Holmes on the Range (26 page)

“Ain't no harm in humoring a ‘lunatic,' is there? So why not answer my question? Is this ranch profitable?”

The Duke snorted at my brother the way one might chuckle over the fumblings of a particularly clumsy kitten.

“Fine. Why not, indeed? The Cantlemere
was
profitable—until six years ago. The winter of 1887 hit our stock hard. We've struggled to return to profitability since then. I expect us to succeed quite soon.”

Gustav cocked an eyebrow at the old man. “What makes you think that?”

Brackwell and Lady Clara suddenly became so attentive they all but leaned forward on their tiptoes and cupped their hands to their ears.

“I have an instinct for these things,” the Duke said, his jowly cheeks stretched tight by a smug smile. “Our luck is about to change.”

“Well,” Old Red said, plainly finding the old man's answer less than satisfying, “six years is a long time to hang in there waitin' for your luck to change. How'd you manage it?”

“Cash reserves, new investors.”

“From what I hear, you ain't got much in the way of cash reserves.”

The Duke's grin dimmed, and a new, hotter light took to shining in his eyes, but my brother pressed on.

“As for new investors, I assume you mean Mr. Edwards. He bought in. . . what was it? Two years ago? That wasn't too long after you had your little run-in with Mr. Sherlock Holmes, was it? I bet you would've been able to herd a fair amount of cash into your ‘reserves' if that had turned out different. But with the wedding called off and—”

“
Enough!
”

The Duke had gone wild-eyed at the mention of Holmes, and it was a wonder his shout didn't shatter every window in the castle. Yet his earsplitting wrath settled into a quiet seethe with surprising speed.

“Enough,” he said again. He took a deep breath, and by the time he was through exhaling, a hint of his spiteful smile had returned. “Your name is. . .Apple-something, isn't it?”

“Amlingmeyer,” Old Red corrected.

The Duke nodded. “It just so happens,
Amlingmeyer
, that the Montana Stockgrowers Association is meeting in Miles City in three days' time. I assume you're aware that the Association maintains a list of men who are not to be employed by its members—a blacklist. The name Amlingmeyer is going to be placed at the very top of that list. And it won't end there. Most of the ranches in this state are owned by English peers like myself, and that same group of men controls the cattle trade in Wyoming, Texas, Colorado, New Mexico—the entire West. It won't be difficult to have you blacklisted
everywhere
. Once my wager with young Brackwell is concluded, I plan to see you and your oafish brother escorted from the Cantlemere without a penny in your pockets, and you won't find a ranch within a thousand miles willing to spare you so much as a crumb of bread.”

Old Red had been giving the Duke a little push to get the man's dander up and his mouth open, but obviously Old Dickie could push back a hell of a lot harder. Gustav's a proud, even conceited fellow in his own quiet way, yet I saw real fear in his eyes now, or at least the realization that he wasn't as slick as he'd thought.

The Duke saw that look, too, and his smile grew larger.

“I suppose you'll be needing a new livelihood. Well, I wouldn't suggest continuing your misadventures as a consulting detective. You attempt to ape Sherlock Holmes, that's obvious. But I've encountered the man's work firsthand, and I assure you, you possess neither his subtlety nor his cunning. And even if you did. . .well, just look what happened to
him
.”

Gustav's eyes had slowly been drawing closed, perhaps to mask the panic they might reflect. But they popped wide now, and Old Red found his voice again.

“What're you talkin' about?”

“You mean you don't know?” The Duke peered at my brother for a moment before cutting loose with another of his acid laughs. “Oh, you poor, ignorant buffoon!”

“What?” Gustav demanded. “What don't I know?”

“Your hero is no more,” Old Dickie choked out between guffaws. “Sherlock Holmes is
dead
!”

Or, Old Red Goes into Mourning, and I Go into Shock

W
hen I was twelve
, my father and my brother Conrad were carried off by smallpox, and it fell to Gustav and me to bury them. The only words we spoke as we did so were on the order of “Over there?” and “That's deep enough” and “
Vater
first.” Gustav left the farm not long afterward, sending back cash from ranches and cow towns up and down the Old Western Trail. The next time I saw him was four years later, at a train station in Dodge City. Our mother and our sisters were barely one month gone, as were our last remaining aunt and cousins and even the farm itself, all washed away by a flood so merciless it hadn't even the decency to leave behind the gravestones in the family plot.

And after all that, Gustav just looked me up and down, nodded once, and said, “I got jobs lined up for us at the Cross J in Texas. Can you keep yourself atop a horse?”

I said yes, and that was that—no eulogizing, no weeping, not so much as a sigh.

I don't relate this to suggest that my brother is a heartless man, but simply to illustrate that he's not a fellow who's given to displays of sentiment. I'm certain that a loving soul lurks within him, for there's no other way to explain why he's stuck by me all these years. He could've cut me loose after that flood, as I was all of sixteen at the time and had some of the skills—if none of the wisdom—a man needs to make his own way in the world.

Yet my brother chose to saddle himself with a big, clumsy kid who couldn't ride, rope, or shoot any better than a cross-eyed catfish. And when that kid got fired from his first two jobs, Gustav quit and stayed alongside him, teaching him what he could, rolling his eyes at the occasional foolishness, and never once complaining of any burden. True, dark moods and long silences there were aplenty, but tears I never did see.

So you can imagine my dismay when I saw them there in the castle. Not that Old Red busted out bawling upon hearing of Mr. Holmes's death. But his eyes did get to glistening, with droplets of moisture pooling and threatening to spill out over the lower lashes.

The notion of Gustav Amlingmeyer shedding tears over a stranger's demise was at first so unbelievable I dismissed the evidence presented by my own eyes. Yet when my brother spoke, I heard in his voice such a tremor of raw emotion I had to accept that what
looked
like tears must indeed
be
tears.

“What. . .? Did he. . .? Who. . .?”

“You want to know how, hmmm?” the Duke said, taking obvious delight in Old Red's distress. “Well, I'm pleased to report that the man's meddling finally did him in. Oh, the exact circumstances aren't known—that damnable quack Watson may feel entirely at liberty to besmirch whomever he chooses with his lurid scribblings, yet on this subject he has remained silent. But details have emerged. It was in Switzerland, apparently. Holmes was persecuting some poor continental, I suppose, and he ended up going over the side of a mountain, never
to be seen again! Pushed or pulled or something else, no one knows. Well, Watson perhaps. If so, he'll write about it eventually, I assure you, for the opportunity to squeeze a few guineas from his friend's death will surely overwhelm whatever stunted sense of propriety he might possess.”

“When?” my brother asked, the word coming out barely more than a whisper.

“Oh, ages ago,” the Duke chortled.

“Holmes has been dead two years,” Brackwell said. He gave Old Red a look I'd never seen directed at my brother before—pity. “I assumed you knew.”

Gustav shook his head slowly, his watery eyes aimed at the space between his boots.

“So, Amlingmeyer,” the Duke said, “now you see the risks you take when you interfere in the affairs of others. A pity you and Holmes couldn't ‘deduce' what snooping will get you!”

Old Dickie was toying with my brother like a cat with its claws in a half-dead mouse, and Lady Clara and Brackwell looked sickened by the old man's cruelty.

“Of course, it's too late for you to renege on your current obligations,” the Duke said. “Though I suppose it's never too late to
concede
.”

His tone turned mild and fatherly with these last words, and the change brought Gustav's gaze up from the floorboards. A little jolt seemed to run through Brackwell, as well.

“Watson's swill about ‘the great Holmes' filled your head with foolish notions, and you overstepped your bounds,” the Duke continued soothingly. “It's forgivable. . .if we put this unpleasant business behind us as quickly as possible.”

Brackwell's face turned bright red, the expression upon it curdling into barely concealed contempt. I was a few seconds behind him in untangling the real message in what the Duke had just said.

“This unpleasant business” was not the murder—it was Old Red's
investigation. My brother had poked a thorn in the lion's paw, and now the only way to pull it out before he got a swat was to call the whole thing off. But if Gustav were to “concede,” the Duke could declare victory.

Old Dickie was trying to bully his way to that two hundred pounds, and he wasn't even bothering to do it behind Brackwell's back.

“Your Grace, if you please, sir,” my brother said. He sprinkled no spice on the words, loathsome and toadying though they were, and it tore at my heart to hear him grovel so. “I wonder if I might have a moment alone in the office with Mr. Brackwell. I . . .” He looked at our youthful patron, his eyes heavy with the promise of disappointment soon to be delivered. “I feel I owe him an. . .well. . .we need to talk.”

The Duke nodded and smiled, finally showing a hint of the supposed “grace” for which people addressed him.

“Of course.”

Gustav rose slowly, reaching out to nudge me softly before trudging toward Brackwell and the office door. I got up and followed, feeling as though I was marching my brother to an execution. His dreams and his pride were about to be strung up side by side like a pair of horse thieves. I was tempted to take a poke at the man who'd supplied the rope as I walked past him, but bloodying the Duke's bulbous nose wouldn't do anything more than scotch the deal for which Old Red was sacrificing all his hopes. No more detectiving, and we'd be allowed to go on drovering—until, that is, the McPhersons saw to it that our
breathing
days were over.

Lady Clara beamed compassion upon us as we passed, but I was so utterly downhearted I could take no comfort from her show of sympathy. My brother had just lost his hero, and it had crushed his spirit.

Somehow, I knew exactly how he felt.

Or, A Sleuth Is Reborn from the Ashes

A
lright, Amlingmeyer,” Brackwell snapped
the moment I'd closed the office door behind us. “What is it you have to say?” His tone was both resigned and angry, and he looked ready to stalk right back out of the room the moment Gustav finished his first “I'm sorry.”

“Well, I suppose I oughta. . .,” Old Red began, each word coming out quieter than the one before it. His gaze dropped, and I could hardly believe I was witnessing the day when my brother couldn't look another man in the eye. He sniffed loudly, and I figured he was about to start weeping on top of everything else.

As mortifying as such a sight might be, I couldn't really blame Old Red for squeezing out a few tears. He'd tried turning maverick, but now he had to accept that he'd been branded for life.

Cowboy
, the brand said.

Laborer
.

Nobody
.

“Yes? Go on,” Brackwell demanded.

Rather than explain, Old Red dropped to his hands and knees.