James Beardley Hendryx - Black John of Halfaday Creek

“Oh, I don’t know, son,” Black John replied. “I guess mebbe it’ll work out all right, in the long run. Hell, I used to be more er less shady in my ethics, myself, an’ look at me now! You jest go ahead an’ do like I said—sort of let things drift. Cush will close up early Sunday night—but you won’t have to rob the safe. Beezely’ll be down the crick—waitin’ till you git there. Jest go ahead like he planned it—an’ let nature take her course.”

“But he’ll hit for Olson’s shack to wait! An’ that’s where Peanuts an’ the Dook are!”

“Yeah—that’s what you said.”

“But—they’ll kill him sure as hell—jest as soon as he sticks his nose in the door!”

“That,” said Black John dryly, “is merely a conjecture—simply an expression of opinion, on your part. To twist an old sayin’ around, if ‘better comes to best,’ an’ they should happen to knock him off—I wouldn’t know of no one that needs it more—except, mebbe, the two that killed him—would you? If they knock Beezely off, that will be their business. But, in doin’ so, they’d be committin’ a murder, an’ that would be our business. Murder ain’t condoned on Halfaday. We’d have to call a miners’ meetin’. An’ if they was found guilty, it looks like we might go the Good Book one better, an’ kill three birds with one stone instead of two.”

The stud game lasted all Saturday night, with the result that business was dull at Cushing’s Fort on Sunday. At ten o’clock Cush barred the doors, took his rifle from its accustomed place and letting himself out the back door, headed for Black John’s cabin, a short distance up the creek. “Wonder what in hell give John the notion of a moose hunt tonight?” he grumbled, as he made his way through the slowly gathering twilight. “Any more meat than what we got on hand would spile, weather like this. I told him that, an’ he jest kind of grinned. Chances is he’s got somethin’ else on his mind. You can’t never tell what John’s thinkin’ by what he says.”

In the cabin were Black John, Red John, Long John and Breckenridge. The big man glanced at his watch.

“Come on,” he said, “we’ll be goin’. Breckenridge says Beezely went on down the crick twenty minutes ago. We don’t want to be in too much of a hurry, nor yet we don’t want to be too late, neither.”

“What in hell we follerin’ Beezely fer?” asked Cush, falling in directly behind Black John on the narrow foot trail down the creek. “Where is he headin’?”

“That,” replied the big man, “is more er less a matter of conjecture. Some theologians hold that——”

“What in hell’s all them big words got to do with it?” interrupted Cush impatiently. “Why can’t you come right out an’ tell me where Beezely’s goin’?”

“Because I don’t know myself. I ain’t made up my mind, yet, whether to accept the good old Presbyterian theory of instant damnation, er the milder one put out by the Catholics—with a sort of halfway house between. Then there’s the more or less atheistic doctrine of utter annihilation that’s well thought of by some, an’ would ondoubtless be a comfort to many.”

“You mean Beezely’s dead?” exclaimed Cush. “If he is, how in hell could he be goin’ down the creek?”

“Well, he could be floatin’ down, if he was dead,” grinned Black John. “But he ain’t—not jest at this minute—onless he’s traveled faster ’n what I think he has.”

“You mean we’re goin’ to kill him?” cried Cush. “Is that why we’re all fetchin’ our rifles? Cripes, John, we can’t do that! If he’s pulled off somethin’, we kin call a miners’ meetin’! We don’t want no onlegal killin’s on Halfaday!”

“Hell, you know as well as I do, I wouldn’t kill no one! We’re goin’ to call a miners’ meetin’—in case the facts warrants one. We’re goin’ down here a ways to arrest a couple of fellas, in case a murder should come off.”

“But what’s Beezely got to do with it?”

“Well—speakin’ in a dramatical way—he’s cast in a role. One might almost say, he’s a protagonist——”

“Why, the damn cuss! Is that some form of skulduggery, John?”

“Yeah,” replied Black John. “In his case, it seems to embrace about every form of skulduggery there is.”

Hardly were the words out of his mouth than the silence of the night was split by a long, thin scream—then another that ended abruptly. Eerie, blood-curdling screams, they were—screams of mortal terror and agony. The five men stopped in their tracks, in the profound silence of the moonlit night.

Old Cush, his eyes gleaming wildly, stared into the face of Black John. “My God!” he cried, “it’s down there jest around the next bend—at Olson’s old shack! I’m goin’ back. I always know’d that shack was onlucky!”

“Yeah,” agreed Black John dryly, “that’s what Beezely’s prob’ly found out. We’ll go on down an’ see.”

Pushing on to the edge of the little clearing that surrounded the cabin, the five concealed themselves in the thick brush, their eyes focused on the oblong of lamplight that showed through the open door not more than thirty feet distant from where they stood. Low voices could be heard from the cabin, and part of a man’s posterior could be seen as he evidently stooped over something on the floor.

Presently the man straightened up, and a moment later he backed out the door, closely followed by another man, walking forward. Between them they supported a limp human form—the dead body of J. Q. A. Beezely.

At a whispered word from Black John, five rifles were cocked and five men stepped from the edge of the bush into the clearing, their guns covering the two who had stepped from the cabin.

“You kin lay him down there,” said Black John, in a hard, brittle voice. “We’ll ’tend to the buryin’. An’ then you better reach high, er some of these guns is liable to go off.”

“Who the hell are you?” demanded the larger of the two men truculently. “An’ what the hell you buttin’ in here fer?”

“The name is Smith—Black John, fer short.”

“Oh, so you’re the guy that tried to hang them Dawson boys, the time you claimed they was up here to crack a box, eh?”

“Yeah, I’m him—er one of ’em. I rec’lect we bungled that job, on account of Corporal Downey comin’ along jest at the wrong time. An’ besides, them boys hadn’t committed no murder—till after they’d got off the crick.”

“An’ this ain’t no murder, neither. We had to bump this guy off in self-defense. You ain’t got no witness that we didn’t.”

“That’s right,” grinned Black John. “What did he attack you with—his toupee?”

“He pulled a gun on us. That’s what he done!”

“Tut, tut, Dook.”

“Dook!”

“Well, Peanuts, then. It don’t make no difference—except fer the head slabs. Beezely, he put up with me fer a week er so, an’ I happen to know that he didn’t have no gun.”

“Where the hell did you git them names?” demanded the man, peering toward the five, but not glimpsing the face of Breckenridge who was purposely keeping behind Black John.

“We didn’t git ’em—they’re yourn,” replied the big man. “Where you got ’em ain’t none of our business, no more ’n it’s any of our business whatever you done before you come to Halfaday. After you got here, though, what you done is our business—like murderin’ Beezely—an’ aimin’ to rob our safe. You’ve compounded yer felonies by addin’ murder on top of skulduggery.”

“It’s a damn lie!” cried the man, his face contorted with rage. “You can’t prove a word of it!”