The Jack-Knife Man

“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.”

“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.