Halfaday Creek Series
Black John Smith and the Outlaws of Halfaday Creek in the Canadian Yukon
THE SAGA OF HALFADAY CREEK by James B Hendryx – Book Review – Black John Smith – Corporal Downey
When I picked my Top 10 Writers of Mountie Fiction, I got a lot of feedback. All of it positive. A bunch of folks especially agreed with James B Hendryx.
As a young man, James Hendryx had really been to the Canadian Klondike. He lived through the Greatest Gold Rush. And, being an avid outdoorsman all his life, continued to visit the Northlands for years to come. And he wrote about it all, adding imagination and humour to first-hand experience. Becoming an accomplished wilderness and Western writer.
His most popular yarns were his magazine novelettes set on Halfaday Creek — the Community of Outlawed Men. Starting with OUTLAWS OF HALFADAY CREEK, he collected a total of thirteen volumes of Halfaday books in his lifetime. And in modern times, Altus Press has released three more new books, for a total of sixteen titles.[1]
Here’s my Book Review of his SAGA OF HALFADAY CREEK. Jim’s SAGA was originally published by Doubleday, New York, 1947.
Jim Hendryx took seven of his Yukon Gold Rush fiction novelettes published between 1936 and 1947 and connected them into a novel-length yarn, broken into 32 short chapters. Chapter titles included “A Doctor Settles on Halfaday,” “One-Armed John Makes a Discovery,” “Bob Farnum Makes a Strike,” “Constable Brink Writes Off His Case,” “Corporal Downey Mentions a Murder,” “Black John Buys Some Lead,” “Cush Speaks His Mind,” “Constable Buck Observes and Deducts” and “Black John Solves a Crime.” Looks like a lot of Mounted Police Presence in our favourite Outlaw Hideaway, eh?
If you’ve never met Black John, you’re in for a great time. Wanted in American territory (Alaska), the big man with the full black beard and booming voice heads a community of men hiding from the Law just inside the Canadian border, along a creek just “half a day’s paddling” from Alaska.
John keeps the community out of trouble by solving the crimes that always seem to be happening in a settlement of outlaws. He controls things with a firm hand — keeping things “Moral.” [2]
His punishment for everything from skullduggery to murder is simple — hanging!
Strange thing is, he makes friends with a Man of the Law: Corporal Downey of the Canadian Mounted Police.
“We’ve got a log cabin about a mile acrost the Line. The Alasky Country Club, we call it. We keep it grubbed an’ lickered, so when Downey shows up on the crick, the Yukon wanteds slip acrost an hole up there till he goes back to Dawson. Then they come back.”
And the Alasky Country Club is where Big John and the Miners’ Committee take the miscreants found guilty to meet their Maker. Rough justice.
The community itself consisted of tents, shacks and solid log cabins. Cush’s Fort, the combined trading post and saloon, was run by Lyme Cushing. Old Cush was big John’s closest friend. Or co-conspirator, depending on how you look at things.
There’s a wild assortment of different characters in THE SAGA OF HALFADAY CREEK.
There’s the dying man Big John and One-Arm find on the rocky edge of the White River. The man lay at the end of Fish Rapids, his body beaten up by the wild water. And in one hand — a golden nugget bigger than that hand.
And there’s the stranger who identifies himself as “Franklin K. Jones, M.D.” Black John has his suspicions about this stranger. But after Jones sets and splinters Red John’s broken arm and cuts out Short John’s appendix so slick, the Community warmly welcomes the doctor. When Corporal Downey arrives seeking to solve a series of murderous pay-roll robberies, it looks like Jones is the culprit. But fingerprints take the doctor off the hook… Until they learn the fingerprints are of a criminal dead and buried.
And there’s Constable Rollo Buck of Her Majesty’s North-West Mounted Police. Black John finds him camped alone on the bank of the Yukon River. “Corporal Downey left me here and went off up some damn crick to investigate a murder. I’ve got a hunch that he wanted to hog all the credit for solving that murder. He can’t make a damn fool out of me!”
“That’s right, Rollo,” Black John agreed gravely. “It looks to me like God saved him the trouble.” John decided to get to know this officer Buck.
NOTE: Besides publishing three new titles, collecting the remaining Halfaday stories, Altus/Steeger Books have also reprinted a number of older titles, including SAGA.
For More, See My ARCHIVED Post HALFADAY CREEK SERIES by James B Hendryx – List In Order – Black John Smith
AS WELL AS MY POPULAR MOUNTIE FICTION POST:
“THE WRITERS OF THE NORTH-WEST MOUNTED POLICE” — MY MOST POPULAR LITERARY HISTORY POST!
“Thanks for a wonderful in-depth article on Mountie fiction. I’m a big fan of the Mounties and I really enjoyed the amount of details you provided and found many, many more books to put on my wish list.” Jack Wagner, creator of Mon Legionnaire
“I just discovered your blog recently and need to dig deeper into it. I’m all for anything that increases people’s knowledge about these older, mostly forgotten authors. That post on Mountie fiction is great!” James Reasoner, writer of Traditional Westerns
An extensive survey of the writers who created the magnificent Mythology of our North-West Mounted Police. I’ve presented my Top 10 Mountie Fiction Writers in some detail, including James B Hendryx. And a look at many, many other authors. Amply illustrated with marvelous magazine and book covers. READ MY ARCHIVED ARTICLE ==> The GREATEST AUTHORS OF NORTH-WEST MOUNTED POLICE FICTION.
“No other nation owes its primary Mythology to such a mix of international writers! Four Americans, three Canadians, an Australian, an Englishman and a Norwegian. The Aussie and Norwegian actually served as Mounties.” – Brian Alan Burhoe
“Live Free, Mon Ami!” – Brian Alan Burhoe
[1] “For a total of sixteen titles…”
Although for a few years, there was the rumor of a seventeenth title: TERROR ON HALFADAY CREEK, published in 1967.
Word was that it was edited and possibly written by a family member. Possibly by James Hendryx Jr, who had written some early Western fiction as well as Horror.
Well, in a sense there’s some truth in that, It was a new Title. Put out by a UK mass media paperback house. But in fact it was a straight reprint of Jim’s 1950 BADMEN ON HALFADAY CREEK.
“Hi, Tommy!” Steve greeted the young man who stepped out of the cabin. “I want you should meet up with my friend Black John Smith, prob’ly the orneriest son of a gun that ever hit the Yukon.”
The younger man smiled. “That’s not the way I heard it,” he said as he shook the big man’s hand. “The Broncho Kid told me all about how you saved him from being hanged for a murder he didn’t commit. And later how you made it possible for him and his sister to develop their claims.”
White teeth showed beneath the black beard as the big man returned the other’s smile.
“My benefactions has ondoubtless be’n greatly exaggerated,” he said.
“It ain’t no particular credit to a man if he saves an innocent man from gettin’ hung. An’ as for cuttin’ the kid’s sister in on that deal—hell, it was the least I could do, seein’ she was the one that slipped me the information that made the deal possible. As I rec’lect the incident, it netted us a profit of fifty thousan’ apiece, or some sech matter. Nice little layout you’ve got here,” he added, glancing at the neat log cabin. “How’s she pannin’ out?”
“I’m taking better than wages out of the top gravel,” the young man replied.
[2] Black John Smith — keeping things “Moral.”
In SKULDUGGERY ON HALFADAY CREEK, a Halfaday Creek Western, Black John takes a trip “Outside.” Maybe 3000 miles south, as the wild geese fly, to his boyhood home in the hills:
Black John paused, set the valise on the ground, and stood for a long time leaning on the rail fence staring at the cabin. It was a familiar scene—the log cabin with the whitewashed porch in front, the stone chimney out of which smoke curled lazily, the ramshackle stable in the rear, and the privy at the end of the well worn path. Nothing was changed.
The bucket still hung at the end of its pole above the stone curbed well, and martins twittered about the bird house canted crazily on top of the wind-broken tree stub—a picture out of the past.
The door opened and a man stepped out onto the porch, seated himself in the splint rocker, and proceeded to fill a pipe.
A hound dog emerged from beneath the porch, yawned, stretched, and ascending the steps curled up at the man’s feet.
For several moments Black John gazed at the big-framed, gaunt man, whose snow-white beard cascaded over his shirtfront. “Goin’ on seventy, an’ nary stoop to his shoulders,” he muttered, picking up the valise. “Looks like pictures of Abraham. Wonder if he’ll know me?”
Stepping through the turnstile, he made his way up the path. The oldster took the pipe from between his lips and eyed the approaching man. The hound at his feet cocked an ear and gazed with sad brown eyes, slowly thumping the floor boards with his tail.
“Come up, stranger, an’ set,” the old man invited, indicating an empty chair without rising. When the other had seated himself he asked abruptly, “You et?”
The black-bearded one nodded and smiled. “Yeah, I fetched a snack along an’ et beside a spring. Ma inside?”
The oldster leaned forward regarding the other with piercing gray eyes. He removed the pipe from between his lips. “You—son! Well, now, I’m powerful glad to see you. Ma’s gone. Passed away three year now, come New Year’s. A misery ketched her. It was the Lord’s will. You be’n away a long time.”
“Yeah, it’s quite a while. But things ain’t changed none.”
The other shook his head slowly. “No. There’s been bornin’s, an’ marryin’s, an’ dyin’s. But the hills don’t change.”
“You still preachin’?”
“Yes. Still carryin’ on the work of the Lord. One Sunday in the Sharon church, an’ the next at Mt. Sinai.”
“Pretty good pay?”
“I can’t complain.”
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