Читать книгу Black John of Halfaday Creek - James B. Hendryx - Страница 10

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Circling back, the two approached Harrison’s shack from the direction of the fort. The door opened abruptly to Black John’s knock, and they entered the single room to see four men huddled together staring down at a still form on the bunk. A tin cup and a half-emptied bottle of whisky stood on the table.

“Hello, John,” Cush greeted. “This here Harrison, he’s dead. He et some musheroons he found, an’ they was p’izen.”

“Yeah, One-Armed John told us about it when we got back with the meat, so we come on up to see if there was anything we could do.”

“Wouldn’t of be’n a damn thing you could done even if you’d got here in time,” said old Bettles. “We done all anyone could. Fetched along enough whisky to cure him, if we could of got it down him. There on the table’s all there is left out of three quarts—but I’m doubtin’ if even half a pint of it stuck. You can’t cure no one if he can’t keep his medicine down. He died jest a couple of minutes ago. Guess he was p’izened, all right. A man’s a damn fool to eat them toadstools.”

“He might of got holt of some wolf p’izen by mistake,” suggested Black John. “Did he git all rigid an’ twitch around, like he was throwin’ some kind of a fit?”

“No, he jest laid there cold an’ sweaty-like. He wasn’t what you might say conscious. He moaned about his stummick hurtin’ turrible. An’ he was awful sick to it. He kep’ mumblin’ fer a drink, an’ when we’d give him the whisky, he couldn’t hold it down.”

“Did you try givin’ him a drink of water?”

“Hell, no! It takes somethin’ a damn sight stronger ’n water to cure a man as sick as he was. When whisky can’t fetch ’em around, nothin’ kin. ’Tain’t the fault of the whisky,” added the oldster, with conviction. “It would cured him if he could of kep’ it down.”

“Well, he’s dead now—no matter what ailed him,” said Black John. “You boys go on back to the fort, an’ we’ll call a coroner’s inquest to set on him. Swiftwater an’ I’ll fetch down the corpse in his canoe.”

“Pore Grover,” sniveled the man known as Cleveland, “he’s the best friend I ever had. We was sech good friends that each one of us made out a will, leavin’ all our stuff to the other one. I’ll stay with you two boys an’ help fetch him down to the fort.”

“You’ll go along with the rest like I said,” ordered Black John. “Me an’ Swiftwater kin handle him. We’ll have a canoe load, as it is.”

“What’s the idee of an inquish?” asked Cleveland. “We all know what he died of.”

“We like to do things up reg’lar on Halfaday,” replied Black John. “An inquest will give you a break, at that. It will establish his death as a matter of record, in case the public administrator would git suspicious about his will.”

“Guess yer right,” admitted the man. “Let’s go down an’ git it over with. Pore Grover. It’s too bad it had to be him that went first. I almost wisht it was me that got p’izened.”

“Sometimes,” said Black John, “a man gits his wish. An’ sometimes he don’t. It’s owin’ to how his luck runs.”

“Come on,” urged old Bettles, “let’s be gittin’ along. Here we got a saint’s day to celebrate, an’ we’ve wasted more ’n half of it a’ready!”

“Jest remember,” said Cleveland, turning to Black John as they left the shack, “that any property you might run acrost belongs to me.”

“You don’t need to worry none,” replied the big man. “We do things right on Halfaday. You’ll git what’s comin’ to you, an’ don’t you fergit it.”

When the others had gone, Black John glanced at the face of the corpse. “He never died of strychnine,” he opined. “I’ve saw several that did, an’ their face is always draw’d up in a grin.” Picking up a bucket that sat at the head of the bunk, he carried it outside. “Likewise,” he added, when he returned, “he never et no musheroons, neither. All he throw’d up, that I could see, was some pieces of meat an’ some rice.”

Stepping to the table, he stood for several moments staring down at the dirty dishes that littered its top. “He had tea an’ meat an’ rice fer his breakfast this mornin’. One of ’em was p’izened.”

“Prob’ly the tea,” suggested Swiftwater. “Mebbe Cleveland come over here an’ slipped the arsenic in his tea when he wasn’t lookin’.” Picking up the empty teacup, he carried it to the doorway and held it to the light as he poked among the damp leaves with a forefinger. “Shore he did!” he exclaimed. “There’s some of that white stuff in the bottom of the cup!”

Black John joined him and peered into the cup to see nearly a quarter of a teaspoonful of the white crystalline substance. “It ain’t the p’izen in the bottom of a cup that kills a man,” he said. “It’s the p’izen in his belly.”

“Shore it is,” admitted Swiftwater, “but what I claim, enough of it dissolved to kill him, an’ there was this much left. Like when you put sugar in yer tea—if you put in quite a bit, there’s gen’ally some left in the bottom of the cup after the tea’s drank.”

“Set the teapot on the stove an’ build up a fire, an’ we’ll soon know,” said Black John. “If arsenic will dissolve in hot tea, yer prob’ly right. If it don’t, yer wrong.”

Removing a bit of the white substance that he had taken from the tin in Cleveland’s duffel bag, Black John poured some hot tea into a cup, added the arsenic and stirred it slowly. Apparently none of it went into solution. “Score one fer the defense,” he said, and returned to continue his scrutiny of the table. “I believe I’ve got it,” he announced directly. “Rice is white. Arsenic wouldn’t show up on rice—an’ he’d eat it without ever noticin’.”

“Shore he would!”

“But,” continued Black John, “how would it git on his rice? A man don’t dish out his rice an’ leave it settin’ around to git cold whilst someone sprinkles p’izen on it. An’ how did the p’izen get in his tea?”

“Why, Cleveland might of be’n here when he started to eat, an’ watched his chanct to p’izen his grub.”

“On Halfaday we convict a man fer what he done, not what he might of done.”

Swiftwater Bill frowned. “It’s all right to be careful, John,” he said. “But it looks to me like yer carryin’ carefulness too fer. That damn cuss ain’t never goin’ to admit that he p’izened this man’s grub. Yer givin’ him all the breaks.”

Black John nodded. “An’ he’s goin’ to need all the breaks he kin git when I git this thing figgered out. There’s damn few murders got away with on Halfaday. Go ahead an’ hunt around the shack whilst I try an’ dope this business out. The way Cleveland spoke, he must believe there’d be somethin’ worth-while here in the way of property.”

After some minutes of search Swiftwater returned to the table where Black John stood in apparent contemplation of the dishes. “There ain’t nothin’ here except his reg’lar outfit,” he opined.

“Hunt up his ax,” said Black John, without removing his eyes from the table, “an’ pry up that third puncheon from the wall. When you stepped on it a minute ago I seen it give a little. This here is an old floor. The puncheons hadn’t ort to be loose.”

Swiftwater complied, and a moment later he reached into an aperture beneath the loosened puncheon and withdrew a thick packet. Hastily removing its canvas wrapping he disclosed several packets of bills which he proceeded to count. “Cripes! There’s eighteen thousan’ dollars!” he announced, “an’ they’ve got bank bands on ’em!”

Black John glanced at the packets which the other laid on the table. “Yeah,” he said. “They’re ondoubtless the fruits of some crime. It’s an American job—so we don’t have to worry none about it. It ain’t none of our business what a man done before he come to Halfaday. He was a fool to let Cleveland know about them bills, though!”

“But what’ll you do with ’em?”

“Put ’em in escrow.”

“What? Put ’em where?”

“In escrow. That’s the legal way of handlin’ funds like that. You see, it wouldn’t be no use to turn ’em over to the public administrator because he couldn’t never locate no heirs—Grover Harrison bein’ merely a synthetical name as you might say. Of course Cleveland would be entitled to inherit ’em under the will, but the chances is he ain’t goin’ to have time to spend ’em nohow. In sech cases, it’s customary to hold ’em in escrow fer a reasonable time. If at the end of that time no one has called fer ’em, they revert to the finder which in this case is you an’ me. I’ll fetch your share down next time I go to Dawson—in case they ain’t called fer. But we’ll be goin’ now. Wait till I do up my evidence.”

“You mean you’ve doped out how Cleveland got that p’izen onto the rice?”

“Cleveland didn’t do it. Harrison p’izened his own rice—an’ his own tea, too.”

“P’izened his own rice!”

“Shore. All Cleveland done was to mix the arsenic up with Harrison’s sugar here in this can. Then, when Harrison come to eat, he spooned it out of the can onto his rice an’ into his tea, too.” As he spoke, Black John poured some of the contents of the half-filled tin, that had served Harrison as a sugar bowl, into his hand and carried it to the light where both could plainly distinguish the poison crystals mixed with the sugar.

Returning the mixture to the tin, Black John poured it out onto a piece of paper, made it into a package and pocketed it. Then he refilled the can with fresh sugar from a cloth bag which he found on a shelf.

“We’ll load Harrison in the canoe now an’ git goin’,” he said. “No use keepin’ the boys waitin’. An’ besides, we’ll be wantin’ to go ahead with our celebration.”

“You’ll call the miners’ meetin’ first, won’t you? You shore as hell can’t claim you ain’t got the goods on that damn skunk now, kin you?”

“Well, we’ve got a motive in them bills, an’ we’ve got the intent to p’izen in tracin’ that stuff from Cleveland’s pack to Harrison’s belly—an’ we’ve got a dead man. The only thing we ain’t shore of is that them there white crystals is p’izen.”

“Ain’t shore they’re p’izen! Good God! Harrison’s dead, ain’t he?”

“Lookin’ at him from here, I’d say he has that appearance.”

“Well, what more do you want?”

“I couldn’t ask fer nothin’ better—in view of his probable character. But on Halfaday we don’t never take nothin’ fer granted. You believe that stuff is p’izen, I believe it’s p’izen, but that don’t make it p’izen. I’m goin’ to make shore. I’ve got a couple of old dogs that’s all crippled up with rheumatizm. I’ve be’n goin’ to put ’em out of their misery fer quite a while but kep’ puttin’ it off. We’ll try out this stuff on ’em an’ then we’ll know fer shore.”

“Looks like one dog would be enough,” said Swiftwater.

“Nope. Half a job is no job at all. One dog gits a dose of the stuff that was mixed with Harrison’s sugar. That’ll show if the stuff he et on his rice was p’izen. The other gits a dose of the stuff out of Cleveland’s pack. That’ll link Cleveland up with it. We’ll hold the inquest first an’ jest make it a matter of form. Then we’ll turn Cleveland loose and try out this stuff on them dogs. After that we’ll govern ourselves accordin’.”

Swiftwater Bill eyed the big man with approval. “No wonder Corporal Downey claims you do a good square job up here, John. By cripes, you as good as know this man is guilty, yet you’re shore givin’ him all the breaks.”

“Oh shore. We give ’em the breaks all right. I wouldn’t like to see no innocent man git convicted on Halfaday. Downey might think we was careless.” He paused and slipped the packets of bills into the front of his shirt. “Git holt of Harrison’s feet now an’ we’ll lay him in the canoe.”

As they were about to shove off, Black John hesitated. “Hold on a minute till I slip back to Cleveland’s tent,” he said. “I jest happened to think that I left that there six gun of his layin’ out on the floor. I’ll stick it back in his pack. There ain’t no use in him knowin’ anyone was prowlin’ around there.”

“Better fetch it along with you,” suggested Swiftwater. “He might take a notion to use it on someone when we come back to git him—if them dogs dies.”

Black John shook his head. “Cripes, Swiftwater, that would be larceny! We hang men fer stealin’ on Halfaday. Of course if Harrison had be’n shot we might be justified in takin’ the gun along fer evidence. But there ain’t no shootin’ involved in this case. It’s a good gun an’ I wouldn’t mind ownin’ it, but when a man lets his ethics git to slippin’ on him he’s in a hell of a fix. No—I’ll jest slip the gun back where I got it. I ain’t lookin’ fer Cleveland to put up no resistance nohow.”