BOOGE waited until he knew Peter was well on his way. Then he took Buddy on his knee.
“Where is your ma, Buddy?” he asked. “Mama went away,” said Buddy vaguely. “Did she go away from this boat?”
“Yes. Let's make a wagon, Uncle Booge,” but Booge was not ready. He considered his next question carefully.
“We'll make that wagon right soon,” he said. “Was Uncle Peter your pa before your ma went away?”
“I don't know,” said Buddy indefinitely. “You'd ought to know whether he was or not,” said Booge. “Didn't you call Uncle Peter 'pa,' or 'papa' or 'daddy' or something like that?”
“No,” said Buddy. “You said you'd make a wagon, Uncle Booge.”
“Right away!” said Booge. “What did you call Uncle Peter before your ma went away, Buddy?”
The child looked at Booge in surprise. “Why, 'course I didn't call him at all,” he said as if Booge should have known as much. “Hewasn'tmy Uncle Peter, then.”
“Your ma just sort of stayed around the boat, did she?”
“No, my mama comed to the boat, and I comed to the boat, and my mama went away. But Uncle Peter and Buddy didn'tnotgo away. I want to make a wagon, Uncle Booge.”
“Just one minute and we'll make that wagon, Buddy,” said Booge. “I just want to get this all straight first. What did your ma do when she came to the boat?”
“Mama cried,” said Buddy.
“I bet you!” said Booge. “And what did your ma do then, Buddy?”
“Mama hit Uncle Peter,” said Buddy, “and Mama went away, and Uncle Peter floated the boat, and I floated the boat. And I steered the boat.”
“And your ma left you with Uncle Peter when she went away,” said Booge. “What was your ma's name, Buddy. Was it Lane?”
“It was Mama,” said Buddy.
“But what was your name?” insisted Booge. “What did you say your name was when anybody said, 'What's your name, little boy?'”
“Buddy,” said the boy.
“Buddy what?” urged Booge.
“Mama's Buddy.”
Booge drew a deep breath. For five minutes more he questioned the boy, while Buddy grew more and more impatient to be at the wagon-making. Of Buddy's past Peter had, of course, never told Booge a word, but the tramp had his own idea of it. He felt that Peter was no ordinary shanty-boat man, and he imputed Peter's silence regarding the boy's past and parentage to a desire on Peter's part to shake himself free from that past. Why was Peter continually telling that he had begun a more respectable life? Peter's wife might have been one of the low shanty-boat women, a shiftless mother and a worse than shiftless wife, running away from Peter only to bring back the boy when he became a burden, taking what money Peter had and going away again. Possibly Peter had never been married to the woman. In digging into Buddy's memories Booge hoped to find some thread that would give him a hold on Peter, however slight. Booge liked the comfortable boat, but deeper than his love of idleness had grown an affection for the cheerful boy and for simple-minded Peter. If Peter had chosen this out-of-the-way slough for his winter harbor—when shanty-boat people usually came nearer the towns—in order that he might keep himself in hiding from the troublesome wife, veiling himself and the boy from discovery by giving out that he and Buddy were uncle and nephew, it was no more than Booge would have done.
“I suppose, when your ma come to the boat, she slept in the bunk, didn't she?” asked Booge.
“Yes, Uncle Booge,” said Buddy. “I want you to make a wagon.”
“All right, bo!” said Booge gleefully. “Come ahead and make a wagon. And when Uncle Peter comes back we'll have a nice surprise for him. We'll shout out at him, when he comes in, 'Hello, Papa!' and just see what he says. That'll be fun, won't it?”
Booge worked on the wagon all morning.
Toward noon he made a meal for himself and Buddy, and set to work on the wagon again. He had found a canned-corn box that did well enough for the body, and he chopped out wheels as well as he could with the ax. He wished, by the time he had completed one wheel, that he had told Buddy it was to be a sled rather than a wagon, but he could not persuade the boy that a sled would be better, and he had to keep on.
He worked on the clean ice before the shanty-boat and he was deep in his work when Buddy asked a question.
“Who is that man, Uncle Booge?” he asked.
Booge glanced up quickly. Across the ice, from the direction of the road a man was coming. He was well wrapped in overcoat and cap and he advanced steadily, without haste. Booge leaned on his ax and waited. When the man was quite near Booge said, “Hello!”
“Good afternoon,” said the stranger. “Are you Peter Lane?”
Booge's little eyes studied the stranger sharply. The man, for all the bulk given him by his ulster and cap, had a small, sharp face, and his eyes were shrewd and shifty.
“Mebby I am,” rumbled Booge, crossing his legs and putting one hand on his hip and one on his forehead, “and mebby I ain't. Let me recall! Now, if IwasPeter Lane, what might you want of me?”
The stranger smiled ingratiatingly and cleared his throat.
“My—my name,” he said slowly, “is Briggles—Reverend Rasmer Briggles, of Derlingport. My duty here is, I may say, one that, if you are Peter Lane, should give you cause only for satisfaction. Extreme satisfaction. Yes!”
Booge was watching the Reverend Mr. Briggles closely.
“I bet that's so!” he said. “I sort of recall now that IamPeter Lane. And I don't know when I've had any extreme satisfaction. I'll be glad to have some.”
“Yes,” said Mr. Briggles rather doubtfully. “Yes! I am the President of the Child Rescue Society, an organization incorporated to rescue ill-cared-for children, placing them in good homes—”
“Buddy,” said Booge roughly, “you go into that boat And you stay there. Understand?”
The child did as he was told. Booge's tone was one he had never heard the tramp use, and it frightened him.
“It has come to my attention,” said Mr. Briggles, “that there is a child here. You will admit this is no place for a tender little child. You may do your best for him but the influence of a good home must be sadly lacking in such a place. In fact, I have an order from the court—”
He began unbuttoning his ulster.
“I bet you have!” said Booge genially. “So, if you want to, you can sit right down on that bank there and read it. And if it's in po'try you can sing it. And if you can't sing, and you hang 'round here for half an hour, I'll come out and sing it for you. Just now I've got to go in and sing my scales.” He boosted himself to the deck of the shanty-boat and went inside, closing and locking the door. In a moment Mr. Briggles, out in the cold, heard Booge burst into song:
Go tell the little baby, the baby, the baby,Go tell the little baby he can't go out to-day;Go tell the little baby, the baby, the baby,Go tell the little baby old Briggles needn't stay.
Mr. Briggles stood holding the court order in his hand. Armed with the law, he had every advantage on his side. He clambered up the bank and stepped to the deck of the shanty-boat. He rapped sharply on the door. “Mr. Lane, open this door!” he ordered. The door opened with unexpected suddenness and Booge threw his arms around Mr. Briggles and lifted him from his feet. He drew him forward as if to hug him, and then, with a mighty out-thrust of his arms, cast him bodily off the deck. Mr. Briggles fell full on the newly constructed wagon, and there was a crash of breaking wood. Booge came to the edge of the deck and looked down at him. The man was wedged into the rough wagon box, his feet and legs hanging over. He was bleeding at the nose, and his face was rather scratched. He was white with fear or anger. Booge laughed.
“I owed you that,” he rumbled. “I owed you that since the day you married me. And now I'll give you what I owe you for coming after this boy.”
He jumped down from the deck, and Mr. Briggles struggled to release himself from the wagon-box. He was caught fast. He kicked violently, and Booge grinned. If he had intended punishing the interloper further, he changed his mind. The lake lay wide and smooth, with only a pile of snow here and there, and Booge grasped the damaged wagon and pushed it. Like a sled it slid along on its broken wheels, and Booge ran, gathering speed as he ran, until, with a last push, he sent the wagon and Mr. Briggles skimming alone over the glassy surface of the lake toward the road. Then he went into the shanty-boat and closed and locked the door.
PETER reached town about noon, and set about his peddling at once, going to the better residential sections, where his spoons were in demand, and so successful was he that by three o'clock he had but a few left to trade at the grocer's. He made his purchases with great care, for his list had grown large in spite of the refillings of his larder from time to time through the errands in town done for him by the farmer. He bought the Bible and the A. B. C. blocks, and a red sweater, stockings for Buddy and socks for himself, and the provisions he needed, and a bright, new jack-knife for Buddy. All these he tied in a big gunny-sack, except the knife, slung the sack over his shoulders, and went down to report to George Rapp, stopping at the Post Office, where he asked for mail. The clerk handed him, among the circulars and other advertising matter, a letter.
Peter turned the letter over and over in his hand. He had a sister, but this letter was not from her. It was addressed in pencil and bore the local postmark. Peter held it to the light, playing with the mystery as a cat plays with a mouse, and finally opened it. It was from Mrs. Potter.
“Now I know all about you, Peter Lane,” it ran, “and not much good I must say, although I might have expected it, and I am much surprised and such shiftlessness and you might have let me knowthat womanwas sick for I am not a heathen whatever you may think. I want you to come and get your clock out of my sight and if you have time to saw me some wood I will paycash. Mrs. Potter.”
Peter folded the letter slowly and put it in his pocket. He knew very well the widow had no cause to single him out to saw her wood, and that she would not be apt to write him for that reason, howevermuch she might underscore “cash.” That she should write him about the clock was not sufficient excuse for a letter. There was no reason why she should write to him at all, unless the underscoring of “that woman” meant she had heard how he had taken the woman and her boy in and it had given her a better opinion of him. If that was so Peter meant to keep far from Mrs. Potter! He began to fear George Rapp might be right, and that the widow had an eye on him—a matrimonial eye. When widows begin writing letters!
When Peter entered George Rapp's livery stable, Rapp was superintending the harnessing of a colt.
“Hello!” he called heartily. “How's Peter? How's the boat? Friend of yours was just enquiring for you in here. Friend from up the river road.”
“She—who was?”
“You guess it!” laughed Rapp. “Widow Potter. Say, why didn't you tell me you were married?”
“Me? Married to Widow Potter?” cried Peter, aghast. “I never in my life married her, George!”
“Oh, nother!” said Rapp. “Not her yet; the other woman. You with a boy three or four years old, posing around as a goody-goody bachelor. But that's the way with you too-good fellows. Hope you can keep your little son.”
“My son?” stammered Peter. “But he's not my son—not my own son.”
“Gee whiz! Is that so!” said Rapp with surprise. “She was that bad, was she? Well, it does you all the more credit, taking him to raise. Anybody else would have sent him to the poor farm or to old snoozer Briggles. You beat anything I ever seen, with your wives nobody ever guessed you had, and your sons that ain't your sons. What makes you act so mysterious?”
Peter put his gunny-sack on the floor.
“I don't know what you 're talking about, George,” he said. “What is it you think you know?”
“I think I know all about it,” said Rapp laughingly. “Come into the office. What a man in the livery stable don't hear ain't worth finding out. I know your wife come back to you at the shanty-boat, Peter, when she was sick and played out and hadn't nowhere else to go, and I know you took her in and got a doctor for her, and I know she brought along her boy, which you say ain't your son. And I know you sold me your boat so you could take her down river and bury her decent, just as if she hadn't ever run off from you—”
“Who said she was my wife? Who said she run off from me?” asked Peter. “You tell me that, George!”
“Why, Widow Potter said so,” said Rapp. “Everybody knows about it. There was a piece in the paper about it. The Doc you had up there told it all around town, I guess. And Widow Potter is so interested she can't sit still. She's just naturally bothering the life out of me. She says she's buying a horse from me, but that's all gee whiz. Anyway, she's dropped in to look at a colt near every day lately, and sort of enquires if you've been up to town. She says she can understand a lot of things she couldn't before. She says she can forgive you a lot of things, now she knows what kind of a wife you had. She says it's some excuse for being shiftless. She's anxious to see you, Peter.”
“She ain't in town now, is she?” asked Peter nervously. “You didn't tell her I was likely to stop in here?”
“I just naturally had to tell her something,” Rapp said. “She's plumb crazy. She says she's willing to let by-gones be by-gones; that it's all as plain as day to her now.”
“All what?” asked poor Peter.
“Why, all,” said Rapp. “Everything. The whole business. Why you didn't marry her long ago, I reckon. She didn't say so in that many words, but she spoke about how curious it was a man could hang around a woman year in and year out, and saw three times as much wood for her as need be, and take any sort of tongue lashing as meek as Moses, andlookkind of marriage-like, and not do it. She said a woman couldn't understand that sort of thing, but it was easy to understand when she knew you had a wife somewhere. She said she's sorry for your loss, and she'd like you to come right up and see her.”
Rapp lay back in his chair and laughed.
“Did she honestly say that?” asked Peter, very white.
“Did she!” said Rapp. “You ought to hear what she said, and me trying to sell her that bay colt of mine all the time. 'Good withers on this animal, Mrs. Potter.''Well, he may be considered worthless by some,' says she, 'but I've studied him many a year, and the whole trouble is he's too good.' 'And he's a speedy colt, speedy but strong,' says I. 'Having a wife like that is what did it,' says she, 'for a wife like that chastens a man too much, but I guess he'll be more human now she's gone, and look after his own rights.' 'Want the colt?' I says, and she just stared at the animal without seeing him and says, 'For my part I'd enjoy having a small boy about the house.'”
“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. “Heusedto 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.
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“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?”
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.”
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, andnowI 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.”
232
“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.
Now he walked to the kitchen door and knocked, and Jane's voice bade him enter. He took off his hat as he entered. His sister was sitting at the kitchen table where, despite the lateness of the hour, she had evidently just finished her breakfast. As she turned her head all Peter's optimism fled, for Jane's eyes were red with weeping. When her sorrows pressed heavily upon Jane she was a very fountain of tears. She threw up her hands as she saw Peter.
“Oh, mercy me, Peter Lane!” she cried in a heart-broken voice. “Look what you've come to at your time of life. Nothing to wear but old rags and horse blankets on back and foot! It does seem as if nothing ever went right for you since the day you were born. Just poverty and bad-health and trouble, and one thing after another.” She wiped her eyes to make room in them for fresh tears. “Every time I think of you, freezing to death in that shanty-boat, and going hungry and cold, I—it makes me so miserable—it makes me feel so bad—”
“Now, Jane,” said Peter uncomfortably, “don't cry! Don't do it! It ain't so bad as all that. Every time I come to see you, you just cry and carry on, and I tell you I don't need it done for me. I'm all right. I get along somehow.”
“Never, never once, have I said an unkind word to you, Peter,” said Jane damply. “You shouldn't upbraid me with it, for I know it ain't your fault you turned out this way. I know you ain't got the health to go to work and earn a living, if you wanted to. I do what I can to keep your house from falling down on my head. When I think what would become of this house if you didn't have me to do what I can to mend it up—the roof's leakin' worse than ever.”
“As soon as spring comes, I'm going to get some shingles and shingle up the leaky places,” said Peter. “Maybe I'll put a whole new roof on. Now, just listen to what I want to say, please, Jane.”
“It's that makes me feel so awful bad, Peter,” said Jane, shaking her head. “You mean so well, and you promise so much, and you see things so big, and yet you ain't got money to buy shoes nor clothes nor anything, and for all I know you might be lying sick without a bite to eat, and me having all I can do to hold body and soul together in a house like this. Time and again I've made up my mind to go and leave it, and I would if it wasn't for you. I feel my duty by you, and I stay, but work in a house like this wears me to the bone. It does. To the bone!”
It may have worn some one to the bone but not Jane. She was one of those huge, flabby women who are naturally lazy; who sit thinking of the work they have to do but do not do it; and who linger long over their meals and weep into them. To Peter her tears were worse than Mrs. Potter's sharp tongue, for Mrs. Potter's reproaches were single of motive, while Jane's tears were too apt to be a mask for reproaches more cutting than Mrs. Potter's out and out hard words. Jane did not weep continually; she had the knack of weeping when tears would serve her purpose.
From time to time, as the spirit moved her, Jane went to town and did plain sewing. She had had a husband (but had one no more) and he had left her a little money which she had kept in the bank, drawing four per cent, regularly. It did not amount to much, only a couple of hundred dollars a year, but this she used most sparingly, leaving the greater part of the interest to accumulate. Perhaps she was sincere in her mourning for Peter, but she certainly did not want him in the house. As a provider Peter had never been a success—he was too liberal—and in his periods of financial stringency he had been known to ask Jane for money. Not that he ever got it, but it was a thing to be guarded against. Jane guarded against it with tears. In fifteen minutes of tearful reproaches she could make Peter feel that he was the most worthless and cruel of men. She had so often reduced him to that state that he had come to fall into it naturally whenever he saw Jane, and he was usually only too glad to escape from her presence again and go back to the river life. Tears proclaim injustice, and a man like Peter, seeing them, falls easily into the belief that he must be in the wrong, and very badly in the wrong. In flying from Jane he fled from the self-incrimination she planted in him. Now he sighed and took a seat on one of the kitchen chairs.
“Jane,” he said, “this house is my house, aint it?”
“You know it is, Peter,” she said reproachfully. “No need to remind me of that, nor that I ain't any better than a pauper. If I was, it would be far from me to stay here trying to hold the old boards together for you. Many and many a time I wish you had health to live in this house, so I could go somewhere and live like a human being, and let you take care of this cow-pen—for it ain't no better than that—yourself. It would be a blessed thing for me, Peter, if you ever got your health. I could go then.”
Peter moved uneasily, and frowned at the fresh tears.
“I wisht you wouldn't cry, Jane,” he said. “I want to talk sort of business to you this morning.” He paused, appalled by the effect his revelation would be apt to have on Jane. It must be made, however, and he plunged into it. “I've got a boy. I've got a little feller about three years old that come to me one night when his ma died, and he ain't got anybody in the world but me, Jane, to take care of him. I've had him some months, down at my boat, and he's the cutest, nicest little tyke you ever set eyes on. Why, he's—he's no more trouble 'round a place than a little kitten or a pup or something like that. You'd be just tickled to death with him. My first notion,” he said more slowly, “my first idee was to have him and me come here, so you could be a sort of ma to him, and I could be a sort of pa, so we'd make a sort of family, like. What he's got to have is a good home, first of all, and a shanty-boat ain't that. I see that. But I can see how easy-going I am, and how I might be an expense to you, for awhile anyway, so I thought, maybe, if you would take the boy in—now wait a minute, Jane! Wait a minute! You're bound to hear me out.”
His sister had forgotten her sorrows in open-mouthed amazement as Peter talked, but as the startling proposal became clear she dabbled at her eyes, and sniffled. Peter knew what was coming—a new torrent of tears, an avalanche of sorrow.
“For Heaven's sake shut up for a minute 'til I get through!” he cried in exasperation. “You ain't done nothing but weep over me since I was knee high. Give me a rest for one time. I don't need weeping over. I'm all right. Ain't I just said I'll go away again?”
“You never understand me,” wept Jane.
“Yes, I do, too!” said Peter angrily. “I understand you good. All you want is to weep me out of house and home, and I know it. I'm a sort of old bum, and I know that, too, but I've been fair to you right along, and all I get for it is to be wept over, and I'm sick of it. You ain't a sister, you 're a—a fountain. You 're an everlasting fountain. You let me come up and saw your wood, and you weep; and you let me make your garden, and you weep, and if you do give me a meal while I'm working for you it's so wept into that my mouth tastes of salt for a week. I've put up with it just as long as I'm going to.”
“I'll go,” said Jane, sniveling. “I'll go. I never thought to get such unkind words from my brother!”
“Brother nothing!” said Peter, thoroughly exasperated. “What did you ever give me but shoves, wrapped up in sorrow and grief? What did you ever do but jump on me, and tear me to pieces, and pull me apart to show me how worthless I was, whilst you let on you was mourning over me? I guess I've had it done to me long enough to see through it, Jane, so you may as well shut off the bawling. You ain't no sister—you 're a miser!”
“Peter Lane!”
“That's what you are, a miser!” said Peter, rising from his chair. “You 're a weeping miser, and you might as well know it. That's why you don't want me 'round, you 're afraid I might cost you a nickel sometime. For two cents I'dputyou out of the house. You'd bawl some if you had to pay rent.”
Peter should have felt a sense of shame, but he did not. In some inexplicable way a huge weight seemed lifted from his chest. He felt big, and strong, and efficient. It was a wonderful thing he had discovered. He, who had for so many years, cringed before his sister's cruelty was making her wince. He, Peter Lane, was not feeling worthless and mean. He was talking out as other men do. He was having a rage, and yet he was so self-controlled that he knew he could stop at any moment. He was not the tool of his anger, the anger was his instrument. His pale eyes blazed, but he ended with a scornful laugh.
Jane did not flare up. She dropped her head on her table and cried again, but with real self-pity this time.
“Now, it ain't worth while to cry,” said Peter coldly. “I've said all I've got to say on that subject. All I've got now is a business proposition, and you can take it or not. If you want to take Buddy in and feed him and sleep him and treat him white, the way he deserves, I'll pay you for it just as soon as I earn some money, and I'm going to get work right away. If you won't do that you can take the house and have it, and I'm through with you.”
He stood with his hat in his hand, waiting. It seemed to him that Jane was waiting too long, that she was calculating the chances of getting her pay if she took the boy, and Peter knew his past record did not suggest any very strong probability of that.
“You'll get your money,” he said. “I'm going to look for a job as soon as I go out from here. Don't you be afraid of that. You won't lose anything.”
Her reply came so suddenly that it startled
Peter. She jumped from her chair and stamped her foot angrily.
“Oh!” she cried, clinching her fists, while all her anger blazed in her face. “Hain't you insulted me enough? Get out of my house! Don't you ever come back!”
Peter put on his hat. He paused when his hand was on the door-knob, his face deathly white.
“If you ever get sick, Jane,” he said, “you can leave word at George Rapp's Livery stable. I'll come to you if you are sick,” and he went out, closing the door softly.
Buddy was waiting where Peter had left him.
“I'm making a funny snake for you, Uncle Peter,” he said.
“Well, I should think you were!” said Peter, summoning all his cheerfulness. “That's just the funniest old snake I ever did see, but you better let Uncle Peter have your jack-knife now, Buddy. We'll get along.”
He gathered the boy, who obediently yielded the knife, into his arms.
“I'm going to see Aunt Jane, now,” said the boy contentedly.
“No, I guess we won't go see your Aunt Jane to-day, Buddy,” said Peter, holding the boy close. “Put your head close up against Uncle Peter's shoulder and he can carry you better. You ain't so heavy that way.”
Buddy put his head on Peter's shoulder and crooned one of Booge's verses contentedly. They walked a long way in this manner, toward the town. From time to time Peter shifted the boy from one shoulder to the other, and once or twice he allowed him to walk, but not far. He wanted to feel Buddy in his arms.
“I shouldn't wonder,” said Peter as they entered the outskirts of the town, “if I had to go on a trip right soon. I can't seem to think of any way out of it.”
“I like to go on trips with you, Uncle Peter,” said Buddy.
“Well, you see, Buddy-boy,” said Peter, “this here trip I can't take you on, so I've got to leave you with a man—a man that looks a good deal like that kazoozer man, but you mustn't be afraid of him, because all he is going to do is to take you for a ride in a horse and buggy out to where you'll stay. It may be some time before I see you again, but I want you should remember me. I guess you will, won't you?”
“Yes, Uncle Peter.”
“That's right! You just remember Uncle Peter every day, but don't you worry for him, and some day maybe I'll come and get you. I've got a lot of work to do first that you wouldn't understand, such as building up a new man from the ground to the top of his head, but I'll get it done some time, and I'll come for you the first thing after I do. You want I should, don't you?”
“Yes” said Buddy.
For the rest of the way to town Peter held the boy very closeinhis arms, and did not think of his tired muscles at all. He was thinking of his perfidy to the trusting child, for he was without money and without it he could see nothing to do but deliver the boy to Briggles and the Unknown.