Strange Doings on Halfaday Creek

James B. Hendryx

Description

Cushing’s Fort on Halfaday Creek is conveniently located in Canadian territory close to the border of United States territory, so that men in ill repute with the Mounted Police can elude them easily. There are “outlaws” of Halfaday Creek live, a band of doughty prospectors ruled by their self-appointed czar, Black John Smith, one of many John Smiths that inhabit that notorious lair.Law and order, however, are nowhere so well maintained as on Halfaday Creek, and Black John dispenses justice with the wisdom of a Solomon and a heart as big as the biggest nugget ever found in the gold rush days. Murder is one of the minor hangable offenses there; skullduggery, connivin’ and conspirin’ are punished by the rope, after a miners’ meeting passes an irrevocable sentence. Confidence men, city slickers, anyone who would take advantage of another man, woman or child, are dealt with sharply, and with a geniality that disarms evildoers unfamiliar with Black John’s swift, efficient legal procedure.In this warmhearted and humorous chronicle of strange doings on Halfday, Corporal Downey of the Mounted and Black John and Old Cush punish some murderers, claim robbers and scoundrels who have made the mistake of assuming that the “outlaws” are not men of honor. Black John needs no introduction to his many admirers; he is one of out most honest and lovable rogues.

Sujets

• Westerns
• Historical fiction
• Pulp Fiction

Informations

• Publié par: Altus Press
• Date de parution: 16 décembre 2019
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9788835346272
• Langue: English

Extrait

Strange Doings on Halfaday Creek
by
James B. Hendryx

Altus Press • 2017
Copyright Information

© 2017 Altus Press

Publication History:
“All the Evidence” originally appeared in the May 25, 1938 issue of Short Stories magazine (vol. 162, no. 6). Reprinted by arrangement with the Estate of James B. Hendryx.
“Bear Paws” originally appeared in the December 10, 1938 issue of Short Stories magazine (vol. 165, no. 5). Reprinted by arrangement with the Estate of James B. Hendryx.
“Black John Assists at a Wedding” originally appeared in the October 25, 1937 issue of Short Stories magazine (vol. 161, no. 2). Reprinted by arrangement with the Estate of James B. Hendryx.
“Black John Files a Claim” originally appeared in the July 25, 1937 issue of Short Stories magazine (vol. 160, no. 2). Reprinted by arrangement with the Estate of James B. Hendryx.
“Father John” originally appeared in the March 10, 1941 issue of Short Stories magazine (vol. 174, no. 5). Reprinted by arrangement with the Estate of James B. Hendryx.
“Mail Order to Halfaday” originally appeared in the March 10, 1942 issue of Short Stories magazine (vol. 178, no. 5). Reprinted by arrangement with the Estate of James B. Hendryx.

No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, without permission in writing from the publisher.

Designed by Matthew Moring/ Altus Press

Series Executive Consultant: Richard Hall

Special Thanks to Robert Loomis, Richard Moore, Cynthia Whyte, & the Leelanau Historical Society
All the Evidence

JOE WEST leaned on his paddle and looked down into the upturned eyes of the girl seated on a stone at his feet, her hands clasping her knees.
“I wish you wouldn’t go,” she was saying. “I—I’ll miss you. I don’t know what I’ll do without you.”
“You don’t have to do without me,” replied the young man quickly. “That’s what I’m tellin’ you, Elsie. You go with me. We’ll get married as soon as we hit Dawson.”
The girl shook her head wearily. “No, Joe, I can’t go. It wouldn’t be right—”
“It is, too, right!” he contradicted vehemently. “It ain’t right for old Tom to stand in the way of our gettin’ married. You love me, don’t you?”
The girl’s eyes dropped before his burning gaze to scrutinize the sand at her feet. She nodded. “You know I love you, Joe.”
“Sure, I know—an’ I love you. Why, Elsie—I never knew what it was to love a woman till I come here to Goose Crick an’ got acquainted with you. An’ old Tom ain’t got no right to keep us from gettin’ married.”
“He’s my father,” the girl replied.
“Yes, an’ you’re goin’ on twenty, an’ you’ve kep’ his cabin, an’ done his cookin’, an’ cranked his windlass fer him ever since you was big enough to, an’ it’s time you was thinkin’ about yer own life. You got a right to a home of yer own, an’ a man of yer own.”
“But, Joe, what would he do without me?”
“Jest like all the others does—batch it, er marry some woman.”
“Why don’t you stay on the crick? Maybe next year he’d—”
“No, he wouldn’t. Not next year, nor the year after—an’ you know it. An’ as fer me stayin’ on the crick—what would I do here? I finished my clean-up today—seventy-six ounces, twelve hundred dollars fer a whole winter’s hard work. I could have got four time that much workin’ fer wages upriver. Old Tom’s got the only decent claim on Goose Crick. Everyone else quit an’ went upriver last year. I stayed on account of—of you. I was hopin’ I’d locate a good pocket, like old Tom, but there ain’t no more pockets—she’s been prospected from one end to the other.”
“There’s one other man on the crick,” said the girl. “He’s up to the cabin, now. He and dad are playing the phonograph.”
Joe West gave a contemptuous snort. “Huh—Charlie Gamble, eh? He’s too damn lazy to locate a claim an’ sink a shaft. Too lazy even to work fer wages. He fools along snipin’ the bars, an’ hen-scratchin’ the flats fer a bare livin’. All he wants to do is tootle-te-toot on that flute of his, an’ play his phonograph, an’ listen to himself sing. I come to this country to make a stake. An’ with my claim what it is—there ain’t nothin’ on Goose Crick fer me.”
“I’m on Goose Crick,” reminded the girl, without raising her eyes.
“Yeah—an’ what good does that do me? Come on, Elsie—look at it reasonable. Marry me, an’ we’ll go somewheres an’ hunt us up a location. Them seventy-six ounces I took out will give us a grubstake. We’ll make good—the two of us together—we couldn’t help it.”
THE shadow had crept higher and higher on the opposite rock wall, till only the rim rocks caught the early evening sunlight. The deep blue eyes of the girl lifted to the gilded pinnacles. “I love you, Joe. You know that. And I’d marry you this very minute, if it wasn’t for him.”
From the direction of the cabin, a short distance back from the creek, came the scratchy cadence of Charlie Gamble’s phonograph:
“When you and I were y-o-u-n-g, Maggie—”
Joe West stooped, drew his canoe a bit higher onto the sandbar, tossed his paddle into it, and turned abruptly onto the foot-trail that led to the cabin.
The girl rose hastily from the stone. “Wait, Joe! Joe—where you going?”
The man paused on the brink of the short, sharp pitch. “I’m goin’ to tell old Tom—”
“No, no! It won’t do any good! He told you once you can’t marry me. He won’t change his mind.”
“It’s time someone changed it for him, then,” retorted the man bitterly, “That other time I asked him; I’m tellin’ him this time!”
“No, no, Joe! Please! He’ll be angry, He—he might—” She paused, as though wondering, herself, what he might do. And again the doleful, wailing cadence of the phonograph broke upon their ears:
“But now were growing o-o-o-o-l-l-d, Maggie—”
“Listen to that!” The girl detected a grim note in Joe West’s voice. “It’s like us. Bye an’ bye we’ll be growin’ old, an’ it’ll be too late!” He turned, and was gone.
She called, “Joe, Joe!” But there was no answer, and she sank back onto her stone and buried her face in her hands.

II
CHARLIE GAMBLE was slipping the cylindrical wax record into its pasteboard case. Tom Nolan looked up at the sound of footsteps, and frowned as he recognized young Joe West. He and Gamble were seated, one on either side of a smudge before the door of the pole and mud cabin, a partially emptied black bottle between them. As the younger man came to a halt before the smudge, Nolan lifted the bottle from the ground and proffered it, without rising. “Have a snort?” he asked, but with no cordiality in his tone.
“No,” West declined shortly. “I come to tell you that me an’ Elsie is goin’ to get married.”
Tom Nolan leaped to his feet, jaw thrust forward, eyes blazing. “Yer goin’ to what?” he roared, swaying a bit unsteadily on his feet.
“You heard it,” replied the younger man curtly.
“Yeah, an’ you heard me when I told you, a month back, that she couldn’t marry you!”
“Listen, Tom, you’re a little drunk, an’ there ain’t no use gettin’ excited about this. But the fact is I finished cleanin’ up my dump today, an’ I ain’t made wages—nor nowheres near wages. I’m through with Goose Crick. I’m pullin’ out in a day or so—an’ Elsie’s goin’ with me.”
“Like hell she is! Who’s goin’ to crank my windlass? Tell me that—an’ who’s goin’ to do my cookin’ if she goes off?”
“Do yer own cookin’—or get married again.”
“Married! Me—goin’ on sixty, an’ git married agin! Look at me! Where’s any woman to marry? An’ who’n hell’d have me, if there was? Some klooch, mebbe, er some skirt that would try to grab off my dust!” Stooping, the man recovered the bottle and took a deep pull at it.
Across the smudge Charlie Gamble picked up a rude case fashioned from a length of hollow balsam, opened it, and removed the filthy cloth covering from a dilapidated flute. Picking up the bottle which Nolan returned to the ground, he took a drink, wet his lips with his tongue, fitted the mouthpiece of the flute to them and blew a few notes, apparently entirely oblivious of the heated words that were passing back and forth between the other two, as his fingers fumbled uncertainly at the keys.
None of the three noticed the girl who hastened up the trail, from the creek and slipped silently behind a scrub spruce at the edge of the tiny clearing.
“That’s what they’d be after—my dust—any woman that’d marry me,” Nolan continued, belligerently. “But they don’t git my dust—not a damn ounce of it! They can’t no woman make a fool out of me! Twelve hundred an’ twenty-seven ounces in my cache—an’ three, four ounces more goin’ in every day.”
“An’ by all good rights, the half of it belongs to Elsie—the way she’s stuck here on Goose Crick, workin’ like hell every day. She’s never havin’ no fun like other girls.”
Nolan leered drunkenly. “So that’s it, eh? That’s why yer so hell-bent on marryin’ Elsie—figgerin’ to git the half of my dust along with her!”
“You lie!” cried West, his voice trembling with anger. “I wouldn’t touch an ounce of yer damn dust! I’ve got enough fer the two of us—an’ some day I’ll have more dust than you ever seen! An’ if you wasn’t half drunk I’d make you eat them words, along with yer front teeth!”
The older man lurched toward him, fists clenched. “Git off this claim, an’ don’t you never set foot on it agin!” he roared. “Ye’ll never marry her while I’m alive!”
“The sooner yer dead the better then! Come on—start somethin’! But if you do, by God, I’ll finish it!”
The older man hesitated, and at that instant, the girl slipped swiftly from behind the tree and, stepping between the two, faced West with flashing eyes.
“Go away from here!” she cried hysterically. “I won’t marry