Читать книгу Black John of Halfaday Creek - James B. Hendryx - Страница 9

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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.

“That’s over on the American side, an’ we told the U.S. marshal about that time on Birch Crick an’ that other will. He done some lookin’ around, but Fatty was somewhere under the ice, an’ nothin’ to show it wasn’t an accident. So Snook got his stuff, too. But we know’d different, ’cause Fatty was a good riverman an’ he wouldn’t git ketched in no ice jam onlest he was shoved in. It looked like the best luck a pardner of Snook could have would be that his claim wasn’t no good.

“The next one was the Bird Man. He wasn’t no p’ardner of Snook’s, but Snook was guidin’ him. That was on the American side, too. There wasn’t much doin’ that summer—no new strikes nor nothin’, an’ I was tendin’ bar down to Eagle.

“This here Bird Man, he was some scientist from the States an’ he come into the country fer to git samples of all the birds there was. He’d shoot anything that wore feathers, from a hummin’ bird to a swan, an’ skin it an’ save the hide. An’ besides that he took samples of all the kinds of flowers an’ grass an’ weeds he could git holt of an’ saved ’em.

“Most of these here scientists is huntin’ rocks—but the Bird Man didn’t give a damn about rocks—birds an’ grass was his weakness.

“Snook, he hired out to guide him, an’ they’d be gone out along the cricks fer a spell, an’ then they’d come into Eagle, an’ the Bird Man would spend a few days sortin’ out what he’d got an’ packin’ it away in boxes.

“One time they come in an’ the Bird Man had a lot of toadstools which he’d picked, an’ he claimed they was good to eat. He took ’em to Pop Bascom’s restaurant an’ told Pop to cook ’em. Pop allowed they was p’izen, but the Bird Man claimed they wasn’t, so Pop went ahead an’ cooked ’em, an’ the Bird Man set there in the restaurant an’ et ’em, an’ a lot of us set around watchin’ him to see if he would die—but he didn’t—an’ I’ll bet he et a quart of the damn stuff.

“Besides these ones Pop cooked, he fetched in some other kinds. But he cooked them hisself, separate, an’ et jest a little bit of each kind—one each day. He claimed that he suspicioned they might be p’izen ones, so he was tryin’ ’em out. One kind did make him sort of sick to his stummick fer a while, but he hadn’t et enough to kill him, an’ he got all right next day.

“I s’pose that’s a damn good way to find out if a thing is p’izen. But it takes guts to do it, an’ what I claim—who would give a damn if it was p’izen er not? There’s plenty other stuff to eat besides toadstools.

“Well, about a month after that Snook come bustin’ into Eagle one day an’ claimed the Bird Man was sick as hell out in the hills. Old Doc Smedly went out an’ found him sick, all right—so damn sick Doc couldn’t do nothin’ but jest set around an’ watch him die. Couldn’t git no medicine down him. He’d throw it up before it could take holt.

“Snook claimed that the Bird Man had cooked up a mess of them toadstools, er whatever it was he et down to the restaurant, so most folks wasn’t surprised to hear he’d got p’izened. But when they fetched the body in, an’ we found out it didn’t have no more ’n about ten dollars an’ some change on it, we began to wonder if it was musheroons, er somethin’ else, that killed the Bird Man. Because we all know’d he carried a roll with him—an’ the most of us remembered about Buck Huston an’ Fatty Eckinrod.

“We told Doc about it, but he claimed that the only kind of p’izen there was that he could of got holt of was strychnine, fer to p’izen wolves with, an’ he claimed it worn’t strychnine p’izen the Bird Man died of—the symptoms was different.

“So we buried the Bird Man, an’ some society er museum er somethin’ back in the States sent on some money fer to ship back his samples, an’ that’s all there was to it—except you can’t never make me believe the Bird Man died of eatin’ musheroons. He know’d too damn much about ’em to eat a p’izen kind—an’ his pockets bein’ damn near empty when he always carried a roll!”

“How come,” queried Black John, “that if you was all these places where this here Snook was, he ain’t recognized you on Halfaday?”

“Oh hell, I was different them days. I had two arms an’ no whiskers. An’ my name was a little different, too.”

“Well,” opined Moosehide Charley, “if a constable an’ a doctor an’ a U.S. marshal couldn’t ketch this damn cuss at his murders, it looks like he’d git away with another one, too.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” grinned Black John. “I’ve saw constables that wasn’t none too wide between the ears, an’ doctors, too. An’ my own experience down around Fort Gibbon, in the matter of that army pay roll, wasn’t nothin’ that would put me in no awe of the acumen of U.S. marshals. Offhand, from what One Armed has told us, I’d say that if this here Harrison didn’t p’izen hisself with musheroons, like Cleveland claims, he’d be’n fed a dose of arsenic.”

“Arsenic!” exclaimed Swiftwater Bill. “Where in hell would he git arsenic in this country?”

“My guess would be that that roll of bills wasn’t the only thing this here Snook, alias Cleveland, took off’ n that Bird Man. You see I happen to rec’lect the Bird Man—er another one jest like him. He come up-river from the coast whilst I was sojournin’ around Fort Gibbon. He was an interestin’ sort of a cuss. I got acquainted with him an’ I kind of liked him. He hired him a Siwash fer a guide down there, an’ he’d come in every little while with his specimens, jest like One Armed claimed he done at Eagle, an’ I’d help him sort ’em an’ pack ’em away.

“He’d explain all about the different kinds—most of which I’ve fergot. But I ain’t fergot that he dusted them bird skins with arsenic an’ plaster of Paris. The arsenic, he explained, preserved the skins an’ kep’ the bugs out of ’em, an’ the plaster blotted up the grease an’ the blood. He had plenty of arsenic with him—an’ Snook could of got holt of it easy enough.”

“By God, John, I believe yer right!” exclaimed Swiftwater Bill, with enthusiasm. “An’ now we’ll see fer ourselves how this jestice works out that we’ve be’n hearin’ about down to Dawson! They all claim down there that no man kin git away with a crime on Halfaday. When will you call yer miners’ meetin’, John?”

“Well, we’ve got to go slow. We don’t make no mistakes on Halfaday—because you can’t never rectify a dead man. I liked the Bird Man. He was a damn nice fella—if it’s the same one. I——”

“He was kind of littlish, an’ redheaded, an’ he didn’t wear no hat,” cut in One-Armed John.

“That’s him to a T. Perfessor Amadon, his name was.”

“That’s him! I rec’lect the name, now you’ve spoke it.”

“H-u-u-m-m, he was a friend of mine,” mused Black John, half aloud. And Swiftwater Bill noted a steely glint in the blue-gray eyes as the big man added: “What a hell of a way to die!”

“Do you know arsenic symptoms?” asked Moosehide.

“No, but I know strychnine symptoms,” Black John replied. “We’ll have to git along with them. We’ll go up the crick now. You go to Harrison’s shack. I’ll show you the one. Stick around there an’ keep this Snook, er Cleveland, there on one pretext er another. Don’t say nothin’ about us comin’ back with the meat. Let ’em think we’re still out in the hills. Jest tell ’em you come up to see if you could do somethin’—fetch Bettles up some more whisky er somethin’. Me an’ Swiftwater’ll slip on to Cleveland’s tent, on the next claim to Harrison’s, an’ look around a little.”

Leaving the saloon, the three proceeded rapidly up the creek for three or four miles when Black John halted and turned to Moosehide. “Harrison’s in the first shack around this bend,” he said. “Go on up there an’ do like I said, an’ me an’ Swiftwater’ll slip around through the brush to Cleveland’s. When we git through there we’ll go to Harrison’s, like we jest come up from the fort.”

Arriving at the tent, Black John threw back the flap and entered. “We’ll find out, now, if that damn cuss has got any arsenic in his outfit,” he said.

“I wouldn’t know it if I seen it,” said Swiftwater.

“It’s fine white crystals, somethin’ like sugar, only finer ground. I used to help the perfessor mix it with the plaster of Paris an’ sprinkle it on some of them skins which he hadn’t done a thorough job on whilst he was out in the bush—‘in the field,’ he called it—like it was a cow pasture, er somethin’. But that was jest his way of speakin’. An’ he had the damnedest names fer the commonest kind of a bird or a flower. A woodpecker wouldn’t be a woodpecker to him. It would be a rhinohinkus spoodukus Canadensis, er some sech a name as that. Cripes, if Cush thinks I use big words, he’d ort to know’d that perfessor!”

“Mebbe I better stay outside an’ kind of keep a lookout in case this here Cleveland would come an’ ketch us goin’ through his stuff,” suggested Swiftwater.

“It ain’t necessary,” replied Black John, his arm thrust to the shoulder into a duffel bag. “In case we should find he’s got arsenic, an’ he started to do somethin’ about it, it would ondoubtless only serve to hasten his doom. If we don’t find none we might have to resort to certain methods to make him tell where he’s got it cached—an’ it might as well be here as anywhere. He’s got a six gun, anyhow,” he added, examining a loaded pistol which he withdrew from the duffel bag and laid to one side.

Presently he withdrew his arm from the bag again, and Swiftwater saw that the huge fingers gripped a stout tin with a small screw top. He looked on with interest as Black John removed the metal cap and poured about a teaspoonful of a white crystalline substance into his palm. Without a word the big man replaced the cap, and after transferring the crystals from his hand to an empty gold sack, pocketed the sack and returned the tin to the duffel bag, being careful to replace it where he had found it in the extreme bottom of the bag.

“The stuff in that can was arsenic, wasn’t it?” asked Swiftwater.

“Such is prob’ly the case,” Black John replied. “It looks jest like what the perfessor claimed was arsenic, an’ it’s in the same kind of a can he carried it in, an’ the label says it is.”

“The dirty bastard!” exclaimed Swiftwater. “That cinches the case agin him!”

Black John shook his head. “No, not yet. Like I told you, on Halfaday our verdicks has a permanent effect on a man’s career. We don’t want to make no mistakes. I ain’t shore this is arsenic. If it is, I ain’t shore that arsenic is p’izen. It’s got that reputation—an’ the perfessor claimed it is, an’ he ort to know. But all that’s only hearsay. Besides, admittin’ that it’s arsenic, an’ that arsenic is p’izen, that ain’t sayin’ that Harrison didn’t eat some musheroons that p’izened him. An’ even if he didn’t we’ve got to find out if, beyond a reasonable doubt, Cleveland could of give him a dose of arsenic. On Halfaday, we don’t call our miners’ meetin’s till I’m damn good an’ shore a man is guilty. Even a pardner-killin’, p’izenin’ son of a bitch like this here Snook is entitled to all the breaks he kin git—an’ he generally needs ’em. Come on, we’ll slip over to Harrison’s cabin an’ see what luck old Bettles an’ Cush had with the whisky.”