Holmes on the Range

by Steve Hockensmith

  “Been used?” I asked.

  Old Red shook his head. Then he jammed the iron back in its leather and handed the whole caboodle to me.

  “Strap that on.”

  As I pulled the holster around my waist and cinched it loose, the way I like it, my brother moved back to Boo, grabbing him by the boots and dragging him out into the light.

  “That ain’t a very respectful way to treat a feller’s remains,” I pointed out.

  “You wanna sing a hymn, you go right ahead. I got work to do.”

  Gustav commenced that work by lifting Boudreaux’s pale paws and giving them a quick going over.

  “No scorch, no scratches, no busted knuckles,” he mumbled. “He didn’t put up a fight.”

  “Hungry Bob or whoever must’ve got the jump on him.”

  “Just make that ‘whoever,’ ” Old Red said, dropping Boo’s hands.

  “You don’t really think Hungry Bob’s tied up in this?”

  “If I were a bettin’ man like ‘His Grace,’ I’d wager ol’ Bob is two hundred miles north of here roastin’ himself a nice, juicy Mountie at this very moment.”

  “So you were just guyin’ the Duke about Bob payin’ us a call?”

  “Got a good jump out of him, too. Only it wasn’t Hungry Bob that had him sweatin’. It was the posse that. . . hel-lo!” Gustav pushed his face in so close to Boo’s he could’ve smelled the man’s breath had he any left in him. “I sure wish I had one of them ‘magnifying glasses’ Doc Watson writes of.”

  “What is it?”

  “I don’t know.”

  My brother reached his hand out slowly and plucked something small and dark from the crusty wound in Boudreaux’s forehead. He squinted at the little ditty for a minute, holding it pinched betwixt his forefinger and thumb, then motioned me over for a look.

  It was a feather—a fluffy bit of down blackened by gunpowder and blood.

  “Well, that wraps up the mystery,” I said. “Boo got himself gunned down by a goose.”

  Gustav sighed. “Brother, I’ll never know how you got hold of the crazy notion that you’re funny.”

  “Oh, a feller just knows.”

  Old Red stuffed the feather into one of his pockets, then started searching those belonging to Boudreaux.

  The first items he pulled out were the inevitable rolling papers and pouch of tobacco—the man had been a puncher, after all, and not finding makings on his person would be akin to discovering a porcupine free of quills. Gustav put it all back where he’d found it and moved on.

  Now many qualities can be credited to my brother, and chief among them is a powerful fortitude: He’s got enough backbone for three men and a mule. This has served him well over the years, for farmboy and cowboy alike can ill afford to go weak-kneed in the face of the unsavory.

  So a display of squeamishness from Old Red is something I would expect about as much as a display of courage from a turnip. Yet when he pulled something pink and rubbery from one of Boudreaux’s pockets, his fingers went fluttery and he dropped it, hissing out a shocked “Sweet Jesus!” I peered over his shoulder and blurted out a blasphemy of my own.

  The albino apparently had mighty unwholesome tastes when it came to mementos and good-luck charms.

  Tucked in his Levi’s had been a man’s nose.

  Twenty

  THE TRAIL

  Or, We Follow in the Footsteps of a Dead Man

  It took my brother but an instant to regain his usual air of unflappable calm. I, on the other hand, remained flapped for a good many moments.

  “Goddamn what the hell holy shit,” I panted. “Is that what I think it is?”

  “That depends,” Old Red said. “What do you think it is?”

  I pointed at the nose, which had dropped onto Boudreaux’s shirt, coming to a stop sitting upright like a pair of extra nostrils growing out of the albino’s chest. It made a considerable mound resting there, being neither a noble “Roman” nose nor a cute “button” nose but rather a huge, hairy, hooked honker adorned with a mole the size, shape, and color of a pinto bean. The flesh had been dusted liberally with coarse salt, no doubt to keep the gruesome keepsake from smelling (so to speak).

  “Well, I know that’s a nose. I’m just surprised Boo would be carryin’ around a spare,” I snapped. “Now don’t give me any crap about ‘theorizin’.’ What’s goin’ on?”

  Gustav shrugged. “I couldn’t theorize if I wanted to,” he said, pulling out a bandanna. He draped it over the nose and scooped it up, bundling it like our Mutter used to wrap biscuits and ham for my lunch at school. “I have no earthly idea what this means.”

  Old Red stuffed the nose in his vest and got back to exploring Boudreaux’s pockets. I took a step back, fearing he might turn up ears, fingers, or eyeballs next. But all he found was an ordinary pocketknife.

  Gustav flipped out the blade. It was covered with a dark, flaky film.

  “Dried blood?” I asked, peeking over my brother’s shoulder.

  “Yup. Looks like Boudreaux didn’t just find that nose on a Christmas tree. He barked it himself.” Old Red folded up the pocketknife and put it back where he’d found it. “Help me get him back in his coffin.”

  It was a bit of a struggle, but after a minute or so we had the man propped up in the privy again.

  “Now what?” I asked.

  “Well, you’ll remember in ‘Silver Blaze’ one of them police inspectors talks about ‘the scene of the crime.’ I reckon that’s what we got to find.”

  “ ‘The scene of the crime’? You mean this ain’t it?”

  Gustav sighed, looking like a schoolmaster about to explain for the fiftieth time why things fall down instead of up.

  “Just try walkin’ through it as Mr. Holmes would,” he said. “Boudreaux didn’t shoot himself, he wasn’t shot through the vent hole in the privy door, and he sure as hell wasn’t shot by somebody there in the jakes with him—that little thing can barely hold one man, let alone two. Now that only leaves one other way to go, don’t it?”

  “Boo. . .was. . .shot someplace else?” I ventured. “And . . .the killer. . .stowed the body in the privy?”

  Old Red nodded. “There you go, Brother,” he said, looking almost pleased for once. “We just might make a detective out of you yet.”

  I grinned, feeling pretty proud of myself—until I realized there was one more step to take if I was to walk through the mystery Holmes-style.

  “Hold on, Gustav,” I said, my grin suddenly gone. “Why in God’s name would anybody try to hide a freshly murdered man in an out-house?”

  “Damned if I know,” Old Red replied, completely unfazed that we’d deducted ourselves smack-dab into a brick wall. “It ain’t just a three-pipe problem—it’s more like a thirty-piper.”

  He turned and wandered away, his eyes on the ground again. This time he headed for the creek that winds behind the castle and the privy, and before long he went down on his knee and spread his fingers in the grass. Though I couldn’t see anything but dirt and scrub, I knew my brother was reading the sod like I read a book. He’d been in the drovering business nearly ten years, and in that time he’d learned to recognize every hoofprint, hair, toenail, tooth, scuff mark, piss puddle, and shit pile on the plains.

  “I thought so,” he said. “Boudreaux brought a horse along here last night. That’s why he had on his spurs. He aimed to. . .hel-lo!” He crawled around a bit, stopping over a hoofprint so bold and deep even I could see it. “Another horse. Someone else rode up this way.” He stood and stared back along the creekbed. “Followed the creek in from the south. Well. . .that’s a wrinkle.”

  Old Red spun on his heel, moving quickly back toward the privy, his eyes down. He went past the outhouse, not stopping until he was under a green ash tree near the castle. The ground around the tree was pocked with horse turds. After a moment, Gustav moved on, finding more of the same behind a stand of buffalo-berry bushes not thirty feet away.

  “Looks like Boudreaux and that
other feller didn’t picket their horses together,” I said.

  Old Red nodded. “Good, Otto, good—you’re using your eyes now.”

  “That means they probably weren’t travelin’ together,” I went on, feeling encouraged to follow up my observation with a touch of deduction. “I bet somebody was trailin’ Boo . . . probably the man who shot him! He came right up behind him here and—”

  “Whoa there! Slow down! We’re supposed to walk through the clues, not go ridin’ roughshod over ‘em,” my brother chided.

  Before he could remind me that my guesswork constituted theorizing—and get a boot up his butt for doing so—the back door of the house opened and someone leaned out to shoot us a “Pssssst.” We turned to find Emily’s pleasingly rounded form in the doorway. She motioned us closer. From behind her in the house I could hear the murmur of conversation and the clinking of silver on china. The recent unpleasantness apparently hadn’t diminished our employers’ appetites.

  “So who snuffed it then?” the maid asked.

  “Excuse me?” I said.

  “Who died?” Emily explained, rolling her big, blue eyes. “Who’s the stiff?”

  “Oh. It’s one of the hands. A feller named Boudreaux. You’ve probably seen him around—the albino Negro.”

  “Oooooo, it was that one, was it? You know, I used to think all coloreds looked alike until I laid eyes on him. Not much ‘colored’ about him, I’d say. Ho!”

  Neither Old Red nor myself gave her a Ho! back.

  “Well, go on then,” Emily prodded. “Tell us what you know.”

  I looked at Old Red, and he gave me a nod, so I spun out the morn-ing’s events, skipping over our more gruesome discoveries. To judge by the look on Emily’s face, I needn’t have worried about protecting her ladylike sensibilities—she didn’t have any. In fact, she seemed positively exhilarated by the few bloody details I did dole out.

  “The Duke and Lady Clara and the rest of ‘em must be in quite a lather, havin’ a dead man on their doorstep and all,” Gustav said when I was done, his voice cool and steady despite the nerves that usually jangled him up around women.

  “Oooooo, so you might expect,” Emily replied. “But the way the Duke and that icicle Edwards are talking, you’d think that Negro back there was no more than a dead cat. ‘Probably some meaningless quarrel amongst the strongbacks,’ says the Duke. ‘Yes,’ says his lapdog. ‘These Westerners are little better than the filthy aboriginals they drove out.’ And then it’s on to breakfast and business talk! Well, my lady gave them a right scolding for their lack of feeling. And then when she heard about the gentlemen’s wager—oooooo! She dressed them down all over again, even her pet Brackwell. She’s a true lady, despite what some say. But when she gets on her high horse, why, she could ride down ‘Mrs. Regina’ herself! Ho!”

  I worked up a “Ho!” of my own to keep things friendly, and my brother even coughed up a good-sport chuckle himself.

  “Speakin’ of Brackwell, what’s the story with him, anyway?” Gustav said once the ho-ing was over. “I can’t imagine why the Duke would bring a kid like that on a trip like this.”

  “Well, let me help you imagine,” Emily said, obviously relishing the opportunity to pass along more high-grade gossip. “The way I hear it, he only got sent along because he was this close to getting kicked out of Cambridge. He’s a queer one, he is. Dreamylike. Couldn’t keep his mind on his books. The earl—his father—he’s hoping this trip will wake the lad up. Get him interested in something. Make a man out of him. Well, he’s interested in something alright. You’ve seen the way he’s taken to dressing? Ho! But as for making him a man. . .well, I daresay that hasn’t happened yet.”

  Being quicker than my brother to recognize the setup for a funny, I was the one who replied.

  “Oh? And why’s that?”

  “Because I’ve been traveling with the boy almost a month, and he hasn’t tried to pinch me once!”

  The maid busted out with a laugh like the nerve-jangling blast of a steamboat whistle.

  “So,” Gustav said through a feeble smile, “Brackwell said he heard the gunshot last night. How about you?”

  The glee fled the girl’s face.

  “Oh. Well, I. . .I may have heard something.”

  Her words came out at a limp rather than the usual stampede, and I had to wonder why speaking of a noise in the night should leave her tongue-tied for once.

  “Did you happen to make note of the time you ‘may have heard something’?” my brother said.

  “After midnight—one o’clock maybe. Really, I was asleep again so fast I could hardly say.”

  Old Red’s eyes went kind of unfocused, like he was doing some tricky figuring over a hand of poker. While he cogitated, I jumped in with a thought I was chewing on myself.

  “You weren’t scared?” I asked. “Everyone else was upstairs in bed, right? So you were down there on the first floor all by your lonesome.”

  “Oh.” Emily sounded surprised, as if the thought hadn’t even occurred to her. “No, I. . .I wasn’t. . .I wasn’t scared.”

  Something about the girl’s hesitation seemed to snap Gustav from his daydream.

  “Well, I guess you wouldn’t have felt entirely alone,” he said. “Thanks to the Duke.”

  Emily glared at my brother as if he’d just complimented her on her magnificent bosoms.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” she snapped.

  “You said yesterday the Duke gave out derringers to everybody before you came West,” Old Red explained quickly. “Sometimes the company of a gun can be a real comfort.”

  “Oh, that little thing,” Emily said dismissively, the sting instantly gone from her voice. “I forgot I even had it.”

  “Really?”

  Gustav’s voice was full of a wonderment I shared. Emily either possessed nerves of steel or a brain of pudding.

  Or she was lying.

  “My goodness, but you Britishers are a calm lot,” I said. “Usually when folks from civilized parts come out here to the ‘Wild West,’ it doesn’t take more than a mouse fart to send ‘em screamin’ for cover, if you’ll pardon my sayin’ so. Yet y’all hear gunfire in the middle of the night, and the women don’t bat an eyelash and the men don’t bother rousin’ themselves to take a peek outside.”

  “I didn’t know it was gunfire. It was just. . .a noise, that’s all,” Emily said. “As for the men, Brackwell wouldn’t have been any use even if he had pulled himself from bed, what with all the drink Lady Clara and the Duke poured down his throat last night.” The maid’s words picked up steam as she went along, and she looked glad to be talking about folks other than herself again. “Edwards came back from that tour of theirs barely able to walk. His back was giving him such pain he couldn’t even make it to the loo—and I should know, because I had to empty out the chamber pot. Oooooo.”

  “And the Duke?” Old Red asked.

  “Old Dickie?” Emily shrugged. “That one’s as lazy as a fat cat once he’s in his chambers for the night. Nothing less than a fire could pull him from bed, and even then he might choose to burn alive rather than fetch a pail of water.”

  “Just how long have you worked for the Duke, Emily?”

  The girl’s wide eyes narrowed, and when she spoke her tone was wary again. “I’ve been in the St. Simons’ employ for two years. Why do you ask?”

  “Well, from what I’ve seen, you do most of your work for Lady Clara. Yet you seem to know the old man’s habits real well. I was wonderin’ how you’d—”

  Before Old Red could do that wondering out loud, there came the tinkle of a small bell from inside the house, and Emily stiffened up like she’d heard a bear growl behind her.

  “I have to go,” she said, somehow managing to look both annoyed and relieved at the same time. She turned and scurried inside to wipe marmalade from the Duke’s whiskers or chew Edwards’s eggs for him or whatever it is maids do for folks at breakfast time.

  Old Red went all dayd
reamy again the second the door shut, and he spent the next few moments staring at an invisible speck of nothing that seemed to hover a few inches beyond the tip of his nose. By this point, I knew better than to ask what he was thinking—one more warning against theorizing and theoretically I was going to rip off his mustache and sprinkle it over his head like pepper.

  So I just stood there, not saying a word. To help the time pass, I began whistling “Bury Me Not on the Lone Prairie.”

  Old Red blinked like a fellow coming out of a spell cast by a tent-show mesmerist.

  “Can’t a man stand here and think a moment?”

  “Can’t a man stand here and whistle?” I replied.

  Old Red growled and stepped around me. “Mr. Holmes gets Dr. Watson, and what do I get?” he mumbled as he stomped away. “A god-damn canary.”

  “Hey,” I said as I hustled along after him. “Where you goin’ now?”

  There was no need for Gustav to answer, for he reached his destination in less than a dozen strides.

  “Stay out here and keep watch,” he said as he pulled open the double doors to the storm cellar and hurried down the steps, disappearing into the dingy gloom. “If you so much as smell a McPherson, call out quick.”

  He didn’t have to explain why he wanted me on lookout. We had reason enough to fear Uly and Spider when we were out in the open. If they were to get us cornered in the cellar, we’d never make it back into the sunshine.

  “See anything?” I called down into the dark.

  “Just spiderwebs and dirt,” Old Red replied.

  A small, orange light flickered to life—my brother firing up a lucifer.

  “Hel-lo,” he said. “Somebody got here before us.”

  “How can you tell?”

  “Footprints, for one thing. And there’s a nice, square depression here in the dirt.”

  The glow of the match went out, and Gustav stepped from the shadows and climbed out of the cellar.

  “Somebody had a box tucked away down there—a heavy one,” he said as he shut the doors behind him. “But it’s gone now.”

  “A box of papers, maybe?” I said, thinking of the sheet of paper Old Red had seen Boo take from the cellar the day before.