Sherlock Holmes In America

“Because he didn’t want his son to be a murderer.”

I was suddenly as dizzy as if I had really plunged into one of those mountain chasms.

“Tom is Jeff’s son from an attachment long before me,” she continued. “And now poor Tom is truly bereft over this; he understands, as Jeff always knew he’d do, about revenge not lightening his heart from sorrow. That’s why he decided to join me in my good work.”

“Good work?” I muttered blankly. “What work is that?”

“Why, helping plural brides to escape over the border into Wyoming and freedom!” she exulted. “Jeff and I had done it for years, and now Tom’s taking it up with me, in Jeff’s memory, and Sally’s-or at least he was, until you laid him low with that lucky shot.” She gave me a dark look under which I began to shift uneasily in my seat. I began to wish, not for the first time, that Holmes would arrive.

I’m not sure that her animadversion about my marksmanship did not rankle as much as the implication that I was somehow setting back the march of women’s rights. “Oh, I’d love to do it all by myself!” she went on. “Maybe even be a Masked Rider like my old friend Bess Erne, but we can’t get a passel of young Mormon women past the Temple guards without a man. The safest way’s to pretend that we’re a Mormon family traveling, a husband with his wives. Now I don’t know what I’m to do! If I take these girls back, their families will never let them slip away again. They’ll be watched too closely. And we can’t camp here much longer; the relief squad for the guards will be coming.”

She looked me full in the face with her piercing eyes. “Do you want them to end up like me-or Sally?” she asked.

I was silent. “No,” she mused, after a few moments watching my face, “so I guess the only answer is for the fake husband to be you, or Mr. Holmes.”

“Hah!” I laughed. “Holmes will never do it! You don’t know his views about women. He couldn’t carry the part off even if he did agree.”

She smiled at me.

And that is how I added the women of a third continent to my store of dearly-bought knowledge. “How many of them are there in all?” I sighed.

“Seven.”

“Oh dear,” I muttered. “‘As I was going to St. Ives… ’ Introduce these young ladies to me,” I said. “I must know their names if I’m to be plausible.”

“Oh, that won’t be any problem,” laughed Lucy. “All seven are named for flowers, and four of them are named Violet.”

When I returned exhausted to the foot of the mountain, the stars were out and I was wrestling with conflicting emotions. I felt pleased with my good deed, but also unsure of how to tell Holmes that I had left Dennis with Lucy Hope-or, for that matter, how to share any of my news with him. I confess I was also put out with him for leaving me to handle the entire matter myself, and I tried to keep that perturbation uppermost in my mind, so as not to contemplate the awful possibility that he might have attempted to follow me, but met with some mishap on the treacherous mountain pathway.

Consequently, it was with mingled relief and displeasure that I found both Holmes and Ames still at our campsite, in a cloud of tobacco smoke discussing possible Phoenician voyages to the New World, and the relevance of this to the Book of Mormon.

Holmes, when he spied me, seemed more annoyed than relieved. “What’s this, Watson? Did you miss Dennis?”

“And you as well, Holmes,” I replied testily.

“My horse took lame,” he explained after a moment’s hesitation.

“Deputy Ames,” I said sternly, turning to the other miscreant, “you ought really to have started for the hospital long before this.”

“Oh, a snake bite ain’t nothin’,” he chortled, taking a swig of his cure-all.

“Really, Watson,” Holmes resumed, “I cannot congratulate you. Have we made all this trip for naught?”

“I don’t know, Holmes,” I replied, suddenly lighthearted, looking up at the starry expanse of the Western night sky. “You were right, as usual: a change in perspective does work wonders!”

THE ADVENTURE OF THE COUGHING DENTIST by Loren D. Estleman

Loren D. Estleman has published more than sixty novels in the mystery and historical western genres and mainstream fiction. He has received four Shamus awards from the Private Eye Writers of America, five Spurs from the Western Writers of America, and has been nominated for the Mystery Writers of America’s Edgar Award and the American Book Award. His first Sherlock Holmes pastiche, Sherlock Holmes vs. Dracula, has been in print for most of the past thirty years. His latest novel is Frames, introducing Valentino, a film archivist-turned detective. Estleman lives in Michigan with his wife, author Deborah Morgan.

Throughout the first year of our association, Mr. Sherlock Holmes and I were rather like strangers wed by prearrangement, mutually respectful but uncertain of the person with whom each was sharing accommodations. The situation was ungainly, to say the least, because upon the surface we were very different individuals indeed. When, therefore, it chanced that we should travel together abroad, we agreed without hesitation. As Mr. Clemens says (mortally assaulting the Queen’s English), “I have found that there ain’t no better way to find out whether you like people or hate them than to travel with them.”

As it happened, both Scotland Yard and the Times of London, which was publishing a series chronicling the tragic events I have set down elsewhere under the somewhat sensational title of A Study in Scarlet, had asked Holmes to visit the place where the troubles involving Enoch Drebber, Joseph Stangerson, and Jefferson Hope had begun, and apply his formidable detecting skills towards eliminating a number of small discrepancies in the murderer’s confession. This journey, with expenses to be paid by the Times in return for an exclusive report of the investigation, would take us to Salt Lake City, the capital of Mormon country in the Utah Territory, a strange and terrible place not unlike Afghanistan of darkest memory.

When I say that we did not hesitate to accept the offer, I do not mean to imply that we failed to discuss it at length in the privacy of our Baker Street digs.

“This is redolent of inspectors Gregson and Lestrade,” said Holmes, flicking his long tapering fingers at the telegram from the Times as he lounged in his basket chair. “They were swift to claim credit when the boat seemed seaworthy, but now that it’s sprung a leak or two they seek to abandon ship and let me go down with it.”

“Undoubtedly. But if you’re still certain of the soundness of the solution-”

“I’d stake my reputation upon it, were I to possess such a thing.”

“Then,” said I, “you have nothing to lose but a month or so from your studies here, and a holiday to gain.”

“Holidays are for the overworked. I am singularly idle thanks to my magnanimity towards the Yard. The press perceived it to be a police case from start to finish until this moment.” He made a motion of dismissal, exactly as if he were slashing his bow across the strings of his violin. Then his face assumed a quizzical expression. “You say ‘you’ as if I am to be alone in this excursion. What do I know of being a special correspondent? You’re the literary half of this partnership, Doctor.”

“That’s flattering, but premature. I’ve only just begun arranging my notes, and there is no guarantee of publication, rather the opposite. I’m just one more returning veteran with a story to tell. Fleet Street must be crowded to the rafters with unrequested and unwelcome manuscripts like mine.”

“Hardly like yours. There’s romance in the business, murder, and not a line about troop movements or grand strategy. I’d read it myself if I didn’t know the ending already. I never accept a pig without a poke. No, Doctor, I shan’t undertake the assignment without a companion upon whose loyalty and discretion I can rely without question. What is your answer?”

“I was afraid you’d never ask.”

His smile was shy, an emotion I had thought absent from his meager repertoire. We would be quite on the