Holmes on the Range (29 page)

My brother fixed his eyes to the ground again. “You'll have to cut that deck a little deeper.”

That's a drover's way of asking a fellow to be more specific.

“Well,” I began, realizing then just how narrow my question had been. Where was Gustav supposed to start?

There was Perkins's death. There was Boudreaux's death. There
was the Duke's “sudden fancy” to visit the VR and Edwards's solitary “picnic” and a thief who took pillows, handbags, and irons. There was Hungry Bob and the McPhersons and feathers and a half-burnt receipt for beef fat and a stray nose and . . .

There was a
lot
.

“Start with Boo then,” I said. “I thought I had some ideas as to who might've put that hole in his head, but what we found back there in the office. . .it's got me all jumbled up. If you were able to make something of it, it would be a comfort to hear it.”

“Theorizin',” Old Red warned me, saying the word the way you might say “sharp” when a two-year-old reaches for a knife.

“Gustav, let me be plain: I don't give a shit about ‘biasin' your judgment' just now. I am sick of runnin' around like a chicken with its head cut off. Tell me what's goin' on.”

“Otto, you know Sherlock Holmes don't go blabbin' his every thought to Doc Watson. He keeps his notions to himself until—”

“You ain't Sherlock Holmes, and I ain't Doc Watson, alright? So just
talk
, God damn it!”

Half a minute passed in silence before my brother realized I was serious: no theorizing from him, no new data from me. He finally heaved a sigh and gave in.

“Boudreaux had a horse waitin' last night, so it's safe to figure he was goin' someplace—probably leavin' the VR,” he said, still aiming his words straight down. “But first he stopped at the castle. He was wearin' his spurs, which ain't somethin' a man's likely to do if he's on the prowl. You know how them things kick up a jingle. So I ain't inclined to believe he snuck up to the second floor and went rootin' around in the closet for an iron. No, he stayed on the first floor, in the office—cuz he was meetin' somebody there. And that somebody up and shot him.”

“But if Boo was killed in the office, the folks in the house would've heard the shot plain as day,” I pointed out. “I mean, what about Emily? Her room was right down the hall.”

Old Red nodded. “True enough. But it looks like the shot was muffled, either by a couple pillows or a passin' duck. I'm thinkin' it was most likely the pillows.”

“Hold on, Gustav. You lost me right around the part about the
duck
.”

“Well, why do you think there was a feather on Boudreaux's forehead? I never saw the man in a Cheyenne warbonnet, did you? Nope, that was pillow down. Pillows would've swallowed up the powder flare, too, which would explain why Boudreaux didn't have any scorch on him.”

“So before the killer shoots Boo, he says, ‘Thanks for comin'—now would you mind sittin' here with these pillows over your face?' ”

I half-expected my brother to respond to my snipping by snapping, but instead he just shrugged. “Yeah, that's a hole in the bucket, alright. Still, Boudreaux was killed in Perkins's office, of that I'm sure.”

“Well. . .let's say you're right. That means I've lost my favorite suspects.”

Old Red peeked up from the turf beneath our mounts just long enough for me to see the amusement in his eyes.

“I started off sure it was Uly or Spider,” I explained. “And if not them, one of their boys. And if not one of their boys, then maybe Anytime—he hated Boo from the second we hit the VR. But there ain't no way any of them would've done the deed in the castle. They could've killed him a lot more easily someplace else.”

“Good deducin',” my brother said. “So the question is, who was Boudreaux meetin' in the house and why? The
who
we'll have to leave for later. But the
why
falls into place with just a little jigglin'. It stands to reason the killer lit up a blaze in the fireplace to try and cover the smell of gunsmoke—and destroy that ‘Bill of Sale' in the process. So the receipt's the key.”

“But, come on. . .a receipt for
tallow
? Why would anybody kill a man over that? It's fat, not gold.”

I leaned back and shook my head, suddenly understanding the problem with theorizing. It doesn't just bias the judgment—it drives a man crazy.

“And how does that nose in Boo's pocket tie in?” I said. “And the missing iron and handbag from the closet upstairs? And why can't anybody agree on the time of the gunshot? And why move Boo out of the office just to dump him in the
outhouse
, for Christ's sake?”

“The answers to them questions are ‘Damned if I know,' ‘I ain't sure,' ‘I am utterly confounded' and ‘All I've got is a guess.' ”

“A guess, huh? Well, that's better than a ‘Damned if I know.' Let's hear it.”

Old Red snuck another quick peek at me, almost looking embarrassed by what he was about to say.

“It was an accident.”

“Come again?”

“Just stroll through it with me,” Gustav said. “The Swede told us he heard someone sneakin' around the privy not long before he heard the gunshot. Now he was comin'
toward
the house at the time, and if someone was movin' the body
from
the house, the two might cross paths. So the body got stuffed into the jakes until the Swede passed by. But you know the door on that privy's always had a mind of its own—let it slam, and it drops the latch.”

My brother shot me another peek, apparently gauging how crazy I thought his guess to be. I sure as hell didn't have a better guess of my own, so I told him to keep going.

“The latch drops, and the body's stuck in the outhouse,” he said. “And though somebody fought with the door a bit—there were fresh scratches in the wood, remember—whoever it was needed tools and more time to pry it off. It was almost mornin' by then, and before long the Swede wouldn't be the only man up and about, and breakin' through the door was bound to kick up a ruckus. So throwin' the gun
in there to make it look like suicide—that was just someone doin' some clever thinkin' on the fly.”

For a man who'd resisted theorizing for so long, my brother sure looked like he was enjoying himself. I couldn't join in the fun, though. There were still too many unanswered questions churning my brain to butter.

“Well, that would explain a lot,” I said. “Not everything, though—not by a long shot.”

“Yeah, we still got quite a ways to go before it all makes sense.” Gustav reached up to tap the side of his Stetson. “But wheels are turnin'. Just give me a little more data and a little more time to cogitate, and I'll cook up some answers that'll sit better in both our stomachs. Speakin' of which, I think it's time you told me what Brackwell had to say back in the office.”

I nodded. Old Red had held to his side of the bargain. Now it was my turn.

So I told him the tale—about Edwards's hunt for respectability and how Lady Clara's fall from grace could land her right in the man's clutches. Though my brother had been uncommonly chatty just moments before, he held his tongue for the next several minutes, offering no commentary beyond the occasional nod or grunt as I dredged up everything I could recall from my conversation with Brackwell. When there was no detail left to dredge, I shifted into spirited speculation on Edwards's chances of wooing the lady—chances I stacked up unfavorably against a snowball's chances in hell.

“Alright,” Old Red finally cut in. “That's enough gossipin' over the fence, Mabel. It's time we got serious about ridin' again.”

Though kicking a man in the seat of the pants while both you and he are mounted would be a difficult and perhaps even dangerous task to undertake, I considered it seriously for a moment there. But instead of lashing out with a boot toe, I lashed out with my tongue.

“How can I be ‘serious about ridin'' when the Sherlock Kid over there won't even tell me where we're headed?”

Gustav glared at me like I'd just called him the Son of a Bitch Kid.

“I'd have thought it was clear enough,” he growled. “We're gonna keep followin' these tracks.”

“Tracks?” I said—and I instantly regretted it, for upon bringing my gaze to the ground I beheld a trail Helen Keller herself would have no trouble following. I'd been so caught up in conversation I hadn't even noticed it.

I stared at the tracks now, trying to make sense of them. They were made by wheels, that much was clear, and they cut across the prairie to the southeast—toward a section of the Bar VR the McPhersons had warned us Hornet's Nesters frequently and forcefully to avoid. Other than that, I wasn't sure what to think. There were so many crisscrossing ruts of varying depth and freshness they all mashed together into a jumble in my head.

I knew Old Red was seeing something else entirely, however. There'd be no jumble for a master tracker like him.

“Well?” I prompted him.

“Four fresh trails, new and light,” he said.

I stared back down at the flattened grass and exposed dirt slipping by beneath Brick's belly. It was still a jumble to me.

“
Four
new trails, you say?”

“Two trips in a buggy,” Old Red replied. “Out and back, then out and back again, all within the last day.”

“Well, the Duke's little expedition would account for one set of tracks,” I said. “But what about the. . . oh. Edwards?”

Gustav nodded. “He must've headed this way for his ‘picnic.' ”

“Why would he come all the way out here?”

“Only one way to find out,” Old Red said, and he got Sugar going before I could slow him down with more talk.

We were able to make good speed, for there was no science to staying
on the trail. It took us far deeper into the VR's grazing land than we'd ever been before, and we rode across open range and up and down gently sloping hills that would have made for pleasant riding if I hadn't been worried about someone putting lead in our livers. Following the buggy tracks kept us exposed to view, making us easy targets for any unfriendly fellow with a Winchester in his scabbard.

Though the wind was at our backs, I eventually began to sense by way of my nose that we would soon be in the company of cattle. We found them not long afterward, perhaps a thousand strong. They were meandering unattended across a long, narrow strip of grassland at the bottom of a rocky punch bowl formed by the surrounding bluffs. From the way the grass had been flattened throughout the valley, it was clear they'd been packed in pretty tight. The Duke's party seemed to have taken pains to drive straight through the center of the herd, and many a cow pie had been squashed beneath buggy wheel and horse's hoof.

At the far end of the valley, a stand of trees ringed a largish pond around and in which perhaps fifty cows were cooling themselves. It appeared that this modest prairie oasis held some appeal for one of the VR's two-legged residents, as well, for the trail split here—one set of buggy ruts cut straight over to the pond, while the other kept on to the south, out of the valley. Gustav eased his horse to a halt where the trails separated.

“The tracks down to the water must be from Edwards today,” I said. “The trail's fresher. The patties it runs through ain't even baked hard yet.”

I had no doubt my brother had already noticed that. I just didn't want him thinking I
hadn't
. He acknowledged my trail-reading with a nod, then unhorsed himself.

“Hold on to Sugar. I wanna look at somethin'.”

I dismounted and stood there holding the horses. They wished to get at that water, but Old Red didn't want them mussing up the ground before he'd had a chance to look it over. He followed the buggy tracks
to the pond, walking so bent-over his face would've been dead even with the buckle of his gunbelt had he been wearing one. It was pure luck that kept him from charging hat-first into a heifer's hindquarters, as he didn't look up to make sure the cows were clearing out of his way. When he got about ten feet from the water's edge, he dropped down to one knee.

“What ya got, Brother?”

“Footprints,” Gustav said. “Cows've already made a mess of ‘em, but . . .” He crawled closer to the marshy muck that ringed the pool. “Edwards took himself a little stroll down to the water here.” Old Red hopped up and planted his feet firmly in place. “This is as close as he got. Didn't want to muddy his pretty shoes, I reckon.”

My brother stayed there staring out over the water. Several cows stared back at him.

“Then what?” I asked.

“Then he left. Got in the buggy, wheeled around, and headed back to the castle.”

“Well, it's plain to see why he'd go to such trouble to visit a spot like this.” I nodded at the murky brown water and the poop-pocked ring of hoof-trampled mud that encircled it. “This here's a regular Garden of Eden.”

“Yeah,” Old Red said, slapping away some little winged pest that was making a run at his neck. “Only things that'd wanna
picnic
around here are horseflies and mosquitoes.”

“So why do you think Edwards really came back here? To meet somebody maybe?”

“Nope. No other tracks.”

“You can't tell me he came all the way out here to eat cheese and bread with a bunch of cows.”

“I ain't tellin' you nothin', Brother. I don't have anything to tell—not till I've had a chance to do some serious thinkin'.”

Gustav picked up a clod of dirt and threw it out into the pond. He
spent a moment just watching the ripples spread before he turned and spoke again.

“Alright—you can let the ponies get ‘em a taste now.”