Mrs. Hudson and The Wild West

When Buffalo Bill Cody’s horse is stolen, the star of the world’s foremost wild west show travels to Baker Street to consult the star of the world’s foremost consulting detective agency. Like many before him, Colonel Cody takes Sherlock Holmes to be that star. The true sage of 221B Baker Street, who also serves as its landlady, takes control of the situation, and finds both the purloined animal and the two children who had taken the horse for a joy ride 1903 style. When their father is murdered weeks later, the children fear they will be blamed because of their quarrel with him. They run away to join the wild west show leading Colonel Cody to make a return visit to Baker Street-this time with the two children in tow, and to enlist Holmes in the search for a murderer. Mrs. Hudson, will, of course, once again take charge, once again without acknowledgement of her contribution, once again maintaining the fiction of Sherlock Holmes’s leadership, an essential pretense in the male dominated world of Victorian England. As Mrs. Hudson and her colleagues work to discover the murderer, they will find themselves having to counter an anti-Indian bigotry that places at risk the marriage of friends of Mrs. Hudson’s from the wild west show, and Mrs. Hudson’s very life. With the help of her two young horse thieves, now happily rehabilitated, Mrs. Hudson may yet find the way to a just and rewarding outcome.