Holmes on the Range (31 page)

I crawled toward Old Red as fast as my belly could take me. He'd managed to get himself into the gully from which we'd emerged minutes before, and he urged me to join him in his usual warm, fatherly fashion.

“Get up and run, you damned idjit!”

I hopped up and took to my heels, managing to cover the last few feet of ground before my innards decorated the grassland. Once I was safely hunkered down next to Old Red, I looked back at the chaos I'd left in my wake. Big black shapes were awhirl in the dim light, squealing and bellowing as they barreled this way and that. As eerie a sight as this was, it didn't chill my blood half as cold as looking over toward the cabin, for framed in the doorway glow was the outline of a man. A
straight line of shadow cut across his midriff, and even without catching any glint of steel I knew it was a rifle.

I turned to tell my brother, but before I could pop out a word he opened his mouth and produced a truly remarkable sound—a long, loud howl so convincing I had to wonder if the Amlingmeyer family had at some point diluted its pure German blood with a few drops of lobo. Gustav cut off his cry with a
yip-yip-yeowow
so sudden and piercing-high it sounded as if it came from a different animal entirely.

Though this little ruse might convince the fellows in the cabin it was a pack of wolves riling things up, not a couple of nosy brothers, I didn't see how that would save us. Surely these were line-camp hands we were dealing with, and they'd grab their guns and lanterns and hustle out quick to protect the herd.

Yet the man in the doorway did no such thing. We were too far away now to hear any talk, but from the way his shadow went thin then wide, thin then wide, it was plain he was conversing with his companions inside, swiveling back and forth between them and the darkness in which we cowered. My brother cut loose with another
yip-yip-yip
, and the shadow disappeared entirely. The man had stepped back inside.

“I don't understand,” I whispered. “Why don't they—?”

“First things first. Let's get the hell out of here.”

I didn't bother with a salute this time, as I was too busy running. The tetchy bull-creature that had fanned up all the fuss was moving toward us yet again.

As Old Red and I retreated back to where we'd left the horses, I was still wondering just what kind of beast this was—and hoping I would never see its like again.

Or, Old Red Lights a Fire for Me, and I Light a Fire Under Old Red

F
or safety's sake, we
withdrew a good mile from the cabin before settling down to make camp. A feather bed and silk sheets being unavailable, we had to make do with a small clearing amongst the thicket and bramble nestled against an outcropping of ice-cold rock. The night had turned nippy, and after weathering my grousing about the cold for five minutes straight, Gustav built a miserly little flame out of brush and twigs and a single dried cow pie.

“Careful with that bonfire,” I said once he had it leveled off to a dull smolder. “If it gets any bigger, it might actually
warm
somethin'.”

The fire gave off such a puny glow I couldn't quite make out the expression on Old Red's face, but the snap in his voice filled in the picture well enough.

“We got two choices—cold or dead. You want a bigger fire, you head off a mile or two before you build it. I'll follow the smoke to your body in the mornin' and give you a decent burial.”

“Well, fine! We'll deprive the McPhersons of the pleasure of
shootin' us by
freezin'
ourselves to death. Or maybe we'll die of starvation first. Damn it, Gustav! If you knew we weren't goin' to Miles, why didn't you grab—?”

Old Red reached into his war bag and produced a small, white brick, which he threw across the fire into my chest. By the time I'd figured out it was a biscuit, a leather pouch filled with pemmican came flying behind it. I set to gnawing at the strips of dried meat while my brother pulled out a couple of airtights, drove his knife into one, and started sawing. A minute later he handed over the tin can, and I took a satisfying slurp of briny water. Big chunks of stewed tomato were afloat in the thick liquid, and I fished one out and popped it into my mouth.

“Alright then,” I said as Gustav began cutting open the other can. “We've got a campfire—or a few camp-
embers
, anyway. We've got food, for which I do thank you. There ain't nobody around to eavesdrop. And for the next few hours, we ain't goin' nowhere. So how about if you did a little more talkin'?”

Old Red speared a hunk of tomato and took a bite out of it. In the dim orange light of the fire, he was little more than a shadow chomping into some dark, pulpy mass, and if I hadn't been half-starved, thoughts of Hungry Bob Tracy would surely have put me off my feed.

“What would you have me talk about?” Gustav asked.

Now we had plenty of mysteries to talk over still, that's for sure. And yet the more I'd thought about them that day, the more one stood out from the others like an elephant running with a pack of coyotes. It was something I'd made my own deductions on, but I had yet to hear Gustav offer a single explanation of his own.

“Brother,” I said, “why'd you stick us in the middle of this mess?”

Old Red answered the question with a shrug. “You're free to leave, you know. You could just
ride
. You don't have to see this through.”

“But you aim to.”

He shrugged
again
.

“Even though it might get you killed.”

He shrugged again.

Of the two of us, my brother usually serves up the long-suffering sighs. Now it was my turn to heave a big one.

“Gustav, would you please just answer the damn question?”

Old Red threw more brush on the fire. When it flickered up into flame, I could see that his lips had a little curl to them—almost as if he was
smiling
.

“You remember the time I asked Uncle Franz why we weren't Calvinists?” he said.

This was a mighty strange time to be reminiscing over family history. But I knew what Gustav was speaking of, and it almost had me unpacking a sad smile myself.

The Germans populating the little corner of Kansas from which we hailed came in two varieties: Calvinist and Lutheran. The Amling-meyers and our
Mutter
's family, the Ortmanns, were Lutherans without exception, and my brother had once wondered aloud why this should be so.

“Becauze vhen you are burnink in hell, Gustav, it vill be becauze
you
zent yourzelf dere, not
Gott
,” our uncle had told him.

Even with no more light to go by than a lightning bug produces from his butt, Old Red knew exactly what I was thinking just from the wistful way I shook my head at the memory.

“Yeah, ol' Franz could sure talk crazy,” he said. “But he had a solid enough point that day. The Calvinists, they talk about ‘predestination.' You don't work your way to heaven—you're either born wearin' golden slippers or you're not. That idea wouldn't sit too well with the likes of Franz. It sure don't sit too well with me, and you know I don't even
believe
in heaven.”

I did know that, actually, though I'd gathered it more from inference than deep conversation, as Gustav brings up religion about as often as a Zulu chief brings up baseball.

“But I don't know,” Old Red went on. “Maybe there is such a thing as destiny. If there is, I'll tell you what a feller like me's supposed to be—dirt-poor and dumb. A farmer, a cowboy, it don't matter which. We're born to use our hands, not our brains. And God damn it, Brother, I just don't accept it.”

My brother got to poking at the fire absentmindedly, and as the silence that followed stretched on, I got the feeling he didn't know what to say next—or he knew and he didn't like it.

“You're afraid, ain't you?” I said, talking at the tiny, flickering flames between us. “Not of the McPhersons or the Duke or whoever killed Boo. You're afraid you won't crack the mystery—afraid of what that says about
you
.”

“You're right, Otto.”

My gaze shot up from the fire, seeking out my brother's face in the gloom. I could see little more than an outline, but his eyes pierced the darkness, sparkling at me like twin stars. He was staring at me, un-blinking, and I knew that my ears had not deceived me. For the first time, my brother was giving me an honest look into his heart.

Don't get me wrong: I knew my brother—knew him damn well. But not because he'd ever done much talking about what he felt or what he believed. I'd just sort of soaked up a knowledge of the man by spending all my time in his company, almost like the way a drover gets to know his best cow pony. You don't expect to have a heart-to-heart with your horse, and I'd never really expected to have one with Gustav. Until now.

“I'm tryin' to be something I'm not, and I'm more scared of failin' than dyin',” Old Red said, his words heavy with as much raw feeling, as much raw
fear
, as I'd ever heard in his voice before. “Does that make me crazy? Does that make me Uncle Franz?”

“Uncle Franz thought he could walk on water,” I said.

“You know what I'm sayin'.”

Now I've often fallen into a lazy sort of call-and-response with Old
Red. He'll snip at me, I'll snap at him, and so on, achieving little beyond mutual irritation. But I was setting that aside now. After our years on the trail, Gustav was finally seeking my counsel as a
man
, and I had to live up to the honor by offering whatever degree of wisdom I could muster.

“You ain't crazy, Gustav. You're just. . .”

I took a deep breath before moving on. Filling the air with words is usually no challenge for me, but picking out the right ones now was proving tricky indeed.

“It's like this. Most cowboys stick to droverin' cuz they ain't got a better idea what to do with themselves. For you it ain't like that. You been lookin' for somethin' different—somethin' more. And I think those Holmes tales showed you what it was. You ain't just a
hand
. You're a
mind
. And whether that mind's filled with book-learnin' or not, it's damn sharp. That ain't no accident. Maybe it's your
destiny
to be a detective. The only way to know for sure is to wrap up all the riddles around here in as neat a knot as Mr. Holmes could've thrown. So that's what
you
gotta do.”

“And what about you?” Gustav asked. “What is it you gotta do?”

I'd been sailing along alright there, but now my words lost their wind, and I drifted to a standstill.

As for me. . . what? Even if Old Red was fated to be a detective, that didn't tell me what
I
was supposed to do.

My brother and I locked eyes on each other. It might have been a trick of the fluttering firelight, but Old Red's seemed to be glistening especially bright and moist.

That gave me my wind back. For a long while, I'd been tagging along behind Gustav out of pure habit. It was different now. My brother wasn't just tolerating me. He
needed
me—and he respected me enough to show me.

For the first time, I didn't feel like Old Red Amlingmeyer's kid brother. I was just his
brother
.

“I guess I'm like most punchers,” I said. “I don't hear any particular call for myself—except to stick close to the only family I got left. So you just do what you got to, and I'll be there to back you up. . .no matter what.”

Old Red nodded, and for a moment the only sound was the quiet crinkling of the burning brush in our campfire. Then my brother stuck his hand out. I grasped it, and we shook.

“You're a good man, Otto.”

“I've had a good teacher.”

Gustav nodded again, then let go of my hand. We shared a few silent minutes, basking more in the lingering warmth of our conversation than the scanty heat that little fire put out. Then Old Red slapped his knee, drew himself to his feet, and announced, “I feel me a piss comin' on.” And with those decidedly unsentimental words he tramped off, wrapping himself in the thick shroud of darkness that enveloped our campsite.

I tried to pass the time by reviewing the “clues” and “suspects” we'd collected, but my mind stuck firm to one and wouldn't budge free. It was Lady Clara, of course. Hearing from Brackwell that she and Edwards might be making a love match had been unsettling. On the other hand, learning that she shared her family's taste for romantic entanglements with the lower classes was fodder for fantasies of an admittedly ludicrous (but altogether satisfying) sort.

After several minutes, this distracting line of thought was interrupted by the rustling of bushes nearby.

“Well, it's about time!” I called out. “You said you had to water the grass, not fertilize an acre or two with a big load of—
shit!
”