Sherlock Holmes In America

THE FLOWERS OF UTAH by Robert Pohle

Robert Pohle is the coauthor (with Doug Hart) of Sherlock Holmes on the Screen (A.S. Barnes, 1977), and has made other contributions to Sherlockian filmography such as The Films of Christopher Lee. He is also a member of the Western Writers of America, and author or coauthor of a number of novels in that genre, including The Fledgling Outlaw (which features a Sherlockian vignette, and of which the late John Bennett Shaw, BSI, memorably wrote the author, “You do have everything in it except Bing Crosby as a drunken Irish priest!”) Robert lives in Florida with his wife, Maryann, and part of the year in New Mexico with his daughter, actress-singer Rita Pohle. Having once argued, in the presence of Dame Jean Conan Doyle, that Holmes never visited America before the period of His Last Bow, Pohle is astonished to have unearthed the present manuscript by Dr. Watson.

“Very sorry to knock you up before dawn, Watson,” said Holmes, handing me a steaming mug of tea, “but it’s the custom here in the West, you know-and we must get an early start if we’re to overtake him.”

“Thank you for not giving me any of that vile stuff that passes for coffee out here,” I replied.

“It’s the buffalo chips that give it body,” murmured Deputy Marshal Ames, stirring under his blanket. “Don’t go criticizin’ American coffee, Doc.”

“Don’t fret,” said Holmes, passing a mug his way, “I brewed you a cup of your own.”

“’Sides, you know you’re damn fortunate,” continued the Marshal, taking a gulp and then slurping the excess liquid from the corner of his moustache, “gettin’ either tea or coffee in Mormon country… let alone anything stronger,” he added, pouring a thin stream from a glass flask into his mug.

Neither the Marshal nor I realized yet that the rattlesnake slithering toward his heel was shortly to send me on the ride of my life.

But I get ahead of my story.

Readers of A Study in Scarlet will recall that Sherlock Holmes had apprehended an American from Utah named Jefferson Hope for the London murders of two of his fellow citizens named Drebber and Stangerson. Hope, it appeared, was seeking revenge for the death at their hands of his lost love Lucy Ferrier. The case never came to trial because Hope died in prison of an aortic aneurism the same night Holmes presented him in handcuffs to Inspectors Gregson and Lestrade of Scotland Yard.

Scotland Yard, and indeed all those who look after the wheels of justice, appeared satisfied that those wheels had turned fully. But Holmes was not; far from it. For there was an accomplice of Hope’s who got off scot-free: someone, apparently an athletic young man impersonating an elderly woman calling herself Mrs. Sawyer, who came brazenly into our very rooms at Baker Street in answer to a lure Holmes had placed in the newspapers, an advertisement for a “found” wedding ring.

“Mrs. Sawyer” gave us a patently mendacious story about the ring belonging to her “girl Sally” who would be in dreadful trouble with a brutish husband named Tom Dennis if it wasn’t recovered; but when Holmes followed her, clinging to the back of the cab, “she” gave him the slip by leaping out of it in full motion. And subsequently, when Holmes asked Hope who his accomplice had been, Hope had responded provokingly with a wink and replied, “I can tell my own secrets, but I don’t get other people into trouble!” Though Holmes acknowledged that Hope’s “friend” had done the job smartly, it still rankled him bitterly to leave this part of the case unclosed.

Finally, a ray of light appeared from a familiar quarter: a loud ring at the bell, an audible expression of resigned martyrdom from Mrs. Hudson, a patter of bare feet in the hall and on the stairs, a tap on our chamber door, and then the entrance of young Wiggins, with all the ceremony (or lack of it) befitting a minikin street Arab who was also chief of the Baker Street irregulars.

“Got ’er!” said Wiggins, with considerable satisfaction.

“Have you, by God!” cried Holmes, springing to his feet.

The boys, it transpired, had been circulating along the route Holmes had followed when he clung to the back of the four-wheeler. Holmes reasoned that the sight of an elderly lady rocketing from a moving cab might have excited comment-and indeed it had-and that a doorway that admitted a lady who exited as a gentleman might also have drawn curious eyes. This was the sort of territory where the irregulars were at their best, and it didn’t take many questions before the exact address was run to ground.

“Ladies into gents is an easy one,” said Wiggins.

“Is it really?” I asked.

“It’s common as a ha’penny upright,” said Wiggins.

“Good gracious!” said I.

“Capital!” cried Holmes.

“But how can you be sure it was the same person, Wiggins, after the, er, change?” I asked.

“Lord love you, Doctor!” the boy chortled. “The little girl wot seen the ‘old lady’ go in, tried to touch ’er for summat, you see, and noticed she was shy a fingernail on ’er right hand wot she swotted ’er with-and didn’t the very same detail ’ppear on the gent who come out after, and swotted ’er too?”

“This is very good work, young Wiggins,” pronounced Holmes, “on the young lady’s part as well as your own! I’ve always said the Science of Observation-”

“Begging your pardon, sir,” interrupted Wiggins, tugging on Holmes’s sleeve, “but I’ve already read ’er that lecture, an’ tipped ’er a tupenny piece as well for the nark job, which you’ll see itemized in my expense list-so ’adn’t we be going?”

The three of us were soon at the actual address, which proved to be a lodging house of a low sort. I was curious how Holmes would handle the situation, but he simply strode up to the desk next to the entrance and asked the clerk: “Is Mr. Tom Dennis in?”

“Sorry, sir,” drawled the sallow youth under the grimy fanlight, “he just checked out this evening.”

Holmes’s disappointment was no greater than my astonishment at his correct guess of the name under which our quarry would be registered, and I said as much as we left.

“Oh, that was a trifle,” he shrugged. “It’s an elementary rule to never multiply names unnecessarily-the rogue wasn’t likely to be bothered to make up a string of ’em without any need. But what now?”

Holmes looked down to find Wiggins tugging on the pocket of his frock coat.

“’Scuse me, Sir,” he said, “but I natural left Simpson as a tail, an’ he’ll reliable report back to Baker Street.”

Which indeed he did, but very late that night, with the news, alas, that Dennis had sailed for New York on the SS Nephite.

“Well, then, Holmes,” I tried to reassure him, “all you need do is get Lestrade to cable the police in New York, and the man is shackled.”

Holmes sunk deeper in his chair. “Ye-ess,” he murmured, “except… I’ve been thinking… ”

Something about my friend’s tone worried me. “Surely, Holmes, there’s nothing more for you to concern yourself with over this matter? You said yourself, only days ago, that this case was one of ‘intrinsic simplicity’! And I quote you-I took notes.”

Holmes grimaced. “My dear Watson, I shall watch myself more carefully if you are going to be quoting me back to myself like that. What bothers me is that I allowed myself to swallow so much of Jefferson Hope’s unsupported confession, and then let slip away the accomplice whose testimony he tried to withhold from me. There’s a piece missing, and I want it.”

“Undoubtedly, the New York police will nab him and send him back,” I predicted.

Events proved me wrong. In the upshot, Dennis was too slippery for the constabulary of that metropolis. But Holmes’s reaction to this was curious: rather than increasing his frustration, as I had feared, it seemed to fire him with a nervous excitement.

Then we had what I suppose must be accounted a bit of luck-although when I was later careening around the precipitous crags of Utah, and dodging bullets, I was not sure whether that luck was bad or good.

Holmes had cabled a colleague in America who had already helped immeasurably with this case: Police Superintendent Schmitt of Cleveland, Ohio, who confirmed that Tom Dennis was indeed the name by which our quarry had been known for some years, and also that he had been sighted in the proximity of Jefferson Hope while the latter was in that jurisdiction. And by the merest fluke, it happened that one of the Superintendent’s sources had informed him that Dennis had recently slipped through Cleveland again-likely on his way back to Salt Lake City. Supt. Schmitt wondered if this tip would be of any use to Holmes in his enquiries.

He would not have wondered long had he been sitting in my chair in Baker Street when Holmes read Schmitt’s cable, for Holmes burst up off his sofa like an exploding shell from a mortar.

“Watson,” he asked, suddenly as calm again as if proposing a stroll across St. James’s Park, “would you care to accompany me to the Country of the Saints?”

I rose to my feet, dumfounded. “Are you serious?”

“It would make for a change, don’t you think?” he chuckled. “A change in perspective does wonders when you’re having trouble with a case. We could grill that confounded Dennis once and for all; and then there’s nothing like going over the ground of a case for yourself, I’ve always said. I have that nagging feeling that Jefferson Hope was not quite as forthcoming with us as he might have been.”

“But my dear Holmes-I can certainly not afford it, even if you are able to.”

“Oh, tut!” he said, waving his hand. “A wealthy old lady here in London who is a member of the Latter-Day Saints-we have them here, too, you know-wishes to retain my services. Mrs. Ponsonby-Mallalieu was dreadfully offended by that stupid piece of puffery Lestrade had inserted in the papers after Jefferson Hope died in prison-the one about ‘romantic feuds and Mormonism’ being behind the murders, even though there was no trial nor even anyone charged. So the good lady has offered me a generous retainer, plus expenses, to solve the case once and for all.”

“But even with your gifts, my dear fellow,” I expostulated, “with Hope dead that will take a miracle.”

“Well, she believes in them,” said Holmes. “Miracles, that is; and she doesn’t mind paying for me to go to Utah, and I think she’ll allow me a traveling companion. Even miracle workers need their coadjutors.”

Holmes and I had crossed the ocean on the SS Liahona and then went west by train, eventually changing at Ogden, Utah, from the noble Union Pacific to the Utah Central, a Mormon-owned spur that took us right into Salt Lake City, arriving on July 1.

Brigham Young’s “New Jerusalem” had been laid out by the Prophet himself a third of a century before, and although the city’s population could hardly compare with London’s millions, there were tens of thousands thronging its streets, readily apparent as our train came into the station.

“The Mormons chose their honeybee emblem aptly, Holmes,” I said, gesturing through the travel-stained window of our car. “How do you expect to find Dennis amongst this multitude?”

“Well, well!” my companion chuckled. “We can but try! I fancy that Superintendant Schmitt’s friend, Marshal Ames, may have a bone to throw us.”

When our bags had been unloaded, we did not have to look for porters or cabmen, as our client had arranged for us to be met by her man of business in Salt Lake City, who turned out to be English, Mr. Edgar Smith.

“No need for surprise, gentlemen,” he assured us. “You’ll soon find that a fair percentage of our citizens are from the old country-why, the president himself is an Englishman!”

“What! Mr. Garfield?” I asked.

“No, no!” the man of business replied, in a hurt tone. “Our president, the Prophet-John Taylor: the president of our Church!”

Holmes gave me a rather sharp poke in the ribs, and we rode the rest of the way to our lodging demurely in Smith’s carriage, our proud guide pointing out to us along the way the remarkable sights of Zion, like Brigham Young’s “beehive” house, and the many-spired temple, still a-building after thirty years.

On the morrow, we asked our host for directions to the United States Marshal’s office, since we were anxious to make contact with Supt. Schmitt’s colleague while Dennis’s trail was yet warm. When he learned that it was Deputy Marshal Ames whom we sought, Smith tried to warn us away from a person of, he claimed, questionable character. Finding us adamant, he sighed.

“At any rate, you’re far more likely to find him in Robertson’s than in the Marshal’s office,” he told us.

“Robertson’s?” asked Holmes.

“A sort of private club,” sniffed our host. “The fumes! We are teetotal here, you understand.”

Holmes looked troubled. “When you say fumes, Mr. Smith, do you mean alcoholic?”

“That too, I fear!” tsked Smith. “But chiefly tobacco! Quite forbidden!”

“Oh dear!” said Holmes, turning pale. “I hadn’t realized… but at any rate, Mr. Smith, we really must make the acquaintance of this officer, so may we beg you to direct us to this den of infamy. We shall steel ourselves in the name of duty.”

“I can’t corrupt a servant by sending one with you to that sort of place.” Smith shook his head. “But if you must go, I’ll draw you a map.”

When Holmes and I were admitted to the club (production of our pipes at the doorway being equivalent to an occult handshake, we discovered), I had trouble at first adjusting my eyes to the dim light within. I don’t know why I was surprised that the place was not dissimilar to an English club, or that an enquiry to the first person we happened to encounter-yet another Englishman, a Yorkshireman-brought us to Ames, who we discovered to be taller than Holmes, and wearing a frock coat that would have passed in London, but with his trousers stuffed into high riding boots. He had an aquiline face, which, again, curiously resembled that of my friend, save that his windblown tan was evident even in the subdued light. With his shoulder-length, rather greasy hair and drooping moustache, he put me in mind of some of the Afghans I’d known in my service days.

But when he spoke, his voice was pure Yankee prairie. “Glad to meet you gents,” he said, wringing our hands with that excruciating American force to which I never became accustomed. “Schmitt wired me, and I reckon I can help you ’prise Tom Dennis outen his roost, but the jurisdiction may be kind of tricky.”

“Really?” said Holmes, lighting the cigar Ames had offered him.

“You see,” the Marshal continued, “we’re in the City of Salt Lake, but also the County of Salt Lake, and of course the Territory of Utah. Now, of course I’m a Deputy United States Marshal, so I can collar the boy anywhere, theoretically.”

“I’m not sure I like the sound of that ‘theoretically,’” said Holmes. “This is an excellent cigar.”

“Thanks, I get ’em made special and brought through the Isthmus. The problem is that we’re also in the Country of the Saints, and President Taylor is King over Israel on the Earth, and just about every municipal, county, territorial, and federal officer is also one of Taylor’s faithful… Now, I’m not sayin’ they have divided loyalties, but there is just a bit of bad feelin’s between the Feds and the Church right now.”

“Very bad?” I asked.

“Just a tad,” he admitted. “What with Washington trying to make them give up their plural wives and their church property and all… So we’ll have to tread easy.”

“But you will help us apprehend Dennis?” Holmes asked.

“Oh, my pleasure,” Ames assured him, downing what looked like a double whisky. “Apparently, your boy is engaged in movin’ some kind of contraband between here and Wyoming.”

I must have looked a little dubious.

“Oh, it ain’t far,” he said. “It’s just over them mountains to the northeast-you must’ve noticed ’em. There’s an easy trail for a good horseman-I used to ride it myself when I was in the Pony Express with Cody and Hickock.”

This caught my attention. “Good Lord!” I cried. “You mean those chaps in the little soft-covered novels I’ve been buying in the train stations all along our route? I never dreamed they were real people.”

“Oh, they’re realer than most,” he chuckled. “Leastwise, Bill Hickock used to be-damn fool fergot to sit with his back to the wall in Deadwood, a few years back. But I guess those dime novels keep him alive, and they’re good publicity for Bill Cody-you might try ’em yourself, in your line of work, Mr. Holmes, bein’ a sort of freelancer as you are.”

Holmes made an expression of distaste. “I hope, Watson,” he told me, “that you shall never contemplate such yellow puffery in my behalf, despite your tendency to take notes. But Marshal, do I understand you to suggest that this ‘collar’ will best be fastened somewhere outside the city, along this route you mention?”

“It’d sartainly keep the paperwork simpler,” Ames chuckled. “I’d like to do ’er in one of the mountain passes better than in the middle of the desert, too… Don’t want to give ’im a long view of our approach, y’understand. What kind of riders are you gents?”

“I’m afraid the Holmeses had left off being country gentlefolk by my time,” deprecated my companion, “but I fancy I can sit a horse adequately to our purposes.”

“And horsemanship was one thing I acquired in Afghanistan besides a Jezail bullet,” I added modestly. “It was no jest riding in those mountains, either.”

“Especially when slung bottom-foremost in the saddle by your orderly!” laughed Holmes. “At least your acquaintance with our four-legged friends is not limited to the wrong end of a bookmaker’s tally-sheet!”

“Really, Holmes!” I replied. “I wouldn’t have thought that a pint of beer would make you so merry! It must be the thin air at this elevation. I’m surprised the Mormons allow this much alcohol to be served here, too.”

“Actually, they don’t,” admitted Ames, glancing about somewhat furtively as he drained another glass of his own. “It may well be that this is the sort of contraband that no-good Dennis is runnin’. Natcherly, I’m prepared to do my duty and put a stop to it, even if the rascal is performin’ a public service.”

So that, reader, is how I found myself encamped under the stars with Ames and Holmes.

“Don’t move,” hissed the motionless Holmes to the Marshal. “Watson! Have you got your service revolver?”

But I was too late. Even as I was shifting for my weapon, the snake-a spotted Massasauga rattler, we later confirmed-struck Ames’s heel, and my shot an instant later tore off its evil head, but was out of time.

The three of us knew well enough how to deal with poisonous snake bites, and I had not outgrown the habit of carrying my medical bag everywhere, so we were easily able to save his life. But there was no question now of the Marshal riding the mountain trail in pursuit of Dennis.

“It’ll be about all I can do to get back to town to the hospital, I reckon,” he lamented. “Your boy will be over the border in Wyoming by the time I can get an officer detailed to you. Damn sorry! But no doubt Dennis’ll make another contraband run sometime soon, he ’ppears to have gotten latched onto a going operation.”

Holmes did not relish a delay, and I doubted our financial benefactress would approve it, either. “Could you not describe the route to us, Marshal,” asked Holmes, “so Dr. Watson and I could secure Dennis on our own?”

Ames chewed his moustache and grimaced, either from the tourniquet we’d applied or the quandary we’d presented. “Well, the way is easy enough to see-bein’ an old Pony Express trail,” he mused. “And I s’pose I could deputize you; you ain’t Americans, but that’s never made much never-mind in this territory. But I still don’t care for it much.”

“Why not?” cried Holmes.

“You have to understand, we were cuttin’ things mighty fine to begin with. We had to wait for the dawn because this trail is so durn precipitous some places that it would be risky even for an experienced rider in the dark. And shoot! Now that the sun’s up, we’ve wasted so much time with this snake folderol that you’d have to do a Pony Express race just to catch up with Dennis before he crosses the border! And frankly, I’m fearful you gents might come to harm tryin’ to go full-out ’round these mountains, unescorted-like.”

“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.”

My mother tried to raise her sons properly, but I have a dreadful feeling that my mouth was hanging agape at this point. I certainly wondered if it was I who was mad, or the lady speaking to me. “But Hope confessed,” I said at last.

“I know that,” she reiterated, as if she were explaining to a child. “He did that because he knew he didn’t have long to live anyway.” She wiped away a tear sliding down her sunburnt cheek. “And because he wanted to shield Tom.”

The sun was now high in the Utah sky, and at last the light began to dawn in my foggy English brain as well. “Dennis killed them both,” I said.

“Of course,” Lucy nodded. “He hated Drebber and Stangerson far worse than Jeff or I did. You see, he hadn’t been able to save the girl he loved. She really was dead.”

“Sally Sawyer,” I whispered.

Lucy looked at me, surprised. “How did you know?”

“Never multiply names unnecessarily,” I recited, recalling Holmes’s dictum as if from a dream. “Dennis told us the name himself, in the story he prattled when he came to try to get the ring from us. But come-how did Hope know of that visit?”

“Oh, goodness, Doctor!” Lucy laughed, for the first time, and I saw she was still a handsome woman. “What chatterboxes you and Inspector Gregson were in that cab on the way to Scotland Yard! Jeff told me all about it!”

I must have looked hurt, because she added, in a kindly tone, “Jeff said Mr. Holmes let slip a hint or two, also… and you have to admit that my Jeff was a resourceful man.”

“More even than we credited,” I agreed sincerely. Seeing sudden misery in her face, I reached across the distance between our two chairs and clasped her wrist. “You must miss him sorely.”

“Every day!” she cried, raising her overflowing eyes to the empty sky, then turning them back to me. “But we had near two happy decades ranching in Wyoming before Jeff learned Tom was on Drebber’s trail in Cleveland. Jeff determined to stop him from doing murder. He couldn’t bear for Tom to have that sin on his conscience or his soul, no matter what the provocation.” Now she was caught up in the full onrush of her story, and had to tell all.

“And I couldn’t bear him to go without me, so we went together. We couldn’t find Tom in Cleveland, but that foul Drebber spotted Jeff and had him jailed for a trumpery nonsense-and I couldn’t bail him out at first for fear that Drebber would see me! By the time Drebber was gone and I’d got Jeff out, it was too late to stop Tom. That was how it went, across half the world, it seemed, using up our resources and Jeff getting more and more desperate, until finally we came to London.

“Jeff tried to do double duty hunting for Tom and guarding Drebber and Stangerson, while I did what I could, too-though it wasn’t much because I daren’t let them see me.

“At last, at Lauriston Gardens, Jeff was too late by moments to stop Tom. It nigh broke his heart.” She looked at me fiercely as if daring me to deny it.

“He wasn’t too late to be observed by the constable,” I pointed out. “And his presence there created all kinds of compromising physical evidence, although I always said that Holmes was too quick to theorize about a crime scene which he himself compared to the aftermath of a buffalo stampede.”

“Jeff made up that stuff about going back for the ring,” she said. “After you told him about ‘Mrs. Sawyer’ coming to your rooms for it, it was easy enough for him to figure out that Tom had lost Sally’s ring there. Tom really wanted it back, you know; it was the one he’d given Sally himself, not like the one in my case.”

“You mean Dennis and Sally had really been married before Drebber had taken her away?” I exclaimed. “But that’s infamous!”

“Oh yes,” she sighed. “It’s not unknown among the polygamists, you know. Sometimes plural wives are passed around-it’s awful. Anyway, Jeff was too late again when Tom got to Stangerson, and I guess you know the rest.”

“But why did the two of you go through all this to save Tom Dennis?” I asked, running my hand through my hair distractedly. “It’s noble, of course, and I commend you both for it, but why should Hope risk the happiness of the woman he loved to save Dennis?”

“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!”