THE Marcy's Run Road, on which Peter's sister lived, led into Riverbank past the cemetery, and near the cemetery stood a group of small stores. One of these, half grocery and half saloon, was even more unkempt than the others, but before its window Peter stopped. A few small coins—the residue after his purchasing trip of the day before—remained in his pocket, and in the window was a square of cardboard announcing “Hot Beef Soup To-day.”
Hot beef soup, when a man has tramped many miles carrying a heavy child, is a temptation. Buddy himself would be glad of a bowl of hot soup, and Peter opened the door and entered.
The store was narrow and dark. A few feet, just inside the door, were occupied by the scanty stock of groceries, tobacco and cheap candy, and back of this was the bar, with two small tables in the space before it. The whole place was miserably dirty. It was no gilded liquor palace, with mirrors and glittering cash-registers. The bar was of plain pine, painted “barn-red,” and the whole arrangement was primitive and cheap. Beyond the bar room a partition cut off the living room, and this completed “Mrs. Crink's Place.”
Mrs. Crink had a bad reputation. During the stringent prohibition days she had run a “speak-easy” without paying the town the usual monthly disorderly house fine, and had served her term in jail. After that she was strongly suspected of boot-legging whisky, and she had purchased this new place but a few days since. She was a thin, sour-faced, angular woman, ugly alike in face and temper. When Peter opened the door a bell sounded sharply, but the high voice of Mrs. Crink in the living room drowned the bell. She was scolding and reviling at the top of her voice—swearing like a man—and a child was sobbing and pleading. Peter heard the sharp slap of a hand against a face, and a cry from the child, and Mrs. Crink came into the bar room, her eyes glaring and her face dark with anger.
“Well, what do you want?” she snarled.
“I'd like to get two bowls of soup for me and the boy, if it ain't too much trouble,” said Peter.
“Everything's trouble,” whined Mrs. Crink. “I don't expect nothing else. A woman can't make a living without these cranks tellin' her what she shall and what she shan't. Shut up that howlin', you little devil, or I'll come in there and bat your head off.”
She went into the living room and brought out the two bowls of soup, placing them on one of the small tables. Peter lifted Buddy into a chair. Mrs. Crink began wiping off the beer-wet bar.
“I wonder if you could let me have about a dime's worth of crackers and cheese?” he asked, and Mrs. Crink dropped the dirty rag with which she was wiping the bar.
“Come out here, and shut up your bawlin', and swab off this bar,” she yelled, and the door of the back room opened and a girl came out. She was the merest child. She came hesitatingly, holding her arm before her face, and the old hag of a woman jerked up the filthy, wet rag and slapped her across the face. It was none of Peter's business, but he half arose from his chair and then dropped back again. It made his blood boil, but he had not associated with shanty-boat men and women without learning that in the coarser strata of humanity slaps and blows and ugly words are often the common portion of children. He would have liked to interfere, but he knew the inefficiency of any effort he might make, and like a shock it came to him that it was for things like this that Briggles rescued,—or pretended to rescue—little children. It was not so bad then, after all. If he must give up Buddy there would be some compensation in telling Briggles of this poor child, who deserved far more the attention of his Society. All this passed through his mind in an instant, but before he could turn back to his bowl of soup Buddy uttered a cry of joy and, scrambling from his chair, ran across the floor toward the weeping girl.
“Oh! Susie! Susie! My Susie!” he shouted and threw himself upon her.
The impetus of his coming almost threw the child off her feet, and she staggered back, but the next instant she had clasped her arms around the boy, and was hugging him in a close, youthful embrace of joy.
“My Buddy! My Buddy!” she kept repeating over and over, as if all other words failed her, as they will in an excess of sudden surprise. “My Buddy! My Buddy!”
The woman stared for an instant in open-mouthed astonishment, and then her eyes flashed with anger. She reached out her hand to grasp the girl, but Peter Lane thrust it aside.
His own eyes could flash, and the woman drew back.
“Now, don't you do that!” he said hotly.
“You git out of my store, then!” shouted Mrs. Crink. “You take your brat and git out!”
“I'll get out,” said Peter slowly, “as soon as I am quite entirely ready to do so. I hope you will understand that. And I'll be ready when I have ate my soup.”
The woman glared at him. She let her hand drop behind the bar, where she had a piece of lead pipe, and then, suddenly, she laughed a high, cackling laugh to cover her defeat, and let her eyes fall. She slouched to the front of the shop for the crackers and cheese and Peter seated himself again at the small table, and looked at the children.
“Where's Mama?” he heard the girl ask, and Buddy's reply: “Mama went away,” and he saw the look of wonder on the girl's face.
“Come here,” Peter said, and the girl came to the table.
“I guess you 're Buddy's sister he's been tellin' me about, ain't you?” said Peter kindly, “and I'm his Uncle Peter He's been staying with on a shanty-boat. Your ma”—he hesitated and looked at the girl's sweet, clear eyes—“your ma went away, like Buddy said, Susie, but you don't want to think she run away and left him, for that wouldn't be so, not at all! She had to go, or she wouldn't 've gone. I guess—I guess she'd 've come and got you. Yes, I guess that's what she had on her mind. She spoke of you quite a little before she went on her trip.”
“I want you should take me away from here,” said the girl suddenly.
“Well, now, I wish I could, Susie,” said Peter, “but I don't see how I can. Maybe I can arrange it—” He poised his soup spoon in the air. “Did Reverend Mr. Briggles bring you here?”
“Not here,” said Susie. “Mrs. Crink didn't live here, then.”
“Well, that's all the same,” said Peter. “I just wanted to enquire about it. You'd better eat your soup, Buddy-boy. Well, now, let me see!”
Peter stared into the soup, as if it might hold, hidden in its muggy depths, the answer to his riddle.
“Just at present I'm sort of unable to do what I'd like to do myself,” he said. “I'd like to take you right with me, but I've got a certain friend that was quite put out because I didn't bring your ma to—to see her when your ma stopped in at my boat, and I guess maybe”—Mrs. Crink was returning with the crackers and cheese, and Peter ended hurriedly—“I guess maybe you better stay here until I make arrangements.”
It was a strange picture, the boy eating his soup gluttonously, Peter Lane in his comedy tramp garb of blanket and blanket-strips, and the little girl staring at him with big, trustful eyes. Mrs. Crink put the crackers and cheese on the table.
“If you've got through takin' up time that don't belong to you, maybe I can git some work out of this brat,” she snapped.
“Why, yes, ma'am,” said Peter politely. “It only so happened that this boy was her brother. We didn't want to discommode you at all.”
Susie turned away to her work of swabbing the bar, and Peter divided the crackers and cheese equally between himself and Buddy.
“I don't care much to have tramps come in here anyway,” said Mrs. Crink. “I never knew one yit that wouldn't pick up anything loose,” but Peter made no reply. He had a matter of tremendous import on his mind. He felt that he had taken the weight of Susie's troubles on his shoulders in addition to those of Buddy, and he had resolved to ask Widow Potter to take the two children!
The parting of the two children had for them none of the pathos it had for Peter. When Buddy had eaten the last scrap of cracker he got down from his chair.
“Good-by, Susie,” he said.
“Good-by, Buddy,” she answered, and that was all, and Peter led the boy out of the place.
There are, in Riverbank, alleys between each two of the streets parallel with the river, and Peter, now that he had once more resolved not to allow Briggles to have Buddy, took to the alleys as he passed through the town. The outlandishness of his garb made him the more noticeable, he knew, and he wished to avoid being seen. He traversed the entire town thus, even where a creek made it necessary for him to scramble down one bank and up another, until the alleys ended at the far side of the town. There he crossed the vacant lot where a lumber mill had once stood, and struck into the river road.
The boy seemed to take it all as a matter of course, but Peter kept a wary eye on the road, ready to seek a hiding-place at the approach of any rig that looked as if it might contain the Reverend Briggles, but none appeared. A farmer, returning from town with a wagon, stopped at a word from Peter, and allowed him to put Buddy in the wagon and clamber in with him. They got out again at Mrs. Potter's gate.
The house was closed, and the doors locked. Peter tried them all before he was convinced he had had the long tramp for nothing, and then he led Buddy toward the barn. As he neared the barn the barn door opened and a man came out, carrying a water bucket. He stared at Peter.
“Mrs. Potter is not at home, I guess?” said Peter.
“Nope,” said the man. “Anything I can do for you?”
“It's business on which I'll have to see her personally,” said Peter. “She wasn't expecting I'd come. Is she going to be back soon?”
“Well, I guess she won't be back to-day,” said the man. “She only hired me about a week ago, so she ain't got to telling me all her plans yet, but she told me it was as like as not she'd go up to Derlingport to-day, and maybe she might come home to-morrow, and maybe not till next day. Want to leave any word for her?”
“No,” said Peter slowly, “I guess there's no word I could leave. I guess not. I'm much obliged to you, but I won't leave no word. Come on, Buddy-boy, we got to go back to town now, before night sets in.”
“Where are we going now, Uncle Peter?” asked the boy.
“Now? Well, now we 're going to see a friend I've got. You never slept in a great, big stable, where there are a lot of horses, did you? You never went to sleep on a great big pile of hay, did you? That'll be fun, won't it, Buddy-boy?”
“Yes, Uncle Peter,” said the child cheerfully, and they began the long, cold walk to town.
THAT horse,” said George Rapp, slapping the colt on the flank, “is as good a horse as you can get for the money in ten counties, and you won't find anybody that will offer what I do in trade for your old one. Nowhere.”
“You'd say that anyway, George Rapp,” said Mrs. Potter. “You ain't here to run down what you want to sell. Seems to me the colt acts skittish.”
“What you said you wanted was a young horse,” said Rapp with a shrug. “I don't know what you want. You want a young horse, and this is young, and you don't want a skittish horse, and all young horses are more or less that way.”
“What I want is a young, strong horse—” Mrs. Potter began.
“You've told me that a million times and two, and if you tell me it again I'll know it by heart well enough to sing it,” said Rapp. “There he stands, just like you say—a young, strong horse.”
“A skittish animal like this colt ain't fit for a woman to drive,” said Mrs. Potter.
“And you ought to have a driver to drive him, as you said about ten thousand times before,” said Rapp with good-natured tolerance, “but Peter Lane ain't come up to town yet, if that's what you're working round to.”
“Oh, get along with you!” said Mrs. Potter. “I got a hired man now.”
“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. “PeterSmith!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 gotonegood 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?”
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 whatyoucalled 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 yououghtto 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.”
He shook Booge's hand and the sheriff unlocked the gate of the stone-yard, and Peter passed out into the cold world.
PETER avoided the main street, for he was aware he was a curious sight in his blanket serape, and it was too comfortable to throw away, and, in addition, would be his only bed clothing when he reached his boat. He hurried along Oak Street as less frequented than the main street, for he had almost the entire length of the town to pass through. As it was growing late he was anxious to strike the bluff road in time to catch a ride with some homeward-bound farmer. His bag of provisions was still at the farmer's on the hillside; the shanty-boat awaited him, and he must take up his life where it had been interrupted. For the present he was powerless to aid either Susie or Buddy.
Peter had a long walk before him if he did not catch a ride, and he started briskly, but in front of the Baptist Church he paused. A bulletin board stood before the door calling attention to a sale to be held in the Sunday-school room, and the heading of the announcement caught his eye. “All For The Children,” it said. It seemed that there were poor children in the town—children with insufficient clothes, children with no shoes, children without underwear, and a sale was to be held for them; candy, cakes, fancy work, toys and all the usual Christmas-time church sale articles were enumerated. Peter read the bulletin, and passed on.
He was successful in catching a ride, and found his sack of provisions at the farmer's and carried it to the boat on his back. The boat was as he had left it, and little damage had been done during his absence. The river had fallen and his temporary mooring rope—too taut to permit the strain—had snapped, but the shanty-boat had grounded and was safe locked in the ice until spring. Inside the cabin not a thing had been touched. The shavings still lay on the floor where they had fallen while he was making Buddy's last toy, and the toys themselves were under the bunk just as he had left them. Peter felt a pang of loneliness as he gathered them up and placed them on his table with the new stockings and the A. B. C. blocks. He put the new “Bibel” on the clock-shelf.
The toys made quite an array, and Peter looked at them one by one, thinking of the child. There were more than a dozen of them—all sorts of animals—and they still bore the marks of Buddy's fingers. It was quite dark by the time Peter had stowed away his provisions, and he lighted the lamp, with a newly formed resolution in his mind. He dropped the A. B. C. blocks into the depths of his gunny-sack and, looking at each for the last time, let the crudely carved animals follow, one by one. He held the funny cat in his hand quite a while, hesitatingly, and then set it on the clock-shelf beside the Bible, but almost immediately he took it down again and dropped it among its fellows in the sack. The Bible, too, he took from the shelf and put in the sack, and, last of all, he added the few bits of clothing Buddy had left in his flight. He tied the neck of the sack firmly with seine twine and set it under the table. All his mementos of Buddy were in that sack, and Peter, with a sigh, chose a clean piece of maple wood, seated himself on the edge of the bunk, and began whittling a kitchen spoon. Once more he was alone; once more he was a hermit; once more he was a mere jack-knife man, and Buddy was but a memory.
Peter tried to put even the memory out of his mind, but that was not as easy as putting toys in a gunny-sack. If he tried to think of painting the boat, he had to think of George Rapp, and then he could think of nothing but the hasty parting in Rapp's barn and how the soft kinks of Buddy's hair snuggled under the rough blanket hood. If he tried to think of wooden spoons he thought of funny cats. And if he tried to think of nothing he caught Booge's nonsense rhymes running through his head and saw Buddy clinging eagerly to Booge's knee and begging, “Sing it again, Booge, sing it again.”
“Thunder!” he exclaimed at last, “I wisht I had that clock to take apart.”
He put the unfinished spoon aside and, choosing another piece of maple wood, began whittling a funny cat, singing, “Go tell the little baby, the baby, the baby,” as he worked. It was late when his eyelids drooped and he wrapped himself in his blanket. Three more cats had been added to the animals in the gunny-sack.
“Some little kid like Buddy'll like them,” he thought with satisfaction, and dropped asleep.
Early the next morning he tramped across the “bottom” to the farmer's.
“You said you was going to town to-day,” Peter said, “and I thought maybe you'd leave this sack at the Baptist Church for me, if it ain't too much out of your way. It's some old truck I won't have any use for, and I took notice they were having a sale there today. You don't need to say anything. Just hand it in.”
Before the farmer could ask him in to have breakfast Peter had disappeared toward the wood-yard, and when, later, he started for town he could hear Peter's saw.
At the Baptist Church the farmer left the sack. A dozen or more women were busily arranging for the sale, and one of them took the sack, holding it well out from her skirt.
“For our sale? How nice!” she cried in the excited tone women acquire when a number of them are working together in a church. “Who are we to thank for it?”
“Oh, I guess there ain't no thanks necessary,” said the farmer. “I guess you won't find it much. I just brought it along because I promised I would. It's from a shanty-boatman down my way—Lane 's his name—Peter Lane.”
“Oh,” said the woman, her voice losing much of its enthusiasm. “Yes, I know who he is. He's the jack-knife man. Tell him Mrs. Vandyne thanks him; it is very kind of him to think of us.”
“All right! Gedap!”
Mrs. Vandyne carried the sack into the Sunday school room and snipped the twine with her scissors, which hung from her belt on a pink ribbon. She was a charming little woman, with bright eyes and rosy cheeks, and she was the more excited this afternoon because she had been able to bring her friend and visitor, Mrs. Montgomery, and Mrs. Montgomery was making a real impression. Mrs. Montgomery was from New York, and just how wealthy and socially important she was at home every one knew, and yet she mingled with the ladies quite as if she was one of them. And not only that, but she had ideas. Her manner of arranging the apron table, as she had once arranged one for the Actors' Fair, was enough to show she was no common person. Already her ideas had quite changed the old cut and dried arrangements. At her request ladies were constantly running out to buy rolls of crêpe paper and other inexpensive decorative accessories, and the dull gray room was blossoming into a fairy garden.
“And when you come to-night, I want each of you to wear a huge bow of crêpe paper on your hair, and—what have you there, Jane?”
Mrs. Montgomery, although beyond her fortieth year, had the fresh and youthfully bright face of a girl of eighteen. She was one of those splendidly large women who retain a vivid interest in life and all its details, and Mrs. Vandyne, who was smaller and lesser in every way, was her Riverbank counterpart.
“Nothing much,” Mrs. Vandyne answered, dipping her hand into the sack. “But it was kind of the man to send what he could. Wooden spoons, I suppose. Well, will you look at this, Anna?”
It was one of the “funny cats.” Mrs. Vandyne held it up, that all the ladies might see.
“Howperfectlyridiculous!” exclaimed Mrs. Wilcox. “Whatdoyou suppose it was meant to be?Doyou suppose it is a bear?”
“Or an otter, or something?” asked Mrs. Ferguson. “Oh, I know! It's a squirrel. Did you ever see anything so—so ridiculous!”
The ladies, all except Mrs. Montgomery, laughed gleefully at the funny cat Buddy had hugged and loved.
“We might get a dime for it, anyway, Alice,” said one. “Are there any more? They will help fill the toy table. Do you think they would spoil the toy table, Mrs. Montgomery?”
The New Yorker had taken the cat in her hand, and Mrs. Vandyne was standing one after another of Peter's toys on the table.
“Spoil it!” exclaimed Mrs. Montgomery enthusiastically. “I have not seen anything so naïve since I was in Russia. It is like the Russian peasant toys, but different, too. It has a character of its own. Oh, how charming!”
She had seized another of the funny animals.
“But whatisit?” asked Mrs. Wilcox.
“Mercy! I don't know what itis,” laughed Mrs. Montgomery. “What does that matter? You can call it a cat—it looks something like a cat—yes! I'm sure it is a cat. Or a squirrel. That doesn't matter. Can't you see that no one but a master impressionist could have done them? Just see how he has done it all with a dozen quick turns of his—his—”
“Jack-knife,” Mrs. Vandyne supplied. “Doyou think they are worth anything, Alice?”
“Worth anything?” exclaimed Mrs. Montgomery. “My dear, they are worth anything you want to ask for them. Really, they are little masterpieces. Can't you see how refreshing they are, after all the painted and prim toys we see in the shops? Just look at this funny frog, or whatever it is.”
The ladies all laughed.
“You see,” said Mrs. Montgomery, “you can't help laughing at it. The man that made it has humor, and he has art and—and untrammeled vision, and really the most wonderful technique.”
Peter Lane and the technique of a jack-knife!
The ladies of the Baptist Aid Society were too surprised to gasp. The enthusiasm of Mrs. Montgomery took their breath away, and Mrs. Montgomery was not loth to speak still more, with a discoverer's natural pride in her discovery. She examined one toy after another, and her enthusiasm grew, and infected the other women. They, too, began to see the charm of Peter's handiwork and to glimpse what Mrs. Montgomery had seen clearly: that the toys were the result of a frank, humorous, boyish imagination combined with a man's masterly sureness of touch. Here was no jig-saw, paper-patterned, conventional German or French slopshop toy, daubed over with ill-smelling paint. She tried to tell the ladies this, and being in New York the president of several important art and literary and musical societies, she succeeded.
“We must ask twenty-five cents apiece for them,” said Mrs. Ferguson.
“Oh! twenty-five cents! A dollar at least,” said Mrs. Montgomery. “The work of an artist. Don't you see it is not the intrinsic value but the art the people will pay for?”
“But do you think Riverbank will pay a dollar for art?” asked Mrs. Vandyne.
Mrs. Montgomery glanced over the toys. “I will pay a dollar apiece for all of them, and be glad to get them,” she said. “I feel—I feel as if this alone made my trip to Riverbank worth while. You have no idea what it will mean to go home and take with me anything so new and unconventional. I shall be famous, I assure you, as the discoverer of—”
“His name is Peter Lane,” said Mrs. Vandyne. “He is one of the shanty-boatmen that live on the river. A little, mildly-blue-eyed man; a sort of hermit. They call him the Jack-knife Man, because he whittles wooden spoons and peddles them.”
“Oh, hewillbe a success!” cried Mrs. Montgomery. “Even his name is delicious. Peter Lane! Isn't it old-fashioned and charming? Peter Lane, the Jack-knife Man! How many of these toys may I have, Anna?”
“I want one!” said Mrs. Wilcox promptly, and before the ladies were through, Mrs. Montgomery had to insist that she be permitted to claim two of the toys by her right as discoverer.
Later, as they went homeward for supper, Mrs. Vandyne gave a happy little laugh.
“That was splendid, Alice,” she said. “To think you were able tomakethem pay a dollar apiece for those awful toys!”
“Awful!” exclaimed Mrs. Montgomery. “My dear, I meant every word I said. You will see! Your Peter Lane is going to make me famous yet!”
That evening, while Peter sat in his shanty-boat, lonely and thinking of Buddy as he whittled a spoon, Mrs. Montgomery stood, tall and imposing and sweet-faced, behind the toy table on which all of Buddy's toys stood with “Sold” tags strung on them, and told about Peter Lane, the Jack-knife Man.
“I'm very sorry,” she said time after time, “but they are all sold. We do not know yet whether we can persuade the Jack-knife Man to make duplicates, but we will take your order subject to his whim, if you wish. We cannot promise anything definite. Artists are so notably irresponsible.”
But there was one voice which, had Peter been able to hear it, would have set him making jack-knife toys on the instant. While the ladies of the Baptist Church were exclaiming over the toys in the Sunday school room a small boy with freckles and white, kinky hair, was leaning on the knee of a harsh-faced woman in a white farm house three miles up the river-road.
“Auntie Potter,” he said longingly, “I wish Uncle Peter would come and make me a funny cat.”
“If he don't,” said Mrs. Potter with great vigor, “he's a wuthless scamp.”