Sherlock Holmes In America by Martin H. Greenberg Page B

wildly aside.
    Sasanoff ’s web, it seemed, had snared the wrong fly. And now it was about to snare two more.
    As the man tore at the stacked stones, he glanced up, eyes darting this way and that. He was grinning madly, giggling, yet he seemed anxious, almost frantic, as well.
    And then his giggles stopped, his grin wilted.
    The man was staring directly at us.
    Surely, he couldn’t see us, I told myself. We were crouched low amidst a thick layer of shadow-eaved brush, and the afternoon sun had long since given way to the gray of approaching dusk.
    Yet his gaze didn’t waver. We might as well have been caught in the blinding light of a follow spot.
    â€œWho’s there?” he called out.
    We said nothing.
    â€œI know you’re there, dammit!” the man bellowed. “I can see your breath!”
    His right hand hovered over the butt of his gun.
    â€œThe better part of valour is discretion,” I’d often said onstage as Falstaff. And I believed it and even lived by it, for “Run away!” I’d often said offstage as myself.
    There would be no screwing of courage to the sticking place. I possessed no courage to screw.
    I stood up with my hands held high.
    Or tried to, at any rate. The thorns and vines clawed at me as I arose. When I was finally standing straight, I found Sasanoff on his feet beside me, face scratched, beard pocked with clinging thistles.
    â€œUmmm . . . could you point us back to the road?” he said. “We appear to be lost.”
    â€œSo lost you end up creepin’ around the bushes?” the man spat back in an American accent as coarse and thick as his handlebar moustache and muttonchops. “Ha!”
    â€œOh, we were just looking for my . . . poodle,” I said. “He slipped his leash when we were walking him, and—”
    â€œGet down here,” the man snapped. “ Now .”
    Sasanoff and I scrambled down the steep embankment side by side, kicking up dirt and stumbling over rocks and rotting logs.
    â€œSo,” the man said when we were finally lined up before him, “who are you two workin’ for? Tabor or yourselves?”
    â€œI don’t know what you mean,” Sasanoff said. He was not so much a hunchback now as a hunch buttock : his hump had slipped down so low it looked as though he had a third cheek at the base of his spine.
    The American took an angry step toward him.
    â€œAre you mine police or bandits?” he demanded.
    He was a tall man, obviously well built despite his bandy legs, and Sasanoff and I shrank back from him as one.
    â€œN-n-neither,” I said. “We’re actors.”
    The American barked out a bitter laugh.
    â€œActors? Oh, I’ll say you are! Bad ones, too, ’cuz I see right through you.” He jutted a lantern jaw at me. “Judgin’ by them lavender duds of yours—” he jerked his head at Sasanoff, “—and the rags on you? And you both talkin’ all hoity-toity? I’ll bet you’re Pinkertons set after the missin’ silver. Well, congratulations, boys. You done found it. You just ain’t leavin’ with it. I am.”
    â€œI assure you I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Sasanoff said with as much stiff-spined dignity as a man with a false beard and an extra rump can muster.
    â€œSir . . . if I may,” I began, a whole new wave of sickly dread churning to life in the pit of my stomach. “How did you come to have that map?”
    The American flashed me a smile sour enough for a Malvolio.
    â€œYou may not . . . but I’ll tell you anyhow. I took it off a feller I followed outta Leadville. Word around town was he’d got his hands on an honest-to-God treasure map. So I caught up with him along the trail and, well . . . ” He patted the butt of his gun. “I persuaded him to hand it over.”
    I could see Sasanoff go pale even beneath his grease paint. His performance back at