The Jack-Knife Man

“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.”

“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.