Читать книгу Black John of Halfaday Creek - James B. Hendryx - Страница 7

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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!”

“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.”