James Beardley Hendryx - Black John of Halfaday Creek

“I’ll go up there an’ see what I kin do,” said Cush, “but I shore as hell don’t know no anicdote fer musheroon p’izen.”

“God, we’ve got to do somethin’!” exclaimed the man. “Grover was the best friend I’ve got. Why, we was jest like brothers! We even wrote out our wills, so in case one of us was to die, the other one would git his claim an’ all his stuff.”

“I’ll go ’long with you,” offered old Bettles. “We kin take a couple of quarts along. What I claim, whisky’s the best medicine a man kin git, no matter what ails him. If we kin git two, three quarts down him, chances is it’ll kill that there p’izen.”

“It might help,” admitted Cush doubtfully. “But when a man’s time comes, he’s goin’ to die, no matter how much licker he drinks.” Slipping some bottles into a packsack, he tossed the apron to One-Armed John. “You tend bar till we git back,” he ordered. “We might be quite a while if that man ain’t dead. When John an’ Swiftwater gits back, tell ’em where we’re at. John might know some anicdote we could feed him along with the licker. He’s pretty handy that way.”

Two hours later, Black John and Swiftwater returned to the fort, turned over a hundred pounds of choice moose meat to the Indian woman with instructions to prepare a big stew and entered the saloon to find One-Armed John presiding behind the bar.

“Where’s Cush an’ old Settles?” Black John demanded.

“Some fella come in an’ claimed another fella et some musheroons an’ got sick,” explained Moosehide Charley. “They went up to see what they could do about it.”

“Chances is they can’t do nothin’,” opined Black John. “Who was the fella?”

“The one that is claimed to have et the musheroons is that there Grover Harrison that came to Halfaday along in the spring,” explained One-Armed John. “An’ the one that come an’ told us about it is Benjamin Cleveland. He come to Halfaday pretty quick after Harrison, an’ he located him a claim right next to Harrison who had moved into Robert E. Grant’s old shack.”

“Ain’t that jest like a damn name-canner—to git p’izened on a saint’s day!” exclaimed Black John. “Not that his demise will throw no hell of a gloom over the crick—but in hot weather he won’t keep—an’ it’s a nuisance to bury him.”

“What’s a name-canner?” asked Moosehide Charley.

“It got so that every malefactor that reached Halfaday give out that his name was John Smith,” explained Black John. “That was all right with us till we run out of descriptive adjectives like One Eyed, One Armed, Long, Short, Pot Gutted, Black, Red an’ so forth. We seen that it was bound to lead to confusion, so about that time we hung One-Eyed John, an’ amongst his effects which he left was a hist’ry book. So me an’ Cush copied the names out of it on slips of paper, takin’ care to use the wrong front names with the right hind ones, an’ then we put the slips in that there molasses can on the end of the bar. Now when someone comes we invite him to draw him a name. So if you meet up with anyone on Halfaday which he sounds historical, you’ll know he’s a name-canner, an’ not one of us Mayflowers.”

“It’s a damn good scheme,” approved Swiftwater Bill. “I’ll buy a drink in honor of Saint One Eye. There’s one good deed he done fer Halfaday, anyhow. He give you the name can!”

“That’s right,” agreed Black John. “We’ll elect him patron saint of the crick—even if his good deed was entirely inadvertent, as you might say, it not happenin’ till after he was hung! Drink hearty, boys—here’s mud in Saint One Eye’s good eye!”

“I s’pose,” suggested Swiftwater, “that we’d ort to go up there an’ see what we kin do. I don’t s’pose Cush is no doctor, an’ I know damn well old Bettles ain’t. Cripes, one time down to Forty Mile, Mrs McSweeny’s baby got the colic, an’ Bettles wanted to give it half a pint of whisky—an’ it only six weeks old!”

“He took three quarts up to give this fella,” said Moosehide. “Claimed whisky will cure anything if you take enough of it—said it would kill that musheroon p’izen.”

“In such case,” grinned Black John, “the most helpful thing we could do would be to begin diggin’ the grave. Three quarts will kill Harrison before it does the p’izen.”

Behind the bar One-Armed John shrugged. “If you wanted to do somethin’ helpful, John, it wouldn’t hurt to kind of give this here Benjamin Cleveland the once-over.”

“What do you mean?”

“Meanin’,” replied One-Armed John, “that mebbe Harrison et some musheroons—an’ then agin, mebbe he didn’t. There’s other kinds of p’izen kills men besides musheroons.”

“You think that mebbe Cleveland p’izened him?” asked Black John, in astonishment.

“I ain’t thinkin’ he did er he didn’t. He could of. An’ when a man like him could of, it’s more ’n likely he did. I know you don’t favor murder on Halfaday. I’m jest tellin’ you.”

“You mean you know this Cleveland?”

“Yeah, I know him, all right. Only his name ain’t Cleveland—it’s Bill Snook.”

“But why would he p’izen Harrison?”

“To git his claim an’ what other stuff he’s got. It wouldn’t be the first time he’s done it. I don’t claim to be smart, like you—but when he said somethin’ about wills, an’ musheroon p’izen, I know’d damn well he was up to his old tricks. The police, down-river, both sides of the line, has tried to git the goods on him, but they never could prove nothin’. He’ll prob’ly git away with it agin.”

Black John nodded slowly. “He might,” he admitted grimly. “We’ll see. Any murder’s bad. But p’izenin’ is the worst form of murder there is. I’d shore hate to see it got away with on Halfaday. S’pose you go ahead an’ tell us what you know—in the meantime leavin’ the bottle where it’s handy to reach.”

“The first I know’d Snook it was in a camp on Birch Crick. Him an’ a fella name of Buck Huston was pardners. They’d located a couple of claims down the crick a ways, an’ one day Snook come bustin’ into camp hollerin’ that Huston had shot hisself. He took on somethin’ fierce, claimin’ Buck was his best friend, an’ all he had did fer him, an’ how he’d ruther it was him that was dead instead of Buck. Claimed Buck come back from a hunt an’ stood leanin’ on his rifle, an’ his dogs was friskin’ around him, an’ jumpin’ up on him, an’ one of ’em must of ketched his toe on the trigger of Buck’s rifle an’ pulled it off, an’ the bullet went plumb through Buck’s chest.

“We went up there, an’ shore enough Buck had be’n shot right off ’n the end of his rifle. He laid there dead as hell, an’ the rifle just like it had dropped out of his hands when he fell, jest like Snook claimed.

“We buried Buck, an’ then Snook filed his will with the public administrator, which it left Snook everything Buck owned, incloodin’ the claim, which was a pretty good one fer them parts. He showed his own will, too, which it left Buck all he owned, in case it would be him that died off first.

“A constable come up an’ looked around, but he couldn’t find nothin’ that would prove Buck hadn’t got shot like Snook claimed he had, so that was the end of it. But there was plenty of us know’d that Buck Huston wouldn’t never of stood leanin’ on a cocked rifle, with a bunch of dogs jumpin’ around him—not no other time, neither.

“Then there was a flurry on a crick near Circle, an’ the bulk of us stampeded there from Birch Crick—Snook along with the rest. He hooked up that time with Fatty Eckinrod an’ they done pretty good until one day Snook come into Circle, snifflin’ an’ sobbin’ about Fatty gittin’ ketched in an ice jam on the river an’ squshed. He showed up with another one of them wills an’ claimed all Fatty’s stuff.