The Jack-Knife Man. Butler Ellis Parker
that’s all right, ma’am,” said Peter, as she began coughing again. “Nobody’s going to take nobody whilst I’m in this boat, and you can make your mind up to that right off. Here’s Buddy right here, eating like a little man, ain’t you, Buddy?”
“Poor baby!” said the woman. “Come and let Ma try to carry you again. Your poor little leg’s all tired out, ain’t it?”
“It’s rested,” said Buddy, “it ain’t tired.”
“Tired, oh, God, I’m tired!” she wept. “You’ll have to get down, Buddy. Ma can’t carry you another step. God knows when I get to Riverbank I’ll be straight. I’ve got enough of this. Where’s Susie?”
“Now, I wisht, if you can, you’d try to lie quiet, ma’am,” said Peter, “for you ain’t well. Try lying still, and I’ll go right to town and get a doctor to come out and see you. I didn’t mean you no harm at all.”
“I know you, you snake!” she cried. “You ‘re from the Society. You took my Susie, and you want Buddy. I’ll kill you first. Come here, Buddy!”
The boy went to her obediently, and she drew him on to the bunk and ran her hand through his white kinks of hair. It seemed to quiet her to feel him in her arm.
“Now, ma’am,” said Peter, “you see nobody’s going to take Buddy at all, and you can take my word I won’t let anybody take him whilst I’m around. You can depend on that, I’m going to town, now, and I guess I’d better leave Buddy right here, for you’ll be more comfortable knowing where he is. Don’t you worry about nothing at all until I get back, and if you find the door locked it’s just so nobody can’t get in and bother you.”
He looked about the cabin. It was comfortably warm, and he poured water on the fire. He wished to take no chances with the woman in her present state. He even took his shot-gun and the heavy poker as he went out. Buddy watched him with interest.
“Are you stealing that gun?” he asked.
“No, son,” said Peter gravely. “Nobody’s stealing anything. You want to get that idea out of your head. Nobody in this cabin – you, nor me, nor your ma, would steal anything. Your ma’s sick and don’t know what she’s doing, but she don’t mean no real harm. I guess she ain’t been treated right, and she feels upset about it, but a boy don’t want, ever, to say anything bad about his ma.”
He went out and closed and locked the door. Involuntarily he glanced at Widow Potter’s chimneys. No smoke came from any of them.
“Now, I just bet that woman has gone and got sick, just when I’ve got my hands plumb full!” he said disgustedly. “I’ve got to go up and see what’s the matter with her, or she might lie there and die and nobody know a thing about it.”
The cold had frozen the slush into hardness, and Peter cut across the corn-field. He tried Mrs. Potter’s doors and found them all locked – which was a bad sign, unless she had gone to town while he was in the shanty-boat – but he knocked on the kitchen door noisily, and was rewarded after a reasonable wait, by hearing the widow dragging her feet across the kitchen.
“Is that you, Peter Lane?” she asked.
“Yes’m,” Peter answered.
“Well, it’s time you come, I must say,” said the widow, between groans. “You the only man anywheres near, and you’d leave me die here as soon as not. You got to feed the cows and the horse and give the chickens some grain and then hitch up and fetch a doctor as fast as he can be fetched. I might have laid here for weeks, you ‘re that unreliable. I’ll put the barn key on the kitchen table, and when the doctor comes I’ll be in my bed, if the Lord lets me live that long. I’ll be in it anyway, I dare say, dead or alive, if I can manage to get to it. And don’t you come in until I get out of the way, for I ain’t got a stitch on but my night-gown.”
“I won’t,” said Peter, and he didn’t. He gave Mrs. Potter time to get into twenty beds, if she had been so minded, before he opened the kitchen door a crack and peeped in. He hurried through the chores as rapidly as he could, feeding the stock and the chickens and milking the cows. He had eaten part of the omelet Buddy had commenced, but he thought it only right he should have a satisfying drink of the warm milk, and he took it. He made a fire in the kitchen stove and saw that the iron tea-kettle was full of water, and then he harnessed the horse and drove briskly to town and sought a doctor.
It was the hour when physicians were making their calls and the first two Peter sought were out, but Dr. Roth, the new doctor who had come from Willets to build a practice in the larger town, happened to be in his office over Moore’s Drug Store, and he drew on his coat and gloves while Peter explained the object of his visit.
“I ain’t running Mrs. Potter’s affairs,” said Peter, “for there ain’t no call for her to have nobody to run them, but, if I was, I’d get a sort of nurse-woman to go up and take care of her. She’s all alone, and I don’t know how sick she is.”
“Then you are not Mr. Potter?” asked the doctor.
“I ain’t nothing at all like that,” said Peter. “I’m a shanty-boatman and my boat is right near the widow’s place, and I do odd chores for her. Old Potter died and went where he belongs quite some time ago.”
The doctor agreed to pick up Mrs. Skinner on his way, Mrs. Skinner being one of those plump, useful creatures that are willing to do nursing, washing, or general housework by the day.
“And another thing, doctor,” said Peter, as the doctor closed his office door, “whilst you are out there I want you to drop down to the cove below the widow’s house, to a shanty-boat you’ll see there, and take a look at the woman I’ve got in it. So far as I can make out she’s a mighty sick woman. I’ll try to get back before you get through with the widow, but you’d better take my key, if I shouldn’t. I’ll pay whatever it costs to treat her. I’m quite ready to do that.”
“Why not drive out with me?”
“I got some business to transact,” said Peter. “But mebby it might be just as well to wait till I do get there. She’s sort of out of her mind, and she might think you had come to do her some harm if I wasn’t there.” The business Peter had to transact took him to George Rapp’s Livery, Sale and Feed Stable, and by good luck he found George in his stuffy, over-heated office, redolent of tobacco smoke, harness soap and general stable odors. Like all men who brave cold weather at all hours George liked to be well baked when in-doors.
“Well, George,” said Peter, “since I seen you yesterday circumstances has occurred to change my mind about making any trips this year in my boat. For a man of my constitution I’ve made up my mind it would be just the worst thing to go south at all. It ain’t the right air for my lungs, and when you got to talking about chinchillas going out of fashion, I seen it wasn’t worth the risk. What I need is cold climate, George, and it’s an unfortunate thing this here Mississippi River don’t run any way but south, because there’s one fur never does go out of style, and that’s arctic fox – .”
“All right, I’ll give you forty dollars for the boat,” laughed Rapp, putting his hand in his pocket.
“Now, wait!” said Peter. “I don’t want you to think I’m doing this just because I want to sell the boat, George. That ain’t so. I guess maybe I could raise what money I need to outfit, one way or another, but I can’t afford to pay a caretaker to take care of that boat whilst I’m away up in Labrador, or Alaska, or wherever I’m going, and it ain’t safe to leave a shanty-boat vacant. Tramps would run away with her.”
“When do you aim to start north?” asked Rapp, grinning.
“My mind ain’t quite made up to that,” said Peter. “I want to look over a map and see where Labrador is before I start out. I thought maybe you’d let me remain in the shanty-boat awhile, George.”
“Stay on her as long as you like,” said Rapp. “You can live right in her all winter. All I want is to get her down to my place right away before the river closes, so she’ll