Vandemark's Folly. Quick Herbert
said I. "If you know where they are, I'll go there by the next boat."
"Hum," said Wisner. "Whether I can tell you the exact township and section is one thing; but I can say that they went to Southport on the same boat with me, and at last accounts were there or thereabouts--there or thereabouts."
"Come on, Bill," said I, "I want to take passage on the next boat!"
Mr. Wisner kept us a long time, giving me letters to his partner; trying to find out how much money I would have when I got to Southport; warning me not to leave that neighborhood even if I found it hard to find the Rucker family; and assuring me that if it weren't for the fact that he had several families along the canal ready to move in a week or two, he would go back with me and place himself at my service.
"And it won't be long," said he, "until I can be with you. My boy, I feel like a father to the young men locating among us, and I beg of you don't make any permanent arrangements until I get back. I can save you money, and start you on the way to a life of wealth and happiness. God bless you, and give you a safe voyage!"
"Bill," said I, as we went down the stairs, "this is the best news I ever had. I'm going to find my mother! I had given up ever finding her, Bill; and I've been so lonesome--you don't know how lonesome I've been!"
"I used to have a mother," said Bill, "in London. Next time I'm there I'll stay sober for a day and have a look about for her. You never have but about one mother, do you, Jake? A mother is a great thing--when she ain't in drink."
"I wish I could have Mr. Wisner with me when I get to Southport," I said. "He'd help me. He is such a Christian man!"
"Wal," said Bill, "I ain't as sure about him as I am about mothers. He minds me of a skipper I served under once; and he starved us, and let the second officer haze us till we deserted and lost our wages. He's about twice too slick. I'd give him the go-by, Jake."
"And now for a boat," I said.
"Wal," said Bill, "I'm sailin' to-morrow mornin' on the schooner Mahala Peters, an' we're short-handed. Go aboard an' ship as an A. B."
I protested that I wasn't a sailor; but Bill insisted that beyond being hazed by the mate there was no reason why I shouldn't work my passage.
"If there's a crime," said he, "it's a feller like you payin' his passage. Let's get a drink or two an' go aboard."
I explained to the captain, in order that I might be honest with him, that I was no sailor, but had worked on canal boats for years, and would do my best. He swore at his luck in having to ship land-lubbers, but took me on; and before we reached Southport--now Kenosha--I was good enough so that he wanted me to ship back with him. It was on this trip that I let the cook tattoo this anchor on my forearm, and thus got the reputation among the people of the prairies of having been a sailor, and therefore a pretty rough character. As a matter of fact the sailors on the Lakes were no rougher than the canallers--and I guess not so rough.
I was sorry, many a time, on the voyage, that I had not taken passage on a steamer, as I saw boats going by us in clouds of smoke that left Buffalo after we did; but we had a good voyage, and after seeing Detroit, Mackinaw and Milwaukee, we anchored in Southport harbor so late that the captain hurried on to Chicago to tie up for the winter. I had nearly three hundred dollars in a belt strapped around my waist, and some in my pocket; and went ashore after bidding Bill good-by--I never saw the good fellow again--and began my search for John Rucker. I did not need to inquire at Mr. Wisner's office, and I now think I probably saved money by not going there; for I found out from the proprietor of the hotel that Rucker, whom he called Doc Rucker, had moved to Milwaukee early in the summer.
"Friend of yours?" he asked.
"No," I said with a good deal of emphasis; "but I want to find him--bad!"
"If you find him," said he, "and can git anything out of him, let me know and I'll make it an object to you. An' if you have any dealings with him, watch him. Nice man, and all that, and a good talker, but watch him."
"Did you ever see his wife?" I inquired.
"They stopped here a day or two before they left," said the hotel-keeper. "She looked bad. Needed a doctor, I guess--a different doctor!"
There was a cold northeaster blowing, and it was spitting snow as I went back to the docks to see if I could get a boat for Milwaukee. A steamer in the offing was getting ready to go, and I hired a man with a skiff to put me and my carpetbag aboard. We went into Milwaukee in a howling blizzard, and I was glad to find a warm bar in the tavern nearest the dock; and a room in which to house up while I carried on my search. I now had found out that the stage lines and real-estate offices were the best places to go for traces of immigrants; and I haunted these places for a month before I got a single clue to Rucker's movements. It almost seemed that he had been hiding in Milwaukee, or had slipped through so quickly as not to have made himself remembered--which was rather odd, for there was something about his tall stooped figure, his sandy beard, his rather whining and fluent talk, and his effort everywhere to get himself into the good graces of every one he met that made it easy to identify him. His name, too, was one that seemed to stick in people's minds.
5
At last I found a man who freighted and drove stage between Milwaukee and Madison, who remembered Rucker; and had given him passage to Madison sometime, as he remembered it, in May or June--or it might have been July, but it was certainly before the Fourth of July.
"You hauled him--and his wife?" I asked.
"Him and his wife," said the man, "and a daughter."
"A daughter!" I said in astonishment. "They have no daughter."
"Might have been his daughter, and not her'n," said the stage-driver. "Wife was a good deal younger than him, an' the girl was pretty old to be her'n. Prob'ly his. Anyhow, he said she was his daughter."
"It wasn't his daughter," I cried.
"Well, you needn't get het up about it," said he; "I hain't to blame no matter whose daughter she wasn't. She can travel with me any time she wants to. Kind of a toppy, fast-goin', tricky little rip, with a sorrel mane."
"I don't understand it," said I. "Did you notice his wife--whether she seemed to be feeling well?"
"Looked bad," said he. "Never said nothing to nobody, and especially not to the daughter. Used to go off to bed while the old man and the girl held spiritualist doin's wherever we laid over. Went into trances, the girl did, and the old man give lectures about the car of progress that always rolls on and on and on, pervided you consult the spirits. Picked up quite a little money 's we went along, too."
I sat in the barroom and thought about this for a long time. There was something wrong about it. My mother's health was failing, that was plain from what I had heard in Southport; but it did not seem to me, no matter how weak and broken she might be, that she would have allowed Rucker to pass off any stray trollop like the one described by the stage-driver as his daughter, or would have traveled with them for a minute. But, I thought, what could she do? And maybe she was trying to keep the affair within bounds as far as possible. A good woman is easily deceived, too. Perhaps she knew best, after all; and maybe she was going on and on with Rucker from one misery to another in the hope that I, her only son, and the only relative she had on earth, might follow and overtake her, and help her out of the terrible situation in which, even I, as young and immature as I was, could see that she must find herself. I had seen too much of the under side of life not to understand the probable meaning of this new and horrible thing. I remembered how insulted my mother was that time so long ago when Rucker proposed that they join the Free-Lovers at Oneida; and how she had refused to ride home with him, at first, and had walked back on that trail through the woods, leading me by the hand, until she was exhausted, and how Rucker had tantalized her by driving by us, and sneering at us when mother and I finally climbed into the democrat