Holmes on the Range

by Steve Hockensmith

  Uly curled up his lip, but before he could get out another word, he was interrupted by the sound of applause.

  “Oh, bravo, bra-vo,” Edwards said, clapping his fleshy, soft-palmed hands. “That was quite a performance. Will you next offer definitive proof that the sky is blue?” He faced the Duke. “I don’t see how the death of some Negro laborer can have any bearing on us, no matter what the circumstance. I suggest we send word to the proper authorities and get back to our business.”

  I gaped at the man, utterly boggled by the bluntness with which he revealed the hardness of both his heart and his head.

  If I’d been looking to the Duke to balance Edwards’s jackass callousness with a little simple human decency—and I wasn’t—I would’ve been sorely disappointed.

  “Quite right, quite right,” the old man said, giving Edwards a nod so firm it set his chins to quivering. “This is obviously no concern of ours. McPherson—see to it.”

  “Yes, sir,” Uly said, triumph gleaming in his eyes.

  The Duke and Edwards turned toward the castle, no doubt keen to move on to matters more important than mere murder—namely, the ones that might make them money.

  “Wait!” Old Red called out.

  The Duke spun around looking like a boar who’s had his tail yanked.

  “Please,” Gustav added quickly. “Your Grace. Sir. You’ll have to pardon my sayin’ so, but I don’t think you should be so quick to assume this has nothin’ to do with you.”

  “What do you mean?” the old man snapped.

  “Well,” Old Red said, and though the pause that followed was mere seconds in length, I aged a good ten years as they dragged themselves out. It was hardly the time to throw down our cards about Perkins.

  As it turned out, my brother had an entirely different card up his sleeve.

  “I’m wonderin’, sir,” he said. “Has anyone warned you that we may have a madman loose in these parts?”

  “A madman?” Edwards scoffed. “What in heaven’s name are you talking about?”

  “Why surely even all the way back in Boston you’ve heard of Hungry Bob Tracy,” Old Red replied. “The Colorado Cannibal? The Mountain Maneater? He was spotted not too far from here. This body don’t look like Bob’s work, bein’ uncooked and free of salt and pepper, but who knows? Maybe that’s just cuz ol’ Bob couldn’t get at it. Like I said there’s good reason to think Boudreaux didn’t kill himself. And if there’s even the smallest chance Hungry Bob did him in, it ain’t just a county matter. You tell the sheriff you got a death you can’t account for, he’s gonna have to tell the federal marshal in Miles City. And then you’re gonna have deputies out here turnin’ over every blessed rock on the spread.”

  The more Gustav flapped his gums, the more the Duke got to looking like he’d swallowed a frog. He clenched his jaw hard, as if trying to keep his breakfast from hopping up his throat and out through his mouth. Edwards looked equally queasy—you could almost see his waistcoat bulging and rippling with all the flip-flops his stomach was doing.

  Setting eyes on a dead man hadn’t so much as ruffled a one of their feathers. But the prospect of a posse on the VR had them practically plucked clean?

  “That would be. . .an unwelcome disruption,” Edwards said.

  Old Red nodded sympathetically. “No doubt. Course, it don’t have to roll out like that. You send one of the boys off after the law, they’re not gonna be back for at least a full day. All we’d have to do is use that time wisely.”

  “By determining the manner of this man’s death before the authorities arrive,” said Brackwell, who now looked decidedly less green around the gills than Edwards or the Duke.

  “That’s the only way we’re gonna avoid that there ‘disruption’ Mr. Edwards spoke of,” Gustav said. “Put our finger on what happened or have lawmen swarmin’ around here like so many honeybees.”

  “And who exactly would conduct this investigation?” Brackwell asked, though he seemed to have guessed the answer already.

  “Why, I would,” Old Red said.

  “You?” Edwards looked my brother up and down as if laying eyes on him for the first time. “I’d like to know what inspires such confidence in a. . .”

  All indications pointed to words along the lines of “ignorant ranch hand” being the next to exit Edwards’s mouth. As he was surrounded by ignorant ranch hands, Edwards reconsidered, ending his sentence instead with the words “man such as yourself.”

  “I’ve made a study of the science of observation and deduction,” Old Red answered. He didn’t acknowledge the snickers this drew from the McPhersons and some of the other men—including, I was disappointed to observe, the boys from our own bunkhouse. But he did raise his voice a touch louder to add, “And I’ll point out that you wouldn’t even be askin’ that question if I hadn’t kept everyone from jumpin’ to conclusions.”

  “He’s right enough about that,” Brackwell said. “I say we give him a chance.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” Edwards sneered.

  “What’s ridiculous about it? I don’t see what we have to lose.”

  “I don’t see what we have to gain.” Edwards gave Brackwell’s colorful costumery a look of open disdain. “This man’s no more a detective than you are a cow-boy.”

  Brackwell’s cheeks flushed so pink you’d think he’d just been slapped.

  “If you fellers feel so strongly opposed on this, maybe you oughta settle it like gentlemen,” Old Red said. His gaze drifted over to the Duke. “You know—make things a little more sportin’.”

  “A wager?” the old man mused. His gray, watery eyes suddenly lit up bright, taking on the same sheen they’d had the night before when he’d tried to square Old Red and Emily off in a battle of half-wits. “Yes! If you have faith in this man, Brackwell, you should back it up!”

  “Well, I. . .I will then,” Brackwell replied, trying to sound defiant despite a nervous quiver in his voice. “Two hundred pounds says he can provide a satisfactory explanation for what’s happened before the authorities arrive.”

  “Done!” the Duke crowed, and Brackwell’s face went from livid red to ghostly pale in a heartbeat. I tried to imagine what shade Lady Clara’s face would turn when she heard of the bet, as the previous evening she hadn’t seemed happy about a wager of five dollars, let alone one of two hundred pounds—however much that was.

  Edwards managed to toss in his own “Yes, done!” before the old man turned to Uly and began barking out instructions.

  “Send word to whatever authorities you must—they should come as quickly as possible. In the meantime, you are to excuse this man from his regular duties so that he may”—the Duke pointed a smirk at Gustav—”pursue his investigation.”

  “One more thing, Your Grace,” Old Red said. “I’ll need my brother’s help if I’m to have a fair shot at this.”

  “Your brother?”

  I stepped forward—this time with no hesitation. “That’s me, sir.”

  The Duke glowered at me. “Why do you need him?”

  “Well, someone’s gotta take down notes and such,” Gustav replied. “And I can’t do nothin’ with a pencil beyond scratch my nose.”

  “You can’t write?” the Duke asked.

  “Nor read, sir. No.”

  Brackwell gave my brother a pained look that said, What have I done?

  “Fine. The brother, too, McPherson,” the Duke said, his smirk returning.

  For a fellow who’d been so unnerved by the thought of lawmen on his land a minute before, he looked awfully chipper now. Uly’d wanted Boo’s death swept under the rug, but the old man seemed perfectly happy to snatch that rug up and toss it out the window—provided he might win a bet in the process.

  Perhaps Uly was just more cautious. Perhaps the Duke was blinded by his contempt for a mere workingman like my brother.

  Or perhaps Uly and the Duke simply had different things to hide.

  The Duke and Edwards turned and headed back to the house, the o
ld man moving with a new spring in his stride while the younger man struggled to keep up, his back stiff and his legs like rubber. Brackwell watched them glumly, no doubt thinking of all the hastily wagered cash that would soon be walking off with them.

  Uly and Spider weren’t wasting their stares on Edwards and the Duke, however. They were focusing all their attention on my brother and myself. And unfriendly attention it was, too—glares of the sort that would turn any normal fellow’s blood to ice.

  “Alright then,” Old Red said, slapping his hands together and rubbing them with cheerful excitement. “Let’s get to it.”

  Nineteen

  CLUES

  Or, Someone Sticks His Nose Where It Doesn’t Belong

  After the Duke left, Uly scattered the Hornet’s Nesters with a few bellowed commands. But he and Spider lingered behind with their men, no doubt waiting to see what Brackwell would do. Should he return to the castle, our newly sanctioned investigation would most likely come to a quick end—along with our lives.

  Old Red set to work as if his audience wasn’t there, walking up to the outhouse door and practically putting splinters in his eyeballs he got to looking at it so close.

  “Would you mind steppin’ over here, Mr. Brackwell?” he said. “I’d like to hear your thoughts on these scratches by the door handle. They look pretty fresh, wouldn’t you say?”

  Brackwell seemed confused by this request, having little knowledge, I would guess, of pinewood and carpentry. But he complied. As he stooped in to take a look, Old Red straightened and turned his gaze on Uly.

  “You know, boss—seein’ you there reminds me. With Hungry Bob or some other mad-dog killer runnin’ around, you oughta let me and my brother strap our irons on. You wouldn’t want us caught short, would you?”

  “I’ll think on that,” Uly said, his tone suggesting he was just as likely to consider setting himself on fire.

  “You do that,” Gustav said. “And as long as y’all are just standin’ there, you may as well answer a few questions for me. Did any of you happen to notice when Boudreaux—?”

  “No time to lip-flap,” Uly broke in. “We’ve got real work do to.”

  He turned and barked at his boys. His orders were of the usual sort, with a solitary exception: One of his men, the little strutting runt we called the Peacock, was to take word of Boudreaux’s death to Sheriff Staples in Miles City.

  McPherson’s men hurried about their business, and Uly and Spider went with them, obviously anxious to avoid any other awkwardness Old Red might send their way while he had Brackwell on hand.

  Our young dude, meanwhile, had finished his inspection of the door and stepped away with a shrug.

  “Yes, I see the scratches. You and that other fellow had to do quite a bit of work to get the door open. I don’t see why that should be significant.”

  “Well, the thing is, we didn’t put all those gouges there—I think someone else had a go at this door,” Gustav said. “Now could you two do me a favor and paste yourselves down for a spell? There’s already been enough boots layin’ tracks around here.”

  Old Red hunched over, screwed his gaze to the ground, and got to walking in a ring around us. His circle gradually grew wider, taking him farther and farther from the privy. When he was about fif-teen feet out, he spoke the same words Mr. Holmes uses when encountering a fresh clue: “Hel-lo! What’s this?” Then he threw himself on the ground and started shuffling around on his hands and knees.

  “Mr. Brackwell, is two hundred pounds a lot of money?” I asked while my brother crawled around like a kid playing horsey.

  Brackwell nodded sadly. “It is. To be honest, I was hoping it would be so much that even a man of the Duke’s tendencies couldn’t accept the wager. Obviously, I was wrong.”

  “You’ll have to pardon my askin’, but . . . well . . . are you good for it?”

  Brackwell would have been within his rights to take offense, but he just offered me a rueful smile.

  “I’m not ‘good for it’—not at the moment, anyway. But my family is.”

  “Oh,” I said. “I understand.”

  I finally had Brackwell pegged. He was what we Westerners call a remittance man—a fellow who’s packed off to the frontier by wealthy relations who wish to be rid of him. The average remittance man lives off an allowance from back home, squandering the majority of it on hard drinking, reckless wagers, and crackpot fixations. Given what I’d seen of Brackwell, I had to conclude he was prone to all three.

  “Tell me,” he said. “This ‘study of deduction’ your brother mentioned to the Duke—what form did it take?”

  I tried to think of an answer that wouldn’t sound ridiculous. I gave up pretty fast.

  “It took the form of him sittin’ on his ass while I read out detective stories. But I assure you—he’s serious about the art of deducifyin’.”

  Gustav was now on his belly, wriggling along the ground back toward the outhouse.

  “I don’t doubt it,” Brackwell said.

  Upon reaching the door, Old Red hopped up and ran his fingers over the ventilation hole. He pushed his nose in, gave the door a sniff, then let out a low, frustrated growl.

  “Damn. That’s what I get for theorizin’.”

  “What is it?” Brackwell asked.

  Old Red rapped on the door. “There ain’t no scorch marks.”

  “So?” I said.

  “So, if Boudreaux was shot through the vent hole, there’d be some burn on the wood. You know derringers—a man can’t hit a barn at ten paces with one of them little things. They’re for killin’ up close.”

  Brackwell sighed. “So you were wrong about how the man died.”

  “Only the details,” Gustav said, shooing away the gentleman’s concerns with a wave of his hand. “He didn’t shoot himself, I’m still sure of that. The rest of it . . .well, it’s a puzzler alright. A regular three-piper.”

  Those last words—a twist on one of Mr. Holmes’s little sayings—seemed to simultaneously amuse and alarm Young Brackwell.

  “These stories you’ve been reading,” he said. “Surely some of them detail the adventures of my countryman Sherlock Holmes?”

  “The best of ‘em do,” Old Red replied, looking deeply gratified to encounter someone who knew of his hero. “His is the only method worth mindin’ when there’s detectin’ to be done.”

  “That might be,” Brackwell said. “All the same, I wouldn’t repeat such praise in the Duke’s presence.”

  Gustav cocked an eyebrow. “Don’t care for Mr. Holmes, do he?”

  “That would be putting it mildly. And he has good reason. You haven’t read ‘The Noble Bachelor’ then?”

  Old Red and I exchanged a puzzled glance.

  “No, sir,” my brother said. “I could see that my Holmesing a while back was puttin’ a twig up his snoot. But I figured that was just his way anytime a man don’t play the hand he’s dealt at birth.”

  Brackwell looked confused for a moment, then nodded slowly. “Yes. . .I see what you mean. But there’s more to it than that. About four years ago, one of the Duke’s sons, Robert St. Simon, came very close to marrying into an American fortune. It would have been. . .a useful alliance for the St. Simons. Unfortunately, your Sherlock Holmes uncovered a most embarrassing fact about the bride-to-be: She was already married. Of course, the scandal tainted the entire family. And just as the whispers were beginning to fade, Holmes’s biographer, Dr. Watson, had the bad taste to publish an account of the affair.”

  “ ‘The Noble Bachelor,’ ” Gustav said.

  “Precisely.”

  “That’s one we ain’t run across yet,” I said. “Looking for Holmes tales out here’s like pannin’ for gold in a trickle of piss.”

  Brackwell may have been done up in cowboy duds, but such language was still a tad overly earthy for him. “Yes, well,” he said with an uncomfortable cough, “it’s plain to see you’ve found enough to acquaint yourselves with his theories and habits. So much so that
old Dickie was probably reminded of a man he blames for a blemish on his family’s honor.”

  “Though I reckon he’s done his part to blemish things up, what with all his bad bets. Is that why his family’s strapped for cash?”

  Brackwell gaped at my brother. “You astonish me. Yes, actually all the male St. Simons are prone to an excessive love of gaming. And it has affected their fortunes over the years. How could you know that?”

  Old Red shrugged casually, the very picture of false modesty. “Simple observation and deduction. Child’s play for Mr. Holmes, I imagine.”

  “Possibly. I never met the man, but I understand he was—”

  “Mr. Brackwell!’ ”

  We turned toward the castle to see Emily heading in our direction. Instinctively, the three of us moved between her and the outhouse, attempting to shield a delicate female from the gruesome sight within. But Emily didn’t want any shielding, and she went up on her tiptoes and swiveled her neck like a snake to get a peek at the body.

  “Breakfast is being served,” she said.

  “Thank you, Emily. I’m not hungry,” Brackwell replied.

  Emily kept coming closer. “Lady Clara would like to speak to you,” she said, dropping her voice down a notch. “At your earliest convenience, sir.”

  “Very well,” Brackwell said with a sigh. “I’m in the soup now,” he added to us under his breath. “I’m not supposed to encourage the Duke’s bad habits. Well, gentlemen. . .good hunting.”

  He took one last look at Boo, shook his head, and started off for the house with Emily—who turned for another peek herself as they walked away.

  That left Old Red and me alone at last. But as much as I wanted to put our privacy to use by unloading a wagonful of questions and complaints, I knew there was more important business to attend to first.

  “Uly and Spider’ll be back any second now,” I said.

  “Most likely. So we’d best move quick.”

  Gustav stepped into the outhouse and began fussing with Boudreaux’s body. When he came out a moment later, he was carrying the man’s gunbelt. He slipped out the .45, checked the cylinder, and gave the barrel a sniff.