Only half of the night gone! Would I be strong enough to endure the
other half?
_This Story Will be Concluded in the Next Issue of WEIRD TALES. Tell
Your Newsdealer to Reserve a Copy for You._
_You Will Find Blood-Curdling
Realism and a Smashing
Surprise in_
_The_ MYSTERY _of_
BLACK JEAN
_By_ JULIAN KILMAN
Aye, sir, since you have asked, there has been many a guess about where
Black Jean finally disappeared to.
He was a French-Canadian and a weed of a man--six-feet-five in his
socks; his eyes were little and close together and black; he wore a
long thin mustache that drooped; and he was as hairy as his two bears.
He just drifted up here to the North, I guess, picking up what scanty
living he could by wrestling with the bears and making them wrestle
each other. ’Twas in the King William hotel that many’s the time I’ve
seen Black Jean drink whisky by the cupful and feed it to the bears.
Yes, he was interesting, especially to us boys.
Along about the time the French-Canadian and his trick animals were
getting to be an old story, there comes--begging your pardon--a Yankee,
who said he would put up a windmill at Morgan’s Cove if he could get
the quicklime to make the mortar with.
Black Jean said he knew how to make lime and if they would give him
time he would put up a kiln. So the French-Canadian went to work and
built that limekiln you see standing there.
I was a youngster then, and I know how Black Jean, a little later,
built his cabin. I used to hide and watch him and his bears. They
worked like men together, with an ugly-looking woman that had joined
them. They put up the cabin, the bears doing most of the heavy lifting
work.
The place he picked for the cabin--over there where that clump of
trees.... No, not that way--more to the right, half a mile about--that
place is called “Split Hill,” because there is a deep crack in the rock
made by some earthquake. The French-Canadian built his cabin across the
crack, and as the woman quarreled with him about the bears sleeping in
the cabin he made a trap-door in the floor of the building and stuck a
small log down it, so the bears could climb up and down from their den
below.
The kiln, you can see for yourself, is a pit-kiln, so called because it
is in the side of a hill and the limestone is fed from the top and the
fuel from the bottom. Like a big chimney it works, and when Black Jean
got the fire started and going good it would roar up through the stone
and cook it. You could see the blaze for a mile.
One day Black Jean came to the King William looking for that Yankee.
Seems that individual hadn’t paid for his lime. When Black Jean didn’t
find him at the tavern he started for the Cove.
I have never known who struck first; but they say the Yankee called
Black Jean a damn frog-eater and there was a fight; and that afternoon
the French-Canadian came to the tavern with his bears and all three of
them got drunk. Black Jean used to keep a muzzle on the larger of the
bears, but by tilting the brute’s head he could pour whisky down its
throat. They got pretty drunk, and then someone dared Black Jean to
wrestle the muzzled bear.
There was a big tree standing in front of the tavern, and close by
was a worn-out pump having a big iron handle. Black Jean and the bear
went at it under the tree, the two of them clinching and hugging and
swearing until they both gasped for air. This day the big bear was
rougher than usual, and Black Jean lost his temper. It was his custom
when he got in too tight a place to kick the bear in the stomach; and
this time he began using his feet.
Suddenly we heard a rip of clothing. The bear had unsheathed his claws;
they were sharp as razors and tore Black Jean’s clothing into shreds
and brought blood. Black Jean broke loose, his eyes flashing, his teeth
gritting. Like lightning, he grabbed his dirk and leaped at the brute
and jabbed the knife into its eye and gave a quick twist. The eyeball
popped out and hung down by shreds alongside the bear’s jaw.
Never can I forget the human-sounding shriek that bear gave, and how my
father caught me up and scrambled behind the tree as the bear started
for Black Jean. But the animal was near blinded, and Black Jean had
time to jerk the iron handle out of the pump; and then, using it as if
it didn’t weigh any more than a spider’s thought, he beat the bear over
the head. He knocked it cold.
Then my father said: “That bear will kill you some day, Jean.”
Black Jean stuck the iron pump handle back into its place.
“_Bagosh!_ you t’ink dat true?” he sneered. “Mebbe I keel _her_, eh?”
Our place was next to the piece where Black Jean lived, and it was only
next morning we heard a loud yelling over at Split Hill. I was a little
fellow but spry, and when I reached Black Jean’s cabin I was ahead of
my father. I saw the French-Canadian leaning against a stump all alone,
the blood streaming from his face.
“By God, M’sieu!” he blurted, when my father came up. “She scrat’ my
eye out.”
My father thought he meant the woman.
“Who did?” he asked.
“Dat dam’ bear,” said Black Jean. “She just walk up an’ steeck her
foots in my eye.”
Father caught hold of Black Jean and helped him to the cabin.
“Which bear was it?” he asked.
Black Jean slumped forward without answering. He had fainted.
I helped father get him into the house--he was more than one man could
carry--and just as we went inside there was a growling and snarling,
and the big muzzled bear went sliding down that pole to her nest.
Well, we looked all around for the woman, expecting to get her help;
but we couldn’t find her, which was the first we knew that she had left
Black Jean.
It took the French-Canadian’s eye two or three months to heal, and then
he came to our place to get something to wear over the empty socket. So
father hammered out a circular piece of copper about twice the size of
a silver dollar and bored a hole in opposite sides for a leather thong
to hold it in place. Black Jean always wore it after that. He seemed
vain of that piece of copper, for he used to keep it polished and
shined until it glowed on a bright day like a bit of fire.
* * * * *
That fall the settlers opened up the first school in the district and
imported a woman teacher from “The States.”
I must tell you about that teacher. She was a thin, little mite of a
thing that you would think the wind would blow away. Some said she was
pretty and some that she wasn’t. I could have called her pretty if her
eyes hadn’t been so black--hereabouts you don’t see many eyes that are
black--brown, maybe, and blue and gray, but not black. Fact is, there
were just two people in these parts having those black eyes: Black Jean
and the little mite of a school teacher.
Well she came. And she hadn’t been here a month before it was noticed
that Black Jean was coming to town more regular. And, what is more, he
was coming down by the school and waiting around there with his bears.
This went on. They say that at first she didn’t pay any attention
to him, but I can’t speak for that as I was too young. But in time
there was talk and it came to me: then I watched. And I remember one
afternoon after the teacher let us out we all went over to where the
bears were. The teacher followed.
Black Jean was grinning and showing his white teeth.
“Beautiful ladee,” says he. “Sooch eyes, mooch black like the back of a
water-bug.”
Teacher smiled and said something I couldn’t understand. It must have
been French. I had never seen a Frenchman around women before, and
Black Jean’s manners were new to me. Here was a big weed of a man
bowing and scraping and standing with his cap in his hand. We boys
laughed at that--holding his cap in his hand.
The long and short of it was the French-Canadian was sparking the
school teacher. And everybody talked about it, of course; they said it
was a shame; they said if she didn’t have sense enough to see what kind
of a man he was, someone should tell her.
I have often wondered since what would have happened if anybody _had_
gone to that woman with stories of Black Jean. I know I’d never dared
to, because, without knowing why, I was afraid of her. I guess maybe
that is why the others didn’t, either.
There was no mistaking she was encouraging to Black Jean. She didn’t
seem to object in the slightest to his attentions, and I can see them
yet: her, little and pretty and in a white dress, and Black Jean
lingering there with his bears, dirty, and towering head and shoulders
above her.
* * * * *
Black Jean kept coming and people went on talking, and finally somebody
said she had been to Split Hill.
And one day I began to understand it, too. It was the time she was
punishing some pupils. Three of them were lined up before her, and she
started along whacking the outstretched hands with a stout ruler. Right
in front of where I was sitting stood Ben Anger. He was the smallest of
the lot and was trembling like a leaf.
Her first clip at him must have raised a welt on his hands, because he
whimpered. She hit him again, and he closed his fingers. At that she
caught up the jackknife he’d been whittling at his desk with and pried
at his fingers until the blood came.
Sitting where I was, I saw her face while she was at it. It had the
expression of a female devil. I didn’t say anything to my folks about
that; but I wasn’t surprised when word came next week that we were to
have a new teacher--the little one had gone to live with Black Jean.
Well, there was more talk--talk of rail-riding the pair of them out of
the district. But nothing was done, and one evening, a month later,
there was a rap at our door and the French-Canadian staggered in. He
was carrying the school teacher in his arms.
“What has happened?” my father demanded.
“Dat dam’ leetle bear,” snarled Black Jean--“She try to keel Madam.”
He laid the woman on the bed. She looked pretty badly cut up, and we
sent for the doctor. Mother would only let her stay in the house that
night, being shocked at the way she was living with the French-Canadian.
It turned out she wasn’t much hurt, and father kept trying to find out
just what had happened. But he couldn’t. _I_ knew, however. Most of my
time, when I wasn’t in school or running errands for the folks, I was
spending watching that couple, and only that afternoon I had seen her
stick a hot poker into the side of the smaller bear and wind it up into
his fur until he screamed. And the bear must have bided his time and
gone for her--those brutes were just like folks.
Next morning Black Jean came and got his woman, and I stole out and
followed. I knew there would be more to it. I was right. The two of
them went into the cabin, and pretty soon I heard a rumpus and out
comes Black Jean with the smaller bear and behind them the woman. She
was carrying a cowhide whip.
The French-Canadian had a chain looped about each forepaw of the
animal, and, pulling it under a tree, he tossed the free end of the
chain over a stout branch and yanked the bear off his feet. Then he
wound the end of the chain about the trunk of the tree and sat down. So
the bear hung, his feet trussed, and squirming and helpless.
And there in that clear day and warm sunshine, the woman started at the
bear with the whip. She lashed it until it cried like a child. Black
Jean watched the proceedings and grinned.
“Bah!” he shouted, after the woman had begun to tire. “She t’ink you
foolin’. Heet harder. Heet the eyes!”
Again the woman went at it and kept it up until the bear quit moaning,
and its head drooped and its body got limp. I was feeling sick at the
sight, and I stole away.
But next morning, when I crawled back, there was the bear still
hanging. It was dead.
* * * * *
That woman was a fair mate for Black Jean.
She kept him working steady over here to this kiln--most any night you
could see the reflection of the blaze--and it was something to watch
Black Jean when he was feeding his fire with the light playing on that
copper piece and making it look like a big red eye flashing in the
night. I saw it many times.
And it was noticed that Black Jean wasn’t getting drunk any more, and
he wasn’t wrestling the one-eyed bear any more. He had good reason for
that. I began to believe Black Jean was afraid of that brute.
But he made it work for him in the kiln, using the whip, and it was a
curious animal, growling and snarling most of the time, as it pulled
and lifted big sticks of wood and lugged them to the kiln.
When Black Jean wasn’t working he was over at the cabin where he would
follow the woman around like a dog. She could make him do anything. She
was getting thinner and crosser, and I was more afraid of her than ever
I was of Black Jean.
Once she caught me watching her from my spying-place in a tree. She
had been petting the one-eyed bear, rubbing his snout and feeding him
sugar. She ran to the house and got a rifle and, my friends, I came
down out of that tree lickety split.
When I reached the ground she didn’t say a word--just let her eyes rest
on mine. After that I was more careful.
* * * * *
Then something happened.
I was hoeing corn one afternoon in a field next the road when I spied
a woman coming along from the village. She was big and blowsy and was
wearing a shawl. I knew she was headed for Black Jean’s, because she
climbed through the fence on his side of the road.
Keeping her in sight, I followed along my side and crossed over when
I came to a place where she couldn’t see me. I followed her because I
knew she was the woman who had come to Black Jean when he first landed
in the district. She walked up to the cabin, and I was wondering who
she would find home, when out comes Black Jean.
“_Sacre!_” he exclaimed, putting one hand to his eye. “Spik queeck! Ees
it Marie?”
“Yes,” the woman said. “I have come back.”
Black Jean looked around fearfully.
“Wat you want?” he demanded.
“I’d like to know who knocked your eye out,” she laughed.
Black Jean did not laugh.
“You steal hunder’ dollar from me an’ run ’way,” he snarled. “_Bagosh!_
You give me dat monee.”
“You fool!” said the woman. “You think I don’t know where you got that
money? You killed--”
A sound of rustling leaves in the wood nearby interrupted.
“_Ssh!_” hissed Black Jean, his face blanching. “For de love o’ God,
nod so loud.”
He listened a moment; then his expression grew crafty. His teeth
showed, and he went close to the woman and said something and started
into the cabin.
The next instant I knew someone else had seen them. It was no other
than the little ex-school teacher--and she was running away! I lay
still a moment, scared out of my wits. Then I went home.
“Did you see Black Jean’s wife?” my mother asked.
“You mean the school teacher woman?” I said.
“Yes,” my mother said. “Who else?”
“I did,” I said, “a while ago.”
“I mean just now,” said my mother, breathing quick. “She rushed in
here, right into the house, and before I could stop her she snatched
your father’s rifle from the wall and ran out.”
* * * * *