Martin Greenberg - Sherlock Holmes In America

“Oh, that’s all right.” Holmes waved his hand dismissively, and to my dismay said, “Dr. Watson is an old Afghan hand who can ride country like this in his sleep. But why does the territorial border matter if we have federal commissions?”

Ames squinted his eyes dubiously at me, as if his suspicions of my prowess as a horseman were much the same as my own. “Well, the federal writ runs both sides of the border, all right,” he acknowledged. “But Jack Taylor has a rough set of Mormon guards up there, and you’re far better off to snag your man before you have to two-step with the Temple brethren.”

Holmes was thoughtful for a moment, and then turned to me. “That settles it,” he said with an air of resolve. “Watson, since I am hardly in your league as a mountain rider, I must follow in your wake as best I can. You must start at once, at full speed, to overtake Dennis before he reaches the border.”

“My dear Holmes,” I assured him fervently, “I’m sure I cannot.”

“Do so all the same,” he replied.

Reader, I did.

Looking at the fire in those keen eyes, I had a prevision of the partnership that would outlast the shadows eternally shifting through those foothills. And though I confess that I heaved a sigh, my pulse racing a little, it did not take me long to saddle my horse, a fine mustang paint called Nestor, which Ames had broken himself, and climb into the stirrups. A few last minute instructions from both my superiors, and I set out at a brisk gallop.

Before long, though, the steepness of the climb and the sharpness of the turns forced me to slow Nestor to a walk. It seemed the pathway skirted one dizzying precipice after another the entire way! But we continued to make the best time we could, and when I looked down at the chasms below us, I blessed my beast’s sure feet.

Sooner than expected, I heard the sound of voices drifting down from above and wondered at first if this might be some trick of the acoustics of the mountains. But not wanting to give our approach away, I stopped and tethered Nestor to some rugged bushes sprouting out of the side of the mountain wall.

Holding my pistol ready, I crept as softly as I could along the path until, rounding a corner, I suddenly found myself staring at a considerable flat expanse in which there was an encampment of several tents. A few young women were busying themselves at some activity, which I had no time to scrutinize because I hastily moved back out of sight. But I was too late. One of the women had seen me, shrieked, and pointed in my direction, and a moment later, a gunshot ricocheted off the rocks, spraying fragments inches from my face just as I leapt back.

This was a fine predicament! I could only reflect back on my Afghan experience for guidance, so I decided that since I knew nothing of the other party’s strength, but knew all too well my own, I should gain little by delay, but might gain something by boldness.

Having a notion of the shooter’s position, to make an impression, I darted out from behind my rocks and hazarded a quick couple of shots, one of which found its mark-for as I ducked for cover again, I was glad to hear a cry of surprise mingled with pain, followed by the sound of a body evidently fallen from some height. This was followed by an unmelodious chorus of feminine wails, and sounds of scurrying feet.

Hard-pressed to know what to do next, I was startled to hear a bold female voice close at hand, beckoning me: “You might as well come out, now, whoever you be-there’s nobody left to shoot back, and I reckon you won’t shoot women, will you?”

It sounds foolish, and I daresay it was, but this challenge to me as a gentleman provoked me to step out into what might have been harm’s way. Instead, I almost stepped into the arms of a masterful-looking woman of perhaps forty years walking toward me, dressed in male western fashion, but rather attractive withal.

“Whoa!” she said, holding up a leather-gloved hand. “Put up that shootin’-iron if you don’t mind. Ain’t I already told you there’s nobody but us women, now you’ve plugged poor Tom?”

“Tom Dennis?” I bellowed. “How badly is he hurt? I’m a doctor!”

She lifted one fine grey eyebrow. “You ain’t much of one fer your Hippocratic Oath, are you? Or do you plug ’em first and then charge to mend ’em?”

“Don’t bandy pleasantries when someone’s bleeding!” I snapped. “My name is Watson. I am a doctor. I’ve chased that man all the way from London, and I want him alive!”

The woman sagged against the mountain wall. “Not Mr. Sherlock Holmes’s friend?” she asked in a weak voice, and also, I noticed, a suddenly more cultured accent. “I thought-we thought-you were from the Church… Tom’s over here.” She gestured toward a space behind the nearest tent, where I saw several young women huddled. “You only winged him, Doctor. He’s more hurt from the fall.”

As she led me where our long-sought quarry was now stretched upon a camp cot, she turned her fine profile to me over her shoulder and added, almost as an afterthought, “I’m Lucy Ferrier Hope.” The words stunned me, and for a moment I simply stared in amazement. Her face, however, was filled with concern for the wounded man, and I realized that explanations would have to wait. Gathering myself, I knelt by the cot to attend to my patient.

Dennis was in considerable pain until I administered some morphia and he drifted off. My shot had been lucky for both of us, for I had stopped his shooting without doing him much harm beyond breaking his thumb, but he had broken his ankle in his fall from the eminence where he’d been doing guard duty for the camp. Just what the camp’s purpose was, I had yet to find: were these young women the “contraband” Dennis was running?

After I had made my patient as comfortable as possible, my hostess led me to a set of canvas camp chairs at her campfire, offered me a mug of barbarous American coffee, and we talked a bit as we awaited the arrival of Sherlock Holmes, which I assured her was imminent.

“You notice I don’t use that fiend Drebber’s name, Doctor,” she said quietly. “I don’t count that as a marriage but as an abduction, of course.”

“I quite understand,” I told her. “But how did you escape? Hope told us he saw you stretched out dead on your bier.”

She smiled in a way that made me shiver. “Why, so he did. Didn’t he tell you also that he used to be the sweeper-out of the laboratory at York College, and learned a thing or two about drugs and medicines?”

“Poisons, you mean,” I corrected her.

“Oh, poisons, too,” she admitted. “But what he gave me was more like what Romeo’s friar gave Juliet-a potion to give me ‘A thing like death to chide away this shame, that cop’st with death himself to scape from it.’ Something to make me sleep till he burst in and carried me off amongst all those ‘mourning’ Drebber wives. Oh, and wasn’t I glad when I woke up!”

I was stunned, not for the first or last time in this case. “But he told us he only came in to take the ring off your finger!”

“I know,” she replied calmly. “He told me when I visited him in prison. But that was one of his tallest ones! Why on earth should he have wanted the ring Drebber gave me? Jeff and I both hated Drebber.”

My mind was swimming -each new revelation prompted at least two questions.

“How could you visit him in prison? He only lived one night! He wanted the ring for revenge, didn’t he?”

“Oh, Doctor!” She shook her head, and her still-beautiful tresses, chestnut mingled with grey, fell about her solemn face as the hint of a reminiscent smile lit it. “Don’t you think I’d been improving my time all those months we’d been in London? I was very active helping the Visitation Society, and it was no problem for me to get permission to visit Jeff. I’ll tell you this, about those ‘poisons’ you mentioned: Jefferson Hope never poisoned anybody. But I wasn’t about to let the man I loved languish in prison to die a lonely death from a burst heart, or at the end of an English noose for murders he never did. He taught me about drugs and poisons too! So there’s my confession, and if you and Mr. Holmes want to take me back to London for it, I’ll go quietly, after I’ve finished the work I’m about today.”