The Jack-Knife Man

“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.