When I opened them a moment later, I beheld what might have been the “missing link,” half man, half beast. The face, with its receding forehead and beetling brows, was apelike and yet manlike. Wrapped about its loins was a large tiger skin. In its right hand it brandished a huge, knotted club.
Gradually it became more manlike and less apelike. The club changed to a spear, the spear to a sword, and I beheld a Roman soldier, fully accoutered for battle, with helmet, armor, target and sandals.
The Roman soldier became a knight, and the knight a musketeer. The musketeer became a colonial soldier.
At that instant there was a crash of glass, and the branch of a tree projected through the window on the right of the fireplace. The shade flew up with a snap, and the soldier disappeared, as a brilliant flash of lightning illuminated the room.
I rushed to the window, and saw that the overhanging limb of an elm had been broken off by the wind and hurled through the glass. The rain was coming in in torrents.
The housekeeper, who had heard the noise, appeared in the doorway. Seeing the rain blowing in at the window, she left and returned a moment later with a hammer, tacks and a folded sheet. I tacked the sheet to the window frame with difficulty, on account of the strong wind, and again pulled down the shade.
Mrs. Rhodes retired.
I consulted my watch. It lacked just one minute of midnight.
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.