James Beardley Hendryx - Black John of Halfaday Creek

“Oh yes he kin, Dook,” said a voice as Breckenridge stepped out from behind the big man. “An’ he kin prove that you threatened to kill old Quince Beezely on sight, too.”

“Dink McQuire!” screamed the other, as with a swift, movement a long blade gleamed in the half-light as he drew back his arm. There was a loud explosion, and the Duke pitched forward upon his face.

Black John, standing a pace or two in front of the others, never turned his head. “Everyone throw a fresh shell in his gun,” he ordered. “A coroner’s inquest will have to investigate this fresh killin’. An’ it would be better if we wasn’t to find no empty shell in anyone’s gun. Come on, now, we’ll be takin’ this other one along before somethin’ definite happens to him.”

The man, Peanuts, and the two corpses were searched, Black John deftly retaining only a small scrap of paper—which was Cush’s receipt for Beezely’s deposit. Magnanimously he turned over to Long John some thousand dollars in currency.

“Jest divide that up amongst you three,” he said. “Me an’ Cush wouldn’t care to participate. There wasn’t nothin’ found on Beezely, these others havin’ prob’ly frisked him before carryin’ him out. An’ there wouldn’t be no use to bother the public administrator with it—on account of them names not bein’ no help in huntin’ out heirs. We’ll go on back, now, an’ stick Peanuts in the hole. We’ll call the miners’ meetin’ fer tomorrow afternoon.”

With the prisoner deposited in “the hole,” a narrow subterranean cell beneath the storeroom floor, and a barrel of pork rolled into place on the trap, the others dispersed, leaving Black John alone with Cush.

In silence, Cush set out a bottle and two glasses, and each poured a drink. Cush was the first to speak. “So it was Breckenridge put you on to this here racket, was it?” he inquired. Pausing suddenly, he lowered his chin and peered at the other over the square rims of his steel spectacles. “So that was what he wanted to speak to you private about t’other day—when you claimed he’d come down to borry a pick.”

“A pick, did I say, Cush?”

“Yeah, you claimed he’d run onto some rocks in his shaft, an’ he wanted to borry a pick.”

“Oh, yeah—I do rec’lect of givin’ you some sort of an evasive answer. But I fergot that I’d mentioned a pick.”

“What difference does that make?”

“Why, yeah, what difference does it?”

“What I mean—ain’t that when he told you?”

“Oh shore. I didn’t want to worry you none. You see, he told me that Beezely was aimin’ to rob the safe.”

“Beezely! Cripes sakes—you told them other fellas it was them that was aimin’ to rob it!”

“Yeah, they was—but that was afterward. They wasn’t even on the crick then.”

Cush shoved his spectacles to his forehead in a gesture of resignation. “It’s too damn mixed up fer me,” he said wearily. “I don’t seem to grasp no holt of it.”

Black John grinned. “Jest open the safe,” he said, “an’ grasp holt of that package of Beezely’s, an’ set it out here on the bar.”

When Cush had complied, Black John lifted it and began to remove the bands from the various packets of bills. “A hundred an’ thirteen thousan’ dollars in good currency,” he said. “An’ you rec’lect Beezely told us he didn’t have a relative in the world! It’s hell, ain’t it, Cush—when a man ain’t got no relative to leave his property to? It kind of looks like his fall-fund had fell at last.

“Ah, well—it jest goes to show that honesty is the best policy in the long run. Come on, we might’s well git it divided up—share an’ share alike, Cush—just like we let them other three boys divide up what we found on them others. Trouble with old Quince Beezely—he didn’t have no ethics.”

One morning a few days after the hanging of Peanuts Landowski, Black John Smith turned from the bar, where two empty glasses and a bottle gave mute evidence that the day’s activity had begun, to face the three men who stood grinning in the open doorway.

“Well, I’ll be damned if it ain’t the sourdoughs!” he exclaimed. “By God, I know’d it was only a question of time till you old reprobates would be seekin’ the sanctity of Halfaday! But I figgered you’d kind of trickle in, one at a time, fer individual infringements of the law. What sort of mass crime did you commit—tip over somebody’s backhouse? Come on in! Cush is buyin’ a drink. We jest be’n havin’ our mornin’s mornin’.”

Old Bettles, dean of the sourdoughs, glanced at the clock and shook his head disapprovingly as the three advanced to the bar. “Here it is nine o’clock, lackin’ of fifteen minutes, an’ you jest havin’ yer mornin’s mornin’. Cripes, we’ve be’n five hours on the trail!”

Black John grinned as old Cush set out the glasses. “Oh shore. There’s be’n times when I’ve had to git an early start an’ pick ’em up and lay ’em down pretty fast, too. Like them first few days immijitly subsequent to that army pay-roll job. But now that my conscience is clear, I kin kind of take things easy. How much of a start do you figger you’ve got on Corporal Downey?”

“Downey sent his regards to you fellas when we told him we might swing around here,” said Swiftwater Bill. “Me an’ Moosehide an’ Bettles got wind of a proposition on a crick up this way, an’ bein’ as we’d heard so damn much about Cushing’s Fort, we figgered we’d swing around an’ make a social call.”

“That’s fine!” exclaimed Black John heartily. “Yer shore welcome, an’ we’ll do our damnedest to show you a good time. You see, we don’t git many strickly social calls. What I claim, all Halfaday needs to make it a fine place to live is good society an’ mebbe a little more water in the crick.”

“Yeah,” grinned old Bettles, filling his glass from the bottle. “But when you come to think of it, that’s all hell needs to make it a fine place to live—good society an’ more water.”

“We’ve always got plenty of water in the spring when the boys is sluicin’ out their winter dumps,” defended old Cush lugubriously. “Take it along like now, we don’t need no more water ’n what we got. Trouble with John, he ain’t never quite satisfied. I’ll bet he’d change the Ten Commandments if he could.”

“Yer damn right I would,” agreed Black John. “There’s some of ’em that’s irreverent an’ immaterial, an’ not a one of ’em mentions claim-jumpin’ as a major offense. As fer as Halfaday is concerned, they could be revised to good advantage.”

“June is a damn pore month, anyway,” opined old Bettles as he contemplated the little beads that rimmed his glass of whisky.

“In what way?” asked Moosehide Charley. “Cripes, the weather’s be’n fine ever sence we started out on this trip.”

“Yeah,” agreed Bettles. “An’ that’s, one of its main troubles. Everyone’s busy, either workin’ his claim er prospectin’ fer new ones. Take most any other month an’ it’s got somethin’ to recommend it. Most of ’em’s got stormy weather that fetches the boys in fer a jamboree er else a hollerday of some sort—an’ some months has got both. But look at that calendar there on the wall—not a damn red-letter day in the hull month!”

“Seems like Worshin’ton’s birthday used to come sometime along in June,” said Moosehide.

“I disremember it that way,” said Swiftwater Bill. “Seems to me like it come in the winter.”

“I don’t rec’lect,” Settles cut in, “but it wouldn’t cut no figger, nohow. The Yukon’s in Canady, an’ Canady’s British—an’ their calendars shore as hell wouldn’t brag up Worshin’ton’s birthday none, no matter what month it come in. Cripes, George Worshin’ton would be lucky if they didn’t leave off his birthday altogether. Them Mexicans is the ones to have hollerdays. I put in a couple of years prospectin’ down in Mexico, an’ every month has got from two to a dozen hollerdays in it, on account of saints dyin’ off. It’s a good way to have it. It gives a man a chanct to git caught up with his stud an’ his drinkin’.”