The Jack-Knife Man

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:

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.’”