at my brother. It was plain that “relaxed” and “natural” were not conditions he’d ever been encouraged to strive for. But strive for them he did, and before long his throws were even better. Though he still wouldn’t have stretched out a steer, he finally got his loop on that fence post.

  Old Red was congratulating his student with a clap on the back when a heart-stopping shriek pierced the morning air. It wasn’t a scream of pain or terror. It was more a kind of wild, yipping yowl. Another screech rang out, then another, and by the time their echoes died away it was clear where they were coming from—the outhouse. Gustav and I raced for the privy, the gentleman as close on our heels as he could manage with that katzenjammer weighing him down.

  When we got to the jakes, we found Anytime peeking through the ventilation hole in the door while Swivel-Eye staggered around behind him, doubled up laughing.

  “Me see you, white man!” Anytime yelled. “Me break down door and scalp you good!”

  Swivel-Eye’s laughter choked to a stop as we approached, and Anytime turned and saw us coming.

  “Oh,” Anytime said. “Good mornin’, Your Highness.”

  Before Brackwell could respond, a new voice boomed out behind us.

  “What the hell is goin’ on?”

  It was Uly. He threw Brackwell a nod as he approached but quickly shifted his glare back to Anytime and Swivel-Eye.

  “Well? Speak up.”

  “Just a little fun, boss,” Swivel-Eye said.

  “What kind of ‘fun’?”

  “I came by to use the shithouse, but somebody was in there already,” Swivel-Eye explained with a nervous grin that was as helterskelter as his eyes. “Anytime was passin’ by and . . .well, we thought it might be one of them swells from the big house. So we thought we’d have us a little fun. No harm intended.”

  Uly shook his head and growled, “Get to work,” sparing us the ear-blistering bluster he might have employed had Brackwell not been present. No doubt thankful that he’d been spared a tongue-lashing—for now—Swivel-Eye hurried away from the privy, offering more muttered apologies as he went. Anytime went with him, too stiff-necked and surly to beg forgiveness, but avoiding Uly’s gaze all the same.

  “That goes for you, too,” Uly said, turning toward me and Old Red. “Make yourselves useful.”

  I wasn’t aiming to buck the man. I had yet to get any breakfast down my gullet, so I was looking forward to a trip to the cookshack—even if it was still under Tall John’s tyranny. But something about the way my brother stayed so absolutely still put roots down through my boot soles, as well.

  “What the hell are you waitin’ for?” Uly asked, his voice running up higher with each word, like a finger dragging up the keys of a church organ.

  “I’m worried about whoever’s in there,” Gustav said. “We still haven’t heard a peep from him.”

  “Oh, bullshit,” Uly spat, starting to lose control of his temper, Brackwell or no. “You know that door’s got a cranky latch. There’s probably not even anybody in there.”

  “There is,” said Anytime, who was still close enough to overhear. “Enough light gets through the peephole to show him sittin’ there.”

  “There you go,” Old Red said to Uly. “I tell you, I’m concerned. Anytime’s war dance probably scared the poor man shitless.”

  “Ain’t no better place for it,” Anytime said.

  “Shut up,” Uly snapped without taking his eyes off my brother.

  Gustav didn’t seem to notice. He walked over to the privy and went up on his toes to peek through the crescent vent hole in the door.

  “Yeah, I can see somebody. . . barely,” he said. “That you, Mr. Edwards? There ain’t no Indians around—just some damn fool cowboys. Why don’t you come out of there?”

  We waited for a response, but the only thing to be heard was a steady buzzing coming from the other side of the door.

  “Lot of flies in there,” Gustav said. He took a big sniff. “Quite an odor, too.”

  “What do you expect?” Uly cried, throwing up his hands. “It’s an outhouse, for chrissakes!”

  Uly usually wasn’t a man to give in to exasperation when cold condescension would suffice, and his bluster now struck me as forced—almost desperate. That thought must’ve struck my brother just as hard, for instead of letting McPherson’s huffing and puffing blow him away, he bent down and scooped up a handful of dirt and gravel. He sorted through it until he found a small stone, then he stood, brought his hand up quick as a flash, and threw that rock through the crescent moon. It must’ve found its target, for we didn’t hear it clatter against wood.

  Old Red got up on his toes again and took another look.

  “That feller in there ain’t scared, is he, Gustav?” I said, already feeling my stomach hitch itself into a queasy knot before my brother even answered.

  “He ain’t scared in the slightest,” Old Red replied. “He’s dead.”

  Eighteen

  THE TURNING POINT

  Or, The West Loses a Drover and Gains a Detective

  When my brother stepped away from the ventilation hole, Brackwell and I took turns peeping through it. All I saw was a dark, shadowy shape slumped away from the single shaft of light that penetrated the cramped (and powerfully odiferous) privy.

  “Could be a body,” Uly said after he finally stomped over to take a look himself. “Could be a sack of taters.”

  “In the outhouse?” my brother said. “With the door locked?”

  “Maybe it needed some privacy,” I suggested. “Right, Uly?”

  McPherson turned on me with a look that could curdle milk, but before he could repay me for my sass, Brackwell cleared his throat with a dainty cough.

  “McPherson . . .I think it might be best to get a good look at. . . whatever’s in there,” the young gentleman said, sounding a tad nervous about handing out orders to the likes of Uly. “Just so we can be certain nothing’s amiss, you understand.”

  For a moment, it looked like the only thing Uly understood was that Brackwell, Old Red, and I were each in need of a swift kick in the ass. But instead of getting busy with his boot, he rolled his eyes and barked out a bitter laugh.

  “I guess it’s a good thing there’s no work to be done this mornin’ so we can just while away the hours chewin’ the fat around the outhouse,” he said. He turned on Swivel-Eye and Anytime and set them to running: Swivel-Eye was sent to fetch tools to get the privy door open, while Anytime was dispatched to the castle to see who might be missing.

  “Damned waste of time,” Uly said, shaking his head as the two Hornet’s Nesters scurried off. “If I might say so, sir.”

  Brackwell fidgeted with his holster for a moment, picking at the leather near his six-guns, then turned away and occupied himself with another look inside the privy. When his back was turned, Uly shifted his gaze to my brother—and that gaze went frigid cold. It might have just been a foreman giving the evil eye to an uppity hand, but I wasn’t so sure. There was an unsettling odor about this business and it seemed to me Uly’d been waving his hat awfully hard to dispel the stink of it.

  While Old Red and Uly stared each other down like a couple of tomcats waiting to see who was going to swing his claws first, I was left to wonder about that shape inside the outhouse. If that was a body in there—and I sure as hell didn’t think it was a sack of taters—then whose body was it?

  Swivel-Eye and Anytime came back fast, and neither one came alone. Swivel-Eye had obviously been unable to keep such news as this bottled for even the minute it took to grab a couple hammers, for Crazymouth and Tall John were on his heels. The
three of them kicked up such a commotion they drew Spider and a few of the other McPherson men from their lair. A moment later, Anytime came rushing back with the Duke and a limping Edwards not far behind. Everyone from the Duke’s party had been accounted for, Anytime said, and the Swede was scrubbing pots in the kitchen.

  If the mystery was to be solved, that door would have to come off. Even before Uly or the Duke could order it done, Gustav snatched one of the hammers from Swivel-Eye and shoved the claw in just below where the latch held firm on the inside. Swivel-Eye slipped in next to him, working the other hammer in a foot higher. After a minute of sweating and growling, they finally got the wood to splinter, and the door clattered open.

  The morning sun streamed in, revealing what would have been a truly nauseating sight if Perkins’s pancake cadaver a few days before hadn’t steeled me to less messy displays of human gore.

  Propped up over the poophole was the albino, Boudreaux. He had a bit of extra color about him now: a dark circle in the center of his forehead. His yellow eyes were rolled up high in their sockets.

  Anytime was the first fellow to state the obvious.

  “Well, I’ll be damned,” he said, not sounding particularly shocked. . .or saddened. “Somebody went and shot Spook.”

  Most of the other boys had the same reaction—which is to say not much of a reaction at all. Boudreaux was a Negro, and not a well-liked one at that. Nobody fell to his knees weeping bitter tears.

  The only fellow who seemed to take Boo’s death personal was Old Red. His eyes blazed with the fire of indignation, and he moved his hot stare from man to man, as if trying to burn a confession out of one of them right then and there.

  “I think I heard it,” Brackwell whispered hoarsely, looking twice as nauseous as when we’d first seen him that morning. “The shot, I mean.”

  “I heard it, too,” Swivel-Eye added. “Not too long ago neither—a couple hours, maybe.”

  Brackwell turned toward the cowhand as if he were about to say something, but the Duke broke in first with an impatient growl.

  “This is unacceptable! Intolerable! Men gunning each other down on my ranch? I won’t stand for it!”

  Beside him, Edwards looked every bit as perturbed as the Duke—though maybe that was because the old man seemed to forget in the heat of the moment that the VR didn’t belong to him and him alone.

  “Well, sir, I don’t think you’ll have to worry about any more fellers ‘gunnin’ each other down,’ ” Uly said, stepping up to Boo’s body. “The only killer we’ve got around here is already dead.” He scooped something up off the ground near the albino’s feet.

  It was a hideout gun—a derringer. One that had seen better days, too, by the looks of it. It was an ancient single-shot Colt .41, mottled and gray with grime.

  “Looks like he did himself in,” Uly said, holding up the little gun for all to see before slipping it casually into his coat pocket. “He always was moody. Ain’t that right boys? I guess he decided this was the end of the trail.”

  Uly sure was cooking up an explanation in a hurry. All of a sudden he seemed as keen on deducifying as my brother. I shot a glance at Gustav to get a bead on his reaction to this turn of events, expecting perhaps a frown or a cocked eyebrow. But what I saw I wasn’t expecting—or happy about—in the slightest.

  They say action speaks louder than words, and ninety-nine times out of a hundred they’re right. On this occasion, however, I witnessed the one-hundredth time out of a hundred, for my brother managed to upend our world without lifting a finger. All it took was one word—two innocent little letters that, when combined, changed absolutely everything.

  “Ha,” Old Red said.

  Awwwww, hell, I thought.

  “Ha?” Uly asked, too surprised to be angry at first.

  “Ha,” my brother confirmed, nodding.

  Uly’s expression shifted from puzzled to pissed. “Ha?” he asked again, cawing the sound out like some huge crow.

  “You heard me,” Old Red said. “Ha!”

  Every man there who had to sweat for his bread knew exactly what this exchange meant. To put it delicately, my brother had formally challenged his foreman’s veracity.

  To put it with less delicacy, Old Red had just told Uly he was full of shit.

  Though Edwards, Brackwell, and the Duke were not themselves workingmen, they could surely piece together that some kind of face-off was at hand. The old man dealt with the situation in his usual fashion—by opening up his big mouth and shouting.

  “What’s the meaning of this? You there! Do you have some other explanation for this man’s death?”

  “You there” was Old Red.

  “An explanation? No, sir,” my brother said. “But I do have some questions that bear askin’.”

  “Such as?” the Duke prompted with his typical impatience.

  “Well, for one thing, why’s he wearin’ his spurs?”

  We all turned to gape at Boudreaux’s boots. Attached at the heels were work spurs, the rusty, star-shaped rowels digging into the dirt of the outhouse floor.

  “Why would a feller on the verge of shootin’ himself take the trouble to strap on his spurs before sneakin’ out to do the deed?” Old Red asked.

  “Well, obviously when a man ups and kills himself, he ain’t thinkin’ straight,” Uly replied. He’d wiped the scowl from his face, affixing in its place an expression of tolerant bemusement similar to the one my dear old Mutter used to wear when Uncle Franz would get to telling us ducks can talk, pigs can hear your thoughts, and God had just dropped by to talk politics. “There’s no use lookin’ for any why to what he might do.”

  “But it ain’t just the spurs,” Old Red said. “Look at Boudreaux’s holster. He’s got a perfectly fine Peacemaker tucked away there. He could’ve placed that up against his ear and done the job with more certainty than he’d have with that little stingy gun. If he was downhearted enough to kill himself, I don’t think he’d be too concerned about makin’ a mess of the privy. So why not use the .45? And that brings us along to somethin’ else.”

  Uly was rolling his eyes now, trying to get his boys to lay in with catcalls. But they were as wrapped up in Gustav’s chatter as us Hornet’s Nesters. Even Spider was hanging on every word, though he looked ready to hang Old Red from the nearest branch.

  As for the gentlemen, no two were reacting the same way. The look of put-upon amusement on Edwards’s face suggested he was inclined toward the view Uly was pushing—namely, that my brother was crazy. Brackwell, on the other hand, was gazing upon Old Red as if he were a conquering hero, not a raving lunatic. And the more my brother worked his mouth, the more the Duke puckered his own into a prodigious frown.

  “There ain’t a lick of powder scorch on the man,” Gustav went on. “Blastin’ yourself in the skull ain’t sharpshootin’. You’d have to get your hand right up against your noggin. And if you did that, not only would you end up wearin’ your brains for a glove, you’d give yourself a heck of a powder burn. But his hands and forehead are as white as ever, aside from that bullet hole. So to my eyes, it’s clear. Boudreaux didn’t shoot himself. Somebody did the shootin’ for him.”

  “Ha!” Uly spat out.

  Gustav folded his arms across his chest and gave McPherson the sort of coldly appraising, vaguely disappointed look he usually reserves for me.

  “And what is there to ‘Ha’ about?”

  “You, that’s what,” Uly replied with cold scorn of his own. “You got a reputation for bein’ an odd bird, Amlingmeyer, and now I see why. I’ve heard cow farts that made more sense. What exactly are you hintin’ at, anyway? Someone got in there with Boudreaux, shot him in the head, dropped down into the shit pit, then dug his way out? That’s the only way it could happen, cuz in case you forgot that door was locked from the inside.”

  Old Red blew out a breath and shook his head. The outhouse door was still open wide, and he surprised us all by walking around to hide behind it.

  “Otto,”
he said, “give this door a knock.”

  I’d been keeping quiet and trying to look small—neither of which comes naturally to me. But there was no way around it now. My brother wasn’t just asking me to play along with his Sherlockery again. He was asking me to do it right there in front of everybody. If I was going to tell him to shut his trap and forget this detectiving nonsense—and maybe keep us in the frying pan as opposed to the fire—now was my last chance to do it.

  So I had a choice to make, and it was splitting my brain like an ax through a watermelon. All Gustav wanted me to do was knock on a door, but it felt like I’d been told to march through one—knowing there was a cliff on the other side. I had to face up to a none-tooflattering truth about myself just then: I’ve always had opinions on things, yet choices I’ve left to others.

  Well, I thought, maybe it’s time to change that.

  I walked up and gave the wood a rap.

  Old Red’s eyes appeared in the ventilation hole.

  “Who’s there?” he said.

  I’m not always lightning-quick about catching on to my brother’s ideas, but this one I got hold of straight off. I stuck out my index finger and pointed it at my brother’s forehead.

  “Bang,” I said, snapping my thumb down like the hammer of a pistol dropping on a round.

  Gustav’s eyes went into a crinkle, and I knew he was favoring me with a small but approving smile.

  When he stepped back around the door, of course, all trace of that smile was gone.

  “I say again—this man did not shoot himself.”

  I thought that was a pretty neat display of deducting, but Uly was having none of it. He’d been working hard to save face in front of his employers—or maybe save his neck from a noose—and he wasn’t about to give up now.

  “Fiddle-faddle!” he declared. “If someone shot Boo like you say, why on God’s green earth would they leave the gun in the outhouse?”

  “That I don’t know,” Old Red admitted, meeting McPherson’s contemptuous glare with a steely stare. “I’d surely love to ask the man who did it.”