Warlock Holmes--A Study in Brimstone (12 page)

SOUTH OF CANADA AND NORTH OF MEXICO LIES A LAND
many Englishmen do not deign to speak of. For the triple crimes of bloodying our nose, stealing itself from our empire and eventually surpassing us at the industrial revolution that we ourselves started, it has been banished from the thoughts and vocabulary of our more conservative element.

Towards the western edge of that cursed land, lies a blighted waste called the Mojave. It is as if the hand of the creator, having formed the earth but not yet adorned it with flora and fauna, paused here. Unable to think of anything apt to draw, the immortal architect resolved to complete the rest of the earth first, then come back and finish up.

Except, he forgot.

Nothing of consequence lives here. In fact, any life that happens to wander into this sun-blasted hell usually dies before the day is out. This is the place where scorpions go to perish of dehydration.

Behold the Spring Mountains, unfinished and unadorned, which jut from the empty plain. These are naked heaps of rock, shoved up from the bowels of the earth just so there could be
something
here. East of them lies an open basin of sand and alkaline dust, an almost endless open expanse of
vegas
which the Spanish call
Las Vegas
. It is a place of madness, where the heat and the unending miles of sand have caused delusion in the few travelers who have managed to traverse it and live. Many report ghostly visions. They speak of a city of a million lights, rising from the sand. Some claim to have seen an ebony pyramid, capped in light, some a vast Italian villa that takes the tiny quantity of precious water that exists there and blasts it into the air in intricate patterns for no reason. One gent even insisted he came across a replica of Camelot itself, gone to squalor and disrepair. These reports are all sun-drunk fantasy of course. Such a city would be totally unsustainable. Who would consent to live there but madmen, insatiable gamblers and the Dutch?

One evening in 1870, this blighted wasteland beheld a rare sight. As daylight faded, a tiny spot of light sprang up upon the plain. It was a campfire. Beside it huddled three dark shapes. Men. Travelers. In those days, anybody who wished to prospect in California had their choice of routes. The wise ones went north, through Oregon Territory, though it was hundreds of miles out of their way. Those foolish few who decided to hurry along the most direct route ended here. These three travelers belonged to the latter kind and were beginning to wish they’d thought better of it when they’d had the chance. They had gathered a pile of the stunted brush that overgrows the plain and set fire to it—as much out of spite as anything. This campfire provided scant relief against the encroaching darkness and the mood of the travelers was strained.

Joseph Strangerson was the youngest, most handsome, best educated, kindest, most reasonable member of the party, but the novelty of these advantages had dried out a thousand miles ago. He was worn to a nub. He sighed. “Feels like I haven’t seen a river this side of a week.”

“No. Nor no pastry shop for a good while longer,” Enoch Drebber groused, staring with unguarded greed at the dainty pink box that rested upon the lap of their companion.

Jefferson Hope’s hard eyes fixed him with a warning glare. “Let’s not have no talk like that, Enoch; you a’ready ate yers.”

Joseph shook his head and kicked a rock into the fire. Enoch, whose temper had been growing shorter and shorter over the last few days, spat, “I sure did an’ it was delicious, too! What the hell kind o’ man wouldn’t eat a donut if he got one? A fool, if y’ask me!”

“I may be a fool, Enoch Drebber, but not so much that I can’t recognize when I’m holdin’ a good thing. You kin take yer eyes off my pastry now, hear?”

Strangerson sighed again and sent another rock to the flames, saying, “He’s got a point, Mr. Hope. If you ain’t gonna eat it, you might as well share. Sharing is one of the seven cardinal virtues, you know.”

“Ain’t never heard of no seven virtues,” Jefferson Hope said, his gaze fixed at the heart of the fire, “jus’ the seven sins. One of ’em’s greed.”

“Goddamit!” shouted Drebber, springing up. “Eat it! Eat it right now or hand it over!”

Jefferson Hope’s eyes rose slowly from the flames to clasp Enoch Drebber in their fell grip. “I’ll eat it when I please, Drebber,” he said, in a voice calm and quiet, but loaded with menacing promise, “an’ there ain’t no man nor beast nor god can make me take a bite afore I’m ready. I’m savin’ it.”

“Calm down, fellers,” Joseph pleaded. “It’s just a damn donut.”

“No. It ain’t. It’s the bestest, most perfect donut what ever there was. I named her Lucy an’ I love her an’ that’s all there is to it,” Jefferson Hope insisted.

“Crazy, that’s what you are,” Enoch Drebber said, but they had reached that same familiar impasse they did every night. In the end there was nothing for it but to hunch down into their bedrolls and go to sleep.

The night was not four hours along and the moon not yet so high in the eastern sky when Joseph Strangerson awoke suddenly to find a hand clapped across his mouth. For a moment he thought to scream, but gazing up he saw the wide, earnest eyes of Enoch Drebber. He had a warning look about him and held one finger to his lips to signal silence. Drebber withdrew his hand and Joseph sat up.

“What? What’s goin’ on?”

“I mean t’ have that donut,” said Enoch.

“That ain’t nothin’ but crazy,” Joseph said, and began to settle once more into his bedroll.

But Drebber shook him bodily and insisted, “I mean t’ have it, I tell you! An’ you’re goin’ to help me.”

“The hell I am,” whispered Joseph, trying to pull himself free.

“You’ve got them light fingers,” Drebber said. “Sure, I’m gonna eat that donut, but he’s sleepin’ on it again and I ain’t got the art t’ git it without wakin’ him.”

The two men looked over at Jefferson Hope. There he lay, with the peace of angels on his face and his arms curled around the pink box, which lay half under his bearded cheek. Joseph Strangerson heaved a sigh of resignation, like a man condemned as he mounts the gallows steps. He had not the bravery nor the brawn of his two companions, but he could see how this would all play out and he wanted it done with. He drew his long, thin knife from its sheath and crept towards the sleeping form of Jefferson Hope. Silently as he could, he slit the thin strip of clear tape that held the box top closed and cut down both corners of the box, from top to bottom. He scarce dared to breathe as he folded back the side of the box to reveal the precious wax-paper packet within. With steady hands, he pressed the scrubby remnants of a half-burned bush into the box, alongside Lucy, so as to stop it collapsing when the pastry was withdrawn. Then he slipped the long blade underneath the donut and worked it silently out, over the labor of some fifteen minutes. At last he held the tiny packet, balanced on the flat of his knife. He turned and held it out to Drebber, who snatched it and retreated some twenty yards or so from the fading ring of firelight. Joseph wiped his brow; he had not realized how freely he’d been sweating—a practice that could prove fatal in a dry waste such as this. Keeping his footfalls as soft as he could, he followed Drebber away from the camp.

Already, Drebber was pulling at the paper with quivering fingers. His eyes were wild and fearful. With every crinkle the wax paper released, his eyes shot back to the sleeping form of Jefferson Hope, terrified that the telltale paper had betrayed him to the sleeping giant. Joseph could not help licking his lips as he peered over Drebber’s shoulder at the stolen treasure. Fold by fold, the paper yielded, until at last the naked form of Lucy lay before them, bathed in moonlight. She was half crushed and all stale. Nevertheless, the sight of this forbidden delicacy drew a gasp of awe from the two men.

“Half,” Joseph dared to whisper. “I want half.”

Drebber’s eyes flashed with fury and greed, but only for an instant.
Wait… yes. Yes. Let him eat.
It was the taste of donut Drebber craved, not the quantity. Far better to have a confederate. Should this crime rouse the fury of Jefferson Hope, he would rather it was a two-against-one argument. Here in the wasteland, a man was his own law. Strangerson wasn’t much of a man, but half a donut was a small price for an ally, here where they all slept so vulnerable, beneath the wild sky. Let him eat.

Eat it, Joseph Strangerson, and whatever fate it brings on me, you will share, as sure as we shared Lucy
.

Enoch Drebber voiced none of this; his eyes drifted to the knife in Strangerson’s hand. It was not the instrument of a man, being pearl-handled and delicate of blade, and Drebber had no fear of it, unarmed though he was. His mind traveled different paths.

“You split. I choose.”

Joseph bent over the moon-drenched donut and, for a moment, his nerve failed him. He stopped, his blade trembling in the air above Lucy. Finally, conscious of what Drebber must think of him, he leaned in to do the deed. Strange, but as the blade slid into Lucy’s soft flesh, he felt the hand of fate close on him. Othello must have felt it at Desdemona’s last gasp. Hannibal, as he watched the Roman lines close at Zama. What had he done? Such a simple thing, but so permanent. No mortal hand had the power to mend that cleft; the closer side of the donut had been cut right through. Even if he were to put it back, Hope would know what he had done. There was but one way now: forward. The second cut was easier. He made one half noticeably larger, as if claiming the smaller share would lessen his blame.

With a muffled laugh of triumph, Drebber pounced upon the larger half and ran with it still further into the darkness. Strangerson picked up his half and followed. The two of them ate, already laughing, already reminiscing about their crime, not one minute past. To one another, they painted it as boyish mischief, a simple prank. For a few moments this lie comforted them, as their white teeth tore the flesh of Lucy. Yet moments fly fast in that desolate and open land; there is nothing to hold them in—no rocks, no trees, no buildings to stop them drifting away into the vastness. There, amongst the crumbs, the sky began to press down on the two men. They sat in silence for almost half an hour. Their joy faded. The deed remained.

“Let’s leave him,” Drebber said.

“We can’t!” said Joseph, louder than he meant to. “A man can’t live alone in a place like this! It’s murder.”

“It ain’t! Ain’t!” insisted Drebber, wide-eyed and shaking. “Look, we all come into this thing, free to leave whenever we chose. We ain’t abandoning him. It’s only… you leave the group and I leave the group, just at the same time. Tomorrow, you and me, we’ll form a new group, but tonight we’re just quittin’. That’s all.”

Joseph shook his head. “It ain’t right.”

“We don’t need him!” Drebber said. “He’s got us all the way out here, that’s what we wanted him for. He don’t know a thing about prospectin’ and that’s a fact. Look, Joseph, look: California’s just over them hills. We kin make it!”

“I can’t. I just… I can’t.”

Drebber rocked back on his heels. Strangerson disgusted him sometimes, the weakness of him. Though they were supposed equals in this venture, though Joseph in fact possessed the knowledge of geology they both hoped would make them rich, Drebber knew himself to be the master. He decided to show it.

“Fine,” he said. “Better this way. You tell him… when he wakes up, you tell him I ate it. Tell him I took it all. Mebbe he won’t look too close at those pretty little slits down the side of the box. Mebbe he won’t know you had a hand in it. Mebbe he won’t notice your tremble or how you hide your eyes from him, all the long years you work together. Mebbe not. Me, I’m strikin’ out on my own.”

“No. Enoch, no,” Joseph mewled, but Drebber moved off to gather his gear, silently as he could. In the end, Joseph gave in—just as always. Jefferson Hope was a sound sleeper and the two made off that night without waking him. They left him little, only two canteens of water, and those half empty. They took all three horses and the pack mule, as it was Drebber who had paid for them. Strangerson left the knife; he didn’t want it any more, never wanted to look on it. As the two rode off, dreading every clop of every hoof, Joseph Strangerson looked back at the sleeping bulk of Jefferson Hope. He tried to imagine what that form would look like with no meat upon it. Flesh could not bide in a desert such as this. No, this was the land of dry and bleaching bones. Without water or hooves, Strangerson knew, the desert would destroy Hope. The shifting dust would cover their crime. The open sky would never tell.

Let the desert have him.