The Jack-Knife Man

“Well, you meant Peter, didn’t you? Why don’t you come right out and say so? But I guess you won’t get Peter to drive this colt for a while yet.”

“He ain’t sick?”

“No. Nor he ain’t dead. But as near as I can make out Peter is goin’ to jail.”

Mrs. Potter turned sharply and George Rapp grinned. He could not help it, she showed such consternation.

“Peter – in – jail?” she cried.

“Well, not yet,” said Rapp, chuckling at her amazement. “They ‘re out hunting him now. The dogs of the law is on his trail. That feller Briggles I told you of got his head broke by a tramp Peter took into my boat, and he’s real sore, both in head and feelings. Last night him and a sort of posse went down to get the whole crowd, but Peter had skipped out with the kid.”

“Good for Peter! Good for Peter!” exclaimed Mrs. Potter. “I never looked for so much spunk. It was his boy as much as anybody’s, wasn’t it?”

“Looks so to me,” said Rapp, “but this here United States of Riverbank County seems to think different. Maybe Peter ain’t been washin’ the boy’s face regular, three times a day. Anyhow, Briggles got a court order for the boy and he’s goin’ to jug Peter.”

“You talk so much nonsense, I don’t know what to believe,” complained the widow.

“Anything I say is apt to be more or less nonsense, except when I’m talkin’ horse,” said Rapp, “but this ain’t. Briggles and the dep’ty sheriff is out now, swearin’ to bring Peter in by the seat of his pants or any way they can get him.”

“Well, if Peter Lane had a wife to look after him and tell him how-so once in a while, he wouldn’t get into trouble like this,” said Mrs. Potter, with aggravation. “He’s enough to drive a body crazy.”

George Rapp’s eyes twinkled. “The next time I see Peter I’ll say, ‘Peter, I been tryin’ to sell a colt to Mrs. Potter since Lord-knows-when, and she’s holdin’ off until she gets a husband to tend the colt. I don’t want to hurry you none,’ I’ll say to him, ‘but when you get done servin’ them ten years in the pen’tentiary, just fix it up for me. I’d like to sell this colt before he dies of old age.”

“You think you ‘re smart, George Rapp,” said Mrs. Potter, reddening, “but when you talk like that, when I’ve heard Peter Lane say, a dozen times, that you’re the best friend he’s got in the world, it’s time somebody took hold for him. I wouldn’t buy a horse off you, not if it was the only one in the world!”

George Rapp patted the colt on the neck and ran his hand down the sleek shoulder.

“Now, Mrs. Potter,” he said, “you know better than that. I’m just as much Peter’s friend as anybody is. I’ll bail him out if he gets in jail, and I’ll pay his fine, if there is one. But don’t you worry. Peter ain’t a fool. By this time Peter and that boy is in Burlington. Peter’s safe – ”

It seemed as if Rapp’s cheerful prediction had been fulfilled, for, as he spoke, horses’ hoofs clattered on the plank incline that led into the stable. Rapp led the colt out of the way as the two-horse rig, containing the Reverend Rasmer Briggles and the deputy sheriff, reached the main floor. It was evident they had not found Peter.

“Wild goose hunt this time, George,” said the deputy as he jumped from the carriage.

“That so?” said Rapp, walking around the team. “Got the team pretty hot for such cold weather, didn’t you?”

“We drove like blazes,” said the deputy, “but I didn’t get heated much. Colder than th’ dickens. H’ar you, Mrs. Potter? George robbin’ you again?”

Mr. Briggles was climbing from the carriage slowly. He was bundled in a heavy ulster with a wide collar that turned up over his ears. He wore ear-mufflers, and a scarf was tied over his cap and under his chin. On his hands were thick, fur-lined mittens, and his trouser legs were buckled into high arctics. Over his nose and across one cheek a strip of adhesive plaster showed where Booge had “hit the old kazoozer and scratched him on the nose,” as he had sung.

Mr. Briggles was not in a good temper. Under his arrangement with his society this had been an unprofitable week, for he had not “rescued” a single child (at twenty dollars per child). He slowly untied his scarf, removed his ear-tabs and unbuttoned his ulster. He affected ministerial garb under his outer roughness; it had a good effect on certain old ladies as he sat in their parlors coaxing money from them (forty per cent, commission on all collected), and his face had what George Rapp called “that solemncholy sneaker” look. You expected him to put his finger-tips together and look at the ceiling. There are but few Briggleses left to prey on the gullibly charitable to-day, and thank God for that. Their day is over. Most of them are in stock-selling games now.

“We were on sheriff’s business to-day, Brother Rapp,” said Briggles, when he had opened his coat. “You can charge the rig to the county.”

“How about that, Joe?” Rapp asked the deputy.

“What’s the diff.?” asked Joe carelessly. “The county can stand it.”

He had entered the office, where Rapp always kept his barrel-stove red hot, and was kicking his toes against the foot-rail of the stove.

“Want the team again to-morrow?” asked Rapp.

“I want it to-morrow,” said Joe. “I got to go to Sweetland to put an attachment on to a feller’s hogs. I don’t know what your friend Briggles wants.”

“I want you to help me find this boy, Brother – ” Briggles began, but the deputy merely turned his back to the stove and looked at him over one shoulder.

“Oh, shut up!” he said. “I ain’t your brother.”

“What’s the matter with you, Joe?” asked Rapp. “You act sore.”

“Sore nothin’! I’m sick at my stummik. You’d be if you had to drive a pole-cat around the county all day.”

“Now, Brother Venby,” said Mr. Briggles pleadingly, “you misunderstood me entirely. If you will let me explain – ”

“You go and explain to your grandmother,” said Joe roughly. “You can’t explain to me. If I didn’t have on my dep’ty sheriff badge, I’d come out there and do some explainin’ with a wagon spoke on my own account. Say, George, did this feller get a rig from you once to take a young girl that he brought down from Derlingport, to a ‘good home’? Nice little girl, wasn’t she? Where d’you suppose he took her? Mrs. Crink’s! Say, come in here a minute.”

Rapp went into the office and Joe closed the door. A hostler led the team to the rear of the stable, and Mr. Briggles, as if feeling a protective influence in the presence of Mrs. Potter, moved nearer to her. He pushed back his cap and wiped his forehead.

“In this charity work we meet the opposition of all rough characters, Madame,” he began suavely, but she interrupted him.

“You ‘re the man that’s pestering Peter Lane, ain’t you?” she asked.

“Only within the law, only within the law!” said Mr. Briggles soothingly. “I act only for the Society, and the Society keeps within the law.”

“Law – fiddlesticks!” said Mrs. Potter. “What’s this nonsense about putting Peter Lane in jail?”

“We fear we shall have to make an example of him,” said Mr. Briggles. “The ungodly throw obstructions in our path, and we must combat them when we can. This Lane has evaded a court order. We trust he will receive a term in prison. We have faith that Judge Bennings will uphold the right.”

“Huh! So that old rascal of a Bennings is the man that let you bother Peter Lane, is he? Seems to me he’s getting pretty free with his court orders and nonsense! But I guess he ain’t heard from me yet!”

She turned her back on Mr. Briggles and almost ran down the incline into the street. Unluckily for Judge Bennings, he was almost too convenient to Rapp’s Livery, Feed and Sale Stable, living in an old brick mansion that occupied the corner of the block but, luckily for him, he was not at home. Mrs. Potter poured out her wrath on the German servant girl.

When Mrs. Potter had hastened away, Mr. Briggles hesitated. He could see the deputy sheriff and George Rapp through the smoky glass of the office door, and Joe was talking steadily, only stopping now and then to expectorate, while Rapp’s good-natured face was scowling. Mr. Briggles buttoned his ulster. From the look on George Rapp’s face he felt it would be better to be out of the stable when Rapp came out of the office. He turned. Peter Lane was staggering wearily up the incline into the stable, his back bent with fatigue, and Buddy, sound asleep, in his arms. Mr. Briggles watched the uncouth, blanket-draped pair advance, and when Peter stood face to face with him, a smile of satisfaction twisted his hard mouth. Peter looked into the fellow’s shrewd eyes and drew a long breath.

“Your name’s Briggles, ain’t it?” he asked listlessly. “Mine’s Peter Lane. This here’s Buddy. I guess we got to the end of our string.”

Peter shifted the sleeping boy to his shoulder and touched the child’s freckled face softly.

“I wisht you would do what’s possible to put him into a nice home,” said Peter; “a home where he won’t be treated harsh. I’ve got so used to Buddy I feel almost like he was my own son, and I wouldn’t like him to be treated harsh. He’s such a nice little feller – ”

He stopped, for he could say no more just then. He lowered his arms until Buddy’s head slid softly from his shoulder to the crook of his arm.

“Well,” he said, holding out the sleeping boy, “I guess you might as well take him now as any time.”

Mr. Briggles reached forward to take the boy just as Mrs. Potter came rushing up the stable incline, waving her hand wildly.

“Oh, Smith!” she called. “Peter Smith! You ‘re just the man I been looking for, Smith!”

Peter stared at her uncomprehendingly for one instant, and as he understood her useless little strategy, his eyes softened.

“I’m just as much obliged to you, Mrs. Potter,” he said, “but I’ve already told this man who I am. I guess I’ll go now.”

He looked from one to the other helplessly and Mrs. Potter put out her arms and took the sleeping boy.

“Peter, you’re a perfect fool!” she said angrily.

“I guess I am,” said Peter. “Yes, I guess I am!”

He bent and kissed Buddy’s warm cheek.

“I’d like to be somewheres else when he wakes up,” he explained and turned away. He had started down the driveway when Mr. Briggles stepped after him and laid a detaining hand on his arm.

“Wait!” said Mr. Briggles. “The sheriffs deputy is in the office here; he has been looking for you.”

“Oh, that’s all right!” said Peter. “You can tell Joe I’ve gone on up to the jail,” and he drew his arm away and went on down to the street. Mrs. Potter called after him.

“Peter Lane! Peter!” she called, but Peter had hurried away. Buddy raised his head suddenly and looked up into Mrs. Potter’s face.

“I know who you are,” he said fearlessly. “You ‘re Aunt Jane.”

“No, child,” said Mrs. Potter, “I ain’t anybody’s aunt. I’m just a worthless old creature.”

“Where’s Uncle Peter?” asked Buddy in his sudden way.

“Now, don’t you worry,” said Mrs. Potter. “Uncle Peter has gone away.”

“I know,” said Buddy, now wide awake. “Uncle Peter told me. I want to get down.” Mrs. Potter put him down and he stood leaning against her knee, holding tightly to her skirt and eyeing Mr. Briggles distrustfully, for his quick eyes recognized the “old kazoozer” Uncle Booge had thrown off the boat, but before he could give utterance to what was running through his small head, the office door opened and George Rapp and the deputy came out. Rapp walked up to Mr. Briggles.

“All right,” he said roughly. “You’ve got the kid, I see, and I guess that’s all you want in my stable, so you pick him up and get out of here, and don’t you ever come here again. Do you understand that? If you do, I’m going to show you how I treat skunks. Y’ understand?”

Involuntarily Mr. Briggles put up his elbow as if to ward off a blow, and Buddy clung the tighter to Mrs. Potter’s skirt. The ex-minister reached out his hand for the child, and Buddy turned and ran.

Mr. Briggles did not run after him. He stood staring at the child. “I don’t want that boy,” he said. “I don’t want him. I couldn’t do anything with that boy. He’s a cripple!”

Buddy, stopping at the head of the incline, gazed, wide-eyed from one to the other.

Didn’t anybody want a boy that was lame? “I got one good foot,” he said boastingly. And suddenly Mrs. Potter’s strong, work-muscled arms gathered Buddy up and held him close to her breast, so that one of the sharp buttons of her coat made him shake his head and forget the angry tears he had been ready to shed.

“I want him!” she cried, her eyes blazing. “I’ll take him, you – you – ”

No one knew what she would have called Mr. Briggles, for with an unexpectedness that made Mr. Briggles’s teeth snap together George Rapp shut an iron hand on the back of his neck, and bumped a knee into Mr. Briggles from behind so vigorously as to lift him off his feet. With the terrible knee bumping him at every step, Mr. Briggles was rushed down the incline with a haste that carried him entirely across the street and left him gasping and trembling against a tool box alongside the railway tracks. George Rapp returned wiping his hands in his coat skirts as if he had just been handling a snake, or some other slimy creature.

“Now we got done with pleasure,” he said with a laugh, “we’ll talk business. Do you want that colt, or don’t you, Mrs. Potter?”

XVI. JAIL UNCLES

THE county jail stood back of the courthouse, on Maple Street, and was a three-story brick building, flush with the sidewalk, with barred windows. To the right was the stone-yard where, when the sheriff was having good trade, you could hear the slow tapping of hammers on limestone as the victims of the law pounded rock, breaking the large stones into road metal. As a factory the prisoners did not seem to care whether they reached a normal output of cracked rock or not.

Seated on a folded gunny-sack laid upon a smooth stone in this yard, Booge was receiving justice at the hands of the law. He pulled a rough piece of limestone toward him, turned it over eight or ten times to find the point of least resistance, settled the stone snugly into the limestone chips, and – yawned. Eight or ten minutes later, feeling chilly and cramped in the arms, he raised his hammer and let it fall on the rock, and – yawned! The other prisoners – there were five in all – worked at the same breathless pace.

The stone-yard was protected from the vulgar gaze of the outer slaves of business and labor by a tall board fence, notable as the only fence of any size in Riverbank that never bore circus posters on its outer surface. Several times within the memory of man there had been “jail deliveries” from the stone-yard. In each case the delivery had been effected in the same manner. The escaping prisoner climbed over the fence and went away. One such renegade, recaptured, told why he had fled. “I won’t stay in no hotel,” he said, “where they’ve got cockroaches in the soup. If this here sheriff don’t brace up, there won’t none of us patronize his durn hotel next winter.”

Peter, enveloped in his blanket serape, pulled the knob of the door-bell of the jail and waited. He heard the bell gradually cease jangling, and presently he heard feet in the corridor, and the door opened.

“Well, what do you want?” asked the sheriff’s wife. “If you want Ed, he ain’t here. You’ll have to come back.”

“I’ve come to give myself up,” said Peter. “My name’s Peter Lane.”

“Well, it don’t make any difference what your name is,” said Mrs. Stevens flatly. “You can’t give yourself up to me, and that’s all there is to it. Every time the weather turns cold a lot of you fellows come around and give yourselves up, and I’m sick and tired of it. I won’t take another one of you unless you ‘re arrested in a proper manner. Half the time Ed can’t collect the board money. If you want to get in here you go down to the calaboose and get arrested in the right way.”

“But I’m sort of looked for here,” said Peter. “Joe Venby knows I’m coming here, and if Ed was here – ”

“Oh, if Ed was here, he’d feed you for nothing, I dare say!” said Mrs. Stevens. “He’s the easiest creature I ever see. If it wasn’t for me he’d lose money on this jail right along.”

“Can’t I come in and wait for Ed?” asked Peter. “I ought to stay here when I’m wanted. I don’t want Ed or Joe to think I’d play a trick on them.”

“You can’t come in!” said Mrs. Stevens. “The last man that come and gave himself up to me stole a shell box off my what-not, and I won’t have that happen again. You can come back after a while.”

“Can’t you let me wait in the stone-yard?” asked Peter.

“See here!” said the sheriff’s wife. “I’m busy getting a meal, and I’ve no time to stand talking. Ed locked them boarders in the yard when he went away, and he took the key. If you want to get into that stone-yard, you’ll have to climb over the fence, and that’s all there is to it. I have no time to fritter away talking.”

She slammed the door in Peter’s face, and Peter turned away. The fence was high but Peter was agile, and he scrambled up and managed to throw one leg over, and thus reached the top.

“Come on in,” Booge’s gruff voice greeted him, and Peter looked down to see the tramp immediately below him.

“They got Buddy,” said Peter, as he dropped to the ground inside the fence.

“Did, hey?” said Booge, stretching his arms. “I was sort of in hopes you’d kill that old kazoozer, if you had to. I don’t like him. He’s the feller that married me and Lize, and I ain’t ever forgive him. One Merdin was enough in a town. I was all of that name the world ought to have had in it – ”

“Merdin?” said Peter. “Is that your name?”

“Why, sure, it is. Didn’t I ever tell you?” asked Booge. “No, I guess I didn’t. Come to think of it, it wasn’t important what you called me, and Buddy sort of clung to ‘Booge.’ Where is the little feller?”

“Your name’s Merdin? And your wife was Lize Merdin?” repeated Peter, staring at the tramp. “Is that so?”

“Cross my heart. If you want me to, I’ll sing it for you.”

“Booge,” said Peter soberly, “she’s dead. Your wife is dead.”

The tramp was serious now. “Lize is dead?” he asked. “Honest, Peter?”

“She’s dead,” Peter repeated. “She died in my boat. She come there one awful stormy night, and she died there. She was run out of Derlingport, and she died, and I buried her.”

Booge put down his stone-hammer and for a full minute stared at the chapped and soiled hands on his knees. Then he shook his head.

“Ain’t that peculiar? Ain’t that odd?” he said. “Lize dead, and she died in your boat, and – why!” he cried suddenly, “Buddy ‘s my boy, ain’t he?”

“Yes,” said Peter, “he’s your boy.”

“Ain’t that queer! Ain’t that strange!” Booge repeated, shaking his bushy head. “Ain’t that odd? And Buddy was my boy all the time! And he’s a nice little feller, too, ain’t he? He’s a real nice little feller. Ain’t that odd!”

He still shook his head as he picked up the hammer. He struck the rock before him several listless blows.

“I wonder if Lize told you what become of Susie?” he asked.

“I know what become of her,” said Peter. “Briggles got her, too. She’s with a – with a lady in town here.” He could not bring himself to tell the imprisoned man what the lady was in reality.

“That’s fine,” said Booge, laughing mirthlessly. “I knowed all along I’d bring up my family first-class. All we needed to make our home a regular ‘God-bless-er’ was for me to get far enough away, and for some one to get the kids away from Lize. Do you know, Peter, I feel sort of sorry for Lize, too. That’s funny, ain’t it?”

“Not if she was your wife, it ain’t,” said Peter.

“Yes, it is,” Booge insisted. “A man don’t feel sorry for a wife like that. Generally he’s glad when she’s gone, but I sort of feel like Lize didn’t have a fair show.. She was real bright. If I hadn’t married her, she’d probably have worked her way over to Chicago and got in a chorus, or blackmailed some rich feller, but I was a handicap to her right along. She couldn’t be out-and-out whole-souled bad when she was a married lady. She’d just get started, and begin whooping things, when she’d remember she was a wife and a mother and all that, and she’d lose her nerve. She never got real bad, and she never got real good. I guess I stood in her way too much.”

“You mean you wasn’t one thing or the other?” asked Peter.

“Yep! That’s why I went away, when I did go,” said Booge. “I seen Lize wasn’t happy, and I wasn’t happy, so I went. The sight of me just made her miserable. She’d come in after being away a week or so, and she’d moan out how wicked she was, and how good I was, and that she was going to reform for my sake, and she’d be unhappy for a month – all regrets and sorrow and punishing herself – and then I’d take my turn and get on a spree, and when I come back, she’d be gone. Then she’d come back and go through the whole thing once more. It was real torture for her. She never fig-gered that my kind of bad was as bad as her kind of bad. I never gave her no help to stay straight, either. I guess what I’d ought to have done was to whack her over the head with an ax handle when she come back, or give her a black eye, but I didn’t have no real stamina. I was a fool that way.”

“I don’t see why you married her,” said simple Peter.

“Well, I was a fool that way, too,” said Booge. “She seemed so young and all, to be throwed out by her mother and father, so I just married her because nobody else offered to, as you might say, to give her baby some sort of a dad when it come. It didn’t get much of a sort of a dad, either, when it got me.

“Then you ain’t Susie’s pa?” asked Peter.

“Lord, no!”

“And Buddy?”

“Oh, yes! And ain’t he a nice little feller? Seems like he’s got all Lize’s and my good in him, don’t it, and none of our bad? And to think I was there with him all the time, and you didn’t even like me to be uncle to him! I wonder – Peter, if you ever see him again, just tell him his dad’s dead, will you, Peter?”.

“If you want I should, Booge,” said Peter reluctantly.

“Yes! And tell him some sort of story about his poor but honest parents. Tell him I was a traveling man and got killed in a wreck. Tell him I had a fine voice to sing with, or some little thing like that, so he can remember it. A little kid likes to remember things like that when he grows up and misses the folks he ought to have.”

“I’ll tell him you were always kind to him, for so you was – in my boat,” said Peter.

“I’ll tell him that when he was a little fellow you used to sing him to sleep.”

“Yes, something like that,” said Booge, and went on breaking rock. Suddenly he looked up. “I wonder if it would do any good for me to give you a paper saying you are to have all my rights in him? I don’t know that I’ve got any, but I’d sort of like to have you have Buddy.”

They talked of this for some time, and it was agreed that when Booge had served his term and was released he was to sign such a paper before a notary and leave it with George Rapp, and they were still discussing the possibility of such a paper being of any value when the door of the jail opened and the sheriff came into the stone-yard.

“Hello, Peter!” he said. “My wife tells me you want to see me. What’s the trouble?”

Peter explained.

“Well, I’m sorry I’ve got to turn you out,” said the sheriff regretfully. “I’ve got the jail so full you mightn’t be comfortable anyway, and I’ve taken in about all I can afford to take on speculation. I’d like to keep you, but I don’t see how I can do it, Peter. I don’t make enough feeding you fellows to take any risk on not getting paid. I guess you’ll have to get out.”

“But I’m guilty, Ed,” said Peter. “I guess I am, anyway.”

“Can’t help it!” said the sheriff firmly. “I don’t know nothing about that. If you want to come to jail, you’ve got to be served with papers in the regular way. The city don’t O. K. my bills hit-or-miss no more. I guess you’ll have to get out. I can’t run the risk of keeping you on your own say-so.”

“If you say so, Ed,” said Peter. “If anything comes up, you’ll know I’ve tried to get into jail, anyway. What should you say I ought to do?”

“What you ought to do,” said the sheriff, “is to go home and wait until somebody comes and arrests you in proper shape.”

“I’ll do so, if you say so, Ed,” said Peter. “I’m living in George Rapp’s house-boat, down at Big Tree Lake, and if you want me, I’ll be there. I’ll wait ‘til you come.”