Holmes on the Range (19 page)

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

The Duke and Edwards turned and headed back to the house, the old 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.”

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

A
fter 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.

“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.