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?”

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