The Wolf Hunt.

A Derrick Miles Mystery

NOW AVAILABLE from Five Star Publishing, a part of Gale, a Cengage Company Excerpted with permission of the publisher

Chapter 3

Dire Deeds (continued) {In which Miles and Hooper interrogate their visitor from Crosby County.}

On tuesday morning i woke, somewhat later than my usual custom, to sunlight streaming through the east-facing window of my bedroom and only the sounds of industry and society emanating from the street. A new day had begun on Houston Street.

It was nearly nine o’clock when I found myself in the sitting room once more. My first impression as I opened the door from the hallway was that a fire had broken out, for the room was so filled with smoke that the light of the lamp upon the table was blurred by it. As I entered, however, my fears were set at rest, for it was the fragrant but strong fumes of a heady cedar-and-sage mixture which took me by the throat and set me coughing. Through the haze I had a vague vision of Miles wrapped in a heavy woolen blanket and coiled up in an armchair, hands cupping a clay vessel of tea. Several rolls of paper lay around him. The fiddle and bow had been set aside on the footstool.

“Caught cold, Hooper?” said he.

“No, it’s this fuliginous atmosphere.”

“I suppose it is pretty thick, now that you mention it.”

“Thick! It is intolerable.”

“Open the window, then! You were about to step out for the newspaper and a morsel of breakfast at the Commercial Club?”

“My dear Miles!”

“Am I right?”

“Certainly, but how?” He laughed at my bewildered expression.

“There is a delightful freshness about you, Hooper, which makes it a pleasure to exercise any small powers which I possess at your expense. A gentleman is dressed to go forth on a fine autumn day, on which the weather has turned quite agreeable. His hair is combed back, his moustache is waxed, he wears his day coat over waistcoat and pocket watch to keep track of the time, he carries his glasses in his hand for reading, and his stomach is grumbling. Where, then, could he be heading? Is it not obvious?”

“Well, it is rather obvious.”

“The world is full of obvious things which nobody by any chance ever observes. Now, where do you think that I have been?”

“A fixture in this sitting room, by the look of it.”

“On the contrary, I have been to Dickens County.” “In spirit?”

“Exactly. My body has remained in this armchair and has, I regret to observe, consumed in my absence an entire pot of herbal tea and neglected the necessity of sleep. Already this morning I have sent down to the survey office for the relevant railroad map of West Texas, and my psyche has hovered over it for the past hour. I flatter myself that I could find my way about.”

“A large-scale map, I presume?”

“Very large.” He unrolled one section and held it over his knee. “Forgo your club plans and sit with me here instead, Hooper, and I will take you on the tour.”

My stomach growled once more. I went to the kitchen, took out a cold biscuit from the night before and spread a layer of butter and honey on it, then returned and pulled up the footstool beside Miles.

“Here you have the particular region that concerns us. Dickens County, nine hundred square miles, most of it on the western half consumed by the enormous Spur Ranch, and isolated within its boundaries the hamlet of Espuela. In the center portion of the county, embracing thirty-eight checkerboarded sections by my count, is the Wolverton Ranch, with its headquarters here on the marge of the Croton Breaks.”

“With the broken country, canyons, and mesas all around it?”

“Exactly. I fancy the trail down to the spring, though not marked under that name, must stretch along this line, with the breaks, as you perceive, to the south and east of it. Within a radius of twenty miles there are, as you see, only a very few scattered dwellings. Here is the Bar M, which was mentioned in the narrative. There is a structure indicated nearby which may be the residence of the geologist—Griswall, if I remember right. Two other ranch camps lie farther east, those of the Pitchfork and the Browning.

“To the west, you’ll note the county of Crosby, where our friend Mr. Barlow resides. Although he lives and practices law in the settlement of Estacado, in the western portion, he farms several sections out here on the caprock, on the Dickens County boundary. Then eighteen miles south”—he drew his finger downward to indicate it—“lies the infamous town of Clairemont, a frontier den of vice and violence. All are places in which the rule of law has yet to be firmly established. Protection men for the ranches are the foremost enforcers of justice. The district judge visits county seats in his circuit twice yearly; in the interim, Judge Lynch and Judge Colt generally hold sway. In none of these towns exists any true jail or prison. Between and around these scattered points extend the desolate badlands. This, then, is the stage upon which tragedy has been played, and upon which we may help to play it again.”

“It must be a wild place.”

“Yes, the setting is a worthy one. If the devil did desire to have a hand in the affairs of men—”

“Then you are yourself inclining to the supernatural explanation.” “The devil’s agents may be of flesh and blood, may they not?”

“The devil’s agents may be of flesh and blood, may they not?” He let the map snap back into a tight scroll. “There are two questions waiting for us at the outset. The one is whether any crime has been committed at all; the second is, if so, what is the crime and how was it committed? Of course, if Mr. Barlow’s surmise should be correct, and we are dealing with forces outside the ordinary laws of Nature, our investigation comes swiftly to a dead end. But we are bound to exhaust all other hypotheses before falling back upon this one. I think we’ll shut that window again, if you don’t mind. It is a singular thing, but I find that a concentrated atmosphere helps a concentration of thought. I have not pushed it to the length of getting into a box to think, but I may yet resort to that expediency. Have you turned the case over in your mind?” “Why, my dreams were filled with nothing else all night. It could

“Why, my dreams were filled with nothing else all night. It could have been the effect of the wind, of course.” “What do you make of it?”

“What do you make of it?”

“It is very bewildering.” “It has certainly a character of its own. There are points of dis

“It has certainly a character of its own. There are points of distinction about it. That change in the footprints, for example. What do you make of that?”

“Barlow said that the man had walked on tiptoe down that portion of the path.” “He only repeated what some fool had said at the inquest. Why

“He only repeated what some fool had said at the inquest. Why should a man walk on tiptoe down a trail? Especially if he’s left his gun holstered in his saddle and his horse grazing idly, untethered?”

“What then?”

“He was running, Hooper—running desperately, running for his life, running until he burst his heart—and fell dead upon his face.”

“Running from what?”

“There lies our problem. There are indications that the man was crazed with fear before ever he began to run.”

“How can you say that?”

“I am presuming that the cause of his fears came to him from below, in the canyon. If that were so, and it seems most probable, only a man who had lost his wits would have run from the house instead of towards it. Then, again, for whom was he waiting that night, and why was he waiting for him at the ranch gate instead of inside his own house?”

“You think that he was waiting for someone?”

“The man was elderly and infirm. We can understand his taking the air at dusk and riding out to check his fences, but the ground was damp and the weather inclement. Is it natural that he should stand for five or ten minutes, as Mr. Barlow, with more practical sense than I should have given him credit for, deduced from the cigar ash?”

“But it’s said he went out every evening.”

“I think it unlikely that he waited at the ranch gate each time. On the contrary, the evidence is that he avoided the breaks. On that occasion he waited there. It was the night before he made his departure for Fort Worth. The thing takes shape, Hooper. It becomes coherent.” He settled back in his chair and closed his eyes. “Might I ask you, while you finish your breakfast, to tell me your impressions of this Trey Wolverton we are soon to encounter?”

I expelled a deep breath and began to prepare him.

In the rugged, desolate Croton Breaks of West texas a spectral creature with a six-inch pawprint has spooked livestock of late. When British-born cattle baron Basil Wolverton is found dead outside his own ranch gate, cowhands and nesters alike whisper of an ancestral curse, the dire wolf of legend.

Sir Basil’s executor Wesley Barlow knows what he must do: catch the next train for Fort Worth, where consulting detective Derrick Miles and his assistant Dr. Frank Hooper are his best bet to figure out whether there’s been a crime committed . . . or some diabolical force at work.

If the story sounds familiar, it should. Transporting the Sherlock Holmes classic The Hound of the Baskervilles to Dickens County, circa 1891, author Will Brandon reimagines Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s thrilling tale with a Texas twist on a murderous beast, a fugitive outlaw, greed and grit, affairs of the heart, and a landscape yet untamed. In the popular tradition of serial publication The Texas Spur has obtained exclusive rights to run excerpts of this new novel, timed with its revised April 2021 release in book form.

In the heyday of Charles Goodnight and Quanah Parker—and one of the craftiest stalkers on the frontier—The Wolf Hunt traces Hooper’s solemn pledge to solve the vexing case with which Miles has entrusted him and protect the Wolverton heir in his charge. But will bullets and iron bars bear out against the embodiment of evil? In this high Victorian adventure, the answer is anything but elementary. _•