Add files from ibiblio as of 2025-03-03 20:18:44HEADmain

1 files changed, 0 insertions, 5769 deletions

diff --git a/old/44150.txt b/old/44150.txt
deleted file mode 100644
index 9afaf9d..0000000
--- a/old/44150.txt
+++ /dev/null
@@ -1,5769 +0,0 @@
-The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Jack-Knife Man, by Ellis Parker Butler
-
-This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
-almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
-re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
-with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
-
-
-Title: The Jack-Knife Man
-
-Author: Ellis Parker Butler
-
-Illustrator: Hanson Booth
-
-Release Date: November 10, 2013 [EBook #44150]
-
-Language: English
-
-Character set encoding: ASCII
-
-*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE JACK-KNIFE MAN ***
-
-
-
-
-Produced by David Widger
-
-
-
-
-
-
-THE JACK-KNIFE MAN
-
-By Ellis Parker Butler
-
-Author Of "Pigs Is Pigs," "The Confessions Of A Daddy," Etc.
-
-Illustrated By Hanson Booth
-
-New York The Century Co.
-
-1913
-
-
-MY FATHER
-
-Whose heart has held many children.
-
-
-Transcriber's Note: Chapter VI is succeeded by Chapter VIII without
-a designated intervening Chapter VII.  DW
-
-
-
-
-I. THE JACK-KNIFE MAN
-
-
-PETER LANE GEORGE RAPP, the red-faced livery-man from town, stood with
-his hands in the pockets of his huge bear-skin coat, his round face
-glowing, looking down at Peter Lane, with amusement wrinkling the
-corners of his eyes.
-
-"Tell you what I'll do, Peter," he said, "I'll give you thirty-five
-dollars for the boat."
-
-"I guess I won't sell, George," said Peter. "I don't seem to care to."
-
-He was sitting on the edge of his bunk, in the shanty-boat he had spent
-the summer in building. He was a thin, wiry little man, with yellowish
-hair that fell naturally into ringlets: but which was rather thin on top
-of his head. His face was brown and weather-seamed. It was difficult
-to guess just how old Peter Lane might be. When his eyes were closed
-he looked rather old-quite like a thin, tired old man-but when his eyes
-were open he looked quite young, for his eyes were large and innocent,
-like the eyes of a baby, and their light blue suggested hopefulness and
-imagination of the boyish, aircastle-building sort.
-
-The shanty-boat was small, only some twenty feet in length, with a short
-deck at either end. The shanty part was no more than fifteen feet long
-and eight feet wide, built of thin boards and roofed with tar paper.
-Inside were the bunk--of clean white pine--a home-made pine table, a
-small sheet-iron cook-stove, two wooden pegs for Peter's shotgun, a
-shelf for his alarm-clock, a breadbox, some driftwood for the stove, and
-a wall lamp with a silvered glass reflector. In one corner was a tangle
-of nets and trot-lines. It was not much of a boat, but the flat-bottomed
-hull was built of good two-inch planks, well caulked and tarred. Tar was
-the prevailing odor. Peter bent over his table, on which the wheels and
-springs of an alarm-clock were laid in careful rows.
-
-"Did you ever stop to think, George, what a mighty fine companion a
-clock like this is for a man like I am?" he asked. "Yes, sir, a tin
-clock like this is a grand thing for a man like me. I can take this
-clock to pieces, George, and mend her, and put her together again, and
-when she's mended all up she needs mending more than she ever did. A
-clock like this is always something to look forward to."
-
-"I might give as much as forty dollars for the boat," said George Rapp
-temptingly.
-
-"No, thank you, George," said Peter. "And it ain't only when you 're
-mending her that a clock like this is interesting. She's interesting all
-the time, like a baby. She don't do a thing you'd expect, all day long.
-I can mend her right up, and wind her and set her right in the morning,
-and set the alarm to go off at four o'clock in the afternoon, and at
-four o'clock what do you think she'll be doing? Like as not she'll be
-pointing at half-past eleven. Yes, sir! And the alarm won't go off until
-half-past two at night, maybe. Why I mended this clock once and left two
-wheels out of her--"
-
-"Tell you what I'll do, Peter," said Rapp, "I'll give _fifty_ dollars
-for the boat, and five dollars for floating her down to my new place
-down the river."
-
-"I'm much obliged, but I guess I won't sell," said Peter nervously. "You
-better take off your coat, George, unless you want to hurry away.
-That stove is heating up. She's a wonderful stove, that stove is. You
-wouldn't think, to look at her right now, that she could go out in a
-minute, would you? But she can. Why, when she wants to, that stove can
-start in and get red hot all over, stove-pipe and legs and all, until
-it's so hot in here the tar melts off them nets yonder--drips off 'em
-like rain off the bob-wires. You'd think she'd suffocate me out of here,
-but she don't. No, sir. The very next minute she'll be as cold as ice.
-For a man alone as much as I am that's a great stove, George."
-
-"Will you sell me the boat, or won't you?" asked Rapp.
-
-"Now, I wish you wouldn't ask me to sell her, George," said Peter
-regretfully, for it hurt him to refuse his friend. "To tell you the
-honest truth, George, I can't sell her because it would upset my plans.
-I've got my plans all laid out to float down river next spring, soon as
-the ice goes out, and when I get to New Orleans I'm going to load this
-boat on to a ship, and I'm going to take her to the Amazon River, and
-trap chinchillas. I read how there's a big market for chinchilla skins
-right now. I'm goin' up the Amazon River and then I'm goin' to haul the
-boat across to the Orinoco River and float down the Orinoco, and then--"
-
-"You told me last week you were going down to Florida next spring and
-shoot alligators from this boat," said Rapp.
-
-Peter looked up blankly, but in a moment his cheerfulness returned.
-
-"If I didn't forget all about that!" he began. "Well, sir, I'm glad I
-did! That would have been a sad mistake. It looks to me like alligator
-skin was going out of fashion. I'd be foolish to take this boat all
-the way to Florida and then find out there was no market for alligator
-skins, wouldn't I?"
-
-"You would," said Rapp. "And you might get down there in South America
-and find there was no market for chinchillas. It looks to me as if the
-style was veering off from chinchillas already. You'd better sell me
-the boat, Peter."
-
-"You know I'd sell to you if I would to anybody, George," said Peter,
-pushing aside the works of the clock, "but this boat is a sort of home
-to me, George. It's the only home I 've got, since Jane don't want me
-'round no more. You're the best friend I've got, and you've done a lot
-for me--you let me sleep in your stable whenever I want to, and you give
-me odd jobs, and clothes--and I appreciate it, George, but a man don't
-like to get rid of his home, if he can help it. I haven't had a home I
-could call my own since I was fourteen years old, as you might say, and
-I'm going on fifty years old now. Ever since Jane got tired havin' me
-'round I've been livin' in your barn, and in old shacks, and anywheres,
-and now, when I've got a boat that's a home for me, and I can go
-traveling in her whenever I want to go, you want me to sell her. No, I
-don't want to sell her, George. I think maybe I'll start her down river
-to-morrow, so as to be able to start up the Missouri when the ice goes
-out--"
-
-"I thought you said Amazon a minute ago," said Rapp.
-
-"Well, now, I don't know," said Peter soberly. "The fevers they catch
-down there wouldn't do my health a bit of good. Rocky Mountain air
-is just what I need. It is grand air. If I can get seventy or eighty
-dollars together, and a good rifle or two, I may start next spring. I
-always wanted to have a try at bear shootin'. I've got sev'ral plans."
-
-"And somehow," said Rapp, who knew Peter could no more raise seventy
-dollars than freeze the sun, "somehow you always land right back in
-Widow Potter's cove for the winter, don't you? She'll get you yet,
-Peter. And then you won't need this boat. All you got to do is to ask
-her."
-
-Peter pushed the table away and stood up, a look of trouble in his blue
-eyes.
-
-"I wish you wouldn't talk like that, George," he said seriously. "It
-ain't fair to the widow to connect up my name and hers that way. She
-wouldn't like it if she got to hear it. You know right well she
-don't think no more of me than she does of any other river-rat or
-shanty-boatman that hangs around this cove all summer, and yet you keep
-saying, 'Widow, widow, widow!' to me all the time. I wish you wouldn't,
-George." He opened the door of his shanty-boat and looked out. The cove
-in which the boat was tied was on the Iowa side of the Mississippi, and
-during the summer it had been crowded with a small colony of worthless
-shanty-boatmen and their ill-kempt wives and children, direly poor and
-afflicted with all the ills that dirt is heir to. Here, each summer,
-they gathered, coming from up-river in their shanty-boats and floating
-on downriver just ahead of the cold weather in the fall. All summer
-their shanty-boats, left high and dry by the receding high water of the
-June flood, stood on the parched mud, and Peter looked askance on all of
-them, dirty and lazy as they were, but somehow--he could not have told
-you why--he made friends with them each summer, lending them dimes that
-were never repaid, helping them set their trot-lines that the women
-might have food, and even aiding in the caulking of their boats when his
-own was crying to be built.
-
-All summer and autumn Peter had been building his shanty-boat, rowing
-loads of lumber in his heavy skiff from the town to the spot he had
-chosen on the Illinois shore, five miles above the town. He had worked
-on the boat, as he did everything for himself, irregularly and at odd
-moments, and the boat had been completed but a few days before George
-Rapp drove up from town, hoping to buy it. Peter believed he loved
-solitude and usually chose a summer dwelling-place far above town, but
-if he had gone to the uttermost solitudes of Alaska he would have found
-some way of mingling with his fellow-men and of doing a good turn to
-some one.
-
-He never dreamed he was associating with the worthless shanty-boatmen,
-yet, somehow, he spent a good part of his time with them. They were
-there, they were willing to accept aid of any and all kinds, and on his
-occasional trips to town Peter passed them. This was enough to draw
-him into the entanglement of their woes, and to waste thankless days on
-them. Yet he never thought of making one of their colony. He would row
-the two miles to reach them, but he rowed back again each evening. It
-was because he was better at heart, and not because he thought he was
-better, that he remained aloof to this extent. In his own estimation he
-ranked himself even lower than the shanty-boatmen, for they at least had
-the social merit of having families, while he had none. His sister Jane
-had told him many times just how worthless he was, and he believed it.
-He was nothing to anybody--he felt--and that is what a tramp is.
-
-Once each week or so Peter rowed to town to sell the product of his
-jack-knife and such fish as he caught. He was not an enthusiastic
-fisherman, but his jack-knife, always keen and sharp, was a magic tool
-in his hand. When he was not making shapely boats for the shanty-boat
-kids, or whittling for the mere pleasure of whittling, his jack-knife
-shaped wooden kitchen spoons and other small household articles, or
-net-makers' shuttles, out of clean maplewood, and these, when he went to
-town, he peddled from door to door. What he could not sell he traded for
-coffee or bacon at the grocery stores.
-
-With the coming of cool weather and the "fall rise" of the river the
-shanty-boat colony left the cove, to float down-river ahead of the
-frost, and Peter hurried the completion of his boat that he might float
-it across to the cove. Rheumatism often gave him a twinge in winter and
-when the river was "closed" the walk to town across the ice was cold
-and long. The Iowa side was more thickly populated, too, for the Iowa
-"bottom" was narrow, the hills coming quite to the river in places,
-while on the Illinois side five or six miles of untillable "bottom"
-stretched between the river and the prosperous hill farms. The Iowa side
-offered opportunities for corn-husking and wood-sawing and other
-odd jobs such as necessity sometimes drove Peter to seek. These
-opportunities were the reasons Peter gave himself, but the truth was
-that Peter loved people. If he was a tramp he was a sedentary tramp, and
-if he was a hermit he was a socialistic hermit. He liked his solitudes
-well peopled.
-
-This early November day Peter had brought his shanty-boat across the
-river to the cove. A fair up-river breeze and his rag of a sail had
-helped him fight the stiff current, but it had been a hard, all-day pull
-at the oars of his skiff, and when he had towed the boat into the cove
-and had made her fast by looping his line under the railway track that
-skirted the bank, he was wet and weary. His tin breadbox was empty and
-he had but a handful of coffee left, but he was too tired to go to town,
-and he had nothing to trade if he went, and he knew by experience that
-an appeal to a farmer--even to Widow Potter--meant wood-sawing, and he
-was too tired to saw wood. But he was accustomed to going without a meal
-now and then, and there being nothing else to do, he tightened his belt,
-made a good fire, took off his shoes, and dissected his alarm-clock. He
-was reassembling it when George Rapp arrived.
-
-George Rapp was a bluff, hearty, loud-voiced, duck-hunting liveryman.
-He ran his livery-stable for a living and, like many other men in the
-Mississippi valley, he lived for duck-hunting. He owned the four best
-duck dogs in the county. He had traded a good horse for one of them.
-Although George Rapp would not have believed it, it was a blessing that
-he could not hunt ducks the year around. The summer and winter months
-gave him time to make money, and he was making all he needed. Some of
-his surplus he had just paid for a tract of low, wooded bottom-land, in
-the section where ducks were most plentiful in their seasons. The land
-was swamp, for the most part, and all so low that the river spread
-over it at every spring "rise" and often in the autumn. It was cut by a
-slough (or bayou, as they are called farther south) and held a rice lake
-which was no more than a widening of the slough. This piece of property,
-far below the town, Rapp had bought because it was a wild-duck haunt,
-and for no other reason, and after looking it over he wisely decided
-that a shanty-boat moored in the slough would be a better hunting cabin
-than one built on the shore, where it would be flooded once, or perhaps
-twice a year, the river leaving a deposit of rich yellow mud and general
-dampness each time. But Peter would not sell his boat, and Peter's boat,
-new, clean and sturdy of hull, was the boat Rapp wanted.
-
-"I wish you wouldn't talk that way about the widow, George," said Peter,
-looking out of the open door. The liveryman's team was tied to a fence
-at the foot of the hills, and between the road and the railway tracks
-that edged the river a wide corn-field extended. A cold drizzle half hid
-the hillside where Widow Potter's low, white farmhouse, with its green
-shutters, stood in the midst of a decaying apple orchard. "I wisht the
-widow lived farther off. There ain't no place like this cove to winter
-a boat, and when I'm here I've got to saw wood for her, and shuck corn,
-and do odd jobs for her, and then she lights into me. I don't say I'm
-any better than a tramp, George, but the way the widow jaws at me, and
-the things she calls me, ain't right. She thinks I'm scum--just common,
-low-down, worthless scum! So that's all there is to that."
-
-"Oh, shucks!" said George Rapp.
-
-But Peter believed it. For five years the Widow Potter had kept a
-jealous eye on Peter Lane. Tall and thin, penny-saving and hard-working,
-she had been led a hard life by the late Mr. Potter, who had been
-something rather worse than a brute, and since death had removed
-Mr. Potter the widow had given Peter Lane the full benefit of her
-experienced tongue whenever opportunity offered. It was her way of
-showing Peter unusual attention, but Peter never suspected that when she
-glared at him and told him he was a worthless, good-for-nothing loafer
-and a lazy, paltering, river-rat, and a no-account, idling vagabond
-she was showing him a flattering partiality. He knew she could make him
-squirm. It was Love-in-Chapped-Hands, but Mrs. Potter herself did not
-know she scolded Peter because she liked him. She counted him as a poor
-stick, of little account to himself or to any one else, but what her
-mind could not, her heart did recognize--that Peter was Romance. He was
-a whiff of something that had never come into her life before; he was a
-gentleman, a chivalrous gentleman, a gentleman down at the heel, but a
-true gentleman for all that.
-
-"The way me and her hates each other, George, is like cats and dogs,"
-said Peter. "I don't go near her unless I have to, and when I do she
-claws me all up."
-
-"All right," said Rapp, laughing, "but you could do a lot worse than
-tie up to a good house and cook-stove. If you make up your mind to go
-housekeeping and to sell the boat, let me know. I'll get along home. It
-is going to be a dog of a night."
-
-"I won't change my mind about the boat, George," said Peter. "Good
-night."
-
-He closed the door and bolted it.
-
-"George means all right," he said, settling himself to his task of
-reassembling his clock, "but he's sort of coarse."
-
-The storm, increasing with the coming of night, darkened the interior of
-the cabin, and Peter lighted his lamp. As he worked over the clock
-the drizzle turned into a heavy rain through which damp snowflakes
-fluttered, and the wind strengthened and turned colder, slapping the
-rain and snow against the small, four-paned window and freezing it
-there. It was blowing up colder every minute and Peter put his handful
-of coffee in his coffee-pot and set it on the stove to boil while he
-completed his clock job. He tested the clock and found that if he set
-the alarm for six o'clock it burst into song at seventeen minutes after
-three. A thin smile twisted the corners of his mouth humorously.
-
-"You skeesicks! You old skeesicks!" he said affectionately. "Ain't you a
-caution!" He set the clock on its shelf where it ticked loudly while he
-drew his table closer to the bunk, his only seat, and put his coffeepot
-and tin cup on the table.
-
-"Well, now," he said cheerfully, "as long as there ain't anything to eat
-I might as well whet up my jack-knife."
-
-He whetted the large blade of his knife while he sipped the coffee. From
-time to time he put down the tin cup and tried the blade of the knife
-on his thumb, and when he was satisfied it was so sharp any further
-whetting meant a wire edge, he took a crumpled newspaper from under the
-pillow of his bunk and read again the article on the increased demand
-for chinchilla fur, but it had lost interest. The wind was slapping
-against the side of the boat in gusts and the frost was gathering on
-his windows, but Peter replenished his fire and lighted the cheap cigar
-George Rapp had left on the clock shelf.
-
-What does a hermit do when he is shut in for a long night with a winter
-storm raging outside? Peter put his newspaper back under the pillow and
-hunted through his driftwood for a piece that would do to whittle, but
-had to give that up as a bad job. Then his eyes alighted on the wooden
-pegs on which his shot-gun lay, and he took down the gun and pulled one
-of the pegs from its hole. He looked out of the door, to see that his
-line was holding securely, and slammed the door quickly, for the night
-was worse, the rain freezing as it fell and the wind howling through the
-telegraph wires. With a sigh of satisfaction that he was alone, and that
-he had a snug shanty-boat in which to spend the winter, Peter propped
-himself up in his bunk and began carving the head of an owl on the end
-of the gun peg, screwing his face to one side to keep the cigar smoke
-out of his eyes. He was holding the half-completed carving at a distance,
-to judge of its effect, when he heard a blow on his door. He hesitated,
-like a timid animal, and then slipped from the bunk and let his hand
-glide to the shot-gun lying on his table. Quietly he swung the gun
-around until the muzzle pointed full at the door, and with the other
-hand he grasped his heavy stove poker, for he knew that tramps, on such
-a night, are not dainty in seeking shelter, and he had no wish to be
-thrown out of his boat and have the boat floated away from him.
-
-"Who's out there?" he shouted, but before he could step forward and bolt
-the door, the latch lifted and the door, forced violently inward by
-a gust of wind, clattered against the cabin wall. A woman, one hand
-extended, stood in the doorway. Her face was deathly white, and her left
-hand held the hand of a three-year-old boy. This much Peter saw before
-the flame of his lamp flared high in a smoky red and went out, leaving
-utter darkness.
-
-[Ill: 46]
-
-
-
-
-II. PETER'S GUESTS
-
-"COME right in, ma'am," said Peter.
-
-"Step inside and close the door. Nobody here's going to hurt you. I'll
-put my shoes on in a minute--"
-
-He was feeling for the matches on his clock shelf, but he hardly knew
-what he was doing or saying. The ghastly white face of the woman was
-still blazed on his mind.
-
-"Excuse me for being bare foot; I wasn't looking for callers," he
-continued nervously, but he was interrupted by the sound of a falling
-body and a cry. He pushed one of the stove lids aside, letting a glare
-of red light into the room. The woman had fallen across his doorsill and
-lay, half in and half out of the boat, with the boy crying as he clung
-to her relaxed fingers.
-
-"Don't, Mama! don't!" the small boy wailed, not understanding.
-
-Peter stood, irresolute. He was a coward before women; they drove his
-wits away, and his first wild thought was of flight--of leaping over
-the fallen body--but, as he stood, the alarm-clock, after a preliminary
-warning cluck, burst into a loud jangling clatter and the boy, sore
-frightened, howled with all his strength. That decided for Peter.
-
-"There, now, don't you cry, son!" he begged, on his knees beside the boy
-in an instant. "Don't you mind the racket. It ain't nothing but my old
-funny alarm-clock. She goes off that way sometimes, but she don't mean
-any harm to anybody. No, sir! Don't you cry."
-
-The boy wailed, more wildly than ever, calling on his mother to get up.
-
-"Don't cry, your ma will be all right!" urged Peter. "That clock will
-stop right soon, and she won't begin again--not unless she takes a
-notion."
-
-The clock stopped ringing abruptly, the boy stared at it open-mouthed.
-
-"That's a big boy!" said Peter approvingly. "And don't you worry about
-your ma. I guess she'll be all right in a minute. You go over by that
-stove and warm yourself, and I'll help your ma in, so this rain won't
-blow on her."
-
-Peter led the boy to the stove, and lighted his lamp. He put the peg
-back in the wall, and placed the gun behind the boy's reach before he
-turned to the woman.
-
-She was neither young nor old, but as she lay on the floor she was
-ghastly white, even in the glare from the smoking oil lamp, and her lips
-were blue. Her cheap hat was wet and weighted down with sleet, and the
-green dye from the trimmings had run down and streaked her face. She was
-fairly well clad, but not against the winter rain, and her shoes were
-too light and too high of heel for tramping a railway track. Peter saw
-she was wet to the skin. He bent down and with his knee against her
-shoulder moved her inside the door and closed it.
-
-"That's hot in there," said the boy, who had been staring into the
-glowing coals of the opened stove. "I better not put my hand in there.
-I'll burn my hand if I put it in there, won't I?"
-
-"Yes, indeedy," said Peter, "but now I got to fix your ma so's she will
-be more comfortable."
-
-"I wish I had some liquor or something," he said, looking at the woman
-helplessly. "Brandy or whisky would be right handy, and I ain't got a
-drop. This ain't no case for cold water; she's had too much cold water
-already. I wonder what coffee would do?"
-
-He put his coffee-pot down among the coals of his fire and while he
-waited for it to heat, he drew on his shoes.
-
-"I guess your ma will feel sort of sick when she wakes up," he told the
-boy, "and I guess she'd be right glad if we took off them wet shoes and
-stockings of yours and got your feet nice and warm. You want to be ready
-to help look after your ma. You ain't going to be afraid to let me, are
-you?"
-
-"No," said the boy promptly, and held out his arms for Peter to take
-him. He was a solid little fellow, as Peter found when he picked him up,
-and his hair was a tangled halo of long, white kinks that burst out
-when Peter pulled off the red stocking-cap into which they had been
-compressed. From the first moment the boy snuggled to Peter, settling
-himself contentedly in Peter's arms as affectionate children do. He had
-a comical little up-tilt to his nose, and eyes of a deeper blue than
-Peter's, and his face was white but covered with freckles.
-
-"That's my good foot," said the boy, as Peter pulled off one stocking.
-
-"Well, it looks like a mighty good one to me, too," said Peter. "So far
-as I can see, it is just as good as anybody'd want."
-
-"Yes. It's my hop-on-foot," explained the boy. "The other foot is the
-lame one. It ain't such a good foot. It's Mama's honey-foot."
-
-"Pshaw, now!" said Peter gently. "Well, I'll be real careful and not
-hurt it a bit." He began removing the shoe and stocking from the lame
-foot with delicate care, and the boy laughed delightedly.
-
-"Ho! You don't have to be careful with it," he laughed, giving a little
-kick. "You thought it was a sore foot, didn't you? It ain't sore, it's
-only lame."
-
-Peter put the barefoot boy on the edge of the bunk and hung the wet
-stockings over his woodpile. The boy asked for the jack-knife again, and
-Peter handed it to him.
-
-"You just set there," he told the boy, "and wiggle your toes at the
-stove, like they was ten little kittens, and I'll see if your ma wants a
-drink of nice, hot coffee."
-
-He poured the coffee into his tin cup and went to the woman, raised her
-head, and held the hot coffee to her lips. At the first touch of the hot
-liquid she opened her eyes and laughed; a harsh, mirthless laugh, which
-made her strangle on the coffee, but when her eyes met Peter's eyes,
-the oath that was on her lips died unspoken. No woman, and but few men,
-could look into Peter's eyes and curse, and her eyes were not those of a
-drunkard, as Peter had supposed they would be.
-
-"That's all right," she said. "I must have keeled over, didn't I?
-Where's Buddy?"
-
-"He's right over there warming his little feet, as nice as can be," said
-Peter. "And he was real concerned about you."
-
-"I wouldn't have come in, but for him," said the woman, trying to
-straighten her hat. "I thought maybe he could get a bite to eat. It
-don't matter much what, he ain't eat since noon. A piece of bread would
-do him 'til we get to town." She leaned back wearily against the pile of
-nets in the corner.
-
-"I want butter on it. Bread, and butter on it," said Buddy promptly.
-
-"There, now!" said Peter accusingly. "I might have knowed it was foolish
-to let myself run so low on food. A man can't tell when food is going
-to come in handiest, and here I went and let myself run clean out of it.
-But don't you worry, ma'am," he hastened to add, "I'll get some in no
-time. Just you let me help you over on to my bunk. I ain't got a chair
-or I'd offer it to you whilst I run up to one of my neighbors and get
-you a bite to eat. I've got good neighbors. That's one thing!"
-
-The woman caught Peter by the arm and drew herself up, laughing weakly
-at her weakness. She tottered, but Peter led her to the bunk with all
-the courtesy of a Raleigh escorting an Elizabeth, and she dropped on
-the edge of the bunk and sat there warming her hands and staring at the
-stove. She seemed still near exhaustion.
-
-"If you'll excuse me, now, ma'am," said Peter, when he had made sure she
-was not going to faint again, "I'll just step across to my neighbor's
-and get something for the boy to eat. I won't probably be gone more than
-a minute, and whilst I'm gone I'll arrange for a place for me to sleep
-to-night. You hadn't ought to make that boy walk no further to-night.
-It's a real bad night outside."
-
-"That's all right. I don't want to chase you out," said the woman.
-
-"Not at all," said Peter politely. "I frequently sleep elsewheres. It'll
-be no trouble at all to make arrangements."
-
-He put more wood in the stove, opened the dampers, and lighted his
-lantern. Then he pinned his coat close about his neck with a blanket
-pin, and, as he passed the clock shelf, slipped the alarm swiftly from
-its place and hid it beneath his coat.
-
-"I'll be right back, as soon as I can," he said, and, drawing his worn
-felt hat down over his eyes, he stepped out hastily and slammed the door
-behind him.
-
-"Why did the man take the clock?" asked the boy as the door closed.
-
-"I guess he thought I'd steal it," said the woman languidly.
-
-"_Would_ you steal it?" asked the boy.
-
-"I guess so," the woman answered, and closed her eyes,
-
-
-
-
-III. PETER LODGES OUT
-
-AS Peter crossed the icy plank that led from his boat to the railway
-embankment he tried to whistle, but the wind was too strong and sharp,
-and he drew his head between his shoulders and closed his mouth tightly.
-He had understated the distance to Widow Potter's when he had said it
-was "just across." In fair weather and daylight he often cut across the
-corn-field, but on such a night as this the trip meant a long plod up
-the railway track until he came to the crossing, and then a longer tramp
-back the slushy road, a good half mile in all. When he turned in
-at Widow Potter's open gate a great yellow dog came rushing at him,
-barking, but a word from Peter silenced him and the dog fell behind
-obediently but watchfully, and followed Peter to where the light shone
-through the widow's kitchen window. Peter rapped on the door.
-
-"Who's out there?" Mrs. Potter called sharply. "I got a gun in here, and
-I ain't afraid to use it. If you 're a tramp, you'd better git!"
-
-"It's Peter Lane," Peter called, loud enough to be heard above the wind.
-"I want to buy a couple of eggs off you, Mrs. Potter."
-
-The door opened the merest crack and Mrs. Potter peered out. She did not
-have a gun, but she held a stove poker. When she saw Peter she opened
-the door wide. It was a brusk welcome.
-
-"Of all the shiftlessness I ever heard of, Peter Lane," she said
-angrily, "you beat all! Cormin' for eggs this time of night when your
-boat's been in the cove nobody knows how long. I suppose it never come
-into your head to get eggs until you got hungry for them, did it?"
-
-Peter closed the door and stood with his back to it. At all times he
-feared Mrs. Potter, but especially when he gave her some cause for
-reproof.
-
-"I had some company drop in on me unexpected, Mrs. Potter," he said
-apologetically. "If I hadn't, I wouldn't have bothered you. I hate it
-worse'n you do."
-
-"Tramps, I dare say," said the widow. "You 're that shiftless you'd
-give the shoes off your feet and the food out of your mouth to feed any
-good-for-nothing that come camping on you. You don't get my good eggs to
-feed such trash, Peter Lane! Winter eggs are worth money."
-
-"I thought to pay for them," said Peter meekly. "I wouldn't ask them of
-you any other way, Mrs. Potter."
-
-"Well, if you 've got the money I suppose I've got to let you have
-them," said the widow grudgingly. "Eggs is worth three cents apiece, and
-I hate to have 'em fed to tramps. How many do you want to buy?" Peter
-shifted from one foot to another uncomfortably. "Well, now, I'm what you
-might call a little short of ready money tonight," he said. "I thought
-maybe I might come over and saw some wood for you tomorrow--"
-
-"And so you can," said Mrs. Potter promptly, "and when the wood is sawed
-they will be paid for, in eggs or money, and not until it is sawed. I'm
-not going to encourage you to run into debt. You 're shiftless enough
-now, goodness knows."
-
-Peter tried to smile and ignored the accusation.
-
-"There couldn't be anything fairer than that," he said. "Nobody ought
-to object to that sort of arrangement at all. That's real business-like.
-Only, there's a small boy amongst the company that dropped in on me and
-he's only about so high--" Peter showed a height that would have been
-small for an infant dwarf. "He's a real nice little fellow, and if you
-was ever a boy that high, and crying because you wanted something to
-eat--"
-
-"I don't believe a word of it!" snapped Mrs. Potter. "If there is a
-child down there he ought to be in bed long ago."
-
-"Yes'm," agreed Peter meekly. "That's so. You wouldn't put even a dog
-that size to bed hungry. So, if you could let me have about half-a-dozen
-eggs, I'll go right back."
-
-"Six eggs at three cents is eighteen cents," said Mrs. Potter firmly,
-looking Peter directly in the eye. She was not bad looking. Her cheek
-bones were rather high and prominent and her cheeks hollow, and she had
-a strong chin for a woman, but the downward twist of discouragement
-that had marked her mouth during her later married years had already
-disappeared, giving place to a firmness that told she was well able to
-manage her own affairs. Peter drew his alarm-clock from beneath his coat
-and stood it on the kitchen table.
-
-"I brought along this alarm-clock," he said, "so you'd know I'd come
-back like I say I will. She's a real good clock. I paid eighty cents
-for her when she was new, and I just fixed her up fresh to-day. She's
-running quite--quite a little, since I fixed her."
-
-Mrs. Potter did not look at the clock. She looked at Peter.
-
-"So!" she exclaimed. "So that's what you've come to, Peter Lane! Pawnin'
-your goods and chattels! That's what shiftless folks always come to in
-the end."
-
-"And so, if you'll let me have half-a-dozen eggs, and maybe some pieces
-of bread and butter and a handful of coffee," said Peter, "I'll leave
-the clock right here as security that I'll come up first thing in the
-morning and saw wood 'til you tell me I've sawed enough."
-
-Mrs. Potter took the clock in her hand and looked at Peter.
-
-"How old did you say that boy is?" she asked.
-
-"Goin' on three, I should judge. He's a real nice little feller," said
-Peter eagerly.
-
-Mrs. Potter put the clock on her kitchen table.
-
-"Fiddlesticks! I don't believe a word of it. Who else have you got down
-there?"
-
-"Just his--his parent," said Peter, blushing. "I wisht you could see
-that little feller. Maybe I'll bring him up here to-morrow and let you
-see him."
-
-"Maybe you won't!" said the widow. "If you 're hungry you can set down
-and I'll fry you as many eggs as you want to eat, but you can't come
-over me with no story about visitors bringin' you children on a night
-like this! No, sir! You don't get none of my eggs for your worthless
-tramps. Shall I fry you some?"
-
-Peter looked down and frowned. Then he raised his head and looked full
-in the widow's eyes and smiled. Nothing but the direct need could
-have induced him to smile thus at the widow for he knew and feared the
-result. When, once or twice before, he had looked into her eyes and
-smiled in this way--unthinkingly--she had fluttered and trembled like a
-bird in the presence of an overmastering fascination, and Peter did
-not like that. Such power frightened him. The widow, scolding and
-condemning, he could escape, but the widow fluttering and trembling, was
-a thing to be afraid of. It made him flutter and tremble, too.
-
-When Peter smiled the widow drew in her breath sharply.
-
-"Six--six eggs--will six eggs be all you want?" she asked hurriedly.
-
-"Yes'm," said Peter, still smiling, "unless you could spare some bread
-_and_ butter. He 'specially asked for butter," and then he looked down.
-The widow drew another long breath.
-
-"I don't believe you've got a boy down there, and I don't believe you've
-got a visitor that deserves nothing," she said crossly. She was herself
-again. "I know you from hair to sole-leather, Peter Lane, and if any
-worthless scamp came and camped on you, you'd lie your head off to get
-food for him, and that's what I think you 're doing now, but there ain't
-no way of telling. If so be you have got a boy down there I don't want
-him to go hungry, but if it's just some worthless tramp, I hope these
-eggs choke him. You ain't got a mite of common sense in you. You 're too
-soft, and that's why you don't get on. You'd come up here to-morrow and
-do a dollar's worth of wood sawing for eighteen cents' worth of eggs,
-and then give the eggs to the first tramp that asked you. What you ought
-to have is a wife. You ought to have a wife with a mind like a hatchet
-and a tongue like a black-snake whip, and you might be worth shucks,
-anyway. You just provoke me beyond patience."
-
-"Yes'm," said Peter nervously.
-
-Mrs. Potter was cutting thick, enticing slices from a big loaf and
-spreading them with golden butter.
-
-"I reckon you want jam on this bread?" she asked suddenly.
-
-"Yes, thank you!" said Peter.
-
-"Well, maybe you _have_ got a boy down there," said Mrs. Potter
-reluctantly. "You'd be ashamed to ask for jam if you hadn't. If you had
-a wife and she was any account you'd have bread and jam when boys come
-to see you. But I do pity the woman that gets you, Peter Lane! No woman
-on this earth but a widow that has had experience with men-folks could
-ever make anything out of you."
-
-Peter put his hand on the door-knob, ready for instant flight. When he
-smiled on Mrs. Potter something like this usually resulted and that was
-why he tried it so seldom. It was he, now, who trembled and fluttered.
-
-"I'm not thinking of getting married at all," he said. "I couldn't
-afford to, anyway."
-
-"You needn't think, just because you are no-account, some fool woman
-wouldn't take you," snapped Mrs. Potter. "Look at what my first husband
-was. Women marry all sorts of trash."
-
-Peter watched the progress of the bread and jam, trusting its
-preparation would not be delayed long.
-
-"If they're asked," said Mrs. Potter. She seemed very cross about
-something. She wrapped the slices of bread in a clean sheet of paper
-from her table drawer, folding in the ends of the paper angrily. "But
-they don't do the asking," she added.
-
-Peter took the parcel, and slipped the six clean white eggs into his
-pocket. He wanted to get away, but Mrs. Potter stopped him.
-
-"I suppose, if there is a boy down there, I've got to give you what's
-left of my roast chicken," she grumbled, "or you'll be coming up here
-about the time I get into bed, routing me out for more victuals. If I
-had a husband, and he was like you, and he had a mind to feed all the
-tramps in the county, he wouldn't have to rout me out of bed to do it.
-He could go to the cupboard himself, and feed them."
-
-"Now, that clock," said Peter hastily, "if I was you I wouldn't depend
-too much on her alarm to get you up. I can't say she's regulated just
-the way I'd like to have her yet. And I'm much obliged to you."
-
-"I don't want your clock!" said Mrs. Potter, but Peter had slipped out
-of the door, closing it behind him. The widow held the clock in her hand
-for a full minute, and then set it gently beside her own opulent Seth
-Thomas.
-
-"I dare say you 're about as well regulated as he is," she said, "and
-that ain't saying much for either of you. He ain't got the eyes to see
-through a grindstone!"
-
-When Peter returned to the boat, the boy was busily trying to work one
-of the trot-line hooks out of the sleeve of his jacket, but the woman
-had dropped back on the bunk and her eyes were closed. She opened them
-when the rush of cold air from the door struck her face, and looked at
-Peter listlessly.
-
-"I guess you don't feel like cooking a couple of eggs," said Peter, "so
-if you'll excuse me remaining here awhile, I'll do it for you. I'm a
-fair to middling fried-egg cook. Son, you let me get that hook out of
-you, and then see if you can eat five or six of these pieces of bread
-and jam. I could when I was a boy, and then I could wind up with a piece
-of chicken like this."
-
-"I hooked myself," the boy explained.
-
-"I should say you did," said Peter. "You want to look out for these
-hooks, they bite a boy like a cat-fish stinger, and that ain't much fun.
-I'm right glad you dropped in," he said to the woman, "because I've got
-such good neighbors. It's almost impossible to keep them from forcing
-more eggs and butter and such things on me than I'd know what to do
-with. 'Just come on up when you want anything,' they are always saying,
-'and help yourself.' So it's quite nice to have somebody drop in and
-give me a chance to show my neighbors I ain't too proud to take a few
-eggs and such. It would surprise you to see how eager they are that
-way."
-
-He scraped the butter from one of the pieces of bread, needing it to
-fry the eggs in, and he worked as he talked, breaking the eggs into the
-frying-pan and watching that they were cooked to a turn.
-
-"I certainly am blessed with nice neighbors," he said. "There's a
-widow lady lives a step or two beyond the railroad, and seems as if she
-couldn't do enough for me. She just lays herself out to see that I'm
-overfed. Do you feel like you could eat a small part of chicken?"
-
-The woman let her eyes rest on Peter some time before she spoke.
-
-"I ought to feel hungry, but I don't," she said.
-
-"Well, maybe a soft-boiled egg _would_ be better. I ought to have
-thought of that," said Peter as if he had been reproved. "You'll have to
-excuse me for boiling it in the coffee-pot, I've been so busy planning a
-trip I'm going to take I haven't had time to lay in much tinware yet."
-
-"_Where_ did you take the clock?" asked the boy suddenly.
-
-Peter reddened under his tan.
-
-"That clock?" he said hesitatingly. "Where did I take that clock? Well,
-the fact is--the fact is that clock is a nuisance. That's it, she's a
-nuisance.' I been meaning to throw that clock into the river for I don't
-know how long. Unless you are used to that clock you just can't sleep
-where she is. 'Rattelty bang!' she goes just whenever she takes a
-notion, like a dish-pan falling downstairs, all times of the night. So
-I just thought, as long as I was going out anyway, 'Now's a good time to
-get rid of the old nuisance!'"
-
-"Mama _would_ steal the clock," said the boy.
-
-"Oh, you mustn't say that!" said Peter. "You come here and eat these two
-nice eggs. I hope, ma'am, you don't think I had any such notion as that.
-When I have visitors they can steal everything in the boat, and welcome.
-I mean--"
-
-"I know what you mean," said the woman. "You 're the white kind."
-
-"I'm glad you look at it that way," said
-
-Peter. "The boy, he don't understand such things, he's so young yet.
-Maybe you'd feel better if I propped you up with the pillow a little
-better. I'll lay this extry blanket on the foot of the bunk here in case
-it should get cold during the night. You look nice and warm now."
-
-"I'm burning up," said the woman.
-
-"I judge you've got a slight fever," said Peter. "I often get them when
-I get overtook by the rain when I'm out for a stroll."
-
-"I'll be all right if I can lie here for an hour or so," said the woman
-listlessly. "Then Buddy and me will get on. Is it far to town?"
-
-"Now, you and that boy ain't going another step to-night," said Peter
-firmly. "You 're going to stay right here. You won't discommode me a bit
-for I've made arrangements to sleep elsewhere, like I often do."
-
-He gave the woman the egg in his tin cup, and while she ate he put his
-trot-lines outside on the small forward deck so the boy might get in
-no more trouble with the hooks. Then he removed the shells from his
-shotgun, put the remaining eggs and bread and butter and chicken in his
-tin box, and pinned his coat collar.
-
-"I'm going up to the place I arranged to sleep at, now," he said, "and
-I hope you'll find everything comfortable and nice. There's more wood
-there by the stove, and before I come in in the morning I'll knock on
-the door, so I guess maybe you'd better take off as many of them wet
-clothes as you wish to. You'll take a worse cold if you don't."
-
-"I'm afraid I'm too weak," said the woman. "If you will just give me
-some help with my dress--"
-
-But Peter fled. He was a strange mixture, was Peter, and he fled as a
-blushing boy would have fled, not to stop running until he was far up
-the railway track. Then he realized, by the chill of the sleety rain
-against his head where the hair was thinnest, that he had forgotten his
-hat, and he laughed at himself.
-
-"Pshaw, I guess that woman scared me," he said.
-
-He did not follow the path to Mrs. Potter's kitchen door this time, but
-skirted the orchard and climbed a rail fence into the cow pasture. He
-made a wide circle through the pasture and climbed another fence into
-the yard behind the barn, where a haystack stood. He was trembling with
-cold by this time, and wet through, and the water froze stiff in his
-coat cuffs, but he dug deep into the base of the haystack and crawled
-into its shelter, drawing the sweet hay close around him. For awhile he
-lay with chattering teeth, his knees close under his chin, and then he
-felt warmer, and straightened his knees. The next moment he was asleep.
-
-
-
-
-IV. THE SCARLET WOMAN
-
-WHEN Peter crawled out of his haystack the next morning the weather was
-intensely cold and the wind was gone. Every twig and weed sparkled with
-the ice frozen upon it. He had needed no alarm-clock to awaken him, for
-an uneasy sense of discomfort gradually opened his eyes, and he found
-his knees aching and his whole body chilled and stiff. He climbed the
-fence into the farm-house yard. He had no doubt now that he was hungry,
-and he was well aware that his head was cold where the hair was thin.
-Indeed, his hands and feet were cold too. But he tightened his belt
-another hole and made for Mrs. Potter's woodshed. Among the chips and
-sawdust he found a piece of white cloth which, had he known it was the
-remains of one of Mrs. Potter's petticoats, he would have left where
-it lay, but not knowing this he made a makeshift turban by knotting the
-corners, and drew it well down over his ears, like a nightcap. It was
-more comfortable than the raw morning air, and Peter had no more pride
-than a tramp.
-
-He found the wood saw hanging in the shed, a piece of bacon-rind on the
-windowsill, and the ice-covered sawbuck in the yard, and he set to work
-on the pile of pin-oak as if he meant to earn his clock, his breakfast
-and a full day's wages before Mrs. Potter got out of bed. The exercise
-warmed him, but he kept one eye on the top of Mrs. Potter's kitchen
-chimney, looking for the thin smoke signal telling that breakfast was
-under way. The pile of stove-wood grew and grew under his saw but still
-the house gave no sign of life. The sun climbed, making the icy coating
-of trees and fences glow with color, and still Mrs. Potter's kitchen
-chimney remained hopelessly smokeless.
-
-"That woman must have a good, clear conscience or she couldn't sleep
-like that," said the hungry Peter, "but I've got folks on my hands, and
-I've got to see to them. If this ain't enough wood to satisfy her I'll
-saw some more when I come back."
-
-He was worried, for no smoke was coming from the stovepipe that
-protruded from the roof of his shanty-boat. When he reached the boat he
-knocked three times without answer before he opened the door cautiously
-and peered in, ready to retreat should his entrance be inopportune. The
-woman was lying where he had left her, still in her wet clothes, and the
-cabin was icy cold. The boy, when Peter opened the door, was standing on
-the table trying to lift the shot-gun from its pegs. His face showed
-he had made a trip to the bread and jam. He looked down at Peter as the
-door opened.
-
-"Mama's funny," he said, and reached for the gun again.
-
-The woman was indeed "funny." She was in the grip of a raging fever. Her
-cheeks were violently red and against them the green dye from her hat
-made hideous streaks. Her hair had fallen and lay in a tangle over the
-pillow, with the rain-soaked hat still clinging to a strand. As she
-moved her head the hat moved with it, giving her a drunken, disreputable
-appearance. She talked rapidly and angrily, repeating the names of men,
-of "Susie" and "Buddy," stopping to sing a verse of a popular song,
-breaking into profanity and laughing loudly. All human emotions except
-tears flowed from her, and Peter stood with his back against the door,
-uncertain what to do. The table, tipping suddenly and throwing the boy
-to the floor, decided him.
-
-"There, now, you little rascal!" he said, gathering the weeping boy in
-his arms.
-
-"You might have broke your arm, or your leg. You oughtn't to stand on a
-table you ain't acquainted with, that way."
-
-"I wanted to fall down," said the boy, ceasing his tears at once. "I
-like to fall off tables I ain't 'quainted with."
-
-"Well, I just bet you do!" said Peter. "You look like that sort of a
-boy to me. Does your ma act funny like this often? You poor young 'un, I
-hope not!"
-
-"No," said Buddy.
-
-Peter looked at the woman, studying her. It might have been possible
-that she was insane, but the vivid red of her cheeks convinced him she
-was delirious with fever. Her hat, askew over one ear, gave Peter a
-feeling of shame for her, and he put Buddy down and walked to the bunk.
-He saw that the hat pin had made a cruel scratch along her cheek.
-
-"Now, ma'am," he said, "I'm just going to help you off with this hat,
-because it's getting all mashed up, and it ain't needed in the house."
-
-He put out his hand to take the hat, but the woman raised herself on one
-arm, and with the other fist struck Peter full in the face, so that he
-staggered back against the table, while she swore at him viciously.
-
-"You hadn't ought to do that," he said reprovingly; "I wasn't going to
-hurt you."
-
-"I know you!" shouted the woman in a rage. "I know you! You can't come
-any of that over me! You took Susie, you beast, but you don't get Buddy.
-Let me get at you!"
-
-She tried to clamber from the bunk, but fell back coughing.
-
-"Now, you are absolutely wrong, ma'am," said Peter earnestly. "You've
-got me placed entirely wrong. I ain't the man you think I am at all. I'm
-the man that got something for Buddy to eat last night. You recall that,
-don't you?"
-
-The woman looked at him craftily.
-
-"Where's Buddy?" she asked.
-
-"I'm--I'm cooking eggs, Mama," said Buddy promptly, and Peter turned.
-
-"Well, you little rascal!" cried Peter. "You must be hungry."
-
-The boy had put the frying-pan on the floor while Peter's back was
-turned, and had broken the remaining eggs in it. Much of the omelet
-had missed the pan, decorating Buddy's clothes and the floor. The woman
-seemed satisfied when she heard the boy's voice, and closed her
-eyes, and Peter took the opportunity to kindle the fire and start the
-breakfast. He cooked the omelet, the condition of the eggs suggesting
-that as the only method of preparing them. The woman opened her eyes as
-the pleasant odor filled the cabin, and followed every movement Peter
-made.
-
-"I know you! You'll run me out of town, will you?" she cried suddenly.
-"All right, I'll go! I'll go! That's what I get for being decent. You
-know I 've been decent since you took Susie away from me, and that's
-what I get. Run me out--what do I care! I'll go."
-
-She put her feet to the floor, but another coughing fit threw her back
-against the pillow, and when she recovered she burst into tears.
-
-"Don't take her!" she pleaded. "I'll be decent--don't! I tell you I'll
-be decent. Don't I feed her plenty? Don't I dress her warm? Ain't she
-going to school like the other kids? Don't take her. Before God, I'll be
-decent. Come here, Susie!"
-
-"Now, that's all right, ma'am," said Peter, as she began coughing again.
-"Nobody's going to take nobody whilst I'm in this boat, and you can make
-your mind up to that right off. Here's Buddy right here, eating like a
-little man, ain't you, Buddy?"
-
-"Poor baby!" said the woman. "Come and let Ma try to carry you again.
-Your poor little leg's all tired out, ain't it?"
-
-"It's rested," said Buddy, "it ain't tired."
-
-"Tired, oh, God, I'm tired!" she wept. "You'll have to get down, Buddy.
-Ma can't carry you another step. God knows when I get to Riverbank I'll
-be straight. I've got enough of this. Where's Susie?"
-
-"Now, I wisht, if you can, you'd try to lie quiet, ma'am," said Peter,
-"for you ain't well. Try lying still, and I'll go right to town and get
-a doctor to come out and see you. I didn't mean you no harm at all."
-
-"I know you, you snake!" she cried. "You 're from the Society. You took
-my Susie, and you want Buddy. I'll kill you first. Come here, Buddy!"
-
-The boy went to her obediently, and she drew him on to the bunk and ran
-her hand through his white kinks of hair. It seemed to quiet her to feel
-him in her arm.
-
-"Now, ma'am," said Peter, "you see nobody's going to take Buddy at all,
-and you can take my word I won't let anybody take him whilst I'm around.
-You can depend on that, I'm going to town, now, and I guess I'd better
-leave Buddy right here, for you'll be more comfortable knowing where he
-is. Don't you worry about nothing at all until I get back, and if you
-find the door locked it's just so nobody can't get in and bother you."
-
-He looked about the cabin. It was comfortably warm, and he poured water
-on the fire. He wished to take no chances with the woman in her present
-state. He even took his shot-gun and the heavy poker as he went out.
-Buddy watched him with interest.
-
-"Are you stealing that gun?" he asked.
-
-"No, son," said Peter gravely. "Nobody's stealing anything. You want to
-get that idea out of your head. Nobody in this cabin--you, nor me, nor
-your ma, would steal anything. Your ma's sick and don't know what she's
-doing, but she don't mean no real harm. I guess she ain't been treated
-right, and she feels upset about it, but a boy don't want, ever, to say
-anything bad about his ma."
-
-He went out and closed and locked the door. Involuntarily he glanced at
-Widow Potter's chimneys. No smoke came from any of them.
-
-"Now, I just bet that woman has gone and got sick, just when I've got
-my hands plumb full!" he said disgustedly. "I've got to go up and see
-what's the matter with her, or she might lie there and die and nobody
-know a thing about it."
-
-The cold had frozen the slush into hardness, and Peter cut across
-the corn-field. He tried Mrs. Potter's doors and found them all
-locked--which was a bad sign, unless she had gone to town while he was
-in the shanty-boat--but he knocked on the kitchen door noisily, and was
-rewarded after a reasonable wait, by hearing the widow dragging her feet
-across the kitchen.
-
-"Is that you, Peter Lane?" she asked.
-
-"Yes'm," Peter answered.
-
-"Well, it's time you come, I must say," said the widow, between groans.
-"You the only man anywheres near, and you'd leave me die here as soon as
-not. You got to feed the cows and the horse and give the chickens some
-grain and then hitch up and fetch a doctor as fast as he can be fetched.
-I might have laid here for weeks, you 're that unreliable. I'll put the
-barn key on the kitchen table, and when the doctor comes I'll be in my
-bed, if the Lord lets me live that long. I'll be in it anyway, I dare
-say, dead or alive, if I can manage to get to it. And don't you come
-in until I get out of the way, for I ain't got a stitch on but my
-night-gown."
-
-"I won't," said Peter, and he didn't. He gave Mrs. Potter time to
-get into twenty beds, if she had been so minded, before he opened the
-kitchen door a crack and peeped in. He hurried through the chores as
-rapidly as he could, feeding the stock and the chickens and milking
-the cows. He had eaten part of the omelet Buddy had commenced, but he
-thought it only right he should have a satisfying drink of the warm
-milk, and he took it. He made a fire in the kitchen stove and saw that
-the iron tea-kettle was full of water, and then he harnessed the horse
-and drove briskly to town and sought a doctor.
-
-It was the hour when physicians were making their calls and the first
-two Peter sought were out, but Dr. Roth, the new doctor who had come
-from Willets to build a practice in the larger town, happened to be in
-his office over Moore's Drug Store, and he drew on his coat and gloves
-while Peter explained the object of his visit.
-
-"I ain't running Mrs. Potter's affairs," said Peter, "for there ain't no
-call for her to have nobody to run them, but, if I was, I'd get a sort
-of nurse-woman to go up and take care of her. She's all alone, and I
-don't know how sick she is."
-
-"Then you are not Mr. Potter?" asked the doctor.
-
-"I ain't nothing at all like that," said Peter. "I'm a shanty-boatman
-and my boat is right near the widow's place, and I do odd chores for
-her. Old Potter died and went where he belongs quite some time ago."
-
-The doctor agreed to pick up Mrs. Skinner on his way, Mrs. Skinner being
-one of those plump, useful creatures that are willing to do nursing,
-washing, or general housework by the day.
-
-"And another thing, doctor," said Peter, as the doctor closed his office
-door, "whilst you are out there I want you to drop down to the cove
-below the widow's house, to a shanty-boat you'll see there, and take
-a look at the woman I've got in it. So far as I can make out she's a
-mighty sick woman. I'll try to get back before you get through with the
-widow, but you'd better take my key, if I shouldn't. I'll pay whatever
-it costs to treat her. I'm quite ready to do that."
-
-"Why not drive out with me?"
-
-"I got some business to transact," said Peter. "But mebby it might be
-just as well to wait till I do get there. She's sort of out of her mind,
-and she might think you had come to do her some harm if I wasn't there."
-The business Peter had to transact took him to George Rapp's Livery,
-Sale and Feed Stable, and by good luck he found George in his stuffy,
-over-heated office, redolent of tobacco smoke, harness soap and general
-stable odors. Like all men who brave cold weather at all hours George
-liked to be well baked when in-doors.
-
-"Well, George," said Peter, "since I seen you yesterday circumstances
-has occurred to change my mind about making any trips this year in my
-boat. For a man of my constitution I've made up my mind it would be just
-the worst thing to go south at all. It ain't the right air for my lungs,
-and when you got to talking about chinchillas going out of fashion, I
-seen it wasn't worth the risk. What I need is cold climate, George, and
-it's an unfortunate thing this here Mississippi River don't run any
-way but south, because there's one fur never does go out of style, and
-that's arctic fox--."
-
-"All right, I'll give you forty dollars for the boat," laughed Rapp,
-putting his hand in his pocket.
-
-"Now, wait!" said Peter. "I don't want you to think I'm doing this just
-because I want to sell the boat, George. That ain't so. I guess maybe I
-could raise what money I need to outfit, one way or another, but I can't
-afford to pay a caretaker to take care of that boat whilst I'm away
-up in Labrador, or Alaska, or wherever I'm going, and it ain't safe to
-leave a shanty-boat vacant. Tramps would run away with her."
-
-"When do you aim to start north?" asked Rapp, grinning.
-
-"My mind ain't quite made up to that," said Peter. "I want to look over
-a map and see where Labrador is before I start out. I thought maybe
-you'd let me remain in the shanty-boat awhile, George."
-
-"Stay on her as long as you like," said Rapp. "You can live right in her
-all winter. All I want is to get her down to my place right away before
-the river closes, so she'll be there when the ducks fly next spring."
-
-"Now, that's another thing," said Peter uneasily. "With all the
-preparations I have to make for my trip I'll have to be round town
-more or less this winter, and as your place is a long way down river,
-I thought maybe you might let the boat stay where she is this winter,
-George?"
-
-"You can sleep in my barn any time you want to, Peter," said Rapp. "I
-might as well let that boat lie where she is forever as leave her there
-all winter. I want her down there when the ducks fly north. I'll give
-you five dollars extra for floating her down, and a dollar or so a week
-for taking care of her, but if she can't go down she ain't any use to
-me."
-
-"The way the ice is beginning to run I'd have to start her down to-day
-or to-morrow," said Peter regretfully. "It upsets my plans, but I got
-to have some ready cash. If the wind shifts your slough will be
-ice-blocked, and there ain't no other safe place to winter a boat down
-there."
-
-"You don't have to sell her if you don't want to," said Rapp. "You can
-put off your trip. Seems like I've heard you put off trips before now,
-Peter."
-
-"Well, I guess I'll sell, George," said Peter. "Maybe I can trap
-muskrats or something down there, I'll make out some how."
-
-He took the money Rapp handed him and once more Peter was homeless.
-He was no better than a tramp now. His plans were vague as to the sick
-woman, but forty-five dollars seemed a great deal of money to Peter. He
-might hire a room from Mrs. Potter, if that lady would permit, and have
-the sick woman cared for there, or he might, have her brought to
-town and lodged somewhere, if any one would take her in. There was no
-hospital in Riverbank. But he was happy. Somehow, he did not doubt he
-could care for the woman, for he had money in his pocket. To turn her
-over to the county poor-farm did not enter his mind. He would not have
-given a dog that fate.
-
-He drove to Main Street first and tied his horse before the grocery that
-received his infrequent patronage. Here he bought a bag of flour and
-six packages of roasted coffee, some bacon and beans, condensed milk and
-canned goods, sugar and other necessities, and then let his eyes wander
-over the grocer's shelves. He had about decided to buy a can of green
-gage plums, as a dainty he loved and never indulged in, and therefore
-suitable to buy for the sick woman, when he saw the small white jars of
-beef extract, and he bought one for the sick woman.
-
-While his parcels were being wrapped he picked up the copy of the
-_Riverbank News_ that lay on the counter and glanced over it, for a
-newspaper was a rare treat for Peter. On the first page his eye caught
-the headline "Pass Her Along." It was at the head of an article in
-the _News_ reporter's best humorous style, and told how Lize Merdin, a
-notorious character, had been run out of Derlingport, the next town up
-the river, and ordered never to return under pain of tar and feathers.
-"The gay girl hit the ties in the direction of Riverbank at a Maud S.
-pace, yanking her young male offspring after her by the arm," wrote the
-reporter, "and when last seen seemed intending to favor River-bank with
-her society, but up to last reports nothing has been seen of her there.
-It is a two days' jaunt for a gentle creature like Lize, but when
-she hits the River Street depot she will find Riverbank a regular
-springboard, and the bounce she will get here will impress on her
-receptive mind the fact that Riverbank is not hankering for her company.
-Pass her along!"
-
-Peter folded the paper and laid it on the counter. So that was who
-his visitor was, and how she came to be tramping the railway track! He
-walked to where great golden oranges glowed in a box, near the door, and
-chose half a dozen and laid them beside his other purchases. These too
-were for the sick woman. Then he selected a dozen big, red apples and
-laid them beside the oranges. They were for Buddy. It was Peter's method
-of showing his disapproval of the bad taste of the _News'_ article.
-
-When Peter reached the widow's farmhouse the doctor's horse still stood
-in the bam-yard, and Peter put up his own horse, while waiting for the
-doctor to come out.
-
-"How is the widow? Is she bad off?" he asked when the doctor appeared.
-
-"Mrs. Potter thinks she is a very sick woman, and she isn't a well one,"
-said the doctor. "She'll stay in bed a week, anyway. That's some woman.
-She has Mrs. Skinner hopping around like a toad in a skillet already,
-and she sent orders by me that you are to come and sleep in the kitchen,
-to be handy if she has a relapse in the night. You are to take care of
-her stock, and saw the rest of her cord wood, and do the odd chores, and
-if the pump freezes thaw it out, before it gets frozen any worse."
-
-"Now, ain't that too bad!" said Peter. "Just when I've got to get
-started down river this afternoon. Things always happen like that, don't
-they?"
-
-He led the way across the frozen corn-field to his shanty-boat, and
-opened the door. Buddy had managed to turn the table upside down and was
-"riding a boat" in it. The doctor gave the boy and the cabin one glance
-and had Peter classed as one of the shiftless shanty-boatmen before
-he had pulled off his fur gloves. Then he turned to the woman. She
-was lying with her face toward the wall. He bent over her, and when he
-straightened his back and turned to Peter his face was very serious.
-
-"Your wife is dead," he said.
-
-Peter's pale blue eyes stared at the doctor vacantly.
-
-"Dead?" he stammered. "My wife? Why, doctor, she ain't--"
-
-"Yes," said the doctor, not waiting to hear the conclusion of Peter's
-sentence. "She has been dead an hour, at least. A weak heart, overtaxed,
-I should say. What do you mean by leaving her in these damp clothes? I
-should have been called long ago."
-
-"Now, ain't that too bad! Ain't that too bad!" said Peter regretfully.
-"It ain't nobody's fault but mine. I ought to have gone for you last
-night, and there I was, a-sleepin' away as comfortable as could be!"
-
-"She should have been under treatment for some time," said the doctor
-severely. He was a young doctor, and important, and not inclined to
-spare the feelings of a mere shanty-boatman. Here he could be severe,
-who had to be suave and politic with better people. He told Peter
-brutally that the woman had not been properly cared for; that with her
-constitution, she should have had delicacies and comforts and kindness.
-"If you want my candid opinion, you as much as killed her," said Dr.
-Roth.
-
-He was nettled by Peter's apparent heartlessness, for while Peter showed
-that the death had shocked him, he gave way to no outburst of sorrow
-such as might be expected from a bereaved husband. But now deep regret
-in Peter's eyes touched him.
-
-"I shouldn't have said that," he said more kindly. "I might not have
-been able to do anything. Probably not much after all. But if you don't
-want the boy to go the same way, treat him better. You have him left."
-
-Peter turned and looked at Buddy who, all unconscious, was rowing his
-table boat with a piece of driftwood for oar.
-
-"That's so, aint it?" said Peter. "She's left the boy on my hands, ain't
-she? I guess I got to take care of him. Yep, I guess I have!"
-
-When the doctor left the boat, half an hour later, he shook his head as
-he closed the door.
-
-"Shiftless and unfeeling!" he muttered to himself. "'Left the boy on my
-hands!' Poor boy, I'm sorry for you, with a father like that."
-
-For he did not see Peter drop on his knees beside the curly headed child
-as soon as the door was closed, and he did not see how Peter took the
-boy in his arms. He could not hear what Peter said.
-
-"Buddy boy," said Peter, "how'd it be if you and Uncle Peter just sort
-of snuggled up close and--and et a big, red apple?"
-
-
-
-
-V. BUDDY STEERS THE BOAT
-
-
-"NOW, don't you fret, Buddy-boy," said Peter Lane with forced
-cheerfulness, "because I'm going to let you do something you never did
-before, and that I wouldn't let many boys do. You are going to help
-Uncle Peter steer this boat, just like you was a big man."
-
-Buddy stood in the skiff which was drawn up on the bank. Peter, with
-a rock and his stove-poker, was undoing the frozen knot that held his
-shanty-boat to the Rock Island Railway System, and by means of that to
-the State of Iowa. He was preparing to take the shanty-boat down the
-river to George Rapp's place. His provisions were aboard, the rag of
-a sail lay ready to raise should the wind serve--but it promised not
-to--and the long sweep that had reposed on the roof of the boat was on
-its pin at the bow, if a boat, both ends of which were identical, could
-be said to have a bow.
-
-"I like to steer boats," said Buddy out of his boyish optimism.
-
-"I bet you do," said Peter, "and a mighty good steerer you'll make.
-I don't know how Uncle Peter could get down river if he didn't have
-somebody to steer for him. Now, you let me push that skiff into the
-water, and we'll row around the boat, and before you know it you'll be
-steering like a regular little sailor."
-
-He threw the mooring rope on to the stern deck of the shanty-boat,
-pushed the skiff into the water and poled to the other end of the boat
-where the long sweep was held with its blade suspended in the air, the
-handle caught under a cleat on the deck. Peter lifted Buddy to the deck,
-made the skiff's painter fast, and climbed to the deck after the boy.
-
-"Now, Buddy, we'll be off in a minute and a half," he said, "just as
-soon as I fix you the way they fix sailors when they steer a ship in a
-big storm."
-
-He drew a ball of seine twine from his pocket, knotted one end about
-Buddy's waist, cut off a generous length, and tied the other end to the
-cleat.
-
-"Don't!" said Buddy imperatively. "I don't want to be tied, Uncle
-Peter."
-
-"Oh, yes, you do!" said Peter. "Why, a sailor-man couldn't think of
-steering a great boat like this unless he was tied to it."
-
-"No!" shouted Buddy, and Peter stood, holding his end of the cord,
-studying the boy.
-
-"Now, Buddy-boy," he said appealingly. "Don't holler like that. Ain't I
-told you we must keep right quiet, because your ma is asleep in there."
-
-"But I don't want to be tied!" cried the boy.
-
-"But Uncle Peter's going to be tied, too," said Peter. "Yes, siree, Bob!
-Just as soon as I get this boat out into the river, I'm going to be tied
-like you are, and no mistake. You didn't know that, I guess, did you?"
-
-The boy looked at him doubtfully.
-
-"Are you?" he asked.
-
-"If I say I am, I am," said Peter. "You can always be right sure that
-when Uncle Peter says a thing, he ain't trying to fool you, Buddy. No,
-sir! You can just believe what Uncle Peter says, with all your might.
-I might lie to grown folks now and then, but I wouldn't lie to a little
-boy. No, sir!"
-
-"I ain't a little boy. I'm a big sailor-man!" said the boy. "And you
-said I could steer, and I want to steer."
-
-"Right away you can," said Peter. "You're going to steer with one of
-them skiff oars, but first I've got to row this boat out into the river
-a ways so you'll have plenty of room. So don't you fret. You watch Uncle
-Peter."
-
-He made the skiff fast to the boat with a length of rope, took the oars,
-and as he rowed, the heavy boat moved slowly from behind the point out
-into the river current. Peter towed her well out into the river before
-he let the skiff drop back. He meant the shanty-boat to float sweep
-first--it was all the same to her--and he fastened the painter of the
-skiff to the shanty-boat's stern, and edged his way along the narrow
-strip of wood that marked the division between the hull and the
-superstructure, holding himself by clasping the edge of the roof with
-his cold fingers, and sliding an oar along the roof as he went. It would
-have been much simpler and safer to have passed through the cabin.
-
-To satisfy Buddy, he tied a length of seine cord about his own waist and
-fastened the end to the deck ring, and then he lashed Buddy's oar to
-a small iron ring. The boy could take a few steps and splash the water
-with the oar without falling into the river. Then Peter took the heavy
-sweep handle in his hands and the shanty-boat was under way.
-
-It was time. The rising water had dislodged heavier ice than had yet
-come down, and the river was filling with it. The wind, such as there
-was, while it blew almost dead upstream, was an aid in that it swept the
-floating ice toward the Illinois shore, leaving Peter's course clear,
-and an occasional dip of the sweep was sufficient to keep the boat
-head-on in the current. The wind made the river choppy, but the
-shanty-boat, not having had time to water-log since Peter put her in the
-water, floated high.
-
-For a while Buddy steered energetically, splashing the water with the
-blade of his oar, but Peter was ready for the first sign of weariness.
-
-"My! but you are a fine steerer!" he said approvingly. "When you grow
-just a bit bigger, Uncle Peter is going to teach you how to row a boat,
-and a song to sing while you row it. Hurry up, now, and help Uncle Peter
-steer."
-
-"Let's sing a song to steer a boat," said Buddy.
-
-"No, I guess we won't sing to-day," said Peter. "Some other day we'll
-sing."
-
-For Peter and Buddy were not taking the voyage alone. When Peter,
-assisted by Mrs. Skinner, had completed the preparations he felt were
-due any woman who is making the Great Journey, he found his money too
-little to afford her a resting-place in the town, but Peter Lane could
-not let one who had knocked at his door, seeking shelter, go from there
-to the potter's field, any more than he could let her boy go to the
-county farm. While the smart reporter was wondering whether the power
-of the press, in his article "Pass Her Along," had warned Lize Merdin to
-take the road to some other town, and while Dr. Roth was telling of the
-shanty-boatman whose wife had died without medical attendance, Peter, by
-roundabout questions regarding George Rapp's place, learned of a small
-country burying ground not too far from the spot where the shanty-boat
-was to be moored for the winter. There he was taking Lize Merdin who,
-"decent" at last and forever, lay within the cabin.
-
-Through the long forenoon Peter leaned on the handle of his sweep,
-pressing his breast against it now and then to swing the shanty-boat
-into the full current. There was no other large boat on the river. Here
-and there a fisherman pulled at his oars in a heavy skiff, or moved
-slowly from hook to hook of his trot-line, lifting from time to time
-a flop-pily protesting fish, but gave the shanty-boat no more than a
-glance.
-
-The boat floated past the empty log-boom of the upper mill--silent
-for the winter--and past the great lumber piles, still bearing their
-covering of sleet. Peter could hear the gun-like slap of board on board
-coming from where some man was loading lumber in a freight car, and
-occasionally a voice came across the water with startling distinctness:
-
-"I told him he could chop his own wood, I wouldn't do it."
-
-"What did he say to that?"
-
-"He said he could get plenty of men that would do it." He knew the men
-must be sitting close to the water's edge, and finally his sharp eyes
-made them out below the railway embankment--two black specks crouched
-over a small, yellow blaze. He recognized one voice, the voice of one
-of the town loafers. The other was strange to him, probably that of some
-tramp.
-
-Below that, dwellings fronted the river and the streets of the
-town opened in long vistas as the boat came to them, closing again
-immediately as it passed. The hissing of a switch-engine, sidetracked
-to await the passing of a train soon due, and the clanking of a poker
-on the grate bars as the fireman dislodged the clinkers, came to Peter's
-ears distinctly. Then the boat slipped past George Rapp's stable, with
-its bold red brick front, and as he passed the door, Peter could hear
-for an instant the scrape of a horse's hoof in the stall, although the
-boat was a good half mile out in the river. Beyond the stable was the
-low-lying canning factory, and the row of saloons, and the hotel, and
-the wholesale houses, partly hidden by the railway station on the river
-side of Front Street, and the packet warehouse on the river's edge. Then
-the low rumbling of the dusty oatmeal mill, cut by the excited voices of
-small children playing at the water's edge, became the prominent voice
-of the town.
-
-From the edge of the river the town rose on two hills, showing masses of
-gray, leafless trees, with here and there a house peeping through. From
-Peter's boat it looked like the dead corpse of a town, but he knew every
-street of it, and he knew Life, with its manifold business of work and
-play, was hurrying feverishly there, and he knew, too, that not one of
-all those so busy with Life knew he was floating by, or if knowing it,
-would have cared.
-
-"That there is a town, Buddy," said Peter. "That's Riverbank."
-
-"Is it?" said Buddy, without interest. He gave it but a glance.
-
-"Yes, sir!" said Peter. "That's the town. And it's sort of funny to
-think of that whole townful of people rushing around, and going and
-coming, and doing things that seem mighty important to them whilst
-your--whilst this boat goes floating down this river as calm and
-peaceful as if the day of judgment had come and gone again. It's funny!
-Probably there ain't man or woman in that whole town but, a couple of
-days ago, was better and whiter than--than a certain party; and now
-there ain't one of 'em but is all smudgy and soiled if compared with
-her. Yes, sir, it's funny!"
-
-He worked his sweep vigorously to carry the shanty-boat to the east
-of the large island--the Tow-head--that lay before the lower-town. The
-screech of boards passing through the knives of a planing-mill drowned
-the rumble of the oatmeal mill. A long passenger train hurried along the
-river bank like a hasty worm, and stopped, panting, at the water tank,
-and went on again. The boat, as it passed on the far side of the island,
-seemed to drop suddenly into silence, and the chopping of the waves
-against the hull of the boat made itself heard.
-
-"Yes, sir, towns is funny!" said Peter. "Now, take the way going behind
-this island has wiped that one out. So far as you and me are concerned,
-Buddy, that town might be wiped off the earth, and we wouldn't know. We
-wouldn't hardly care at all. The folks in it ain't nothing to us at all,
-right now. And yet, if I go into that town, I'm interested in every one
-of the folks I meet, and it makes me sort of sick to see any of them
-cold and hungry. Maybe that's what towns is for. Maybe I live alone too
-much. I get so all I think about is sleep and eat. And eating ain't a
-bad habit. How'd you like to?"
-
-Buddy was willing. He was willing to eat any time. He ate two apples and
-eight crackers, and watched the apple cores float beside the boat.
-
-"Now, you 're going to fish," said Peter. "Right here looks like a good
-place to fish. Maybe you'll catch a whale. You're just as apt to catch a
-whale here as anything else."
-
-"Ain't Mama hungry?" asked Buddy so suddenly that Peter was startled.
-
-"Now, hear that!" he said. "Ain't you just as thoughtful! Why, no,
-Buddy. It's real nice for you to think of that, but your ma ain't
-hungry. She ain't going to be hungry or cold or wet any more, so don't
-you bother your little head about it one bit. She don't want anything
-but that you should grow up and be a big, fine man."
-
-"Like you, Uncle Peter?" asked Buddy. "My land, no!" said Peter
-impulsively. "I mean, no, indeed. Don't you take me for no model, Buddy.
-You want to grow up and be--I'll explain when you get older. I want you
-to grow up to be a good man; the kind of man that takes some interest in
-other folks. You don't want to be a dried-up old codger like me."
-
-"What's a codger?" asked Buddy.
-
-"A codger is a stingy, old, hard-shell cuss--" Peter began. "I guess you
-could eat another apple," he finished, and Buddy did.
-
-The island they were passing was low and fringed with willows, now bare
-of leaf, and the shanty-boat kept close in until the current veered to
-the Illinois shore, with its water-elms and maples, and tangles of wild
-grapevines. Peter knew every mark of this part of the river well. The
-current swung from shore to shore, now crossing to the Iowa side
-again, where the levee guarded the fields, and now swinging back to the
-Illinois bottom-land. For the boy the scene held little interest;
-for Peter it was a new chapter of an old story he loved. Here a giant
-sycamore he had known since youth had been blackened and shortened by
-lightning; there an elm, falling, had created a new sand-bar on which
-willows were already finding a foothold. In time it might be quite an
-island, or perhaps the next spring "rise" might sweep it away
-entirely. A farm-house high on the Illinois bluff had a new windmill. A
-sweet-potato bam on the other side of the river was now a blackened pile
-of timbers. Rotting sand-bags told the spot where the river, on its last
-"rampage" had threatened to cut the levee.
-
-Buddy fished patiently until even a more interested fisherman would have
-given it up as a bad job, and Peter fed him a slice of bread and butter.
-For half an hour he watched Peter whittle a nubbin off the end of the
-sweep and fashion it into a top, but at the first attempt to spin it the
-top bounded into the water, and floated away, and this suggested boats.
-For the rest of the afternoon Peter doled out pieces of the pile of
-driftwood on the deck, and they went over the side as boats, Peter
-naming each after one of the river steamers, until Buddy himself said,
-"This is the _War Eagle_, Uncle Peter," or "This is the _Long Annie.
-She'll_ splash!" Peter did not grudge his firewood; there was an
-abundance of driftwood to be had in the slough for which they were
-making. The last piece he fitted with a painter of twine, and Buddy let
-it drag in the water, enjoying its "pull," until the afternoon grew late
-and the sun set like a huge red ball that almost reached from bank to
-bank, and made the river a path of gold and copper.
-
-As they floated down this glowing way, Peter fed the boy again. Little
-as he knew about boys, he knew they must be fed.
-
-"There, now!" he said when the tired boy could eat no more, and the
-tired eyes blinked, "I guess you'll sleep like a sailor to-night, and no
-mistake, Buddy-boy, and I'm going to give you a treat such as boys don't
-often have. You see that great, big, white moon up there? I'm going to
-let you go to bed outdoors here, so you can look right up at that moon
-and blink your eyes at it, and see if it blinks back at you. That's what
-I'm going to do; and whenever you want to, you can open your eyes and
-you'll see that big old moon, and those stars, and Uncle Peter."
-
-"I don't want to go to sleep," said Buddy.
-
-"Nobody said you had to go to sleep," said Peter. "You stay awake, if
-you want to, and watch that funny old moon. You'd think we'd float right
-past it, but she floats along up there, like a sort of shanty-boat up in
-the sky, and the stars follow along like the play boats you put in the
-water. You wait until you see the bed Uncle Peter is going to make for
-you!"
-
-Buddy fixed his eyes very seriously on the moon, while Peter unlocked
-the cabin door and brought out an armful of nets and blankets and a
-pillow. Close against the cabin Peter built a bed of nets and blankets.
-
-"There, now!" he said. "That's some bed! I hope that moon didn't blink
-at you. Did she?"
-
-"No, she didn't," said Buddy. "But she almost did."
-
-"You crawl in here where you'll be nice and warm, then," said Peter.
-"Uncle Peter has to have somebody to watch that moon and tell him if she
-blinks, and you can lie here and look up, like the sailors do. If she
-blinks, you tell me, won't you?"
-
-"Yes," said Buddy seriously, and Peter tucked him in the blankets.
-"Uncle Peter," he said, after a minute, "she blinked."
-
-"Did she, now?" said Peter, but Buddy said no more. He was asleep.
-
-But the moon did not blink much. Big and clear and cold she filled the
-river valley with white light through which sparkles of frost glittered,
-and through the evening and late into the night Peter Lane stood at his
-sweep, looking out over the water and thinking his own strange thoughts.
-Now and then he stooped and arranged the blanket over Buddy's shoulders,
-and now and then he knelt and dipped water from the river with his
-cupped hand to pour upon the sweep-pin lest it creak and awaken the boy.
-When he swung the sweep he swung it slowly and carefully, so that only
-the softest gurgle of water could be heard above the plashing of the
-small waves against the hull.
-
-After midnight the night became intensely cold and Peter's fingers
-stiffened on the sweep handle, and he warmed them by hugging them in his
-arm-pits. It was about two in the morning when the shanty-boat slipped
-into the mouth of the slough that cut George Rapp's place, and floated
-more slowly down the narrow winding water until the soft grating of sand
-on the bottom of the hull told Peter she was going aground on a bar.
-Very quietly, then, Peter poled the boat close to the low, muddy
-bank--frozen now--and made her fast. His voyage was over.
-
-He gathered driftwood and made a fire, well back from the boat so the
-light might not disturb the boy's slumber, and sat beside it, warming
-his hands and feet, until the sun lighted the east. It was a full hour
-after sunrise before Buddy awakened, and then he looked expectantly at
-the sky.
-
-"The moon got lost, Uncle Peter," he said with deep concern.
-
-"Well, we haven't time to bother about any moon this morning," said
-Peter briskly. "This is the day you are going to have a real good time,
-because a farmer man lives not so far away from here, and he has more
-pigs than you ever heard of, and horses, and cows, and chickens, and
-turkeys, and guinea-hens, and I don't know what all, and I dare say he's
-wondering why you haven't come to see them by this time. Yes, sir, he's
-wondering why Buddy hasn't come yet. And so are the pigs, and the cows,
-and the horses, and the chickens, and the guinea-hens."
-
-"And the turkeys," said Buddy, eagerly.
-
-"Yes, siree, Bob!" said Peter. "So we'll hurry up and wash our faces--"
-
-Buddy scrambled to his feet, all eagerness, and then, with the sudden
-changefulness of a small boy, he turned from Peter, toward the cabin
-door.
-
-"I want my mama to wash my face!" he said.
-
-Peter Lane put his thin brown hand on Buddy's shoulder.
-
-"Son," he said, so seriously that Buddy looked up, "do you recall to
-mind the other night when you and your ma come a knocking at my door,
-and how cold and wet and tired in the leg, and hungry you was? Well,
-Buddy, your ma was awful sorry you was so tired out and all. I guess I
-couldn't half tell you how sorry she was, son, not in a week. You took
-notice how your ma cried whilst you was on that trip, didn't you?"
-
-"Yes, Mama cried," said Buddy.
-
-"Yes, she cried," said Peter. "And the reason she cried was because she
-had to take you on that trip that she didn't know what was to be the end
-of. That's what she cried for, because she had to let you get all tired
-and hungry. And you wouldn't want to make your ma cry any more, would
-you?"
-
-"No," said Buddy simply.
-
-"Well, then," said Peter, clearing his throat, "your ma she has had
-to go on another trip, unexpected, and she says to me, in a way, so to
-speak, 'Uncle Peter,' she said, 'here's Buddy, and he just can't go with
-me on this trip, and I want you to take him and--and--show him the pigs
-and--'"
-
-"And cows," Buddy prompted. "And horses. And turkeys."
-
-"Why, yes," said Peter Lane. "So to speak, that's what she meant, I
-guess. The horses and turkeys and the things in the world. So she went
-away, and she wouldn't like to have you fret too much just because she
-couldn't take you along."
-
-"All right," said Buddy, quite satisfied. "Let's go see the pigs, and
-the cows, and the turkeys."
-
-For Peter it was a long day, from the time he carried Buddy on his
-shoulder to the farm-house two miles back on the bluff to the time he
-stopped for him at the farm-house again, late in the afternoon, and bore
-him back to the boat, with a chunk of gingerbread in his hand, and the
-farmer's kind wife standing in the door, wiping her eyes on her blue
-apron.
-
-When Peter had tucked the boy in the bunk, and had said "Good night,"
-he took out his jack-knife to shape a wooden spoon. The boy, raising his
-head, watched him, and Peter, looking up, saw the blue eyes and thought
-he saw a reproach in them.
-
-"That's so!" he said. "That's so! I forgot it teetotally last night."
-
-He seated himself on the edge of the bunk and leaned over the boy,
-taking the small hands in his.
-
-"I don't know if your ma had you say your prayers to her or not, Buddy,"
-he said, "and I don't rightly remember how that 'Our Father' goes, so
-we'll get along the best we can 'til I go up to the farm again and I
-find out for sure. You just say this after Uncle Peter--'O God, make us
-all well and happy to-morrow: Buddy and Uncle Peter, and Aunt Jane,'"
-
-"And Aunt Jane," repeated Buddy.
-
-"And--and Mrs. Potter," said Peter.
-
-"And Mrs. Potter," said Buddy, "and the pigs, and the horses, and the
-cows, and the chickens, and the turkeys."
-
-"Well--yes!" said Peter. "I guess it won't do any harm to put them in,
-although it ain't customary. They might as well be well and happy as
-not.--Amen!"
-
-"Uncle Peter," said the boy suddenly, "will Mama come back?"
-
-"Oh, yes!" said Peter Lane, in his unpreparedness, and then he opened
-his mouth again to tell the boy the truth, but he heard the sigh of
-satisfaction as Buddy dropped his head on the pillow and closed his
-eyes.
-
-"I got to take that lie back to-morrow," said Peter gravely, but he
-never did take it back, never! It stands against him to this day, but it
-is quite hidden in the heaped up blossoms of his gentle kindness.
-
-
-
-
-VI. "BOOGE"
-
-"NO, siree, Buddy!" said Peter, shaking his head, "my jack-knife is one
-thing you can't have to play with. There's two things a man oughtn't to
-trust to anybody; one's his jack-knife and one's his soul. He ought to
-keep both of them nice and sharp and clean. If I been letting my soul
-get dull and rusty and all nicked up, it's no sign I'm going to let my
-jack-knife get that way. What I got to do is to polish up my soul, and
-I guess there ain't no better place to do it than down here where there
-ain't nobody to bother me whilst I do it. You hain't no idee what a soul
-is, but you will have some day, maybe. I ain't right sure I know that,
-myself."
-
-The shanty-boat was moored in Rapp's slough, and had been there three
-days. The cold weather, which continued unabated, had sealed the boat
-in by spreading a sheet of ice over the surface of the slough, but Peter
-did not like the way the river was behaving. Between the new-formed
-ice and the shore a narrow strip of water appeared faster than the cold
-could freeze it and the ice that covered the slough cracked now and then
-in long, irregular lines, all telling that the river was rising, and
-rising rapidly. This meant that the cold snap was merely local and that
-up the river unseasonably warm weather had brought rains or a great
-thaw. There was no great danger of a long period of high water so late
-in the season, for cold waves were sure to freeze the North soon, but
-the present high water was not only apt to be inconvenient but actually
-dangerous for the shanty-boat. A rise of another foot would cover the
-lowland, and if the weather turned warm Buddy and Peter would be cut
-off from the hill farms by two miles of water-covered "bottom," to wade
-across which in Peter's thin shoes would be most unpleasant.
-
-The danger was that the wind which now blew steadily toward the Iowa
-side and down stream, might force the huge weight of floating ice into
-the head of the slough, pushing and pressing it against the newly formed
-slough ice and crumbling it--cracked and loosened at the edges as
-it was--and thus pile the whole mass irresistibly against the little
-shanty-boat. In such an event the boat would either be overwhelmed by
-one of those great ice hills that pile up when the river ice meets an
-obstruction or, borne before the tons of pressure, be carried out of
-the slough with the moving ice and forced down the river for many miles,
-perhaps, before Peter could work the boat into clear water and find
-shelter behind some point. The water reached the height of the bank of
-the slough the third day, and Peter made every possible preparation to
-save the boat should the ice begin to move. There was not much he could
-do. He unshipped his small mast and drove a spike in its butt, to use as
-a pike pole, stowed his skiff in a safe place between two large trees on
-the shore, and saw to the hitch that held the boat, that he might cast
-off promptly if the strain became too great.
-
-Peter did not blame himself for the position in which the untimely rise
-had placed him. The slough should have been a safe place. Once let the
-ice firmly seal the slough--any slough--and all the weight of all the
-floating ice of the whole river could not disturb the boat. When the ice
-moved out of the river in the spring it would pile up in a mountain at
-the head of the island formed by the slough, choking the entrance, and
-not until the slough ice softened and rotted and honeycombed and at last
-dissolved in the sun, could anything move the shanty-boat. A big rise in
-November is rare indeed.
-
-"But I want your jack-knife, Uncle Peter," said the boy insistently. "I
-want to whittle."
-
-"And I wouldn't give two cents for a boy that didn't want to whittle,"
-said Peter. "A jack-knife is one of the things I've got to get you when
-I go up town, and I'll put it right down now."
-
-From his clock shelf--still lacking its alarm-clock--he took a slip of
-paper and a pencil stub. It was his list of goods to be bought, and it
-was growing daily.
-
-     Coffee
-     Rubber boots for B
-     Lard
-     Sweter for B. red one
-     Bibel
-     Sope
-     Hymn Book
-     Stokings for B
-     A. B. C. blocks for B
-     60 thread. 80 too
-
-Under this he added "Jack-knife for B." and replaced the list and
-pencil. He shook his head as he did so. He had forty cents in his
-pocket, and the small pile of wooden spoons that represented his trading
-capital had not increased. Getting settled for the winter had taken most
-of his time, and while his jack-knife was busy each evening its work was
-explained by the toys with which Buddy had littered the floor. These
-were crudely whittled and grotesque animals--a horse, a cow, two pigs
-and a cat much larger than the cow, all of clean white maplewood--the
-beginnings of a complete farm-yard. Of them all Buddy preferred the
-"funny cat," and a funny cat it was.
-
-Peter had his own ideas on the question of when a small boy should go to
-bed, but Buddy had other ideas, and Peter was not sorry to have the boy
-playing about the cabin long after normal bed-time. When, on the night
-of the funeral, it became a matter of plain decency for Buddy to retire,
-and he wouldn't, Peter had compromised by agreeing to whittle a cat
-if Buddy would go to bed like a little soldier as soon as the cat was
-completed. The result was a very hasty cat. Peter made it with
-twenty quick motions of his jack-knife--which was putting up a job on
-Buddy--but Buddy was satisfied. The cat had no ears. It might have been
-a rabbit or a bear, if Peter had chosen to call it so. It was a most
-impressionistic cat. But Buddy loved it.
-
-"Ho! ho!" he laughed, throwing his legs in the air, as was his way when
-he was much amused. "_That's_ a funny cat, Uncle Peter. Make another
-funny cat."
-
-"You get to bed, young Buddy!" said Peter. "I said I'd make you a cat,
-and you say that's a cat, and you said you'd go to bed, so to bed you
-go."
-
-And to bed Buddy went, with the cat in one hand. Next to Peter himself
-Buddy loved the cat more than anything in the world. He loved to look at
-the cat. It was the sort of cat that left something to the imagination.
-That may be why he liked it. Children are happiest with the simplest
-toys.
-
-In Peter's list of prospective purchases the "Bibel" had been put down
-because Peter, watching Buddy's curly head as it lay beside the cat
-on the pillow of the bunk, had suddenly perceived that a child is a
-tremendous responsibility. Buddy's hair did it. He noticed that Buddy's
-hair, which had been almost white, had, in the few days Peter had had
-him in charge, turned to a dirty gray. He had not minded Buddy's dirty
-face and hands--they were normal to a boy--but the soiled tow hair
-shamed Peter. Even a mother like Buddy's had kept that hair as it
-should be, and Peter was shocked to think he was already letting the
-boy deteriorate. If this continued Buddy would soon be no better than
-himself--a shiftless (as per Mrs. Potter), careless, no-account scrub
-of a boy, and it made Peter wince. He thought too much of the freckled
-face, and the little tow-head to have that happen.
-
-It made him down-hearted for a minute, but Peter was never despondent
-long. If the cold chilled his bones it suggested a trip to New Orleans
-or Cuba, and he instantly forgot the cold in building one detail of the
-trip on another, until he had circumnavigated the globe and decided he
-would go to neither one nor the other, but to Patagonia or Peru.
-
-If that was the way Buddy's hair looked after a few days under the old
-Peter, then Peter must turn over so many new leaves he would be in the
-second volume. He would be a tramp no more. He would have money and a
-home and be a respected citizen, with a black silk watch fob, and go to
-church--and that suggested the "Bibel." With "sope" and the Scripture on
-his list Peter felt less guilty.
-
-The "hymn book" was a sequential thought. Bibles and hymn books go hand
-in hand. Peter meant to start Buddy right, and he was going to begin
-with himself. He meant, now, to be a good man, and a prosperous
-one--perhaps a millionaire. His idea was a little vague, including a
-shadowy Prince Albert coat and a silk hat, but he thought a Bible and a
-hymn book, at least, ought to be in the stock of a man that was going
-to be what Peter meant to be. The A. B. C. blocks on the list were to
-be the cornerstone of Buddy's education, and on them Peter visioned a
-gilded structure of college and other vague things of culture. Peter's
-plans were always dreamlike, and all the more beautiful for that
-reason. He was forever about to trap some elusive chinchilla on some
-unattainable Amazon.
-
-"Make a funny cat, Uncle Peter," said Buddy when he was convinced he
-could not coax the jack-knife from Peter.
-
-"Oh, no!" said Peter. "You've got one funny cat. I guess one funny cat
-like that is enough in one family. Uncle Peter has to keep his eye out
-to watch if the ice is going to move this morning. He can't make cats."
-
-"Make a funny dog," said Buddy promptly. "Well, Buddy, if I make you a
-funny dog," said Peter, "will you be a good boy and play with it and let
-Uncle Peter get some stove wood aboard the boat?"
-
-"Yes, Uncle Peter," said Buddy. He had the smile of a cherub and the
-splendid mendacity of youth. He would promise anything. Only the most
-unreasonable expect a boy to keep such promises, but it does the heart
-good to hear them.
-
-Peter took a thin slice of maplewood from his pile, and seated himself
-on his bunk. He held the wood at arm's length until he saw a dog in it,
-and Buddy leaned against his knee.
-
-"Now, this is going to be a real funny dog," said Peter, as his keen
-blade sliced through the wood as easily as a yacht's prow cuts the
-water. "S'pose we put his head up like that, hey, like he was laughing
-at the moon?" Two deft turns of the blade. "And we'll have this funny
-dog a-sitting on his hind legs, hey?" Four swift turns of the knife.
-
-"That's a funny dog!" laughed Buddy. "Give me the funny dog."
-
-"Now, don't you be so impatient," said Peter. "This is going to be a
-real funny dog, if you wait a minute. There, now, he's scratching
-that ear with this paw, and he's ready to shake hands with this one,
-and"--two or three quick turns of the knife--"there he is, cocking his
-eye up at you, like he was tickled to death to see you had your face
-washed this morning without howling no more than you did."
-
-"Ho, ho!" laughed Buddy; "that's a funny dog! Now make a funny rabbit,
-Uncle Peter."
-
-"No, siree, Buddy!" said Peter sternly.
-
-"You promised to be good if I made a dog, so you just sit down and be
-it. When a body makes a promise, he'd always ought to keep it, if it
-ain't too inconvenient. So you stay right here and don't touch the stove
-or anything, whilst I get in some wood. That's my duty, and when a man
-has a duty to do he ought to do it, unless something he'd rather do
-turns up meanwhile."
-
-Peter took his shot-gun. There was always a chance of a shot at a
-rabbit. He crossed the plank to the shore, but there was not much
-burnable driftwood along the slough. What there was had been frozen in
-the ice, and Peter pushed his way up to where the slough made a sharp
-turn. In such places abundant driftwood was thrown against the willows
-at high water, and Peter set his gun against a log and filled his arms.
-He was stooping for a last stick when a cotton-tail darted from under
-the tangled pile and zig-zagged into the willow thicket.
-
-Peter dropped his wood and grasped his gun and ran after the rabbit, but
-his foot turned on a slimy log and he went down. He had a bad fall.
-
-For a man just beginning a career of superhuman goodness Peter swore
-quite freely as he sat on the log and hugged his ankle, grinning with
-pain. It relieved his mind, and the rubbing he gave his ankle relieved
-the pain, and he felt better all through when he put his foot to the
-ground and tried it. He limped a little, but he grinned, too, for he
-knew Buddy would be amused to see Uncle Peter limping "like Buddy."
-Buddy could see something funny in anything.
-
-Peter limped back to his driftwood, but as he pushed through the
-leafless willows he dropped his gun and hobbled hastily toward the
-shanty-boat. Forced by the weight of river ice pressing in at the head
-of the slough, the slough ice was "going out," and it was going out
-rapidly. Already, as far as Peter could see down the slough, the surface
-was covered with hurrying river ice, borne along by wind and current.
-
-In his concern for the shanty-boat and Buddy, Peter forgot his ankle.
-He knew well the power of the ice, and he fought his way along the
-shore through the willow thickets, fearing at each glimpse to see the
-shanty-boat crushed against some great water-elm and heaped high with
-ice, and fearing still more to see nothing of it whatever. Once let the
-shanty-boat find the mouth of the slough and pass out into the broad
-Mississippi and, he well knew, he might have a long fight to overtake
-it. The boat might travel for days jammed in the floating ice, before
-he could reach it, or it might be crushed against some point or in some
-cove. What would then be Buddy's fate? What, indeed, might not be the
-boy's fate already, if he had been frightened by the grinding of the ice
-against the boat, by the snapping of the shore cable or by the motion
-of the boat, and had attempted to reach the shore? Peter beat the willow
-saplings aside with his arms as he tried to make haste, jumping into
-them and thrusting them aside like a swimmer.
-
-In places the water had overflowed the feet of the willows, and through
-this Peter splashed unheeding. Once, in trying to keep outside the
-willow fringe, he would have slipped into the slough had he not saved
-himself by clinging to the bushes, and he was wet to the waist. Here and
-there the bank lay a foot or two higher, and there were no willows,
-but a tangle of dead grapevines impeded him. In other places the shore
-dipped and the water stood as deep as Peter's knees, and he crashed
-through the thin ice into icy water. He did not dare venture back from
-the shore lest he pass the shanty-boat, stranded against some tree.
-
-Cold as the air was the sweat ran from Peter's face, and he panted for
-breath. To pass leisurely along the bank of such a slough is strenuous
-work, but to fight along it as Peter was fighting, is real man's work,
-and Peter--thin, delicate as he looked--was all iron and leather. For
-a mile and a half he worked his way, until he reached a great sycamore,
-known to all the duck hunters as the "Big Tree." Below the Big Tree the
-slough widened into a broad expanse of water known as Big Tree Lake.
-Peter stopped short. In the middle of the lake, knee-deep in water and
-holding fast to a worn imitation-leather valise from which the water was
-dripping, stood a man. The shanty-boat, thrown out of the main current,
-had been pushed into shallow water, where it had grounded unharmed, and
-it was for the shanty-boat the man with the valise was making, swearing
-heartily each time he took a new step in the icy water. Peter yelled and
-the man turned, and looked back. At the first glimpse of the face Peter
-picked up a stout slab of driftwood.
-
-The man wore the ragged remnant of a felt hat on a mass of iron-gray
-hair that hung over his beady eyes, and all his face but his eyes and a
-round red nubbin of a nose was hidden by a mat of brown beard. When he
-saw Peter he scowled and splashed recklessly toward the boat, swearing
-as he went.
-
-The western side of the lake was overgrown with wild rice, a favorite
-feeding spot for the migrating ducks. Indeed, the entire lake was apt
-to disappear during very low water, leaving only sun-baked mud with the
-slough running along the eastern margin. Through the shallow ice-topped
-water Peter splashed after the tramp, breaking the ice as he went. Until
-he was well out in the lake the ice had not been broken, and Peter could
-not understand this. It was as if the tramp had jumped a hundred yards
-from the shore. But Peter did not give it much thought. He had something
-more important to think of.
-
-The tramp had reached the shanty-boat and had clambered aboard, and with
-the pike pole Peter had left lying on the roof, was trying frantically
-to pole the boat off the bar into deeper water. A boat adrift is any
-one's boat, if he can keep it, and once the boat swung clear of the
-bar into deeper water the tramp could laugh at Peter. He rammed the
-pike-pole into the sand-bar and threw his weight upon it, straining and
-jumping up and down while Peter splashed toward him.
-
-But the boat would not budge. The pike-pole found no grip in the soft
-sand of the bar, and Peter came nearer, holding up one arm to protect
-his head. He expected the tramp to strike him down with the heavy
-pike-pole, and he was ready to make a fight for it, but as Peter's hand
-touched the deck the tramp put down a hand to help him aboard.
-
-"All right, pardner," he said in a voice so gruff it seemed to come from
-great depths, "I'll give you half the vessel. I've been dyin' for company
-since I come aboard. It's lonely on this yacht."
-
-Peter grinned a grin he had when he was angry, that made his face
-wrinkle like a wolf's.
-
-"This is my boat," he said briefly, and threw open the door. Buddy sat
-on the floor as Peter had left him, playing with the "funny" dog. As
-Peter entered he looked up.
-
-"My funny dog ain't got no tail, Uncle Peter," he said.
-
-"Yes, he has, Buddy," said Peter, with a great sigh of relief. "He's
-got a tail, but you can't see it because he's sitting on it."
-
-But Buddy was looking past Peter at the tramp. The man, his thumbs in
-the torn armholes of his coat, his head on one side, one leg raised in
-the air, was making faces at Buddy. As Peter turned, the tramp put the
-toe of his boot through the handle of his valise and raised it, tossing
-it in the air with his foot.
-
-Buddy laughed with glee.
-
-"That's a funny man, Uncle Peter," he said. "Who's him?"
-
-The tramp stepped aside and put his wet valise on the floor. Then he
-took off his hat and laid it across his breast and bowed low to Buddy.
-
-"Yer royal highness," he said gravely. "I am knowed from
-near to far as The No-Less-Talented-Stranger-Who-Came-Out
-Of-the-East-and-Got-His-Permanent-Set-back-In-the-Booze. Can you say
-that?"
-
-Buddy laughed.
-
-"Booge," he said. "That's a funny name."
-
-Peter stood with one hand on the door and the tramp's dripping valise
-in the other, but it was evident Booge did not mean to accept Peter's
-attitude as an invitation to depart. He went inside and seated himself
-on the edge of the bunk and pulled off first one wet boot, and then the
-other. He paid no attention to Peter whatever but from time to time he
-screwed up his hairy face and winked at the boy.
-
-"My name's Buddy," said Buddy. "Buddy?" queried Booge. "That's a bully
-name for a little feller. First the Bud, an' then the Flower, an' then
-the Apple green an' sour."
-
-Peter had never seen a tramp just like Booge. He had seen tramps as
-dirty, and as ragged, and as hairy, but he had never seen one that
-little boys did not fear, and it was plain that Buddy was captivated by
-Booge's good-nature. But a tramp was a tramp, no matter how captivating,
-and a tramp was no companion for a boy who was to grow up to be a bank
-president, or goodness knows what, of respectability. He hardened his
-heart.
-
-Booge continued to Buddy: "You didn't know I was a teacher, did you? Oh,
-yes, indeed! I'm an educated feller, and I figured to teach you, but it
-seems some folks want you to grow up just as ignorant as possible. Oh,
-yes!"
-
-Peter hesitated. At any rate there was no need of making the fellow walk
-through the ice-covered lake again.
-
-"What can you teach him?" he asked.
-
-"Well, there's soprano," rumbled Booge. "I can teach him soprano. That's
-a good thing for a young feller to know. Soprano or alto, just as you
-say--or bass. I can teach bass if the board is good. How is the board on
-board?"
-
-Peter ignored the question. He was trying to guess what sort of strange
-creature this was.
-
-"Well, if it's as good as you say," said Booge, "I'll teach him all
-three. That's liberal. I'll give you a sample of my singin'."
-
-"You don't need to," said Peter. "When I want any singing, I'll do my
-own."
-
-[Illus: 154]
-
-"Well, since you urge it that way," said Booge, "I can't refuse," and
-tapping his bare foot on the floor he sang. He found, somewhere in
-his head, a high, squeaky falsetto. It seemed to dwell in his nose. He
-sang:--
-
-     Go wash the little baby, the baby, the baby;
-     Go wash the little baby, and give it toast and tea;
-     Go wash the little baby, the baby, the baby,
-     Go wash the little baby, and bring it back to me.
-
-He let the last word drone out long and thin, and as it droned he made
-faces at Buddy, screwing up his eyes, wriggling his nose, and waggling
-his chin.
-
-"Sing it again, Booge!" cried Buddy enthusiastically. "Sing it again."
-
-The tramp arose and bowed gravely, first to Buddy and then to the
-frowning Peter.
-
-"That's enough of that," said Peter.
-
-"Sing it again, Booge!" commanded Buddy, and the tramp standing with his
-hand inside his coat, sang, in his deepest bass:--
-
-     Don't swear before the baby, the baby, the baby,
-     Don't swear before the baby, or cheat or steal or lie,
-     Don't swear before the baby, the baby, the baby,
-     Don't swear before the baby, but give it apple pie.
-
-"Now, _laugh!_ shouted Buddy.
-
-"Ha, ha! Ha, ha, ha!" said Booge, exactly as it is printed.
-
-"I want your _face_ to laugh!" ordered Buddy.
-
-Booge screwed up his thin face, and Buddy looked and was satisfied.
-Booge was satisfied, too. He knew Buddy was boss of the boat, now, and
-he knew he stood well with Buddy.
-
-
-
-
-VIII. RIVALS
-
-
-"THUNDERING cats!" cried Peter with exasperation when the tramp had "ha,
-ha'd" and grinned through two more verses of the idiotic song; "I've got
-to go outside and tend to this boat!"
-
-"You play with your toys a minute, now, Buddy," said Booge, as soon as
-Peter was outside. "My voice is such a delicate voice I got to rest it
-between songs or it's liable to get sick and die away for good. You wait
-'til I rest it and I'll sing about that funny dog you've got there, if
-you remember to ask me."
-
-He took his few belongings from the valise and hung them before the fire
-and then, crawling into the bunk, settled himself comfortably, and went
-to sleep. When Peter came in a minute later, with feet and legs chilled,
-Booge was snoring.
-
-"Get up, here!" said Peter, shaking him.
-
-"You better not wake up Booge, Uncle Peter," said Buddy, "he's got to
-get his voice rested up."
-
-"You get up and get your boots on quick, and come out here and help
-me," Peter commanded the tramp. "We got to get this boat afloat quick or
-we'll be here all winter."
-
-"All right, Captain Kidd," said Booge cheerfully. "And you remember to
-ask me to sing you that song about the funny dog," he told Buddy.
-
-The slough was now free from floating river ice, but Peter noticed that
-the wind was still from the east. This should have kept the ice running
-through the slough. He knew the ice must have jammed at the head of the
-slough, and that it might act as a dam, lowering the water in the slough
-enough to make it impossible to move the boat. He was working at the
-pike-pole, but with poor success, and when Booge came out their combined
-efforts seemed to accomplish no more. But Peter knew the boat must be
-moved, and long after Booge wanted to give it up as a bad job, Peter
-made him labor at the pole. By standing on the landward edge of the
-deck and joggling the boat as they pushed on the pole they succeeded in
-inching the shanty-boat toward deeper water, and at length she floated
-free and swung down the current. Where the lake narrowed and ended Peter
-ran the boat against the shore, letting her rest against a fallen tree.
-It was a precarious position, and one in which it would not be safe to
-leave the boat if the river ice ran again, but just above this where the
-lake widened, Peter saw a safe harbor. Fifty feet out from the southern
-shore of the lake a bar had formed, and between the bar and the
-shore there was deep water enough to float the boat. To break the ice of
-this cove, warp the boat around the point and into this snug harbor was
-Peter's intention. His only cable had snapped close to the boat when she
-broke away, and he made Booge hold the bow of the boat close against the
-bank while he hastily twisted a makeshift rope of trot-lines--hooks and
-all.
-
-With Booge on the shore dragging at the rope end, and Peter breaking
-the ice with his pike-pole from the deck, and pushing with the pole, the
-shanty-boat moved slowly out of the current of the slough and into the
-quiet water where, as the river fell, it would be stranded with its hull
-in the mud, as safe from danger as if on top of one of the hills two
-miles back from the slough.
-
-It was hard work--the hardest Booge had tackled for years--and it
-consumed the balance of the day. When the two men went inside Peter did
-not complain when Booge threw himself on the bunk.
-
-If Booge imagined he had won an easy and permanent victory, leading to
-a life of listless ease, he misestimated Buddy and Peter. Buddy alone
-could have kept him busy, but Peter let Booge know immediately that if
-he was to stay even a day he must earn his food and lodging.
-
-The tramp was an odd combination of good nature and laziness; of good
-intentions and poor fulfilments. He could twang a banjo, when he had one
-to twang, and his present low estate was due to the untimely end of
-the career of a "medicine show," one of those numerous half-vaudeville,
-half-peddling aggregations that at that time filled the country, charging
-a dime for admission to the "show" and a dollar a bottle for the
-"remedy." Out of a hidden past Booge had dropped into the position of
-general "roustabout" for the show, caring for the tent, doing a banjo
-"turn" when the "artist" went on his regular spree, and driving the
-wagon when the show moved from town to town. When the final catastrophe
-came, Booge sold his banjo and started on the trail of another
-medicine-show. It fled as he advanced, and his garments decayed, were
-replaced with cast-off clothes, until he awoke one morning with a sharp
-realization that he was no longer a specialist seeking a position, but a
-common, every-day tramp. It did not annoy him at all. Being a tramp had
-advantages. He accepted it as his ultimate destiny.
-
-Caught near Riverbank by the cold weather, he recalled Lone Tree Lake,
-where the duck hunters usually had a shack or a shanty-boat, vacant
-at this season, and he left the main road only to find nothing but the
-scant shelter of the duck blind. Peter's boat, when it appeared, had
-seemed a gift from the gods.
-
-The shore against which the boat now lay was a thicket of willows so
-close of growth that it was almost impossible to fight through them,
-and while most were no larger than whips some were as large as a man's
-wrist. Against the low bank the boat lay broadside and so close that the
-willow branches reached over her roof, and as soon as Booge had brought
-his valise inside Peter reached far under the bunk and brought forth an
-ax.
-
-"Now, Booge ain't going to have time to sing songs to you daytimes,
-Buddy, because everybody that lives in this boat has work to do," said
-Peter, "and as I've got to make some spoons, Booge is going to take this
-ax and clear away a path through the willows. And you want to cut them
-off close down to the roots," he warned Booge, "or you'll have to do
-it over again. You cut a path from the front door through that willow
-clump, so we can pass in and out and get fire-wood, and when you 've got
-the path you can fetch the fire-wood. I'm going to stay in to-day and
-make spoons."
-
-Booge took the ax and looked at it quizzically.
-
-"Well, if this ain't my old friend wood-splitter I've been dodging for
-years and years," he said good naturedly. "How-do, wood-splitter? How's
-your cousin buck saw? Is all the little saw-bucks well?"
-
-"You'd better get at them willows," said Peter.
-
-"I just wanted to enquire about them old friends of mine," said Booge.
-
-"You'll have time enough to talk to Mr. Wood-ax before you get done with
-him," said Peter dryly, and Booge laughed and went out.
-
-That evening, when Buddy was in bed Peter put down his jack-knife long
-enough to scribble down the new variations of the "Tell the Little Baby"
-song.
-
-"Writin' a book?" Booge asked.
-
-"Writing home to my folks to tell them how much I'm enjoying your
-visit," Peter said, "and how sorry I am you 've got to be moving along
-in a day or so."
-
-But Booge did not move along. After Peter had ostentatiously bathed once
-or twice Booge became painfully clean. He would come in from the jobs
-Peter set him and wash his face and hands violently.
-
-"You 're getting as clean as them fellows that get five dollars' worth
-of baths at the Y. M. C. A., ain't you?" Peter said scornfully.
-
-"A feller can get lots of things at the Y. M. C. A. for five dollars
-that he can't get without it," said Booge good naturedly. "You don't
-want to knock me all the time, Peter. A horse crops grass one way, and a
-cow crops it another way, and the Lord is the maker of them all, as the
-feller said. So long as a man has a clean conscience and a clear eye he
-can walk right up to any bull alive--if the bull wants to let him."
-
-"I'm glad you got a clean conscience," said Peter. "Maybe that's why you
-don't worry."
-
-"If you feed a pig regular it don't ask to be petted," said Booge, "and
-that's the way with me, but you ought to give me some credit for the way
-I pitched in and labored in this here driftwood vineyard when you said
-to. I bet the prodigal son hated to get down to work after his
-pa's party, and yet he got to be quite a respected feller in his
-neighborhood. You oughtn't to think a man can't work because he don't.
-There's lots of fellers never seen the sea that has eat salt codfish."
-
-"I guess you read that in a book," said Peter.
-
-"I guess not," said Booge. "I never read but one book in my life. I read
-the Bible, unexpurgated edition, when I was a kid, and it sort of cured
-me of book readin'. There ain't hardly a comfortable word in it for an
-easy-goin' man. If the Bible had been published to-day it would have got
-some mighty severe criticism."
-
-"Booge," said Peter suddenly, "how'd you ever happen to become a tramp?"
-
-"How'd you ever happen to become a shanty-boatman?" asked Booge,
-grinning, but Peter was serious.
-
-"I guess you 're right about that," he said. "I hadn't ought to object
-to what you are, when I'm what I am. I just let myself slide, was how.
-I had bad lungs was what was the matter with me, when I was a kid, so
-my pa bought me a farm and put a man on it to run it for me, and I just
-fooled around and tried to get husky and stout and by the time I was old
-enough to run the farm Father busted, and then a--certain circumstances
-took the farm from me, and I took to the river. It seemed like me and
-the river was old friends from ever so far back. So I stuck to it and it
-stuck to me, and--that's the story."
-
-"Just run down hill," commented Booge cheerfully. "It's funny, ain't it,
-that water's about the only thing that don't get blamed for runnin' down
-hill? You and the river sort of run down together. What started me was
-something just about as common as lungs--it was wives. Yes sir, just
-plain wives!"
-
-"Don't mean to say you had two of 'em?" asked Peter.
-
-"Almost," said Booge. "I had one-half of that many. I'm a naturally
-happy man, and I've had all sorts of ups and downs, and as near as I can
-make out, a man can be happy in most any circumstances except where he
-don't give his wife the clothes she wants. My notion of hell is a place
-where a man has fifty wives and no money to buy clothes for 'em. My wife
-got to goin' through my pockets every night for money to buy clothes, so
-I skipped out."
-
-"You don't mean to say a woman would rob a man's pockets whilst he was
-asleep?" asked Peter. "Was that what she done? Took money from them?"
-
-"No, the trouble was she didn't find no money to take," said Booge.
-"Light on money and strong on breath was what was my trouble."
-
-He made an expressive drinking motion with his hand.
-
-"Booze," he said. "Booze done it."
-
-"You'd ought to quit it," Peter said. "You don't seem like a common
-tramp. I wouldn't let you stay here if you was. Look at the harm
-booze done you. Look at what it done when you went to sleep in that
-duck-blind."
-
-"That's so," agreed Booge. "It got me a good shanty-boat to sleep in
-and three square meals a day and a place to practise my voice in. But I
-suppose you mean it got me where I have to listen to temp'rance lectures
-from you."
-
-That was sort of hard on Peter, although he would not have admitted it,
-he was growing fond of the careless, happy-go-lucky tramp. Booge had a
-fund of rough philosophy and, more than all else, he was good to Buddy,
-and had not Peter resolved to be a different man himself on Buddy's
-account, he would have liked nothing better than to have Booge make his
-winter home in the shanty-boat, but he felt that Booge must go. The
-trouble was to drive him away. Booge would not drive, and Peter thought
-of a hundred quite impossible schemes for getting rid of him before he
-hit on the one he finally decided to put into effect.
-
-He had noticed that the farmer on the hill back of the lake, where Buddy
-had spent the day of his mother's funeral, had a huge pile of cord wood
-in his yard, and he tramped across the lowland to the farmer's house and
-dickered for the sawing of the wood. It was a large contract, and Peter
-as a rule did not care to saw wood except in dire straits, but he had
-decided that if he was to be a man of worth he must be a man of work to
-begin with, and the wood pile was opportunity. It was while walking home
-after making his bargain with his farmer friend that he had his happy
-idea--Booge must saw wood! His food supply would be cut off otherwise!
-
-He explained it to Booge that evening. Here they were in the
-shanty-boat, Peter explained, the two of them and Buddy, all eating from
-the common store of food, and that store dwindling daily. Buddy could
-not work, but Peter could, and Booge must. Then he explained about the
-pile of wood, a good winter's work for the two of them. Booge listened
-in silence. He was silent for several minutes after Peter ceased
-talking, and then he grinned.
-
-"The man that says he wouldn't rather find a silver dollar in the road
-than earn five dollars a-workin', is like that man that got killed with
-a thunderbolt for careless conversation," he said cheerfully, "so I
-won't say it. Wood-sawin' and me has been enemies ever since I became a
-tourist. I guess I'll have to go--"
-
-"I bet you would!" said Peter.
-
-"Yes," said Booge, "I'll have to go--up to that farmer's and saw wood."
-
-His eyes twinkled as he saw Peter's face fall. And he was as good as
-his word. The two men, taking turns carrying Buddy or leading him by
-the hand, walked across the snow-covered bottom to the farm the next
-morning, and while Booge did not over-exert himself, he at least sawed
-wood. He sawed enough to prevent any unduly harsh criticism from Peter.
-
-For Buddy the trips were pleasure jaunts. He was able to play all day
-with the farmer's little daughter, just enough older than he to hold her
-own against his imperious little will, and Booge might have developed
-into an excellent sawer of wood, but one morning, the little girl did
-not come out to play with Buddy. She was sick, and in due time Buddy
-became sick too--plain, simple measles.
-
-"Now, then," said Peter when one morning he awakened to find Buddy's
-face covered with the red spots and the boy complaining, "one of us has
-got to stay here in the boat and take care of Buddy."
-
-"You'd better stay," said Booge promptly. "You stay, Peter, and I'll go
-on up and saw wood. I'm gettin' quite fond of it."
-
-Peter hesitated. He ran his hand over the boy's white head lovingly.
-
-"Who do you want to stay with you, Buddy?" he asked.
-
-"I don't care, Uncle Peter," said Buddy listlessly.
-
-It was a full minute before Peter took his hand from Buddy's curls.
-
-"I guess you'd better stay, Booge," he said then. "You can sing what he
-likes better'n I can."
-
-"Well, if you think I can amuse him better'n you can, I'll stay,
-Peter," said Booge reluctantly. "If he seems to hanker for you, I'll
-fire the shot-gun and you can come to him."
-
-So one of these two men went to his work, and the other seated himself
-on the floor of the cabin with his back against the wall and sang "Go
-Tell the Little Baby, the Baby, the Baby," through his nose, and made
-faces, to amuse a freckle-faced little boy with a very light attack of
-the measles.
-
-
-
-
-IX. PETER GIVES WARNING
-
-
-THE weather turned extremely cold. Peter came back from his wood-sawing
-one evening and found Buddy astride a rocking-horse. The table was on
-top of the bunk to make room for the horse, and Booge, robed in one of
-the blankets, was playing the part of a badly scared Indian after whom
-Buddy was riding in violent chase. For a week Buddy had been well, but
-Booge managed to make Peter think he could still see spots on the boy.
-Booge had no desire to begin sawing wood again. It was much pleasanter
-in the shanty-boat with Buddy.
-
-The rocking-horse was the oddest looking horse that ever cantered. Among
-the driftwood Booge had found the remains of an old rocking-chair, and
-on the rockers he had mounted four willow legs, with the bark still on
-them, and on these a section of log for the body. With his ax he had cut
-out a rough semblance of a head and neck from a pine board. The tail and
-mane were seine twine. But Buddy thought it was a great horse.
-
-"Looks like you was a great sculpist, don't it?" said Peter jealously,
-as he stood watching Buddy riding recklessly over the prairies of the
-shanty-boat floor. "So that's why you been trying to make me think
-freckles was measles. It's a pity you didn't have a saw to work with."
-
-Booge looked at Peter suspiciously.
-
-"I guess maybe by to-morrow I can find one for you," continued Peter.
-"I saw a right good one up at the farm. And quite a lot of cord wood to
-practise on."
-
-"If you ain't just like a mind reader, Peter!" exclaimed Booge. "You
-must have knowed I been hankerin' to get back there at that pleasant
-occupation. But I hated to ask you, you 're so dumb jealous of
-everything. It's been so long since you've invited me to saw wood I was
-beginnin' to think you wanted the whole job for yourself."
-
-"You won't have to hanker to-morrow," said Peter dryly.
-
-"To-morrow? Now, ain't that too bad!" said Booge. "To-morrow's just the
-one day I can't saw wood. I been hired for the day."
-
-"Uncle Booge is going to make me a wagon," said Buddy.
-
-"Uncle Booge is going to take you up to the farm while he saws wood,"
-declared Peter. "Uncle Peter will make you a wagon later on, Buddy."
-
-"I want Uncle Booge to make me a wagon to-morrow," Buddy insisted. "He
-said he would make me a wagon to-morrow. With wheels."
-
-"And a seat into it," added Booge.
-
-"All right," said Peter with irritation, "stay here and make a wagon,
-then," but that night when Buddy was in the bunk and asleep, Peter had a
-word for Booge.
-
-"I don't want to hasten you any, Booge," he said, trimming the handle
-of a wooden spoon with great care as he spoke, "but day after to-morrow
-you'll have to pack your valise and get out of here. I don't want to
-seem inhospitable or anything, but when a visitor gets permission to
-stay over night to dry his boots, and then camps down, and loafs, and
-stays half the winter, and makes wagons and horses there ain't no room
-for in the boat, he's done about all the staying he's entitled to."
-
-"Buddy's been askin' to have me go again!" said Booge.
-
-"No, he ain't," answered Peter. "He--"
-
-He caught the twinkle in Booge's eye and stopped.
-
-"Let's wake Buddy up and ask him," said Booge.
-
-"Buddy ain't got anything to say on this matter," said Peter firmly.
-"And I ain't sending you away because you are trying to play off from
-doing your share of wood sawing, neither. I'm Buddy's uncle, and I've
-got to look out for how he's raised, and I don't want him raised by no
-tramp, and that's how he's being raised. Every day I think I'll chase
-you out to saw wood, and every day you come it over me somehow, and I
-go, and you don't. I don't know how you do it, but you're smart enough
-to make a fool of me. That's why you got to go."
-
-"Is it?" asked Booge placidly. "I thought it was because you was jealous
-of me. Yep, that's what I was just thinkin'. He's jealous and he don't
-care nothin' for what Buddy likes, or wants, or--"
-
-"Nothing of the sort," said Peter indignantly. "You ain't no sort of
-example to set the boy. I heard you swear this morning when Buddy stuck
-a fork into you to wake you up. No man that uses words like you used is
-the sort of man I want Buddy to be with."
-
-Booge grinned. There was no use in rebutting such an accusation. Indeed,
-he felt he had no call to argue with Peter. Day after to-morrow was a
-distant future for a man who had lately lived from one meal to the next.
-Booge believed Buddy would be the final dictator in the matter, and he
-was sure of Buddy now.
-
-"So I guess you'll have to go," continued Peter. "_For_ a tramp you
-ain't been so bad, but it crops out on you every once in awhile, and
-it's liable to crop out strong any time. If it wasn't for the boy I'd
-let you stay until the ice goes out. I'd got just about to the point
-where I wasn't no better than a tramp myself, but when--but I've
-changed, and I'm going to change more."
-
-Booge nodded an assent.
-
-"I can almost notice a change myself," he said, "but the way you 're
-going to change ain't a marker to the way I'm goin' to change. I've
-been planning what I'd change into ever since I come here. I ain't quite
-decided whether to be an angel cherub, like you--or a bank president. I
-sort of lean to being a bank president. Whiskers look better on a bank
-president than on an angel cherub, but if you think I'd better be an
-angel cherub, I'll shave up--and make a stab at--"
-
-"You might as well be serious, my mind's made up," said Peter coldly.
-"You got to go."
-
-"Suppose," said Booge slowly, "I was to withdraw out of this here uncle
-competition and leave it all to you? Suppose I let on I lost my singin'
-voice?"
-
-"No use!" said Peter firmly. "My mind's settled on that question. The
-longer you stay the harder it'll be to get you to go. I'm givin' you
-'til day after to-morrow because I've got' to go up to town to-morrow.
-We 're shy on food. If it wasn't for that I'd start you off to-morrow."
-
-"Now, suppose I stop bein' Uncle Booge. Say I start bein' Gran'pa Booge,
-or Aunt Booge," proposed Booge gravely. "I'll get a gingham apron and a
-caliker dress--"
-
-"You'll get nothin' but out," said Peter firmly. "You'll be nothin' but
-away from here."
-
-The trip to town had become absolutely necessary. Peter had drawn ten
-dollars from the farmer and he had some spoons ready for sale. The
-farmer was going to town and Peter had at first decided to take Buddy
-with him, but the spoon peddling excursion would, he feared, tire the
-boy too much, and he ended by planning to let Booge and Buddy stay in
-the shanty-boat.
-
-It was an index to Peter's changed opinion of the tramp that he felt
-reasonably safe in leaving Buddy in Booge's care. For one thing Booge
-was sure to stay with the boat as long as food held out and work was not
-too pressing. The river had closed and the boat was solidly frozen in
-the slough. There was no possibility of Booge's floating away in it.
-
-"I won't be back until late," said Peter the next morning as he pinned
-his thin coat close about his neck, "and it's possible I won't get my
-spoons all sold out to-day. If I don't I'll stay all night with a friend
-up town and get back somewhere to-morrow. And you take good care of
-Buddy, for if anything happens to him I'll hunt you up, no matter where
-you are, and make you wish it hadn't."
-
-"Unless this horse runs away with him there ain't nothin' to happen,"
-said Booge. "You needn't worry."
-
-"And, Buddy, if you are a good boy and let Booge put you to bed, if I
-don't get back, Uncle Peter will bring you something you've been wanting
-this long while."
-
-"I know what you 're going to bring me," said Buddy.
-
-"I bet you do, you little rascal," said Peter, thinking of the
-jack-knife. "We both of us know, don't we? Good-by, Buddy-boy."
-
-He picked up the boy and kissed him.
-
-"You don't know what Uncle Peter is going to bring me, Uncle Booge!"
-said Buddy joyfully, when Peter was gone.
-
-"No, sir!" said Booge.
-
-"No, sir!" repeated Buddy. "Cause I know! Uncle Peter's going to bring
-me back my mama."
-
-
-
-
-X. A VIOLENT INCIDENT
-
-
-BOOGE waited until he knew Peter was well on his way. Then he took Buddy
-on his knee.
-
-"Where is your ma, Buddy?" he asked. "Mama went away," said Buddy
-vaguely. "Did she go away from this boat?"
-
-"Yes. Let's make a wagon, Uncle Booge," but Booge was not ready. He
-considered his next question carefully.
-
-"We'll make that wagon right soon," he said. "Was Uncle Peter your pa
-before your ma went away?"
-
-"I don't know," said Buddy indefinitely. "You'd ought to know whether he
-was or not," said Booge. "Didn't you call Uncle Peter 'pa,' or 'papa' or
-'daddy' or something like that?"
-
-"No," said Buddy. "You said you'd make a wagon, Uncle Booge."
-
-"Right away!" said Booge. "What did you call Uncle Peter before your ma
-went away, Buddy?"
-
-The child looked at Booge in surprise. "Why, 'course I didn't call him
-at all," he said as if Booge should have known as much. "He _wasn't_ my
-Uncle Peter, then."
-
-"Your ma just sort of stayed around the boat, did she?"
-
-"No, my mama comed to the boat, and I comed to the boat, and my mama
-went away. But Uncle Peter and Buddy didn't _not_ go away. I want to
-make a wagon, Uncle Booge."
-
-"Just one minute and we'll make that wagon, Buddy," said Booge. "I just
-want to get this all straight first. What did your ma do when she came
-to the boat?"
-
-"Mama cried," said Buddy.
-
-"I bet you!" said Booge. "And what did your ma do then, Buddy?"
-
-"Mama hit Uncle Peter," said Buddy, "and Mama went away, and Uncle Peter
-floated the boat, and I floated the boat. And I steered the boat."
-
-"And your ma left you with Uncle Peter when she went away," said Booge.
-"What was your ma's name, Buddy. Was it Lane?"
-
-"It was Mama," said Buddy.
-
-"But what was your name?" insisted Booge. "What did you say your name
-was when anybody said, 'What's your name, little boy?'"
-
-"Buddy," said the boy.
-
-"Buddy what?" urged Booge.
-
-"Mama's Buddy."
-
-Booge drew a deep breath. For five minutes more he questioned the boy,
-while Buddy grew more and more impatient to be at the wagon-making.
-Of Buddy's past Peter had, of course, never told Booge a word, but
-the tramp had his own idea of it. He felt that Peter was no ordinary
-shanty-boat man, and he imputed Peter's silence regarding the boy's past
-and parentage to a desire on Peter's part to shake himself free from
-that past. Why was Peter continually telling that he had begun a
-more respectable life? Peter's wife might have been one of the low
-shanty-boat women, a shiftless mother and a worse than shiftless wife,
-running away from Peter only to bring back the boy when he became a
-burden, taking what money Peter had and going away again. Possibly Peter
-had never been married to the woman. In digging into Buddy's memories
-Booge hoped to find some thread that would give him a hold on Peter,
-however slight. Booge liked the comfortable boat, but deeper than his
-love of idleness had grown an affection for the cheerful boy and for
-simple-minded Peter. If Peter had chosen this out-of-the-way slough
-for his winter harbor--when shanty-boat people usually came nearer
-the towns--in order that he might keep himself in hiding from the
-troublesome wife, veiling himself and the boy from discovery by giving
-out that he and Buddy were uncle and nephew, it was no more than Booge
-would have done.
-
-"I suppose, when your ma come to the boat, she slept in the bunk, didn't
-she?" asked Booge.
-
-"Yes, Uncle Booge," said Buddy. "I want you to make a wagon."
-
-"All right, bo!" said Booge gleefully. "Come ahead and make a wagon. And
-when Uncle Peter comes back we'll have a nice surprise for him. We'll
-shout out at him, when he comes in, 'Hello, Papa!' and just see what he
-says. That'll be fun, won't it?"
-
-Booge worked on the wagon all morning.
-
-Toward noon he made a meal for himself and Buddy, and set to work on the
-wagon again. He had found a canned-corn box that did well enough for
-the body, and he chopped out wheels as well as he could with the ax. He
-wished, by the time he had completed one wheel, that he had told Buddy
-it was to be a sled rather than a wagon, but he could not persuade the
-boy that a sled would be better, and he had to keep on.
-
-He worked on the clean ice before the shanty-boat and he was deep in his
-work when Buddy asked a question.
-
-"Who is that man, Uncle Booge?" he asked.
-
-Booge glanced up quickly. Across the ice, from the direction of the
-road a man was coming. He was well wrapped in overcoat and cap and he
-advanced steadily, without haste. Booge leaned on his ax and waited.
-When the man was quite near Booge said, "Hello!"
-
-"Good afternoon," said the stranger. "Are you Peter Lane?"
-
-Booge's little eyes studied the stranger sharply. The man, for all the
-bulk given him by his ulster and cap, had a small, sharp face, and his
-eyes were shrewd and shifty.
-
-"Mebby I am," rumbled Booge, crossing his legs and putting one hand on
-his hip and one on his forehead, "and mebby I ain't. Let me recall! Now,
-if I _was_ Peter Lane, what might you want of me?"
-
-The stranger smiled ingratiatingly and cleared his throat.
-
-"My--my name," he said slowly, "is Briggles--Reverend Rasmer Briggles,
-of Derlingport. My duty here is, I may say, one that, if you are Peter
-Lane, should give you cause only for satisfaction. Extreme satisfaction.
-Yes!"
-
-Booge was watching the Reverend Mr. Briggles closely.
-
-"I bet that's so!" he said. "I sort of recall now that I _am_ Peter
-Lane. And I don't know when I've had any extreme satisfaction. I'll be
-glad to have some."
-
-"Yes," said Mr. Briggles rather doubtfully. "Yes! I am the President
-of the Child Rescue Society, an organization incorporated to rescue
-ill-cared-for children, placing them in good homes--"
-
-"Buddy," said Booge roughly, "you go into that boat And you stay there.
-Understand?"
-
-The child did as he was told. Booge's tone was one he had never heard
-the tramp use, and it frightened him.
-
-"It has come to my attention," said Mr. Briggles, "that there is a child
-here. You will admit this is no place for a tender little child. You
-may do your best for him but the influence of a good home must be sadly
-lacking in such a place. In fact, I have an order from the court--"
-
-He began unbuttoning his ulster.
-
-"I bet you have!" said Booge genially. "So, if you want to, you can sit
-right down on that bank there and read it. And if it's in po'try you
-can sing it. And if you can't sing, and you hang 'round here for half an
-hour, I'll come out and sing it for you. Just now I've got to go in and
-sing my scales." He boosted himself to the deck of the shanty-boat and
-went inside, closing and locking the door. In a moment Mr. Briggles, out
-in the cold, heard Booge burst into song:
-
-     Go tell the little baby, the baby, the baby,
-     Go tell the little baby he can't go out to-day;
-     Go tell the little baby, the baby, the baby,
-     Go tell the little baby old Briggles needn't stay.
-
-Mr. Briggles stood holding the court order in his hand. Armed with the
-law, he had every advantage on his side. He clambered up the bank and
-stepped to the deck of the shanty-boat. He rapped sharply on the door.
-"Mr. Lane, open this door!" he ordered. The door opened with unexpected
-suddenness and Booge threw his arms around Mr. Briggles and lifted him
-from his feet. He drew him forward as if to hug him, and then, with
-a mighty out-thrust of his arms, cast him bodily off the deck. Mr.
-Briggles fell full on the newly constructed wagon, and there was a crash
-of breaking wood. Booge came to the edge of the deck and looked down
-at him. The man was wedged into the rough wagon box, his feet and legs
-hanging over. He was bleeding at the nose, and his face was rather
-scratched. He was white with fear or anger. Booge laughed.
-
-"I owed you that," he rumbled. "I owed you that since the day you
-married me. And now I'll give you what I owe you for coming after this
-boy."
-
-He jumped down from the deck, and Mr. Briggles struggled to release
-himself from the wagon-box. He was caught fast. He kicked violently, and
-Booge grinned. If he had intended punishing the interloper further, he
-changed his mind. The lake lay wide and smooth, with only a pile of snow
-here and there, and Booge grasped the damaged wagon and pushed it. Like
-a sled it slid along on its broken wheels, and Booge ran, gathering
-speed as he ran, until, with a last push, he sent the wagon and Mr.
-Briggles skimming alone over the glassy surface of the lake toward the
-road. Then he went into the shanty-boat and closed and locked the door.
-
-
-
-
-XI. PETER HEARS NEWS
-
-
-PETER reached town about noon, and set about his peddling at once, going
-to the better residential sections, where his spoons were in demand,
-and so successful was he that by three o'clock he had but a few left to
-trade at the grocer's. He made his purchases with great care, for his
-list had grown large in spite of the refillings of his larder from
-time to time through the errands in town done for him by the farmer. He
-bought the Bible and the A. B. C. blocks, and a red sweater, stockings
-for Buddy and socks for himself, and the provisions he needed, and a
-bright, new jack-knife for Buddy. All these he tied in a big gunny-sack,
-except the knife, slung the sack over his shoulders, and went down to
-report to George Rapp, stopping at the Post Office, where he asked for
-mail. The clerk handed him, among the circulars and other advertising
-matter, a letter.
-
-Peter turned the letter over and over in his hand. He had a sister, but
-this letter was not from her. It was addressed in pencil and bore the
-local postmark. Peter held it to the light, playing with the mystery
-as a cat plays with a mouse, and finally opened it. It was from Mrs.
-Potter.
-
-"Now I know all about you, Peter Lane," it ran, "and not much good I
-must say, although I might have expected it, and I am much surprised and
-such shiftlessness and you might have let me know _that woman_ was sick
-for I am not a heathen whatever you may think. I want you to come and
-get your clock out of my sight and if you have time to saw me some wood
-I will pay _cash_. Mrs. Potter."
-
-Peter folded the letter slowly and put it in his pocket. He knew very
-well the widow had no cause to single him out to saw her wood, and that
-she would not be apt to write him for that reason, howevermuch she might
-underscore "cash." That she should write him about the clock was not
-sufficient excuse for a letter. There was no reason why she should write
-to him at all, unless the underscoring of "that woman" meant she had
-heard how he had taken the woman and her boy in and it had given her a
-better opinion of him. If that was so Peter meant to keep far from Mrs.
-Potter! He began to fear George Rapp might be right, and that the widow
-had an eye on him--a matrimonial eye. When widows begin writing letters!
-
-When Peter entered George Rapp's livery stable, Rapp was superintending
-the harnessing of a colt.
-
-"Hello!" he called heartily. "How's Peter? How's the boat? Friend of
-yours was just enquiring for you in here. Friend from up the river
-road."
-
-"She--who was?"
-
-"You guess it!" laughed Rapp. "Widow Potter. Say, why didn't you tell me
-you were married?"
-
-"Me? Married to Widow Potter?" cried Peter, aghast. "I never in my life
-married her, George!"
-
-"Oh, not _her_!" said Rapp. "Not her yet; the other woman. You with a
-boy three or four years old, posing around as a goody-goody bachelor.
-But that's the way with you too-good fellows. Hope you can keep your
-little son."
-
-"My son?" stammered Peter. "But he's not my son--not my own son."
-
-"Gee whiz! Is that so!" said Rapp with surprise. "She was that bad, was
-she? Well, it does you all the more credit, taking him to raise. Anybody
-else would have sent him to the poor farm or to old snoozer Briggles.
-You beat anything I ever seen, with your wives nobody ever guessed
-you had, and your sons that ain't your sons. What makes you act so
-mysterious?"
-
-Peter put his gunny-sack on the floor.
-
-"I don't know what you 're talking about, George," he said. "What is it
-you think you know?"
-
-"I think I know all about it," said Rapp laughingly. "Come into the
-office. What a man in the livery stable don't hear ain't worth finding
-out. I know your wife come back to you at the shanty-boat, Peter, when
-she was sick and played out and hadn't nowhere else to go, and I know
-you took her in and got a doctor for her, and I know she brought along
-her boy, which you say ain't your son. And I know you sold me your boat
-so you could take her down river and bury her decent, just as if she
-hadn't ever run off from you--"
-
-"Who said she was my wife? Who said she run off from me?" asked Peter.
-"You tell me that, George!"
-
-"Why, Widow Potter said so," said Rapp. "Everybody knows about it. There
-was a piece in the paper about it. The Doc you had up there told it all
-around town, I guess. And Widow Potter is so interested she can't sit
-still. She's just naturally bothering the life out of me. She says she's
-buying a horse from me, but that's all gee whiz. Anyway, she's dropped
-in to look at a colt near every day lately, and sort of enquires if
-you've been up to town. She says she can understand a lot of things she
-couldn't before. She says she can forgive you a lot of things, now she
-knows what kind of a wife you had. She says it's some excuse for being
-shiftless. She's anxious to see you, Peter."
-
-"She ain't in town now, is she?" asked Peter nervously. "You didn't tell
-her I was likely to stop in here?"
-
-"I just naturally had to tell her something," Rapp said. "She's plumb
-crazy. She says she's willing to let by-gones be by-gones; that it's all
-as plain as day to her now."
-
-"All what?" asked poor Peter.
-
-"Why, all," said Rapp. "Everything. The whole business. Why you didn't
-marry her long ago, I reckon. She didn't say so in that many words, but
-she spoke about how curious it was a man could hang around a woman year
-in and year out, and saw three times as much wood for her as need be,
-and take any sort of tongue lashing as meek as Moses, and _look_ kind of
-marriage-like, and not do it. She said a woman couldn't understand that
-sort of thing, but it was easy to understand when she knew you had a
-wife somewhere. She said she's sorry for your loss, and she'd like you
-to come right up and see her."
-
-Rapp lay back in his chair and laughed.
-
-"Did she honestly say that?" asked Peter, very white.
-
-"Did she!" said Rapp. "You ought to hear what she said, and me trying
-to sell her that bay colt of mine all the time. 'Good withers on this
-animal, Mrs. Potter.''Well, he may be considered worthless by some,'
-says she, 'but I've studied him many a year, and the whole trouble is
-he's too good.' 'And he's a speedy colt, speedy but strong,' says I.
-'Having a wife like that is what did it,' says she, 'for a wife like
-that chastens a man too much, but I guess he'll be more human now she's
-gone, and look after his own rights.' 'Want the colt?' I says, and she
-just stared at the animal without seeing him and says, 'For my part I'd
-enjoy having a small boy about the house.'"
-
-"Did she say that?" asked Peter. "She didn't say that!"
-
-"I never told anything nearer the truth," Rapp assured him. "She said
-that she believed, now, you were a fully proper person to raise a small
-boy, but that if Briggles was bound to take the boy, she--"
-
-"Briggles?" asked Peter breathlessly. "Who is Briggles? What has he got
-to do with it?"
-
-"Don't you know who Briggles is?" asked Rapp with real surprise. "He
-_used_ to be a Reverend, but he got kicked out, I hear say. He hires a
-team now and again to take a child out in the country."
-
-"What does he take children to the country for?"
-
-"To put them in families," Rapp explained, and he told Peter how Mr.
-Briggles hunted up children for the Society he had organized; how he
-collected money and spent the money, and put the children in any family
-that would take them, and paid himself twenty dollars a child for doing
-it, charging mileage and expense extra. "Last time he come down here
-he had a nice little girl from Derlingport," said Rapp. "Her name was
-Susie. He put her with a woman named Crink."
-
-"Susie? Susie what?" asked Peter.
-
-"I don't know, but I felt sorry for her. He might as well have put her
-in hell as with that Crink woman. He'll probably get twenty dollars
-by-and-by for taking her out and putting her somewheres else, if they
-don't work her to death. It's 'God help the little children but give me
-the money,' so far as I see. He gets an order from the court, just like
-he did in your case--"
-
-Peter had let himself drop into a chair as Rapp talked but now he leaped
-from it.
-
-"What's that? He ain't after Buddy?" he cried aghast.
-
-"He drove down to-day," said Rapp. "I told him--"
-
-But Peter was gone. He slammed the office door so hard that one of the
-small panes of glass clattered tinklingly to the floor. He slung his
-gunny-sack over his shoulder and was dog-trotting down the incline into
-the street before George Rapp could get to his feet, for Rapp was never
-hasty. Along the street toward the feed-yard, where his farmer friend
-had put up his team, Peter ran, the heavy sack swinging from side to
-side over his shoulder and almost swinging him off his feet. He had
-spent more time at Rapp's than he had intended, but he met the farmer
-driving out of the feed-yard and threw the sack into the wagon bed.
-
-"Whoa-up!" said the farmer, pulling hard on his reins, but Peter was
-already on the seat beside him.
-
-"Get along," he cried. "I want to get home. I want to get home quick."
-
-Through all the long ride Peter sat staring straight ahead, holding
-tight to the wagon seat. The cold wind blew against his face but he did
-not notice it. He was thinking of Buddy--of tow-headed, freckled-faced,
-blue-eyed, merry Buddy, perhaps already on his way to a "good home" like
-the "good home" to which Susie had been condemned. There were no hills
-and the horses, with their light load and a driver with several warming
-drinks in his body, covered most of the distance at a good trot, but
-when the track left the road to avoid the snow-drifts that covered it
-in places, and the horses slowed to a walk, Peter longed to get down and
-run. It was long after dark when they reached the gate that opened into
-Rapp's lowland, and Peter did not stop to take his purchases from the
-wagon. He did not wait to open the gate, but cleared it at one leap and
-ran down the faintly defined path, between the trees and bushes, as fast
-as he could rim.
-
-Years in the open had mended the weak lungs that had driven him to the
-open air, but long before he came in sight of the shanty-boat his breath
-was coming in great sobs and he was gasping painfully. But still he kept
-on, falling into a dog-trot and pressing his elbows close against his
-sides, breathing through his open mouth. The path was rough, rising and
-falling, littered with branches and roots. The calves of his legs seemed
-swelled to bursting. Time and again he fell but scrambled up and ran on
-until at last he caught sight of the light in the cabin-boat window.
-He stopped and leaned with his hand against a tree, striving to get one
-last breath sufficient to carry him to the boat, and as he stopped he
-heard the shrill falsetto of Booge:
-
-Go wash the little baby, the baby, the baby, Go wash the little baby,
-and give it toast and tea, Go wash the little baby, the baby, the baby,
-Go wash the little baby and bring it back to me.
-
-It was Buddy's supper song.
-
-"Sing it again, Uncle Booge! Sing it again!" came Buddy's sharply
-commanding voice, and Peter wrapped his arms around the tree trunk, and
-laid his forehead against it. He was happy, but trembling so violently
-that the branches of the small elm shook above his head. He twined his
-legs around the tree, to still their trembling, and hugged the tree
-close, for he felt as if he would be shaken to pieces. Even his forehead
-rattled against the bark of the trunk, but he was happy. Buddy was not
-gone!
-
-He clung there while his breath slowly returned, and until his trembling
-dwindled into mere shivers, listening to Booge boom and trill his songs,
-and to Buddy clamor for more. And as he stepped toward the boat Booge's
-voice took up a new verse; one Peter had never heard:--
-
-     We took the old kazoozer, kazoozer, kazoozer,
-     We grabbed the old kazoozer and tore his preacher clothes;
-     We kicked the old ka-boozer, ka-doozer, ka-hoozer,
-     We scratched the old ka-roozer and smote him on the n-o-s-e!
-
-Peter opened the door. Buddy flew from his seat on the bunk and threw
-himself into Peter's arms.
-
-"Uncle Peter! Uncle Peter!" he cried. "Did you bring me my mama?"
-
-"No, Buddy-boy," said Peter gently. "She's off on the long trip yet. We
-mustn't fret about that. Ain't you glad Uncle Peter come back?"
-
-"Yes--and--and Uncle Booge made me a wagon," said Buddy, "and it got
-broke."
-
-"A feller sort of fell on it," explained Booge carelessly, "and busted
-it. He come visiting when we wasn't ready for comp'ny."
-
-Peter listened while Booge told the story of Mr. Briggles's arrival,
-reception and departure.
-
-"And he failed on the wagon and broke it," said Buddy, "and Booge slided
-him. And Booge is going to mend my wagon."
-
-"Maybe Uncle Peter'll mend it for you, Buddy," said Booge. "I guess
-Booge has got to take a trip, like your ma did, to-morrow."
-
-"You couldn't talk sense if you tried, could you?" said Peter with
-vexation. "You are going to stay here every bit as long as I do. Ain't
-he, Buddy-boy?"
-
-
-
-
-XII. THE RETURN OF "OLD KAZOOZER"
-
-"I'm much obliged to you, Peter," said Booge after a minute, "but I'm
-afraid I can't stay. I got a telegram saying Caruso's got a cold and
-I've got to go to New York and sing grand opry."
-
-"You 're real welcome to stay," said Peter, warming his hands over the
-stove. "I'd like you to stay. That feller is sure to come back."
-
-"He's got a court order," said Booge. "I guess he heard you was so kind
-hearted you'd hand Buddy right over to him and say, Thank you, mister.'
-I surprised him." Booge looked at Buddy, playing on the floor.
-
-"Ain't it funny how you get attached to a kid?" he asked. "I was just as
-mad when that old kazoozer said he was going to take Buddy as if he was
-after my own boy, instead of yours."
-
-"I guess they think this ain't a good enough home for him," said Peter.
-
-He looked about the cabin with new interest. To Peter it had seemed all
-that a home need be, and he had been proud of it and satisfied with it,
-but now it looked poor and shabby. There were no chairs with tidies on
-them, no chairs at all; there was no piano lamp; nor even a hanging lamp
-with prisms; no carpet, not even a rug. It was not a "good home," it was
-only a shanty-boat, not much better than any other shanty-boat, and it
-was not even Peter's shanty-boat. It was George Rapp's.
-
-Booge was ramming his belongings into his valise.
-
-"Not a good enough home?" he growled.
-
-"What do they want for a home? A town hall or an op'ry house?"
-
-"It's all right for you or me, Booge," said Peter, "but what would be a
-good home for a couple of old hard-shells like us ain't what a boy like
-Buddy ought to have. I'll bet we 're eight miles from a Sunday school."
-
-"My, my!" said Booge. "I wouldn't have remained here a minute if I had
-thought I was that far from Sunday school."
-
-"And we 're two miles from a woman. A boy like Buddy ought to be nearer
-a woman than that. When I was a little tyke like him I was always right
-up against my ma's knee."
-
-"And look how fine you turned out to be," said Booge.
-
-"Well, a place ain't a home unless there's a woman in it," said Peter
-gravely. "I can see that now. I thought when I built this boat I had
-a home, but I hadn't. And when I got Buddy I thought I had a home for
-sure, but I hadn't. I never thought there ought to be a woman. I went
-at it wrong end to. I'd ought to have looked up a woman first. Then I
-could have got a house. And the boy would tag on somewheres along after.
-Only it wouldn't have been Buddy. I guess I'd rather have Buddy."
-
-Booge snapped his valise shut and looked about for any stray bit of
-clothing belonging to him.
-
-"You won't have him if you don't look out," he said. "You'd stand there
-until that old kazoozer come back and took him, if I'd let you. Of
-course, if you 're the sort to give him up, I ain't got a word to say."
-
-"I ain't that sort!" said Peter hotly. "If that man comes back I've got
-the shot-gun, ain't I? Of course," he said more gently, "unless Buddy
-wants to go. You don't want to go away from Uncle Peter, do you Buddy?"
-
-"No!" said Buddy in a way that left no doubt.
-
-"I can't do anything until that man comes back," said Peter helplessly.
-"Maybe he won't come."
-
-"Don't you fret about that; he'll come," said Booge, grinning. "He's got
-my address and number scratched on his face, and I'd ought to clear out
-right now, but you see how I've got to help you out when trouble comes.
-You 're like a child, Peter. You and Buddy would do for twins. When old
-kazoozer comes back he'll bring a wagonload of sheriffs and a cannon or
-something. What would you do if you come to me with a peaceable court
-order, and got throwed all over a toy wagon?"
-
-"If he can shoot, I can shoot," said Peter. "I bet! And get Buddy
-shot all full of holes? We've got to skedaddle and scoot and
-vamoose,--listen!"
-
-In the silence that followed they could hear voices--a number of
-voices--and Buddy crept to Peter's side and clung to his knee,
-frightened by the tense expression on the two uncles' faces. Peter stood
-with one hand resting on the table and the other clutching Buddy's arm.
-Suddenly he put out his free hand and grasped his shot-gun. Booge jerked
-it away from him and slid it under the bunk.
-
-"You idiot!" he said. "What good would that do you? Listen--have you got
-any place you can take the kid to if you get away from here?"
-
-"I've got a sister up near town--"
-
-"All right! Now, I'm going to sing, and whilst I sing you get Buddy's
-duds on, and your own, and be ready to skin out the back door with him.
-I can hold off any constable that ever was--long enough to give you a
-start, anyway--and then you've got to look out for yourself."
-
-Peter hurried Buddy into his outer coat and hat, and Booge searched the
-breadbox for portable food, as he sang in his deepest bass. He crowded
-some cold corn cake into Peter's pocket, and some into his own as he
-sang, and as his song ended he whispered: "Hurry now! I'm goin' to put
-out this lamp in a minute, and when it's out you slide out of that back
-door--quick, you understand?" He let his voice rise to his falsetto.
-"Sing it again, Uncle Booge!" he cried, imitating Buddy's voice. "No,
-Buddy's got to go to sleep now," he growled and the next instant the
-shanty-boat's interior was dark. "Scoot!" he whispered, and Peter opened
-the rear door of the cabin and stepped out upon the small rear deck. He
-stood an instant listening and dropped to the ice, sliding in behind
-the willows, and the next moment he was around the protecting point, and
-hurrying down the slough on the snow-covered ice, with Buddy held tight
-in his arms. He heard Booge throw open the other door of the boat
-and begin a noisy confab with the men on the shore. Booge was
-bluffing--telling them they had lost their way, that they had come
-to the wrong boat, that there was no boy there. Peter had crossed the
-slough and was on the island that separated it from the river when he
-saw the light flash up in the shanty-boat window. He slipped in among
-the island willows and crouched there, listening, but he heard nothing
-for he was too distant from the boat to hear what went on inside, and he
-pushed deeper into the willows and sat there shivering and waiting.
-
-It was an hour later, perhaps, when he heard Booge's voice boom out,
-deep and cheerful, repeating one song until his words died away in the
-distance:
-
-     Go tell the little baby, the baby, the baby,
-     Go tell the little baby we won't be back to-day;
-     Go tell the little baby, the baby, the baby,
-     Go tell the little baby they're takin' Booge away.
-
-"Come now, Buddy," said Peter, "we can go back to the boat. Uncle Booge
-says there ain't nobody there now."
-
-
-
-
-XIII. AUNT JANE
-
-PETER approached the shanty-boat cautiously but there was no sign of
-danger. Indeed, finding Buddy gone, the five men who had come to the
-boat were quite satisfied to get Booge. Four were but little interested
-in helping Briggles pick up a small boy, and nobody wanted Peter, but
-Booge, being a tramp and having assaulted a bearer of a court order,
-was a desirable capture. Booge, when he felt reasonably sure Peter had
-reached safety, ended his half-joking parley abruptly, and said he was
-willing to accompany his captors in peace. He was satisfied he would not
-be given much more than six months in the county jail for the assault,
-and six months would carry him through the winter, into good, warm,
-summer weather. There was nothing to be gained by a struggle against
-five men except more trouble.
-
-Once more in his cabin, Peter put Buddy to bed in the dark, and ate his
-much delayed supper. Buddy seemed to take the flight as a matter of no
-moment. Flights, he probably thought, were a part of every small boy's
-life, and he dropped asleep the moment he was tucked in the bunk. Peter,
-however, did not sleep. He had much to think over. When an hour had
-elapsed he lighted his lamp, knowing it could not be seen from any
-distance, and set to work preparing to leave the boat forever. He had
-few portable belongings worth carrying away. What food was left he
-made into a parcel. He cut, with his jack-knife, strips from one of his
-blankets to wind about his legs, and sliced off other pieces in which to
-tie his feet, for his shoes were thin and worn through in places. He cut
-a hole in the center of what was left of the blanket, making a serape
-of it for Buddy. Later he cut a similar hole in the other blanket
-for himself. All Buddy's toys he stored away under the bunk, with
-his shotgun. Then he baked a corn cake and stowed pieces of it in his
-pockets. He was ready for his flight. His sister Jane should afford a
-refuge for him and the boy.
-
-Long before sunrise he awakened Buddy and fed him, ate his own
-breakfast, tied his feet in the pieces of blanket and left the
-shanty-boat. They were two strange looking objects as Peter worked his
-way down the slough, taking care to avoid the snow patches and keeping
-to that part of the ice blown clear by the wind. Peter had dressed Buddy
-and himself for comfort and not for show. The blue serape enveloped
-Buddy and hung below his feet as Peter carried him, and both Peter and
-Buddy had strips of blanket tied over their heads to protect their ears.
-Peter, in his own gray blanket, tied about the waist with seine twine,
-looked like an untidy friar, his feet huge gray paws.
-
-A quarter of a mile below the shanty-boat Peter turned and crossed the
-island, and, issuing on the other side, the whole broad river lay before
-him. It was still dark as he began his long tramp across the river,
-and on the vast field of ice it was frigidly cold. There the wind had a
-clearer sweep than in the protected slough, and one could understand why
-Peter had risked the return to the boat for additional garments after
-having once fled from it. The wind carried the snow in low white clouds,
-lifting it from one drift to deposit it in another, piling it high
-against every obstruction on the ice. Without their blanket serapes it
-would have been impossible for Peter, hardened as he was, to withstand
-the cold of the long journey he had planned.
-
-For a quarter of a mile, after leaving the island, Peter had to struggle
-over the rough hummocks that had been drift ice until the river closed,
-but beyond that the going was smoother. In places the ice was so glassy
-that he could not walk, but had to slide his feet along without lifting
-them. The wind cut his face like a knife and the blowing snow gathered
-on his eye lashes, and Buddy grew heavier and heavier in his arms. He
-could have carried him all day pickaback, but he did not dare risk that
-mode lest he slip and fall backward on the little fellow. His arms and
-back ached with the strain, but still he kept on, making straight across
-the river, and not until he had passed the middle did he set Buddy down.
-Then, believing he was beyond the jurisdiction of an Iowa court order,
-he rested, sitting flat on the ice with Buddy in his lap.
-
-"I can walk, Uncle Peter," said Buddy.
-
-"Uncle Peter will carry you awhile yet, Buddy," said Peter. "By and by,
-when he gets tired again he'll let you walk. Uncle Peter is in a hurry
-now."
-
-He lifted the boy again and plodded on, and when he reached the roughly
-wooded Illinois shore he pushed in among the grapevine festooned trees
-until he was well hidden from the river. There he made a fire and rested
-until he and Buddy were warmed through. Then out upon the river again
-and, keeping close to the bank, up stream. Here he was sheltered from
-the cutting wind, and the walking was surer, for the sand had blown upon
-the ice in many places, but his progress was slow for all that. About
-noon he halted again and made a fire and ate, and then went on. Toward
-four o'clock, coming abreast of a tall, lightning scarred sycamore,
-Peter plunged into the brush until he came to a clearing on the edge of
-a small slough. Here stood an old log cattle shed, and here, with a
-fire burning on the dirt floor, they spent the night, Buddy huddled in
-Peter's arms, with his back to the fire.
-
-They had covered half the distance to Riverbank.
-
-"Where are we going now, Uncle Peter?" asked Buddy the next morning.
-
-"I guess we won't go nowhere to-day," said Peter. "We ain't likely to be
-bothered here, this time of the year, so we'll just make a good fire and
-stay right here and be comfortable, and to-night we 're going to start
-over across to your Aunt Jane's house."
-
-"Is Aunt Jane's house like this house?" asked Buddy.
-
-"Well, it's quite considerable better," said Peter. "You'll see what
-it's like when you get to it. If everything turns out the way I hope it
-will, you and me will live at Aunt Jane's quite some time."
-
-Not until well toward nine o'clock did Peter awaken Buddy that night. He
-was haunted by the fear that, once he touched Iowa soil, every eye would
-be watching for him and every hand eager to tear Buddy from him. If,
-however, he could get Buddy safely into Jane's care Peter believed he
-could make a fight against Briggles or any other man, for Jane's house
-was a home--there was a woman in it--Peter meant to time his trip to
-reach Jane's in the early morning.
-
-The moon was full and bright, glaring bright on the river, as Peter
-started, and the cold was benumbing.
-
-The long, diagonal course across the river brought Peter and Buddy to
-the Iowa shore some three miles below Riverbank, just before sunrise. On
-shore new difficulties met him. A road ran along the shore, but Peter's
-destination lay straight back in the hills, and two miles of sandy farm
-land, in frozen furrows, crossed by many barbed wire fences, lay between
-Peter and the foot of the hills. The sun came up while he was still
-struggling across the plowed land, and by the time he reached the road
-that led up the hillside it was glaring day. Twice early farmers, bound
-to town, passed him as he trudged along the winding road, staring at him
-curiously, and Peter dropped to the creek bed that followed the road.
-Here he could hide if he heard an approaching team. Just below his
-sister's house the road crossed the creek and here Peter climbed the
-bank. A wind had risen with the sun and Peter's blanket flapped against
-his legs. At his sister's gate he paused behind a mass of leafless
-elderberry bushes, and deposited Buddy on the low bank that edged the
-road.
-
-"Now, you stay right here, Buddy," said Peter to the boy, "and just sort
-of look at the landscape over there whilst I run up and tell your Aunt
-Jane you're coming. She don't like to be surprised."
-
-"But I don't want to look at the landscape, Uncle Peter," Buddy
-complained. "I want to go with you."
-
-"It ain't much of a landscape, and that's a fact," said Peter, glancing
-at the bare clay bank across the creek, "and if it wasn't very important
-that I should speak to your Aunt Jane first I wouldn't ask you to wait
-here. I know just how a boy feels about waiting. My goodness! Did I see
-a squirrel over there? A little gray squirrel with a big bushy tail?"
-
-"No," said Buddy.
-
-"Well, you just keep a sharp eye on that clay bank, and maybe you will.
-Maybe you'll see a little jumpy rabbit."
-
-"I don't want to see a rabbit. I want to go with you," said Buddy.
-
-Peter looked at the house. It was hardly more than a weather-beaten
-shanty. Its fence, once an army of white pickets, was now but a
-tumble-down affair of rotting posts and stringers with a loose picket
-here and there, and the door yard was cluttered with tin cans and wood
-ashes. The woodshed, as free from paint as the house, was well filled
-with stove wood, for Peter had filled it in the early fall. Beyond the
-woodshed the garden--Peter worked it for his sister each spring--was
-indicated by the rows of cabbage stalks with their few frozen leaves
-still clinging to them. The whole place was run down and slip-shod, but
-it was a house, and it held a woman.
-
-"Goodness me!" said Peter. "Of course you don't want to look for
-rabbits! I've got that jack-knife I bought for you right here in my
-pocket, and _now_ I guess you'll want to wait here for Uncle Peter!
-You will if Uncle Peter opens the big blade and gets you a stick to
-whittle."
-
-"I want to whittle," said Buddy promptly. "I want to whittle a funny
-cat."
-
-Peter looked about for a stick.
-
-"There!" he said. "There's a stick, but if I was you I'd make a funny
-snake out of it. That stick don't look like it would make a cat. You
-make a snake, and if it don't turn out to be a snake, maybe it'll be a
-sword. Now, you stay right here, and Uncle Peter won't be gone very
-long. I'm going to put you right back in among these bushes, and don't
-you move."
-
-[Illus: 232]
-
-"I won't," said Buddy.
-
-When Peter left the shanty-boat he had felt that he could walk up to
-Jane with the front of a lion and demand shelter for himself and for
-Buddy all the advantages of a home. From that distance it had seemed
-quite reasonable, for he owned the house and the small plot of ground on
-which it stood. Ownership ought to give some rights, and he had planned
-just what he would say. He would tell Jane he had come. Then he would
-tell her he had reformed, and how he had reformed, and that he was a
-changed man and was going to work hard and make things comfortable for
-her, and give up shanty-boating and the river and all the things he had
-loved. He would say he now saw all these were bad for his character.
-Then, when she got used to that, he would incidentally mention Buddy,
-and tell her what a nice little fellow he was, and what a steadying
-effect the boy would have on his shiftless life. Then he would get
-Buddy, and his sister would see what a fine boy Buddy was, and wrap
-her arms around him, and weep. Peter was sure she would weep. And there
-would be a home for Buddy with a woman in it!
-
-But if Jane objected--as she might--Peter meant to set his foot down
-hard. It was his house and he could do what he wished with it. That he
-had allowed Jane to possess it in single peace was well enough, but it
-was his house. That would bring her to time--it----
-
-The nearer he had approached the house, however, the more doubtful
-he had become that Jane would welcome him and that she would, after a
-little talk, order him to bring Buddy in. The closer he came to Jane the
-better he recalled the many times he had fled precipitately after doing
-her chores, and his many moist and mournful receptions.
-
-Now he walked to the kitchen door and knocked, and Jane's voice bade him
-enter. He took off his hat as he entered. His sister was sitting at the
-kitchen table where, despite the lateness of the hour, she had evidently
-just finished her breakfast. As she turned her head all Peter's optimism
-fled, for Jane's eyes were red with weeping. When her sorrows pressed
-heavily upon Jane she was a very fountain of tears. She threw up her
-hands as she saw Peter.
-
-"Oh, mercy me, Peter Lane!" she cried in a heart-broken voice. "Look
-what you've come to at your time of life. Nothing to wear but old rags
-and horse blankets on back and foot! It does seem as if nothing ever
-went right for you since the day you were born. Just poverty and
-bad-health and trouble, and one thing after another." She wiped her
-eyes to make room in them for fresh tears. "Every time I think of you,
-freezing to death in that shanty-boat, and going hungry and cold, I--it
-makes me so miserable--it makes me feel so bad--"
-
-"Now, Jane," said Peter uncomfortably, "don't cry! Don't do it! It ain't
-so bad as all that. Every time I come to see you, you just cry and carry
-on, and I tell you I don't need it done for me. I'm all right. I get
-along somehow."
-
-"Never, never once, have I said an unkind word to you, Peter," said
-Jane damply. "You shouldn't upbraid me with it, for I know it ain't your
-fault you turned out this way. I know you ain't got the health to go to
-work and earn a living, if you wanted to. I do what I can to keep your
-house from falling down on my head. When I think what would become of
-this house if you didn't have me to do what I can to mend it up--the
-roof's leakin' worse than ever."
-
-"As soon as spring comes, I'm going to get some shingles and shingle up
-the leaky places," said Peter. "Maybe I'll put a whole new roof on. Now,
-just listen to what I want to say, please, Jane."
-
-"It's that makes me feel so awful bad, Peter," said Jane, shaking her
-head. "You mean so well, and you promise so much, and you see things so
-big, and yet you ain't got money to buy shoes nor clothes nor anything,
-and for all I know you might be lying sick without a bite to eat, and me
-having all I can do to hold body and soul together in a house like this.
-Time and again I've made up my mind to go and leave it, and I would
-if it wasn't for you. I feel my duty by you, and I stay, but work in a
-house like this wears me to the bone. It does. To the bone!"
-
-It may have worn some one to the bone but not Jane. She was one of those
-huge, flabby women who are naturally lazy; who sit thinking of the work
-they have to do but do not do it; and who linger long over their meals
-and weep into them. To Peter her tears were worse than Mrs. Potter's
-sharp tongue, for Mrs. Potter's reproaches were single of motive, while
-Jane's tears were too apt to be a mask for reproaches more cutting than
-Mrs. Potter's out and out hard words. Jane did not weep continually; she
-had the knack of weeping when tears would serve her purpose.
-
-From time to time, as the spirit moved her, Jane went to town and did
-plain sewing. She had had a husband (but had one no more) and he had
-left her a little money which she had kept in the bank, drawing four
-per cent, regularly. It did not amount to much, only a couple of hundred
-dollars a year, but this she used most sparingly, leaving the greater
-part of the interest to accumulate. Perhaps she was sincere in her
-mourning for Peter, but she certainly did not want him in the house. As
-a provider Peter had never been a success--he was too liberal--and in
-his periods of financial stringency he had been known to ask Jane
-for money. Not that he ever got it, but it was a thing to be guarded
-against. Jane guarded against it with tears. In fifteen minutes of
-tearful reproaches she could make Peter feel that he was the most
-worthless and cruel of men. She had so often reduced him to that state
-that he had come to fall into it naturally whenever he saw Jane, and he
-was usually only too glad to escape from her presence again and go
-back to the river life. Tears proclaim injustice, and a man like Peter,
-seeing them, falls easily into the belief that he must be in the wrong,
-and very badly in the wrong. In flying from Jane he fled from the
-self-incrimination she planted in him. Now he sighed and took a seat on
-one of the kitchen chairs.
-
-"Jane," he said, "this house is my house, aint it?"
-
-"You know it is, Peter," she said reproachfully. "No need to remind me
-of that, nor that I ain't any better than a pauper. If I was, it would
-be far from me to stay here trying to hold the old boards together for
-you. Many and many a time I wish you had health to live in this house,
-so I could go somewhere and live like a human being, and let you take
-care of this cow-pen--for it ain't no better than that--yourself. It
-would be a blessed thing for me, Peter, if you ever got your health. I
-could go then."
-
-Peter moved uneasily, and frowned at the fresh tears.
-
-"I wisht you wouldn't cry, Jane," he said. "I want to talk sort of
-business to you this morning." He paused, appalled by the effect his
-revelation would be apt to have on Jane. It must be made, however, and
-he plunged into it. "I've got a boy. I've got a little feller about
-three years old that come to me one night when his ma died, and he ain't
-got anybody in the world but me, Jane, to take care of him. I've had him
-some months, down at my boat, and he's the cutest, nicest little tyke
-you ever set eyes on. Why, he's--he's no more trouble 'round a place
-than a little kitten or a pup or something like that. You'd be just
-tickled to death with him. My first notion," he said more slowly, "my
-first idee was to have him and me come here, so you could be a sort of
-ma to him, and I could be a sort of pa, so we'd make a sort of family,
-like. What he's got to have is a good home, first of all, and a
-shanty-boat ain't that. I see that. But I can see how easy-going I am,
-and how I might be an expense to you, for awhile anyway, so I thought,
-maybe, if you would take the boy in--now wait a minute, Jane! Wait a
-minute! You're bound to hear me out."
-
-His sister had forgotten her sorrows in open-mouthed amazement as Peter
-talked, but as the startling proposal became clear she dabbled at her
-eyes, and sniffled. Peter knew what was coming--a new torrent of tears,
-an avalanche of sorrow.
-
-"For Heaven's sake shut up for a minute 'til I get through!" he cried in
-exasperation. "You ain't done nothing but weep over me since I was knee
-high. Give me a rest for one time. I don't need weeping over. I'm all
-right. Ain't I just said I'll go away again?"
-
-"You never understand me," wept Jane.
-
-"Yes, I do, too!" said Peter angrily. "I understand you good. All you
-want is to weep me out of house and home, and I know it. I'm a sort of
-old bum, and I know that, too, but I've been fair to you right along,
-and all I get for it is to be wept over, and I'm sick of it. You ain't a
-sister, you 're a--a fountain. You 're an everlasting fountain. You let
-me come up and saw your wood, and you weep; and you let me make your
-garden, and you weep, and if you do give me a meal while I'm working for
-you it's so wept into that my mouth tastes of salt for a week. I've put
-up with it just as long as I'm going to."
-
-"I'll go," said Jane, sniveling. "I'll go. I never thought to get such
-unkind words from my brother!"
-
-"Brother nothing!" said Peter, thoroughly exasperated. "What did you
-ever give me but shoves, wrapped up in sorrow and grief? What did you
-ever do but jump on me, and tear me to pieces, and pull me apart to show
-me how worthless I was, whilst you let on you was mourning over me? I
-guess I've had it done to me long enough to see through it, Jane, so you
-may as well shut off the bawling. You ain't no sister--you 're a miser!"
-
-"Peter Lane!"
-
-"That's what you are, a miser!" said Peter, rising from his chair. "You
-'re a weeping miser, and you might as well know it. That's why you don't
-want me 'round, you 're afraid I might cost you a nickel sometime. For
-two cents I'd _put_ you out of the house. You'd bawl some if you had to
-pay rent."
-
-Peter should have felt a sense of shame, but he did not. In some
-inexplicable way a huge weight seemed lifted from his chest. He
-felt big, and strong, and efficient. It was a wonderful thing he had
-discovered. He, who had for so many years, cringed before his sister's
-cruelty was making her wince. He, Peter Lane, was not feeling worthless
-and mean. He was talking out as other men do. He was having a rage, and
-yet he was so self-controlled that he knew he could stop at any moment.
-He was not the tool of his anger, the anger was his instrument. His pale
-eyes blazed, but he ended with a scornful laugh.
-
-Jane did not flare up. She dropped her head on her table and cried
-again, but with real self-pity this time.
-
-"Now, it ain't worth while to cry," said Peter coldly. "I've said
-all I've got to say on that subject. All I've got now is a business
-proposition, and you can take it or not. If you want to take Buddy in
-and feed him and sleep him and treat him white, the way he deserves,
-I'll pay you for it just as soon as I earn some money, and I'm going
-to get work right away. If you won't do that you can take the house and
-have it, and I'm through with you."
-
-He stood with his hat in his hand, waiting. It seemed to him that Jane
-was waiting too long, that she was calculating the chances of getting
-her pay if she took the boy, and Peter knew his past record did not
-suggest any very strong probability of that.
-
-"You'll get your money," he said. "I'm going to look for a job as
-soon as I go out from here. Don't you be afraid of that. You won't lose
-anything."
-
-Her reply came so suddenly that it startled
-
-Peter. She jumped from her chair and stamped her foot angrily.
-
-"Oh!" she cried, clinching her fists, while all her anger blazed in her
-face. "Hain't you insulted me enough? Get out of my house! Don't you
-ever come back!"
-
-Peter put on his hat. He paused when his hand was on the door-knob, his
-face deathly white.
-
-"If you ever get sick, Jane," he said, "you can leave word at George
-Rapp's Livery stable. I'll come to you if you are sick," and he went
-out, closing the door softly.
-
-Buddy was waiting where Peter had left him.
-
-"I'm making a funny snake for you, Uncle Peter," he said.
-
-"Well, I should think you were!" said Peter, summoning all his
-cheerfulness. "That's just the funniest old snake I ever did see, but
-you better let Uncle Peter have your jack-knife now, Buddy. We'll get
-along."
-
-He gathered the boy, who obediently yielded the knife, into his arms.
-
-"I'm going to see Aunt Jane, now," said the boy contentedly.
-
-"No, I guess we won't go see your Aunt Jane to-day, Buddy," said Peter,
-holding the boy close. "Put your head close up against Uncle Peter's
-shoulder and he can carry you better. You ain't so heavy that way."
-
-Buddy put his head on Peter's shoulder and crooned one of Booge's verses
-contentedly. They walked a long way in this manner, toward the town.
-From time to time Peter shifted the boy from one shoulder to the other,
-and once or twice he allowed him to walk, but not far. He wanted to feel
-Buddy in his arms.
-
-"I shouldn't wonder," said Peter as they entered the outskirts of the
-town, "if I had to go on a trip right soon. I can't seem to think of any
-way out of it."
-
-"I like to go on trips with you, Uncle Peter," said Buddy.
-
-"Well, you see, Buddy-boy," said Peter, "this here trip I can't take you
-on, so I've got to leave you with a man--a man that looks a good deal
-like that kazoozer man, but you mustn't be afraid of him, because all
-he is going to do is to take you for a ride in a horse and buggy out
-to where you'll stay. It may be some time before I see you again, but I
-want you should remember me. I guess you will, won't you?"
-
-"Yes, Uncle Peter."
-
-"That's right! You just remember Uncle Peter every day, but don't you
-worry for him, and some day maybe I'll come and get you. I've got a lot
-of work to do first that you wouldn't understand, such as building up a
-new man from the ground to the top of his head, but I'll get it done
-some time, and I'll come for you the first thing after I do. You want I
-should, don't you?"
-
-"Yes" said Buddy.
-
-For the rest of the way to town Peter held the boy very close _in_ his
-arms, and did not think of his tired muscles at all. He was thinking of
-his perfidy to the trusting child, for he was without money and without
-it he could see nothing to do but deliver the boy to Briggles and the
-Unknown.
-
-
-
-
-XIV. A RAY OF HOPE
-
-THE Marcy's Run Road, on which Peter's sister lived, led into Riverbank
-past the cemetery, and near the cemetery stood a group of small stores.
-One of these, half grocery and half saloon, was even more unkempt than
-the others, but before its window Peter stopped. A few small coins--the
-residue after his purchasing trip of the day before--remained in his
-pocket, and in the window was a square of cardboard announcing "Hot Beef
-Soup To-day."
-
-Hot beef soup, when a man has tramped many miles carrying a heavy child,
-is a temptation. Buddy himself would be glad of a bowl of hot soup, and
-Peter opened the door and entered.
-
-The store was narrow and dark. A few feet, just inside the door, were
-occupied by the scanty stock of groceries, tobacco and cheap candy, and
-back of this was the bar, with two small tables in the space before it.
-The whole place was miserably dirty. It was no gilded liquor palace,
-with mirrors and glittering cash-registers. The bar was of plain pine,
-painted "barn-red," and the whole arrangement was primitive and cheap.
-Beyond the bar room a partition cut off the living room, and this
-completed "Mrs. Crink's Place."
-
-Mrs. Crink had a bad reputation. During the stringent prohibition days
-she had run a "speak-easy" without paying the town the usual monthly
-disorderly house fine, and had served her term in jail. After that she
-was strongly suspected of boot-legging whisky, and she had purchased
-this new place but a few days since. She was a thin, sour-faced, angular
-woman, ugly alike in face and temper. When Peter opened the door a bell
-sounded sharply, but the high voice of Mrs. Crink in the living room
-drowned the bell. She was scolding and reviling at the top of her
-voice--swearing like a man--and a child was sobbing and pleading. Peter
-heard the sharp slap of a hand against a face, and a cry from the child,
-and Mrs. Crink came into the bar room, her eyes glaring and her face
-dark with anger.
-
-"Well, what do you want?" she snarled.
-
-"I'd like to get two bowls of soup for me and the boy, if it ain't too
-much trouble," said Peter.
-
-"Everything's trouble," whined Mrs. Crink. "I don't expect nothing else.
-A woman can't make a living without these cranks tellin' her what she
-shall and what she shan't. Shut up that howlin', you little devil, or
-I'll come in there and bat your head off."
-
-She went into the living room and brought out the two bowls of soup,
-placing them on one of the small tables. Peter lifted Buddy into a
-chair. Mrs. Crink began wiping off the beer-wet bar.
-
-"I wonder if you could let me have about a dime's worth of crackers and
-cheese?" he asked, and Mrs. Crink dropped the dirty rag with which she
-was wiping the bar.
-
-"Come out here, and shut up your bawlin', and swab off this bar," she
-yelled, and the door of the back room opened and a girl came out. She
-was the merest child. She came hesitatingly, holding her arm before
-her face, and the old hag of a woman jerked up the filthy, wet rag and
-slapped her across the face. It was none of Peter's business, but he
-half arose from his chair and then dropped back again. It made his blood
-boil, but he had not associated with shanty-boat men and women without
-learning that in the coarser strata of humanity slaps and blows and ugly
-words are often the common portion of children. He would have liked to
-interfere, but he knew the inefficiency of any effort he might make,
-and like a shock it came to him that it was for things like this that
-Briggles rescued,--or pretended to rescue--little children. It was not
-so bad then, after all. If he must give up Buddy there would be some
-compensation in telling Briggles of this poor child, who deserved far
-more the attention of his Society. All this passed through his mind
-in an instant, but before he could turn back to his bowl of soup Buddy
-uttered a cry of joy and, scrambling from his chair, ran across the
-floor toward the weeping girl.
-
-"Oh! Susie! Susie! My Susie!" he shouted and threw himself upon her.
-
-The impetus of his coming almost threw the child off her feet, and she
-staggered back, but the next instant she had clasped her arms around the
-boy, and was hugging him in a close, youthful embrace of joy.
-
-"My Buddy! My Buddy!" she kept repeating over and over, as if all other
-words failed her, as they will in an excess of sudden surprise. "My
-Buddy! My Buddy!"
-
-The woman stared for an instant in open-mouthed astonishment, and then
-her eyes flashed with anger. She reached out her hand to grasp the girl,
-but Peter Lane thrust it aside.
-
-His own eyes could flash, and the woman drew back.
-
-"Now, don't you do that!" he said hotly.
-
-"You git out of my store, then!" shouted Mrs. Crink. "You take your brat
-and git out!"
-
-"I'll get out," said Peter slowly, "as soon as I am quite entirely ready
-to do so. I hope you will understand that. And I'll be ready when I have
-ate my soup."
-
-The woman glared at him. She let her hand drop behind the bar, where
-she had a piece of lead pipe, and then, suddenly, she laughed a high,
-cackling laugh to cover her defeat, and let her eyes fall. She slouched
-to the front of the shop for the crackers and cheese and Peter seated
-himself again at the small table, and looked at the children.
-
-"Where's Mama?" he heard the girl ask, and Buddy's reply: "Mama went
-away," and he saw the look of wonder on the girl's face.
-
-"Come here," Peter said, and the girl came to the table.
-
-"I guess you 're Buddy's sister he's been tellin' me about, ain't you?"
-said Peter kindly, "and I'm his Uncle Peter He's been staying with on
-a shanty-boat. Your ma"--he hesitated and looked at the girl's sweet,
-clear eyes--"your ma went away, like Buddy said, Susie, but you don't
-want to think she run away and left him, for that wouldn't be so, not at
-all! She had to go, or she wouldn't 've gone. I guess--I guess she'd 've
-come and got you. Yes, I guess that's what she had on her mind. She
-spoke of you quite a little before she went on her trip."
-
-"I want you should take me away from here," said the girl suddenly.
-
-"Well, now, I wish I could, Susie," said Peter, "but I don't see how I
-can. Maybe I can arrange it--" He poised his soup spoon in the air. "Did
-Reverend Mr. Briggles bring you here?"
-
-"Not here," said Susie. "Mrs. Crink didn't live here, then."
-
-"Well, that's all the same," said Peter. "I just wanted to enquire about
-it. You'd better eat your soup, Buddy-boy. Well, now, let me see!"
-
-Peter stared into the soup, as if it might hold, hidden in its muggy
-depths, the answer to his riddle.
-
-"Just at present I'm sort of unable to do what I'd like to do myself,"
-he said. "I'd like to take you right with me, but I've got a certain
-friend that was quite put out because I didn't bring your ma to--to see
-her when your ma stopped in at my boat, and I guess maybe"--Mrs.
-Crink was returning with the crackers and cheese, and Peter
-ended hurriedly--"I guess maybe you better stay here until I make
-arrangements."
-
-It was a strange picture, the boy eating his soup gluttonously, Peter
-Lane in his comedy tramp garb of blanket and blanket-strips, and the
-little girl staring at him with big, trustful eyes. Mrs. Crink put the
-crackers and cheese on the table.
-
-"If you've got through takin' up time that don't belong to you, maybe I
-can git some work out of this brat," she snapped.
-
-"Why, yes, ma'am," said Peter politely. "It only so happened that this
-boy was her brother. We didn't want to discommode you at all."
-
-Susie turned away to her work of swabbing the bar, and Peter divided the
-crackers and cheese equally between himself and Buddy.
-
-"I don't care much to have tramps come in here anyway," said Mrs. Crink.
-"I never knew one yit that wouldn't pick up anything loose," but Peter
-made no reply. He had a matter of tremendous import on his mind. He felt
-that he had taken the weight of Susie's troubles on his shoulders in
-addition to those of Buddy, and he had resolved to ask Widow Potter to
-take the two children!
-
-The parting of the two children had for them none of the pathos it had
-for Peter. When Buddy had eaten the last scrap of cracker he got down
-from his chair.
-
-"Good-by, Susie," he said.
-
-"Good-by, Buddy," she answered, and that was all, and Peter led the boy
-out of the place.
-
-There are, in Riverbank, alleys between each two of the streets parallel
-with the river, and Peter, now that he had once more resolved not to
-allow Briggles to have Buddy, took to the alleys as he passed through
-the town. The outlandishness of his garb made him the more noticeable,
-he knew, and he wished to avoid being seen. He traversed the entire town
-thus, even where a creek made it necessary for him to scramble down one
-bank and up another, until the alleys ended at the far side of the town.
-There he crossed the vacant lot where a lumber mill had once stood, and
-struck into the river road.
-
-The boy seemed to take it all as a matter of course, but Peter kept a
-wary eye on the road, ready to seek a hiding-place at the approach of
-any rig that looked as if it might contain the Reverend Briggles, but
-none appeared. A farmer, returning from town with a wagon, stopped at a
-word from Peter, and allowed him to put Buddy in the wagon and clamber
-in with him. They got out again at Mrs. Potter's gate.
-
-The house was closed, and the doors locked. Peter tried them all before
-he was convinced he had had the long tramp for nothing, and then he led
-Buddy toward the barn. As he neared the barn the barn door opened and a
-man came out, carrying a water bucket. He stared at Peter.
-
-"Mrs. Potter is not at home, I guess?" said Peter.
-
-"Nope," said the man. "Anything I can do for you?"
-
-"It's business on which I'll have to see her personally," said Peter.
-"She wasn't expecting I'd come. Is she going to be back soon?"
-
-"Well, I guess she won't be back to-day," said the man. "She only hired
-me about a week ago, so she ain't got to telling me all her plans yet,
-but she told me it was as like as not she'd go up to Derlingport to-day,
-and maybe she might come home to-morrow, and maybe not till next day.
-Want to leave any word for her?"
-
-"No," said Peter slowly, "I guess there's no word I could leave. I
-guess not. I'm much obliged to you, but I won't leave no word. Come on,
-Buddy-boy, we got to go back to town now, before night sets in."
-
-"Where are we going now, Uncle Peter?" asked the boy.
-
-"Now? Well, now we 're going to see a friend I've got. You never slept
-in a great, big stable, where there are a lot of horses, did you? You
-never went to sleep on a great big pile of hay, did you? That'll be fun,
-won't it, Buddy-boy?"
-
-"Yes, Uncle Peter," said the child cheerfully, and they began the long,
-cold walk to town.
-
-
-
-
-XV. AN ENCOUNTER
-
-
-"THAT horse," said George Rapp, slapping the colt on the flank, "is as
-good a horse as you can get for the money in ten counties, and you
-won't find anybody that will offer what I do in trade for your old one.
-Nowhere."
-
-"You'd say that anyway, George Rapp," said Mrs. Potter. "You ain't here
-to run down what you want to sell. Seems to me the colt acts skittish."
-
-"What you said you wanted was a young horse," said Rapp with a shrug. "I
-don't know what you want. You want a young horse, and this is young, and
-you don't want a skittish horse, and all young horses are more or less
-that way."
-
-"What I want is a young, strong horse--" Mrs. Potter began.
-
-"You've told me that a million times and two, and if you tell me it
-again I'll know it by heart well enough to sing it," said Rapp. "There
-he stands, just like you say--a young, strong horse."
-
-"A skittish animal like this colt ain't fit for a woman to drive," said
-Mrs. Potter.
-
-"And you ought to have a driver to drive him, as you said about ten
-thousand times before," said Rapp with good-natured tolerance, "but
-Peter Lane ain't come up to town yet, if that's what you're working
-round to."
-
-"Oh, get along with you!" said Mrs. Potter. "I got a hired man now."
-
-"Well, you meant Peter, didn't you? Why don't you come right out and say
-so? But I guess you won't get Peter to drive this colt for a while yet."
-
-"He ain't sick?"
-
-"No. Nor he ain't dead. But as near as I can make out Peter is goin' to
-jail."
-
-Mrs. Potter turned sharply and George Rapp grinned. He could not help
-it, she showed such consternation.
-
-"Peter--in--jail?" she cried.
-
-"Well, not yet," said Rapp, chuckling at her amazement. "They 're
-out hunting him now. The dogs of the law is on his trail. That feller
-Briggles I told you of got his head broke by a tramp Peter took into my
-boat, and he's real sore, both in head and feelings. Last night him and
-a sort of posse went down to get the whole crowd, but Peter had skipped
-out with the kid."
-
-"Good for Peter! Good for Peter!" exclaimed Mrs. Potter. "I never looked
-for so much spunk. It was his boy as much as anybody's, wasn't it?"
-
-"Looks so to me," said Rapp, "but this here United States of Riverbank
-County seems to think different. Maybe Peter ain't been washin' the
-boy's face regular, three times a day. Anyhow, Briggles got a court
-order for the boy and he's goin' to jug Peter."
-
-"You talk so much nonsense, I don't know what to believe," complained
-the widow.
-
-"Anything I say is apt to be more or less nonsense, except when I'm
-talkin' horse," said Rapp, "but this ain't. Briggles and the dep'ty
-sheriff is out now, swearin' to bring Peter in by the seat of his pants
-or any way they can get him."
-
-"Well, if Peter Lane had a wife to look after him and tell him how-so
-once in a while, he wouldn't get into trouble like this," said Mrs.
-Potter, with aggravation. "He's enough to drive a body crazy."
-
-George Rapp's eyes twinkled. "The next time I see Peter I'll
-say, 'Peter, I been tryin' to sell a colt to Mrs. Potter since
-Lord-knows-when, and she's holdin' off until she gets a husband to tend
-the colt. I don't want to hurry you none,' I'll say to him, 'but when
-you get done servin' them ten years in the pen'tentiary, just fix it up
-for me. I'd like to sell this colt before he dies of old age."
-
-"You think you 're smart, George Rapp," said Mrs. Potter, reddening,
-"but when you talk like that, when I've heard Peter Lane say, a dozen
-times, that you're the best friend he's got in the world, it's time
-somebody took hold for him. I wouldn't buy a horse off you, not if it
-was the only one in the world!"
-
-George Rapp patted the colt on the neck and ran his hand down the sleek
-shoulder.
-
-"Now, Mrs. Potter," he said, "you know better than that. I'm just as
-much Peter's friend as anybody is. I'll bail him out if he gets in jail,
-and I'll pay his fine, if there is one. But don't you worry. Peter
-ain't a fool. By this time Peter and that boy is in Burlington. Peter's
-safe--"
-
-It seemed as if Rapp's cheerful prediction had been fulfilled, for, as
-he spoke, horses' hoofs clattered on the plank incline that led into
-the stable. Rapp led the colt out of the way as the two-horse rig,
-containing the Reverend Rasmer Briggles and the deputy sheriff, reached
-the main floor. It was evident they had not found Peter.
-
-"Wild goose hunt this time, George," said the deputy as he jumped from
-the carriage.
-
-"That so?" said Rapp, walking around the team. "Got the team pretty hot
-for such cold weather, didn't you?"
-
-"We drove like blazes," said the deputy, "but I didn't get heated much.
-Colder than th' dickens. H'ar you, Mrs. Potter? George robbin' you
-again?"
-
-Mr. Briggles was climbing from the carriage slowly. He was bundled in
-a heavy ulster with a wide collar that turned up over his ears. He wore
-ear-mufflers, and a scarf was tied over his cap and under his chin.
-On his hands were thick, fur-lined mittens, and his trouser legs were
-buckled into high arctics. Over his nose and across one cheek a strip
-of adhesive plaster showed where Booge had "hit the old kazoozer and
-scratched him on the nose," as he had sung.
-
-Mr. Briggles was not in a good temper. Under his arrangement with his
-society this had been an unprofitable week, for he had not "rescued" a
-single child (at twenty dollars per child). He slowly untied his scarf,
-removed his ear-tabs and unbuttoned his ulster. He affected ministerial
-garb under his outer roughness; it had a good effect on certain old
-ladies as he sat in their parlors coaxing money from them (forty per
-cent, commission on all collected), and his face had what George Rapp
-called "that solemncholy sneaker" look. You expected him to put
-his finger-tips together and look at the ceiling. There are but few
-Briggleses left to prey on the gullibly charitable to-day, and thank
-God for that. Their day is over. Most of them are in stock-selling games
-now.
-
-"We were on sheriff's business to-day, Brother Rapp," said Briggles,
-when he had opened his coat. "You can charge the rig to the county."
-
-"How about that, Joe?" Rapp asked the deputy.
-
-"What's the diff.?" asked Joe carelessly. "The county can stand it."
-
-He had entered the office, where Rapp always kept his barrel-stove red
-hot, and was kicking his toes against the foot-rail of the stove.
-
-"Want the team again to-morrow?" asked Rapp.
-
-"I want it to-morrow," said Joe. "I got to go to Sweetland to put an
-attachment on to a feller's hogs. I don't know what your friend Briggles
-wants."
-
-"I want you to help me find this boy, Brother--" Briggles began, but the
-deputy merely turned his back to the stove and looked at him over one
-shoulder.
-
-"Oh, shut up!" he said. "I ain't your brother."
-
-"What's the matter with you, Joe?" asked Rapp. "You act sore."
-
-"Sore nothin'! I'm sick at my stummik. You'd be if you had to drive a
-pole-cat around the county all day."
-
-"Now, Brother Venby," said Mr. Briggles pleadingly, "you misunderstood
-me entirely. If you will let me explain--"
-
-"You go and explain to your grandmother," said Joe roughly. "You can't
-explain to me. If I didn't have on my dep'ty sheriff badge, I'd come out
-there and do some explainin' with a wagon spoke on my own account. Say,
-George, did this feller get a rig from you once to take a young girl
-that he brought down from Derlingport, to a 'good home'? Nice little
-girl, wasn't she? Where d'you suppose he took her? Mrs. Crink's! Say,
-come in here a minute."
-
-Rapp went into the office and Joe closed the door. A hostler led the
-team to the rear of the stable, and Mr. Briggles, as if feeling a
-protective influence in the presence of Mrs. Potter, moved nearer to
-her. He pushed back his cap and wiped his forehead.
-
-"In this charity work we meet the opposition of all rough characters,
-Madame," he began suavely, but she interrupted him.
-
-"You 're the man that's pestering Peter Lane, ain't you?" she asked.
-
-"Only within the law, only within the law!" said Mr. Briggles
-soothingly. "I act only for the Society, and the Society keeps within
-the law."
-
-"Law--fiddlesticks!" said Mrs. Potter. "What's this nonsense about
-putting Peter Lane in jail?"
-
-"We fear we shall have to make an example of him," said Mr. Briggles.
-"The ungodly throw obstructions in our path, and we must combat them
-when we can. This Lane has evaded a court order. We trust he will
-receive a term in prison. We have faith that Judge Bennings will uphold
-the right."
-
-"Huh! So that old rascal of a Bennings is the man that let you bother
-Peter Lane, is he? Seems to me he's getting pretty free with his court
-orders and nonsense! But I guess he ain't heard from me yet!"
-
-She turned her back on Mr. Briggles and almost ran down the incline into
-the street. Unluckily for Judge Bennings, he was almost too convenient
-to Rapp's Livery, Feed and Sale Stable, living in an old brick mansion
-that occupied the corner of the block but, luckily for him, he was not
-at home. Mrs. Potter poured out her wrath on the German servant girl.
-
-When Mrs. Potter had hastened away, Mr. Briggles hesitated. He could see
-the deputy sheriff and George Rapp through the smoky glass of the
-office door, and Joe was talking steadily, only stopping now and then to
-expectorate, while Rapp's good-natured face was scowling. Mr. Briggles
-buttoned his ulster. From the look on George Rapp's face he felt it
-would be better to be out of the stable when Rapp came out of the
-office. He turned. Peter Lane was staggering wearily up the incline into
-the stable, his back bent with fatigue, and Buddy, sound asleep, in his
-arms. Mr. Briggles watched the uncouth, blanket-draped pair advance, and
-when Peter stood face to face with him, a smile of satisfaction twisted
-his hard mouth. Peter looked into the fellow's shrewd eyes and drew a
-long breath.
-
-"Your name's Briggles, ain't it?" he asked listlessly. "Mine's Peter
-Lane. This here's Buddy. I guess we got to the end of our string."
-
-Peter shifted the sleeping boy to his shoulder and touched the child's
-freckled face softly.
-
-"I wisht you would do what's possible to put him into a nice home,"
-said Peter; "a home where he won't be treated harsh. I've got so used to
-Buddy I feel almost like he was my own son, and I wouldn't like him to
-be treated harsh. He's such a nice little feller--"
-
-He stopped, for he could say no more just then. He lowered his arms
-until Buddy's head slid softly from his shoulder to the crook of his
-arm.
-
-"Well," he said, holding out the sleeping boy, "I guess you might as
-well take him now as any time."
-
-Mr. Briggles reached forward to take the boy just as Mrs. Potter came
-rushing up the stable incline, waving her hand wildly.
-
-"Oh, _Smith!_" she called. "Peter _Smith!_ You 're just the man I been
-looking for, _Smith!_"
-
-Peter stared at her uncomprehendingly for one instant, and as he
-understood her useless little strategy, his eyes softened.
-
-"I'm just as much obliged to you, Mrs. Potter," he said, "but I've
-already told this man who I am. I guess I'll go now."
-
-He looked from one to the other helplessly and Mrs. Potter put out her
-arms and took the sleeping boy.
-
-"Peter, you're a perfect fool!" she said angrily.
-
-"I guess I am," said Peter. "Yes, I guess I am!"
-
-He bent and kissed Buddy's warm cheek.
-
-"I'd like to be somewheres else when he wakes up," he explained and
-turned away. He had started down the driveway when Mr. Briggles stepped
-after him and laid a detaining hand on his arm.
-
-"Wait!" said Mr. Briggles. "The sheriffs deputy is in the office here;
-he has been looking for you."
-
-"Oh, that's all right!" said Peter. "You can tell Joe I've gone on up to
-the jail," and he drew his arm away and went on down to the street. Mrs.
-Potter called after him.
-
-"Peter Lane! Peter!" she called, but Peter had hurried away. Buddy
-raised his head suddenly and looked up into Mrs. Potter's face.
-
-"I know who you are," he said fearlessly. "You 're Aunt Jane."
-
-"No, child," said Mrs. Potter, "I ain't anybody's aunt. I'm just a
-worthless old creature."
-
-"Where's Uncle Peter?" asked Buddy in his sudden way.
-
-"Now, don't you worry," said Mrs. Potter. "Uncle Peter has gone away."
-
-"I know," said Buddy, now wide awake. "Uncle Peter told me. I want to
-get down." Mrs. Potter put him down and he stood leaning against
-her knee, holding tightly to her skirt and eyeing Mr. Briggles
-distrustfully, for his quick eyes recognized the "old kazoozer" Uncle
-Booge had thrown off the boat, but before he could give utterance to
-what was running through his small head, the office door opened and
-George Rapp and the deputy came out. Rapp walked up to Mr. Briggles.
-
-"All right," he said roughly. "You've got the kid, I see, and I guess
-that's all you want in my stable, so you pick him up and get out of
-here, and don't you ever come here again. Do you understand that? If you
-do, I'm going to show you how I treat skunks. Y' understand?"
-
-Involuntarily Mr. Briggles put up his elbow as if to ward off a blow,
-and Buddy clung the tighter to Mrs. Potter's skirt. The ex-minister
-reached out his hand for the child, and Buddy turned and ran.
-
-Mr. Briggles did not run after him. He stood staring at the child. "I
-don't want that boy," he said. "I don't want him. I couldn't do anything
-with that boy. He's a cripple!"
-
-Buddy, stopping at the head of the incline, gazed, wide-eyed from one to
-the other.
-
-Didn't anybody want a boy that was lame? "I got _one_ good foot," he
-said boastingly. And suddenly Mrs. Potter's strong, work-muscled arms
-gathered Buddy up and held him close to her breast, so that one of the
-sharp buttons of her coat made him shake his head and forget the angry
-tears he had been ready to shed.
-
-"I want him!" she cried, her eyes blazing. "I'll take him, you--you--"
-
-No one knew what she would have called Mr. Briggles, for with an
-unexpectedness that made Mr. Briggles's teeth snap together George Rapp
-shut an iron hand on the back of his neck, and bumped a knee into Mr.
-Briggles from behind so vigorously as to lift him off his feet. With the
-terrible knee bumping him at every step, Mr. Briggles was rushed down
-the incline with a haste that carried him entirely across the street and
-left him gasping and trembling against a tool box alongside the railway
-tracks. George Rapp returned wiping his hands in his coat skirts as if
-he had just been handling a snake, or some other slimy creature.
-
-"Now we got done with pleasure," he said with a laugh, "we'll talk
-business. Do you want that colt, or don't you, Mrs. Potter?"
-
-
-
-
-XVI. JAIL UNCLES
-
-
-THE county jail stood back of the courthouse, on Maple Street, and was
-a three-story brick building, flush with the sidewalk, with barred
-windows. To the right was the stone-yard where, when the sheriff
-was having good trade, you could hear the slow tapping of hammers on
-limestone as the victims of the law pounded rock, breaking the large
-stones into road metal. As a factory the prisoners did not seem to care
-whether they reached a normal output of cracked rock or not.
-
-Seated on a folded gunny-sack laid upon a smooth stone in this yard,
-Booge was receiving justice at the hands of the law. He pulled a rough
-piece of limestone toward him, turned it over eight or ten times to
-find the point of least resistance, settled the stone snugly into the
-limestone chips, and--yawned. Eight or ten minutes later, feeling chilly
-and cramped in the arms, he raised his hammer and let it fall on the
-rock, and--yawned! The other prisoners--there were five in all--worked
-at the same breathless pace.
-
-The stone-yard was protected from the vulgar gaze of the outer slaves of
-business and labor by a tall board fence, notable as the only fence
-of any size in Riverbank that never bore circus posters on its outer
-surface. Several times within the memory of man there had been "jail
-deliveries" from the stone-yard. In each case the delivery had been
-effected in the same manner. The escaping prisoner climbed over the
-fence and went away. One such renegade, recaptured, told why he
-had fled. "I won't stay in no hotel," he said, "where they've got
-cockroaches in the soup. If this here sheriff don't brace up, there
-won't none of us patronize his durn hotel next winter."
-
-Peter, enveloped in his blanket serape, pulled the knob of the door-bell
-of the jail and waited. He heard the bell gradually cease jangling, and
-presently he heard feet in the corridor, and the door opened.
-
-"Well, what do you want?" asked the sheriff's wife. "If you want Ed, he
-ain't here. You'll have to come back."
-
-"I've come to give myself up," said Peter. "My name's Peter Lane."
-
-"Well, it don't make any difference what your name is," said Mrs.
-Stevens flatly. "You can't give yourself up to me, and that's all there
-is to it. Every time the weather turns cold a lot of you fellows come
-around and give yourselves up, and I'm sick and tired of it. I won't
-take another one of you unless you 're arrested in a proper manner. Half
-the time Ed can't collect the board money. If you want to get in here
-you go down to the calaboose and get arrested in the right way."
-
-"But I'm sort of looked for here," said Peter. "Joe Venby knows I'm
-coming here, and if Ed was here--"
-
-"Oh, if Ed was here, he'd feed you for nothing, I dare say!" said Mrs.
-Stevens. "He's the easiest creature I ever see. If it wasn't for me he'd
-lose money on this jail right along."
-
-"Can't I come in and wait for Ed?" asked Peter. "I ought to stay here
-when I'm wanted. I don't want Ed or Joe to think I'd play a trick on
-them."
-
-"You can't come in!" said Mrs. Stevens. "The last man that come and gave
-himself up to me stole a shell box off my what-not, and I won't have
-that happen again. You can come back after a while."
-
-"Can't you let me wait in the stone-yard?" asked Peter.
-
-"See here!" said the sheriff's wife. "I'm busy getting a meal, and I've
-no time to stand talking. Ed locked them boarders in the yard when he
-went away, and he took the key. If you want to get into that stone-yard,
-you'll have to climb over the fence, and that's all there is to it. I
-have no time to fritter away talking."
-
-She slammed the door in Peter's face, and Peter turned away. The fence
-was high but Peter was agile, and he scrambled up and managed to throw
-one leg over, and thus reached the top.
-
-"Come on in," Booge's gruff voice greeted him, and Peter looked down to
-see the tramp immediately below him.
-
-"They got Buddy," said Peter, as he dropped to the ground inside the
-fence.
-
-"Did, hey?" said Booge, stretching his arms. "I was sort of in hopes
-you'd kill that old kazoozer, if you had to. I don't like him. He's
-the feller that married me and Lize, and I ain't ever forgive him. One
-Merdin was enough in a town. I was all of that name the world ought to
-have had in it--"
-
-"Merdin?" said Peter. "Is that your name?"
-
-"Why, sure, it is. Didn't I ever tell you?" asked Booge. "No, I guess I
-didn't. Come to think of it, it wasn't important what _you_ called me,
-and Buddy sort of clung to 'Booge.' Where is the little feller?"
-
-"Your name's Merdin? And your wife was Lize Merdin?" repeated Peter,
-staring at the tramp. "Is that so?"
-
-"Cross my heart. If you want me to, I'll sing it for you."
-
-"Booge," said Peter soberly, "she's dead. Your wife is dead."
-
-The tramp was serious now. "Lize is dead?" he asked. "Honest, Peter?"
-
-"She's dead," Peter repeated. "She died in my boat. She come there one
-awful stormy night, and she died there. She was run out of Derlingport,
-and she died, and I buried her."
-
-Booge put down his stone-hammer and for a full minute stared at the
-chapped and soiled hands on his knees. Then he shook his head.
-
-"Ain't that peculiar? Ain't that odd?" he said. "Lize dead, and she
-died in your boat, and--why!" he cried suddenly, "Buddy 's my boy, ain't
-he?"
-
-"Yes," said Peter, "he's your boy."
-
-"Ain't that queer! Ain't that strange!" Booge repeated, shaking his
-bushy head. "Ain't that odd? And Buddy was my boy all the time! And he's
-a nice little feller, too, ain't he? He's a real nice little feller.
-Ain't that odd!"
-
-He still shook his head as he picked up the hammer. He struck the rock
-before him several listless blows.
-
-"I wonder if Lize told you what become of Susie?" he asked.
-
-"I know what become of her," said Peter. "Briggles got her, too. She's
-with a--with a lady in town here." He could not bring himself to tell
-the imprisoned man what the lady was in reality.
-
-"That's fine," said Booge, laughing mirthlessly. "I knowed all along I'd
-bring up my family first-class. All we needed to make our home a regular
-'God-bless-er' was for me to get far enough away, and for some one to
-get the kids away from Lize. Do you know, Peter, I feel sort of sorry
-for Lize, too. That's funny, ain't it?"
-
-"Not if she was your wife, it ain't," said Peter.
-
-"Yes, it is," Booge insisted. "A man don't feel sorry for a wife like
-that. Generally he's glad when she's gone, but I sort of feel like Lize
-didn't have a fair show.. She was real bright. If I hadn't married her,
-she'd probably have worked her way over to Chicago and got in a chorus,
-or blackmailed some rich feller, but I was a handicap to her right
-along. She couldn't be out-and-out whole-souled bad when she was a
-married lady. She'd just get started, and begin whooping things, when
-she'd remember she was a wife and a mother and all that, and she'd lose
-her nerve. She never got real bad, and she never got real good. I guess
-I stood in her way too much."
-
-"You mean you wasn't one thing or the other?" asked Peter.
-
-"Yep! That's why I went away, when I did go," said Booge. "I seen Lize
-wasn't happy, and I wasn't happy, so I went. The sight of me just made
-her miserable. She'd come in after being away a week or so, and she'd
-moan out how wicked she was, and how good I was, and that she was going
-to reform for my sake, and she'd be unhappy for a month--all regrets
-and sorrow and punishing herself--and then I'd take my turn and get on a
-spree, and when I come back, she'd be gone. Then she 'd come back and
-go through the whole thing once more. It was real torture for her. She
-never fig-gered that my kind of bad was as bad as her kind of bad. I
-never gave her no help to stay straight, either. I guess what I'd ought
-to have done was to whack her over the head with an ax handle when she
-come back, or give her a black eye, but I didn't have no real stamina. I
-was a fool that way."
-
-"I don't see why you married her," said simple Peter.
-
-"Well, I was a fool that way, too," said Booge. "She seemed so young and
-all, to be throwed out by her mother and father, so I just married her
-because nobody else offered to, as you might say, to give her baby
-some sort of a dad when it come. It didn't get much of a sort of a dad,
-either, when it got me.
-
-"Then you ain't Susie's pa?" asked Peter.
-
-"Lord, no!"
-
-"And Buddy?"
-
-"Oh, yes! And ain't he a nice little feller? Seems like he's got all
-Lize's and my good in him, don't it, and none of our bad? And to think I
-was there with him all the time, and you didn't even like me to be uncle
-to him! I wonder--Peter, if you ever see him again, just tell him his
-dad's dead, will you, Peter?".
-
-"If you want I should, Booge," said Peter reluctantly.
-
-"Yes! And tell him some sort of story about his poor but honest parents.
-Tell him I was a traveling man and got killed in a wreck. Tell him I
-had a fine voice to sing with, or some little thing like that, so he
-can remember it. A little kid likes to remember things like that when he
-grows up and misses the folks he ought to have."
-
-"I'll tell him you were always kind to him, for so you was--in my boat,"
-said Peter.
-
-"I'll tell him that when he was a little fellow you used to sing him to
-sleep."
-
-"Yes, something like that," said Booge, and went on breaking rock.
-Suddenly he looked up. "I wonder if it would do any good for me to give
-you a paper saying you are to have all my rights in him? I don't know
-that I've got any, but I'd sort of like to have you have Buddy."
-
-They talked of this for some time, and it was agreed that when Booge had
-served his term and was released he was to sign such a paper before a
-notary and leave it with George Rapp, and they were still discussing the
-possibility of such a paper being of any value when the door of the jail
-opened and the sheriff came into the stone-yard.
-
-"Hello, Peter!" he said. "My wife tells me you want to see me. What's
-the trouble?"
-
-Peter explained.
-
-"Well, I'm sorry I've got to turn you out," said the sheriff
-regretfully. "I've got the jail so full you mightn't be comfortable
-anyway, and I've taken in about all I can afford to take on speculation.
-I'd like to keep you, but I don't see how I can do it, Peter. I don't
-make enough feeding you fellows to take any risk on not getting paid. I
-guess you'll have to get out."
-
-"But I'm guilty, Ed," said Peter. "I guess I am, anyway."
-
-"Can't help it!" said the sheriff firmly. "I don't know nothing about
-that. If you want to come to jail, you've got to be served with papers
-in the regular way. The city don't O. K. my bills hit-or-miss no more.
-I guess you'll have to get out. I can't run the risk of keeping you on
-your own say-so."
-
-"If you say so, Ed," said Peter. "If anything comes up, you'll know I've
-tried to get into jail, anyway. What should you say I ought to do?"
-
-"What you _ought_ to do," said the sheriff, "is to go home and wait
-until somebody comes and arrests you in proper shape."
-
-"I'll do so, if you say so, Ed," said Peter. "I'm living in George
-Rapp's house-boat, down at Big Tree Lake, and if you want me, I'll be
-there. I'll wait 'til you come."
-
-He shook Booge's hand and the sheriff unlocked the gate of the
-stone-yard, and Peter passed out into the cold world.
-
-
-
-
-XVII. FUNNY CATS
-
-
-PETER avoided the main street, for he was aware he was a curious sight
-in his blanket serape, and it was too comfortable to throw away, and,
-in addition, would be his only bed clothing when he reached his boat. He
-hurried along Oak Street as less frequented than the main street, for
-he had almost the entire length of the town to pass through. As it was
-growing late he was anxious to strike the bluff road in time to catch a
-ride with some homeward-bound farmer. His bag of provisions was still at
-the farmer's on the hillside; the shanty-boat awaited him, and he must
-take up his life where it had been interrupted. For the present he was
-powerless to aid either Susie or Buddy.
-
-Peter had a long walk before him if he did not catch a ride, and
-he started briskly, but in front of the Baptist Church he paused. A
-bulletin board stood before the door calling attention to a sale to
-be held in the Sunday-school room, and the heading of the announcement
-caught his eye. "All For The Children," it said. It seemed that there
-were poor children in the town--children with insufficient clothes,
-children with no shoes, children without underwear, and a sale was to
-be held for them; candy, cakes, fancy work, toys and all the usual
-Christmas-time church sale articles were enumerated. Peter read the
-bulletin, and passed on.
-
-He was successful in catching a ride, and found his sack of provisions
-at the farmer's and carried it to the boat on his back. The boat was as
-he had left it, and little damage had been done during his absence. The
-river had fallen and his temporary mooring rope--too taut to permit
-the strain--had snapped, but the shanty-boat had grounded and was safe
-locked in the ice until spring. Inside the cabin not a thing had been
-touched. The shavings still lay on the floor where they had fallen while
-he was making Buddy's last toy, and the toys themselves were under the
-bunk just as he had left them. Peter felt a pang of loneliness as he
-gathered them up and placed them on his table with the new stockings and
-the A. B. C. blocks. He put the new "Bibel" on the clock-shelf.
-
-The toys made quite an array, and Peter looked at them one by one,
-thinking of the child. There were more than a dozen of them--all sorts
-of animals--and they still bore the marks of Buddy's fingers. It was
-quite dark by the time Peter had stowed away his provisions, and he
-lighted the lamp, with a newly formed resolution in his mind. He dropped
-the A. B. C. blocks into the depths of his gunny-sack and, looking at
-each for the last time, let the crudely carved animals follow, one by
-one. He held the funny cat in his hand quite a while, hesitatingly, and
-then set it on the clock-shelf beside the Bible, but almost immediately
-he took it down again and dropped it among its fellows in the sack. The
-Bible, too, he took from the shelf and put in the sack, and, last of
-all, he added the few bits of clothing Buddy had left in his flight. He
-tied the neck of the sack firmly with seine twine and set it under the
-table. All his mementos of Buddy were in that sack, and Peter, with a
-sigh, chose a clean piece of maple wood, seated himself on the edge of
-the bunk, and began whittling a kitchen spoon. Once more he was alone;
-once more he was a hermit; once more he was a mere jack-knife man, and
-Buddy was but a memory.
-
-Peter tried to put even the memory out of his mind, but that was not as
-easy as putting toys in a gunny-sack. If he tried to think of painting
-the boat, he had to think of George Rapp, and then he could think of
-nothing but the hasty parting in Rapp's barn and how the soft kinks of
-Buddy's hair snuggled under the rough blanket hood. If he tried to think
-of wooden spoons he thought of funny cats. And if he tried to think of
-nothing he caught Booge's nonsense rhymes running through his head and
-saw Buddy clinging eagerly to Booge's knee and begging, "Sing it again,
-Booge, sing it again."
-
-"Thunder!" he exclaimed at last, "I wisht I had that clock to take
-apart."
-
-He put the unfinished spoon aside and, choosing another piece of maple
-wood, began whittling a funny cat, singing, "Go tell the little baby,
-the baby, the baby," as he worked. It was late when his eyelids drooped
-and he wrapped himself in his blanket. Three more cats had been added to
-the animals in the gunny-sack.
-
-"Some little kid like Buddy'll like them," he thought with satisfaction,
-and dropped asleep.
-
-Early the next morning he tramped across the "bottom" to the farmer's.
-
-"You said you was going to town to-day," Peter said, "and I thought
-maybe you'd leave this sack at the Baptist Church for me, if it ain't
-too much out of your way. It's some old truck I won't have any use for,
-and I took notice they were having a sale there today. You don't need to
-say anything. Just hand it in."
-
-Before the farmer could ask him in to have breakfast Peter had
-disappeared toward the wood-yard, and when, later, he started for town
-he could hear Peter's saw.
-
-At the Baptist Church the farmer left the sack. A dozen or more women
-were busily arranging for the sale, and one of them took the sack,
-holding it well out from her skirt.
-
-"For our sale? How nice!" she cried in the excited tone women acquire
-when a number of them are working together in a church. "Who are we to
-thank for it?"
-
-"Oh, I guess there ain't no thanks necessary," said the farmer. "I guess
-you won't find it much. I just brought it along because I promised I
-would. It's from a shanty-boatman down my way--Lane 's his name--Peter
-Lane."
-
-"Oh," said the woman, her voice losing much of its enthusiasm. "Yes, I
-know who he is. He's the jack-knife man. Tell him Mrs. Vandyne thanks
-him; it is very kind of him to think of us."
-
-"All right! Gedap!"
-
-Mrs. Vandyne carried the sack into the Sunday school room and snipped
-the twine with her scissors, which hung from her belt on a pink ribbon.
-She was a charming little woman, with bright eyes and rosy cheeks, and
-she was the more excited this afternoon because she had been able to
-bring her friend and visitor, Mrs. Montgomery, and Mrs. Montgomery was
-making a real impression. Mrs. Montgomery was from New York, and just
-how wealthy and socially important she was at home every one knew, and
-yet she mingled with the ladies quite as if she was one of them. And not
-only that, but she had ideas. Her manner of arranging the apron table,
-as she had once arranged one for the Actors' Fair, was enough to show
-she was no common person. Already her ideas had quite changed the
-old cut and dried arrangements. At her request ladies were constantly
-running out to buy rolls of crepe paper and other inexpensive decorative
-accessories, and the dull gray room was blossoming into a fairy garden.
-
-"And when you come to-night, I want each of you to wear a huge bow of
-crepe paper on your hair, and--what have you there, Jane?"
-
-Mrs. Montgomery, although beyond her fortieth year, had the fresh and
-youthfully bright face of a girl of eighteen. She was one of those
-splendidly large women who retain a vivid interest in life and all its
-details, and Mrs. Vandyne, who was smaller and lesser in every way, was
-her Riverbank counterpart.
-
-"Nothing much," Mrs. Vandyne answered, dipping her hand into the sack.
-"But it was kind of the man to send what he could. Wooden spoons, I
-suppose. Well, will you look at this, Anna?"
-
-It was one of the "funny cats." Mrs. Vandyne held it up, that all the
-ladies might see.
-
-"How _perfectly_ ridiculous!" exclaimed Mrs. Wilcox. "What _do_ you
-suppose it was meant to be? _Do_ you suppose it is a bear?"
-
-"Or an otter, or something?" asked Mrs. Ferguson. "Oh, I know! It's a
-squirrel. Did you ever see anything so--so ridiculous!"
-
-The ladies, all except Mrs. Montgomery, laughed gleefully at the funny
-cat Buddy had hugged and loved.
-
-"We might get a dime for it, anyway, Alice," said one. "Are there any
-more? They will help fill the toy table. Do you think they would spoil
-the toy table, Mrs. Montgomery?"
-
-The New Yorker had taken the cat in her hand, and Mrs. Vandyne was
-standing one after another of Peter's toys on the table.
-
-"Spoil it!" exclaimed Mrs. Montgomery enthusiastically. "I have not seen
-anything so naive since I was in Russia. It is like the Russian peasant
-toys, but different, too. It has a character of its own. Oh, how
-charming!"
-
-She had seized another of the funny animals.
-
-"But what _is_ it?" asked Mrs. Wilcox.
-
-"Mercy! I don't know what it _is_," laughed Mrs. Montgomery. "What does
-that matter? You can call it a cat--it looks something like a cat--yes!
-I'm sure it is a cat. Or a squirrel. That doesn't matter. Can't you see
-that no one but a master impressionist could have done them? Just see
-how he has done it all with a dozen quick turns of his--his--"
-
-"Jack-knife," Mrs. Vandyne supplied. "_Do_ you think they are worth
-anything, Alice?"
-
-"Worth anything?" exclaimed Mrs. Montgomery. "My dear, they are worth
-anything you want to ask for them. Really, they are little masterpieces.
-Can't you see how refreshing they are, after all the painted and prim
-toys we see in the shops? Just look at this funny frog, or whatever it
-is."
-
-The ladies all laughed.
-
-"You see," said Mrs. Montgomery, "you can't help laughing at it. The man
-that made it has humor, and he has art and--and untrammeled vision, and
-really the most wonderful technique."
-
-Peter Lane and the technique of a jack-knife!
-
-The ladies of the Baptist Aid Society were too surprised to gasp.
-The enthusiasm of Mrs. Montgomery took their breath away, and Mrs.
-Montgomery was not loth to speak still more, with a discoverer's natural
-pride in her discovery. She examined one toy after another, and her
-enthusiasm grew, and infected the other women. They, too, began to see
-the charm of Peter's handiwork and to glimpse what Mrs. Montgomery had
-seen clearly: that the toys were the result of a frank, humorous, boyish
-imagination combined with a man's masterly sureness of touch. Here was
-no jig-saw, paper-patterned, conventional German or French slopshop toy,
-daubed over with ill-smelling paint. She tried to tell the ladies
-this, and being in New York the president of several important art and
-literary and musical societies, she succeeded.
-
-"We must ask twenty-five cents apiece for them," said Mrs. Ferguson.
-
-"Oh! twenty-five cents! A dollar at least," said Mrs. Montgomery. "The
-work of an artist. Don't you see it is not the intrinsic value but the
-art the people will pay for?"
-
-"But do you think Riverbank will pay a dollar for art?" asked Mrs.
-Vandyne.
-
-Mrs. Montgomery glanced over the toys. "I will pay a dollar apiece for
-all of them, and be glad to get them," she said. "I feel--I feel as if
-this alone made my trip to Riverbank worth while. You have no idea
-what it will mean to go home and take with me anything so new and
-unconventional. I shall be famous, I assure you, as the discoverer of--"
-
-"His name is Peter Lane," said Mrs. Vandyne. "He is one of the
-shanty-boatmen that live on the river. A little, mildly-blue-eyed man;
-a sort of hermit. They call him the Jack-knife Man, because he whittles
-wooden spoons and peddles them."
-
-"Oh, he _will_ be a success!" cried Mrs. Montgomery. "Even his name is
-delicious. Peter Lane! Isn't it old-fashioned and charming? Peter Lane,
-the Jack-knife Man! How many of these toys may I have, Anna?"
-
-"I want one!" said Mrs. Wilcox promptly, and before the ladies were
-through, Mrs. Montgomery had to insist that she be permitted to claim
-two of the toys by her right as discoverer.
-
-Later, as they went homeward for supper, Mrs. Vandyne gave a happy
-little laugh.
-
-"That was splendid, Alice," she said. "To think you were able to _make_
-them pay a dollar apiece for those awful toys!"
-
-"Awful!" exclaimed Mrs. Montgomery. "My dear, I meant every word I said.
-You will see! Your Peter Lane is going to make me famous yet!"
-
-That evening, while Peter sat in his shanty-boat, lonely and thinking of
-Buddy as he whittled a spoon, Mrs. Montgomery stood, tall and imposing
-and sweet-faced, behind the toy table on which all of Buddy's toys
-stood with "Sold" tags strung on them, and told about Peter Lane, the
-Jack-knife Man.
-
-"I'm very sorry," she said time after time, "but they are all sold.
-We do not know yet whether we can persuade the Jack-knife Man to make
-duplicates, but we will take your order subject to his whim, if you
-wish. We cannot promise anything definite. Artists are so notably
-irresponsible."
-
-But there was one voice which, had Peter been able to hear it, would
-have set him making jack-knife toys on the instant. While the ladies of
-the Baptist Church were exclaiming over the toys in the Sunday school
-room a small boy with freckles and white, kinky hair, was leaning on
-the knee of a harsh-faced woman in a white farm house three miles up the
-river-road.
-
-"Auntie Potter," he said longingly, "I wish Uncle Peter would come and
-make me a funny cat."
-
-"If he don't," said Mrs. Potter with great vigor, "he's a wuthless
-scamp."
-
-
-
-
-XVIII. MORE FUNNY CATS
-
-
-NEW YORK, being a great mill that grinds off rough corners and operates,
-as it seems, for no other purpose than to make each New York inhabitant
-and each New York creation a facsimile of every other New York
-inhabitant and creation, loves those who introduce the quaint, the
-strange and the outlandish--which is to say, anything not after the
-conventional New York model. Women have become rich with the discovery
-of a rag rug or a corn-husk door-mat.
-
-To Mrs. Montgomery the trip to Peter Lane's shanty-boat was a path to
-fame. Her quick perception grasped every detail and saw its value or, to
-put it most crudely, its advertising potency. As she, with Mr. and Mrs.
-Vandyne, whirled down the smooth bluff road in the Vandyne barouche, she
-said: "Anna, I do wish we could have come in an ox-cart, or a-straddle
-little donkeys, or in a hay-wagon, at least."
-
-"My dear! Isn't this comfortable enough?"
-
-"Oh, I was thinking of my talk before the Arts and Crafts Club. It makes
-such a difference. It is so conventional to be taken in a carriage.
-And probably I'll find your Peter Lane just an ordinary man, and his
-shanty-boat nothing but a common houseboat."
-
-But when the carriage ran into the farmer's yard--it was Sunday--and the
-farmer volunteered to show the route to Peter's shanty-boat, and warned
-Mrs. Montgomery, after a glance at her handsome furs, that it would be
-a rough tramp, her spirits rose again. Perhaps there would be some local
-color after all. The event fully satisfied her.
-
-In single file they tramped the long path to the boat, stooping under
-low boughs, climbing over fallen tree trunks, dipping into hollows.
-Rabbits turned and stared at them and scurried away. Great grapevine
-swings hung from the water elms, and when the broad expanse of Big Tree
-Lake came into view Mrs. Montgomery stood still and absorbed the scene.
-It represented absolute loneliness--acres of waving rice straw, acres of
-snow-covered ice and, close under the bank, the low, squat shanty-boat
-overshadowed by the leafless willows. It was a romantic setting for her
-hermit.
-
-The farmer had brought them by the shorter route, so that they had to
-cross the lake, and Peter, gathering driftwood, was amazed to see the
-procession issue from the rice and come toward him across the lake.
-
-"That's Peter," said the farmer. "He acts like he didn't expect
-comp'ny."
-
-Peter was standing at the edge of the willows, his arms full of
-driftwood, the gray blanket serape with its brilliant red stripes
-hanging to his ankles, and a home-made blanket cap pulled down over his
-ears. He stood like a statue until they reached him, then doffed his cap
-politely, and Mrs. Montgomery saw his eyes and knew this was the artist.
-
-"I guess you'd better step inside my boat, if it's big enough," said
-Peter, "but it's sort of mussy. Maybe you'd like to wait out here 'til I
-sweep out. I been whittlin' all morning."
-
-"We will go in just as it is," said Mrs. Montgomery promptly. "I want to
-see where you work, just as it is when you work."
-
-Peter looked at her with surprise.
-
-"You ain't mistook in the man you're lookin' for, are you, ma'am?" He
-asked. "I'm Peter Lane. I don't work in this boat. Lately I've been
-workin' up at the farmer's, sawin' wood."
-
-Mrs. Montgomery laughed delightedly, and Peter, looking into her eyes,
-grinned. He liked this large, wholesome woman.
-
-"You are the man!" said Mrs. Montgomery gaily. "And since Mrs. Vandyne
-won't introduce me, I'll introduce myself."
-
-Peter was justified in his doubts regarding the capacity of his boat,
-and the farmer, after trying to feel comfortable inside, went out
-and sat on the edge of the deck. The shavings on the floor, the
-wooden-spoons (there were but three or four), the boat itself--when
-she learned Peter had built it himself--all delighted her. She asked
-innumerable questions that would have been impertinent but for her
-kindly smile, and she was delighted when she learned that Peter had but
-one blanket, which was his coat by day and his bed-clothing by night.
-But more than all else she liked Peter's kindly eyes. She explained, in
-detail, the object of their visit, and Peter listened politely.
-
-"It's right kind of you to come down so far," he said when he had heard,
-"but I guess I'll have to refuse you, Mrs. Montgomery. I don't seem to
-have no desire to make no more funny toys. I guess I won't."
-
-"I can understand the feeling perfectly," said Mrs. Montgomery, too wise
-to try coaxing. "You have an artist's reluctance to undertake for pay
-what you have done for pleasure only."
-
-"It ain't that," said Peter. "I just whittled out them toys for a little
-feller I had here, because he used to laugh at them. That's all I done
-it for, and since he ain't here to laugh, it don't seem as if I could
-get the grin into them. I don't know as I can explain; I don't know as
-you could understand if I did--"
-
-"But I _do_, I _do_," said Mrs. Montgomery eagerly. "You mean you lack the
-sympathetic audience."
-
-"Maybe so," said Peter doubtfully. "What I do mean is, that I'd miss the
-look in his eyes and how he quirked up his mouth whilst I was
-cutting out a toy. Maybe it looks to you like this hand and this old
-whetted-down jack-knife was what made them toys, but that ain't so! No,
-ma'am! All I done was to take a piece of maple wood and start things
-going. 'This is going to be a cat, Buddy,' I'd say, maybe, and he'd
-sparkle up at me and say, 'A funny old cat, Uncle Peter!' and then it
-had got to be a funny old cat, like he said. And his eyes and his mouth
-would tell me just how funny to make that cat, and just how funny not to
-make it. He sort of seen each whittle before I seen it myself, and told
-me how to make it by the look of his eyes and the way his mouth sort of
-_felt_ for it until I got it just right. And then he would laugh. So you
-see, now that Buddy's gone, I couldn't--no, I guess I couldn't!"
-
-"And you made no more after Buddy--after he left?"
-
-"He didn't die," said Peter, "if that's what you mean. He was took away.
-Yes'm. I did make a couple. I made a couple more cats to put in the
-gunny-sack. But that was because I sort of saw Buddy a sittin' there on
-the floor, even when he was gone."
-
-"But don't you see," cried Mrs. Montgomery eagerly, "that you can always
-see Buddy? Don't you know there are hundreds of other Buddys--boys
-and girls--all over the country, and that, as you work, a man of your
-imagination can _feel_ their eyes and smiling mouths guiding your hand
-and your knife? _They_ want your 'funny cats,' too, Mr. Lane. Don't
-you see that you could sit here in your lonely boat, and have all the
-children of America clustered about your knee?"
-
-"Yes, I do sort of see it," said Peter, "but it's a thing I'm liable
-to forget any time."
-
-"But you must not forget it!" exclaimed Mrs. Montgomery. "Your work is
-too rare, too valuable to permit you to forget How many artists, do you
-suppose, are, like the musicians, able to draw their inspiration face to
-face from their audiences? Very few, Mr. Lane. Do you suppose a Dickens
-was able to have those for whom he wrote crowded in his workroom? And
-yet those he worked to please guided his pen. He heard the laughs and
-saw the tears and was guided by them as he chose the words that were to
-cause the laughs and tears. You, too, can see the children's faces."
-
-She paused, for she saw in Peter's eyes that he understood and agreed.
-
-"But then there's another reason I can't whittle more toys," he said.
-"I've got about thirty more cords of wood to saw this winter."
-
-"But that is not like you!" said Mrs. Montgomery reproachfully. "You
-see I know you, Mr. Lane! You are not the man to saw wood when all the
-Buddys are eager for your toys."
-
-"It ain't like me usually," admitted Peter. "I don't know who's been
-telling you about me, but usually I don't do any work I don't have
-to, and that's a fact, but certain circumstances--" he hesitated. "You
-didn't know why they took Buddy away from me, did you? I wasn't fit
-to keep him. I was like a certain woman was always tellin' me, I
-guess--shiftless and no-'count--so they took Buddy. And I guess they
-were right. But I've changed. It's going to take some time, but I'm
-going to make money, and I'm going to be like other folks, and I'm going
-to get Buddy back. So you see," he said, after this outburst, "I've got
-to saw wood. If it wasn't for that I'd be right eager to make toys for
-all the kids you speak of. It would be a pleasure. But I've got to make
-some money."
-
-Mrs. Montgomery stared at him. "You don't mean to tell me--" she began.
-"You don't mean to say you thought I wanted you to give up everything
-and make toys for _nothing?_"
-
-"Why, yes," said Peter.
-
-"But, my dear Mr. _Lane!_" exclaimed Mrs. Montgomery. "I do believe I
-almost persuaded you to do it!" She laughed joyously. "Oh, you _are_ a
-true artist! Why, you can make many, many times as much money whittling
-jack-knife toys as you could make sawing wood! You can hire your own
-wood sawed."
-
-She descended to details and told him what he could sell the toys for;
-how she would tell of them in New York and interest a few dealers.
-
-"You'll be working for Buddy all the while you are working for the other
-Buddys," she ended, "making the home you want while you make the toys
-that will make little children happy."
-
-"That's so," agreed Peter eagerly, and her battle was won. The rest was
-mere detail--her address in New York, prices, samples, Peter's address,
-and other similar matters. The farmer was willing enough to hunt another
-man to saw his wood. Mrs. Vandyne placed the orders with which she had
-been commissioned by the Baptist ladies; Mr. Vandyne--the cashier of the
-First National Bank--actually shook Peter's hand in farewell, and Peter
-was alone again.
-
-When the voices of his visitors had died in the distance he lifted the
-mattress of his bunk and felt under it with his hand until he found a
-round, soft ball. He unrolled it and smoothed it out--Buddy's old, worn
-stockings, out at knees and toes.
-
-"There, now," he said, hanging them on a nail under his clock-shelf, "I
-guess I ain't afraid to have you look me in the face now."
-
-"What happened to the child he mentioned?" Mrs. Montgomery asked when
-she was snugly rug-enwrapped in the barouche once more.
-
-"I think some society took it," Mrs. Van-dyne answered. "I'll have Jim
-look it up. No doubt Jim can have the boy returned to Peter Lane."
-
-"I'll do what I can," said Mr. Vandyne, but Mrs. Montgomery was silent
-while the carriage traveled a full mile.
-
-"I wouldn't!" she said at last "No, I wouldn't! You might see that the
-boy is where he is properly cared for, but I think it will be best to
-let the Jack-knife Man earn the boy himself. I know what he has been,
-and I can see what he hopes to be. If he could step outside himself and
-see as we see, he would say what I say. The best thing for him is to
-have something to work for."
-
-"He could work for money, like the rest of us," suggested Mr. Vandyne.
-
-"Oh, you utter Philistine!" cried Mrs. Montgomery. "You must wait until
-he gets the habit, and then--!"
-
-"Then what?"
-
-"Then he will have a bank-book," laughed Mrs. Montgomery.
-
-*****
-
-The winter passed rapidly enough for Peter. Between the stockings, and
-the vision of the children Mrs. Montgomery had conjured up, and his
-eagerness to win a home for Buddy, Peter worked as faithfully as an
-artist should, and he made many raids on the farmer's wood-pile to
-secure dry, well-seasoned, maple wood.
-
-When the vision of Buddy's eyes grew dim Peter was always able to bring
-it back by humming Booge's song, and before the winter was over Peter
-had crowded his clock shelf with toys and had constructed another shelf,
-which was filling rapidly, for while he made many duplicates he kept one
-of each for Buddy--"Buddy's menagerie," he called them. Thus he kept
-his own interest alive, too, for when it flagged he made a new animal,
-making it as he thought Buddy would like it made and so that it would
-bring that happy "Ho! ho! _That's_ a funny old squ'arl, Uncle Peter."
-
-One letter Peter wrote, soon after the visit to his boat, which was to
-Mrs. Vandyne. It brought this answer: "My husband called at the place
-you mentioned, but the little girl is there no longer. I can find no
-trace of her. Mr. Briggles, I understand, has had to leave this state
-and no one knows where he is."
-
-Peter had no time to go to town. Mrs. Montgomery had been as good as her
-word, and had, on her return to New York in midseason, introduced the
-"Peter Lane Jack-Knife Toys" to her Arts and Crafts Club, and to two of
-those small shops on the Avenue that seem so inconspicuous and yet
-are known to every one. The toys, after their first few weeks as a
-fashionable fad, settled into a vogue and James Vandyne, whom Mrs.
-Montgomery had wisely asked to act as Peter's agent, received letters
-from other shops, and from wholesalers, asking for them. The toys were,
-of course, almost immediately counterfeited by other dealers, and it was
-Vandyne who wisely secured copyrights on Peter's models, and who, later
-in the winter, sent Peter a small branding-iron with which he could burn
-his autograph on each toy.
-
-Peter's farmer friend stopped at the bank on each trip to town,
-delivering the toys, which Vandyne tagged and turned over to the express
-company. The farmer brought back such supplies as Peter had commissioned
-him to buy. The entire business was crude and unsystematic, even to
-Peter's method of packing the toys in hay and sewing the parcels in
-gunny-sacking, but it all served. It was naive.
-
-When the ice in the river went out, and that in Big Tree Lake softened
-and honeycombed, Peter put aside his jack-knife for a few days and
-repaired the old duck-blind that had been Booge's damp and temporary
-home, and built two more, knowing George Rapp and his friends would be
-down before long. He built two more bunks in the narrow shanty-boat and
-cleared a tent space on the highest ground near the boat, constructing a
-platform four feet above the ground, in case the high water should come
-with the ducks. All this put a temporary close to his toy-making, but
-Peter was ready for Rapp when the first flock of ducks dropped into
-the lake, and that night he sent the farmer's hired man to town with a
-message to Rapp. Late the next evening Rapp and his two friends found
-Peter waiting for them at the road, and the best part of the night was
-spent getting the provisions and duck-boats to the slough. The four men
-dropped asleep the instant they touched their beds, and it was not
-until the next morning, when Peter was cooking breakfast that he had an
-opportunity to ask a question that had been in his mind.
-
-"George," he said, "you didn't ever hear where they took Buddy to, did
-you?"
-
-Rapp looked up, and stared at Peter until the match with which he had
-been lighting his pipe burned his fingers, and he snapped them with
-pain.
-
-"Do you mean to tell me you don't know where that boy is?" he asked.
-"Well--I'll--be--Petered! Why, Mrs. Potter's got him!"
-
-Peter was holding a plate, but he was quick, and he caught it before it
-struck the floor.
-
-"I--I caught that one," he said in silly fashion.
-
-"You're going to catch something else when Widow Potter sees you," said
-George Rapp.
-
-
-
-
-XIX. PETER GOES TO TOWN
-
-
-ONE DAY, if we saw a woman gowned as Mrs. Montgomery was gowned when she
-visited Riverbank, we would laugh her to ridicule, but the toys Peter
-Lane whittled that winter are still admired for their design and
-execution. There is a collection of them in the rooms of the Riverbank
-Historical Society. We laugh, too, when we see photographs of Main
-Street as it was when Peter came to town after his winter on Big Tree
-Lake, with the mud almost hub deep. That was before the new banks were
-built or the brick-paving laid, and Main Street was a ragged, ill-kept
-thoroughfare, with none of the city airs it has since donned. But as
-Peter stepped out of the First National Bank, and stood for a minute
-on the steps in the warm spring sunshine, the street looked like an old
-friend, and this was the more odd because it had never looked like a
-friend before.
-
-Jim Vandyne had just cashed the checks and money orders Peter had
-accumulated during the winter. They were for small amounts--a few
-dollars each--and not until the cashier had pushed the pile of crisp
-bills under the wicket, mentioning the amount, did happy-go-lucky Peter
-realize how much his winter earnings had amounted to.
-
-"Quite a lot of money," Jim had said. "How would you like to open
-an account?" and Peter had opened his first bank account. The warm,
-leather-bound bank-book now reposed in his pocket. Peter could feel it
-pressing against him, and he could feel the extra bulge the check-book
-made in his hip pocket. He felt like a serf raised to knighthood, with
-armor protecting him against harm. As he stood there, Mr. Howard, the
-bank's president, came briskly down the street. He was a short, chubby
-man, and he had always nodded cheerfully to Peter, but now he stopped
-and extended his hand.
-
-"How do you do!" he said cheerfully. "Jim Vandyne has been telling me
-what you have been doing this winter. Glad to know you are making a go
-of it."
-
-It was not much. The bank president was not a great bank president,
-and the bank was not much of a bank--as great banks go--and he had
-not, after all, said much, but it made Peter's brown cheeks glow. Bank
-presidents do not often stop to shake hands with shanty-boatmen, nor do
-they pause to congratulate them, although the bank president may be an
-infernal rascal and the shanty-boatman a moral king. But Peter did not
-philosophize. He knew that if enough bank presidents shake the hand
-of an ex-shanty-boatman the world will consider the shanty-boatman
-respectable enough to raise one freckle-faced, kinky-headed little waif
-of a boy.
-
-Peter raised his head higher than ever, and he had always held it high.
-He was a man, like other men, now. He could, if he wished, build another
-shanty-boat. He could _hire_ it built. He could rent a house and put
-a carpet on the parlor floor. He could say he was going to Florida and
-people would believe him. He could--buy a suit of clothes! A whole,
-complete, entire suit, vest and all! It had been years and years since
-he could do that, and when he had been able to do it he had always spent
-the money otherwise. Now he crossed the street and entered the Riverbank
-Clothing Emporium. It gave him a warming feeling of respectability to be
-buying clothes, but he did not plunge recklessly. He bought everything
-he needed, from socks and shoes to tie and hat, but the shoes were stout
-and cheap, and the shirt a woolen one, and the hat a soft felt that
-would stand wind and weather.
-
-Mr. Rosenheim himself came and stood by Peter when he was trying on the
-shoes.
-
-"My wife was showing me the piece about you in the magazine," he said.
-"I guess you are the first man in Riverbank to get into magazines. We
-should be proud of you, Lane."
-
-"Who, me in a magazine? I guess not."
-
-"Oh, sure! I read some of it. Some such Art and Crafts magazine, with
-photo cuts from them toys you make. Ain't you seen it?"
-
-"Nope! Let me try on a seven and a half B," he said calmly, but his
-pulse quickened.
-
-"Well, I suppose you are used to being puffed up already," said Mr.
-Rosenheim. "I wish I could get such free advertising."
-
-When Peter looked at himself in the store mirror he was well satisfied.
-Mr. Rosenheim nodded his approval.
-
-"That suit looks like it was made for you, Mr. Lane," he said, and he
-did not know what a great truth he was uttering, for Peter, so long in
-rags, and the simple, quiet suit seemed well fitted for each other's
-company. Peter went out upon the street, and at the first corner he
-met--Booge!
-
-He was the same old, frowsy, hairy Booge, and he greeted Peter in the
-same deep bass.
-
-"Did you get the papers, to rescue the cheeild?" he asked
-melodramatically. "I hid them under the stone at the corner of the lane.
-Meet me at midnight! Hush! A stranger approaches!"
-
-There were several strangers approaching, for they were standing on the
-corner of the two principal streets. Peter grinned.
-
-"George Rapp brought it down to me," he said. "I thought you were in for
-six months."
-
-"Sheriff discharged me," said Booge. "I ate too much. He couldn't figure
-a profit, so he kicked me out."
-
-"You don't mean it!"
-
-"No, teacher excused me at noon so I could go to dancing class," said
-Booge.
-
-"How did you get out?" Peter insisted. "There wasn't room for me and
-Briggles in the same jail," said Booge. "We was always singin' out of
-harmony."
-
-"Was Briggles in jail?"
-
-     "They caught the old kazoozer, kazoozer, kazoozer,
-     They caught the old kazoozer and took him to the jail,"
-
-hummed Booge, "and I got excused so I could go and hunt up Susie: I was
-her responsible guardian. Ain't that a joke?"
-
-"What are you going to do now?" asked Peter.
-
-"I dunno!" said Booge thoughtfully. "I ain't made up my mind whether to
-run for mayor or buy the op'ry house, but if anybody was to give me a
-nickel I'd give up whisky and buy beer. If not, I'll stand around here
-'til I _do_ get arrested. The town cop has promised and promised to do
-it, but he ain't reliable. I've got so I don't depend on his word no
-more."
-
-Peter took a silver dollar from his pocket and handed it to the tramp,
-and Booge started across the street to the nearest saloon without
-farewell. Peter took a step after him and then turned back.
-
-"I guess it's what he likes," he said, "and I couldn't stop him if I
-wanted to."
-
-Peter turned into the Star Restaurant and took a seat at one of the
-red-covered tables.
-
-"Bob," he said, "can you get me up one of them oyster stews of yours?
-One of them milk stews, with plenty of oysters and a hunk of butter
-thawing out on top. Fix me one. And then I want a chicken--a nice,
-fresh, young chicken, killed about day before yesterday--split open and
-br'iled right on top of the coals, so the burned smell will come sifting
-in before the chicken is ready, and I want it on a hot plate--a plate so
-hot I'll holler when I grab it. And I want some of your fried potatoes
-in a side dish--hashed browned potatoes, browned almost crisp in the
-dish, with bacon chopped up in them. And I want a big cup of coffee with
-real cream, even if you have to send out for it. And then, Bob, I want
-a whole lemon meringue pie. A whole one, three inches thick and fourteen
-inches across. I've been wanting to eat a whole lemon meringue pie ever
-since I was fourteen years old, and now I'm going to. _I'm_ going to
-have one full, fine, first-class meal and then--"
-
-"Then what?" asked Bob.
-
-"Then I'm going to go and get an alarm-clock that belongs to me."
-
-
-
-
-XX. PETER GETS HIS CLOCK
-
-
-For a man who means to walk it, considering the usual state of the
-river-road in spring, the railway is the best path between Riverbank and
-Widow Potter's farm, and Peter, leaving the town, took to the railway
-track. He had, he assured himself, a definite purpose in visiting Mrs.
-Potter. She had expressed her views of a man who fell so low as to pawn
-his goods and chattels, and the wound still rankled, and Peter meant to
-have back his alarm-clock. That, he repeated to himself, was why he was
-going to Mrs. Potter's, but in his heart he knew this was not
-so--he wanted to see Buddy. He wanted, before the boy forgot him, to
-reestablish for a moment the old ties. In short, he was jealous of Mrs.
-Potter.
-
-As he walked up the track he planned the interview in advance. "Mrs.
-Potter," he would say, "I have come to get my clock. Here is the money,
-and I'm sorry I had to trouble you to keep it so long." Then he would
-lay the money on the kitchen table, and Mrs. Potter, slightly awed by
-his new clothes, would hand him the clock. "And if possible," he would
-say then, "I'd like to speak with Buddy a few minutes." Mrs. Potter
-would then call Buddy.
-
-That was as he planned it, but the nearer he approached Mrs. Potter's
-cove the less likely it seemed to Peter that Mrs. Potter would be much
-awed by the clothes. By the time he was within half a mile of the cove
-he was not only sure that Mrs. Potter was not the woman to be awed by
-anything, but he began to wish he had not bought the clothes. He could
-imagine her tone as she put her hands on her hips and looked him over
-and said, "Well, of all the shiftlessness I ever heard tell of! Goin'
-and dressin' yourself up like a dude, and you not a roof in the world to
-hide your head under!" He wished he could see himself just once more in
-a large mirror, so that he might renew the feeling of confidence he had
-felt at Rosenheim's. Instead, he felt much as a young fellow feels when
-he dons his first dress-suit and steps upon the dancing-floor. He felt
-stiff and awkward, and that every garment he wore was a showy misfit.
-He did not seem to be Peter Lane at all, but some flashy, overdressed,
-uncomfortable stranger. He suddenly realized that he had hands and feet,
-and that the new hat was stiff and uncomfortable, and that the tie--so
-placidly blue in the dusk of the clothing store--was rampantly and
-screamingly blue in the full light of day. He felt that he had done an
-inexcusable and reckless thing in buying the new clothes, and he knew
-Mrs. Potter would tell him so.
-
-Peter decided that, since he was sure to be in for a horrible half hour,
-he would assert his manhood. If Mrs. Potter scolded he would sass back.
-He had money in the bank, hadn't he? He had heard enough of her hard
-words, hadn't he? All right! The minute she said "shiftless" he would
-speak right up. He would look her firmly in the eye and say something
-like--"Now, stop! You've talked to me that way before, Mrs. Potter, when
-I was a poor shanty-boatman, but I've had just about enough of it! I'm
-tired of that." He would hide the misery of his clothes in a flood of
-high words.
-
-That is to say, if Mrs. Potter gave him a chance! For, as Peter turned
-from the track to the road, and neared the gate, he saw it all depended
-on Mrs. Potter. If she did not wish him to talk, that would end it, and
-it was a meek, uneasy, uncomfortable, undecided, miserable Peter that
-turned in at the gate.
-
-And then, before he could tuck the sleeves of his flannel shirt--which
-seemed to have grown until they were ridiculously long--into his coat
-cuffs--which seemed to have become ridiculously short--a young girl
-jumped from behind one of the old apple trees and stood staring at him.
-Peter took off his hat as if she had been a princess. He was in the
-state of mind when he would have taken off his hat to a wax figure.
-
-But the girl stood but for a moment. Then she ran toward him.
-
-"I know who you are!" she cried. "You 're Uncle Peter, ain't you? I'm
-Susie!"
-
-"Susie?" said Peter. "Are _you_ Susie?" He tried to greet her as a man
-should greet a strange child, but she would have none of it. She threw
-her arm around his right arm and hugged it, jumping up and down.
-
-"O Uncle Peter! Uncle Peter!" she cried joyously, and turning, she
-screamed at the top of her voice: "Bud-dy! B-u-u-u-dy! Bud-dy! Here's
-Uncle Peter!"
-
-Around the corner of the house popped a hatless, kinky head.
-
-"Uncle Peter! Uncle Peter!" screamed Buddy, running with a strange
-little hippety-hop. "O Uncle Peter! My Uncle Peter! My Uncle Peter!" and
-he threw himself into Peter's arms, laughing and crying and trembling
-with joy, repeating over and over, through the laughter and the tears:
-"My Uncle Peter! My Uncle Peter!"
-
-"My Buddy! My old Buddy-boy!" Peter murmured, hugging him close. "My old
-Buddy-boy!"
-
-So it happened that he was not thinking of his new clothes when Mrs.
-Potter came to the kitchen door.
-
-"Well, for the land's sake, Peter Lane," she cried, while Buddy clung to
-his neck and Susie clung around one leg, "it's about time! I thought
-you never _was_ cornin'. I been waitin' here for you, with these two
-fatherless children--"
-
-From the kitchen came the rackety-banging of the alarm-clock, proving
-that, as the clock was set to ring at six, Peter had found a mother for
-the fatherless children at just seventeen minutes past three.
-
-"If it wouldn't annoy you too much to get married, Mrs. Potter," said
-Peter, gasping at his own temerity, and wiping his forehead on the
-sleeve of his new coat, "I can--I could--we'd have quite a nice little
-family to start off with right away."
-
-"Annoy me? Is that what you call a proposal to marry me, Peter Lane?"
-asked Mrs. Potter scornfully. "Ain't you ever goin' to be able to talk
-up like a man!"
-
-"Yes, I am," snapped Peter. "Will you marry me?"
-
-"Yes, I will!" snapped the Widow Potter.
-
-THE END
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-End of Project Gutenberg's The Jack-Knife Man, by Ellis Parker Butler
-
-*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE JACK-KNIFE MAN ***
-
-***** This file should be named 44150.txt or 44150.zip *****
-This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:
-        http://www.gutenberg.org/4/4/1/5/44150/
-
-Produced by David Widger
-
-Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions
-will be renamed.
-
-Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no
-one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation
-(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without
-permission and without paying copyright royalties.  Special rules,
-set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to
-copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to
-protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark.  Project
-Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you
-charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission.  If you
-do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the
-rules is very easy.  You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose
-such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and
-research.  They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do
-practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks.  Redistribution is
-subject to the trademark license, especially commercial
-redistribution.
-
-
-
-*** START: FULL LICENSE ***
-
-THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE
-PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK
-
-To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free
-distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work
-(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project
-Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project
-Gutenberg-tm License available with this file or online at
-  www.gutenberg.org/license.
-
-
-Section 1.  General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm
-electronic works
-
-1.A.  By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm
-electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to
-and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property
-(trademark/copyright) agreement.  If you do not agree to abide by all
-the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy
-all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession.
-If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project
-Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the
-terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or
-entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8.
-
-1.B.  "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark.  It may only be
-used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who
-agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement.  There are a few
-things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works
-even without complying with the full terms of this agreement.  See
-paragraph 1.C below.  There are a lot of things you can do with Project
-Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement
-and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
-works.  See paragraph 1.E below.
-
-1.C.  The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the Foundation"
-or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project
-Gutenberg-tm electronic works.  Nearly all the individual works in the
-collection are in the public domain in the United States.  If an
-individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are
-located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from
-copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative
-works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg
-are removed.  Of course, we hope that you will support the Project
-Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by
-freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of
-this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with
-the work.  You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by
-keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project
-Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others.
-
-1.D.  The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern
-what you can do with this work.  Copyright laws in most countries are in
-a constant state of change.  If you are outside the United States, check
-the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement
-before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or
-creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project
-Gutenberg-tm work.  The Foundation makes no representations concerning
-the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United
-States.
-
-1.E.  Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg:
-
-1.E.1.  The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate
-access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently
-whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the
-phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the phrase "Project
-Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed,
-copied or distributed:
-
-This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
-almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
-re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
-with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
-
-1.E.2.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived
-from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is
-posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied
-and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees
-or charges.  If you are redistributing or providing access to a work
-with the phrase "Project Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the
-work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1
-through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the
-Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or
-1.E.9.
-
-1.E.3.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted
-with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution
-must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional
-terms imposed by the copyright holder.  Additional terms will be linked
-to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the
-permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work.
-
-1.E.4.  Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm
-License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this
-work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm.
-
-1.E.5.  Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this
-electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without
-prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with
-active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project
-Gutenberg-tm License.
-
-1.E.6.  You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary,
-compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any
-word processing or hypertext form.  However, if you provide access to or
-distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than
-"Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official version
-posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.org),
-you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a
-copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon
-request, of the work in its original "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other
-form.  Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm
-License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1.
-
-1.E.7.  Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying,
-performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works
-unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.
-
-1.E.8.  You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing
-access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided
-that
-
-- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from
-     the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method
-     you already use to calculate your applicable taxes.  The fee is
-     owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he
-     has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the
-     Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation.  Royalty payments
-     must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you
-     prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax
-     returns.  Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and
-     sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the
-     address specified in Section 4, "Information about donations to
-     the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation."
-
-- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies
-     you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he
-     does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm
-     License.  You must require such a user to return or
-     destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium
-     and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of
-     Project Gutenberg-tm works.
-
-- You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any
-     money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the
-     electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days
-     of receipt of the work.
-
-- You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free
-     distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works.
-
-1.E.9.  If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm
-electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set
-forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from
-both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael
-Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark.  Contact the
-Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below.
-
-1.F.
-
-1.F.1.  Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable
-effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread
-public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm
-collection.  Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
-works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain
-"Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or
-corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual
-property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a
-computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by
-your equipment.
-
-1.F.2.  LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right
-of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project
-Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project
-Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project
-Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all
-liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal
-fees.  YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT
-LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE
-PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH 1.F.3.  YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE
-TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE
-LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR
-INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH
-DAMAGE.
-
-1.F.3.  LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a
-defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can
-receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a
-written explanation to the person you received the work from.  If you
-received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with
-your written explanation.  The person or entity that provided you with
-the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a
-refund.  If you received the work electronically, the person or entity
-providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to
-receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund.  If the second copy
-is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further
-opportunities to fix the problem.
-
-1.F.4.  Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth
-in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS', WITH NO OTHER
-WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO
-WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE.
-
-1.F.5.  Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied
-warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages.
-If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the
-law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be
-interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by
-the applicable state law.  The invalidity or unenforceability of any
-provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions.
-
-1.F.6.  INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the
-trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone
-providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance
-with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production,
-promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works,
-harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees,
-that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do
-or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm
-work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any
-Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause.
-
-
-Section  2.  Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm
-
-Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of
-electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers
-including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers.  It exists
-because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from
-people in all walks of life.
-
-Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the
-assistance they need are critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's
-goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will
-remain freely available for generations to come.  In 2001, the Project
-Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure
-and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations.
-To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
-and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4
-and the Foundation information page at www.gutenberg.org
-
-
-Section 3.  Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive
-Foundation
-
-The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit
-501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the
-state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal
-Revenue Service.  The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification
-number is 64-6221541.  Contributions to the Project Gutenberg
-Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent
-permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state's laws.
-
-The Foundation's principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S.
-Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered
-throughout numerous locations.  Its business office is located at 809
-North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887.  Email
-contact links and up to date contact information can be found at the
-Foundation's web site and official page at www.gutenberg.org/contact
-
-For additional contact information:
-     Dr. Gregory B. Newby
-     Chief Executive and Director
-     gbnewby@pglaf.org
-
-Section 4.  Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg
-Literary Archive Foundation
-
-Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide
-spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of
-increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be
-freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest
-array of equipment including outdated equipment.  Many small donations
-($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt
-status with the IRS.
-
-The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating
-charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United
-States.  Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a
-considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up
-with these requirements.  We do not solicit donations in locations
-where we have not received written confirmation of compliance.  To
-SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any
-particular state visit www.gutenberg.org/donate
-
-While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we
-have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition
-against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who
-approach us with offers to donate.
-
-International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make
-any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from
-outside the United States.  U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff.
-
-Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation
-methods and addresses.  Donations are accepted in a number of other
-ways including checks, online payments and credit card donations.
-To donate, please visit:  www.gutenberg.org/donate
-
-
-Section 5.  General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
-works.
-
-Professor Michael S. Hart was the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm
-concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared
-with anyone.  For forty years, he produced and distributed Project
-Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support.
-
-Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed
-editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S.
-unless a copyright notice is included.  Thus, we do not necessarily
-keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition.
-
-Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility:
-
-     www.gutenberg.org
-
-This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm,
-including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary
-Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to
-subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks.
-