I BECOME A SAILOR, AND FIND A CLUE
I was just past thirteen when I had my great wrestle with loneliness and
desertion that night under the old apple-tree at Tempe; and the next
three and a half years are not of much concern to the reader who is
interested only in the history of Vandemark Township. I was just a
growing boy, tussling, more alone than I should have been, and with no
guidance or direction, with that problem of keeping soul and body
together, which, after all, is the thing with which all of us are
naturally obliged to cope all through our lives. I lived here and there,
most of the time looking to Eben Sproule as a prop and support, as a boy
must look to some one, or fall into bad and dangerous ways--and even
then, maybe he will.
I was a backward boy, and this saved me from some deadfalls, I guess;
and I had the Dutch hard mouth and a tendency to feel my ground and see
how the land lay, which made me take so long to balk at any new vice or
virtue that the impulse or temptation was sometimes past before I could
get ready to embrace it. I guess there are some who may read this who
have let chances for sinful joys go by while an inward debate went on in
their own souls; and if they will only own up to it, found themselves
afterward guiltily sorry for not falling from grace. "As a man thinketh
in his heart, so is he," is Scripture, and must be true if rightly
understood; but I wonder if it is as bad for one of us tardy people to
regret not having sinned, as it would have been if he had been quicker
and done so. I hardly think it can be as bad; for many a saint must have
had such experiences--which really is thinking both right and wrong, and
doing right, even if he did think wrong afterward.
That first winter, I lived on Captain Sproule's farm, and had my board,
washing and mending. His sister kept house for him, and his younger
brother, Finley, managed the place summers, with such help in handling
it as the captain had time to give when he passed the farm on his
voyages. It was quite a stock farm, and here I learned something about
the handling of cattle,--and in those days this meant breaking and
working them. It was a hard winter, and there was so much work on the
farm that I got only one month's schooling.
The teacher was a man named Lockwood. He kept telling us that we ought
to read about farming, and study the business by which we expected to
live; and this made a deep impression on me. Lockwood was a real
teacher, and like all such worked without realizing it on stuff more
lasting than steel or stone,--young, soft human beings. I did not see
that there was much to study about as to driving on the canal; and when
I told him that he said that the business of taking care of the horses
and feeding them was something that ought to be closely studied if I
expected to be a farmer. This looked reasonable to me; and I soon got to
be one of those driver boys who were noted for the sleekness and fatness
of their teams, and began getting the habit of studying any task I had
to do. But I was more interested in cattle than anything else, and was
sorry when spring came and we unmoored the old boat and pulled down to
Albany for a cargo west. This summer was like the last, except that I
was now a skilled driver, larger, stronger, and more confident
than before.
I used to ask leave to go on ahead on some fast boat when we drew near
to the Sproule farm, so I could spend a day or two at farm work, see the
family, and better than this, I am afraid--for they were pretty good to
me--look the cattle over, pet and feed the calves, colts and lambs,
count the little pigs and generally enjoy myself. On these packet boats,
too, I could talk with travelers, and try to strike the trail of
John Rucker.
I had one never-failing subject of conversation with the Sproules and
all my other acquaintances--how to find my mother. We went over the
whole matter a thousand times. I had no post-office address, and my
mother had depended on Rucker's getting Captain Sproule's address at
Syracuse--which of course he had never meant to do--and had not asked me
to inquire at any place for mail. I wrote letters to her at Buffalo as
she had asked me to do in her letter, but they were returned unclaimed.
It was plain that Rucker meant to give me the slip, and had done so. He
could be relied upon to balk every effort my mother might make to find
me. I inquired for letters at the post-offices in Buffalo, Syracuse,
Albany and Tempe at every chance, but finally gave up in despair.
2
I had only one hope, and that was to find the hump-backed man with the
black beard--the man Rucker was talking to on the boat we had passed on
our voyage eastward before I found my home deserted. This was a very
slim chance, but it was all there was left. Captain Sproule had noticed
him, and said he had seen him a great many times before. He was a land
agent, who made it a business to get emigrants to go west, away up the
lakes somewhere.
"If your stepfather had any money," said the captain, "you can bet that
hunchback tried to bamboozle him into some land deal, and probably did.
And if he did, he'll remember him and his name, and where he left the
canal or the Lakes, and maybe where he located."
"I must watch for him," I said.
"We'll all watch for him," said the captain.
Paddy was not with us the next summer; but Bill was, and so was Ace,
with whom I was now on the best of terms. We all agreed to keep our eyes
peeled for a hunchback with a black beard. Bill said he'd spear him with
a boathook as soon as he hove in sight for fear he'd get away. Ace was
sure the hunchback was a witch[3] who had spirited off my folks; and
looked upon the situation without much hope. He would agree to sing out
if he saw this monster; but that was as far as he would promise to
help me.
[3] "Witch" in American dialect is of the common gender. "Wizard" has no
place in the vocabulary.--G.v.d.M.
The summer went by with no news and no hunchback; and that winter I
stayed with an aunt of Captain Sproule's, taking care of her stock. I
got five dollars a month, and my keep, but no schooling. She wanted me
to stay the summer with her, and offered me what was almost a man's
wages; which shows how strong I was getting, and how much of a farmer I
was. I did stay and helped through the spring's work; but on Captain
Sproule's second passing of Mrs. Fogg's farm, I joined him, not as a
driver, but as a full hand. I kept thinking all the time of my mother,
and felt that if I kept to the canal I surely should find some trace of
her. In this I was doing what any detective would have done; for
everything sooner or later passed through the Erie Canal--news, goods
and passengers. But I had little hope when I thought of the flood which
surged back and forth through this river of news, and of the little bit
of a net with which I fished it for information.
All this time the stream of emigration and trade swelled, and swelled
until it became a torrent. I thought at times that all the people in the
world had gone crazy to move west. We took families, even neighborhoods,
household goods, live stock, and all the time more and more people. They
were talking about Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan and Wisconsin, and
once in a while the word Iowa was heard; and one family astonished us by
saying that they were going to Texas.
The Mormons had already made their great migration to Utah, and the
Northwestern Trail across the plains to Oregon and to California took
its quota of gold-seekers every year. John C. Fremont had crossed the
continent to California, and caused me to read my first book, _The Life
of Kit Carson_.
Bill, who never could speak in hard enough terms about sailing on the
mud-puddle Lakes, which he had never done as yet, once went to
Pittsburgh, meaning to go from there down the Ohio and up the Missouri.
He had heard of the Missouri River fur-trade, and big wages on the
steamboats carrying emigrants from St. Louis up-stream to Nebraska, Iowa
and Dakota Territory, and bringing back furs and hides. But at
Pittsburgh he was turned back by news of the outbreak of cholera at New
Orleans, a disease which had struck us with terror along the canal two
or three years before. That summer there were medicine pedlers working
on all the boats, selling a kind of stuff they called "thieves' vinegar"
which was claimed to be a medicine that was used in the old country
somewhere by thieves who robbed the infected houses in safety, protected
by this wonderful "vinegar"; and only told how it was made to save their
lives when they were about to be hanged. A man offered me a bottle of
this at Rochester, for five dollars, and finally came down to fifty
cents. This made me think it was of no use, and I did not buy, though
just before I had been wondering whether I had not better borrow the
money of Captain Sproule; so I saved my money, which was getting to be a
habit of mine.
California, the Rockies, the fur-trade, the Ohio Valley, the new cities
up the Lakes and the new farms in the woods back of them, and some few
tales of the prairies--all these voices of the West kept calling us more
loudly and plainly every year, and every year I grew stronger and more
confident of myself.
The third year I had made up my mind that I would get work on a
passenger boat so as to be able to see and talk with more people who
were going up and down the Lakes and the canal. I went from one to
another as I met folks who were coming back from the West, and asked
every one if he had known a man out west named John Rucker; but, though
I found traces of two or three Ruckers in the course of the three years,
it did not take long in each case to find out that it was not the man I
hated so, and so much wanted to find. People used to point me out as the
boy who was trying to find a man named Rucker; and two or three came to
me and told me of men they had met who might be my man. I became known
to many who traveled the canal as being engaged in some mysterious
quest. I suppose I had an anxious and rather strange expression as I
made my inquiries.
It took me two years to make up my mind to change to a passenger boat,
so slow was I to alter my way of doing things. I have always been that
way. My wife read _Knickerbocker's History of New York_ after the
children were grown up and she had more time for reading, and always
told the children that she was positive their father must be descended
from that ancient Dutchman[4] who took thirteen months to look the
ground over before he began to put up that well-known church in
Rotterdam of which he was the builder. After smoking over it to the tune
of three hundred pounds of Virginia tobacco, after knocking his head--to
jar his ideas loose, maybe--and breaking his pipe against every church
in Holland and parts of France and Germany; after looking at the site of
his church from every point of view--from land, from water, and from the
air which he went up into by climbing other towers; this good old Dutch
contractor and builder pulled off his coat and five pairs of breeches,
and laid the corner-stone of the church. I think that this delay was a
credit to him. Better be slow than sorry. The church was, according to
my wife, a very good one; and if the man had jumped into the job on the
first day of his contract it might have been a very bad one. So, when I
used to take a good deal of time to turn myself before beginning any
job, and my wife would say to one of the boys: "Just wait! He'll start
to build that church after a while!" I always took it as a compliment.
Finally I always did the thing, if after long study it seemed the right
thing to do, or if some one else had not done it in the meantime; just
as I finally told Captain Sproule that I expected to work on a passenger
boat the next summer, and was told by him that he had sold his boat to a
company, and was to be a passenger-boat captain himself the next summer;
and would sign me on if I wanted to stay with him--which I did.
[4] Irving's impersonation of Homer must have nodded when he named this
safe, sane and staunch worthy Hermanus Van Clattercop.--G.v.d.M.
3
I was getting pretty stocky now, and no longer feared anything I was
likely to meet. I was well-known to the general run of canallers, and
had very little fighting to do; once in a while a fellow would pick a
fight with me because of some spite, frequently because I refused to
drink with him, or because he was egged on to do it; and this year I was
licked by three toughs in Batavia. They left me senseless because I
would not say "enough." I was getting a good deal of reputation as a
wrestler. I liked wrestling better than fighting; and though a smallish
man always, like my fellow Iowan Farmer Burns, I have seldom found my
master at this game. It is much more a matter of sleight than strength.
A man must be cautious, wary, cool, his muscles always ready, as quick
as a flash to meet any strain; but the main source of my success seemed
to be my ability to use all the strength in every muscle of my body at
any given instant, so as to overpower a much stronger opponent by
pouring out on him so much power in a single burst of force that he was
carried away and crushed. I have thrown over my head and to a distance
of ten feet men seventy-five pounds heavier than I was. This is the only
thing I ever did so well that I never met any one who could beat me.
I was of a fair complexion, with blue eyes, and my upper lip and chin
were covered with a reddish fuzz over a very ruddy skin--a little like
David's of old, I guess. On the passenger boats I met a great many
people, and was joked a good deal about the girls, some of whom seemed
to take quite a shine to me, just as they do to any fair-haired,
reasonably clean-looking boy; especially if he has a little reputation;
but though I sometimes found myself looking at one of them with
considerable interest there was not enough time for as slow a boy as I
to begin, let alone to finish any courting operations on even as long a
voyage as that from Albany to Buffalo. I was really afraid of them all,
and they seemed to know it, and made a good deal of fun of me.
We did not carry our horses on this boat; but stopped at relay stations
for fresh teams, and after we had pulled out from one of these stations,
we went flying along at from six to eight miles an hour, with a cook
getting up fine meals; and we often had a "sing" as we called it when in
the evening the musical passengers got together and tuned up. Many of
them carried dulcimers, accordions, fiddles, flutes and various kinds of
brass horns, and in those days a great many people could sing the good
old hymns in the _Carmina Sacra_, and the glees and part-songs in the
old _Jubilee_, with the soprano, tenor, bass and alto, and the high
tenor and counter which made better music than any gathering of people
are likely to make nowadays. All they needed was a leader with a
tuning-fork, and off they would start, making the great canal a pretty
musical place on fine summer evenings. We traveled night and day, and at
night the boat, lighted up as well as we could do it then, with lanterns
and lamps burning whale-oil, and with candles in the cabin, looked like
a traveling banquet-hall or opera-house or tavern.
We were always crowded with immigrants when we went west; and on our
eastern voyages even, our passenger traffic was mostly related to the
West, its trade, and its people. Many of the men had been out west
"hunting country," and sat on the decks or in the cabins until late at
night, telling their fellow-travelers what they had found, exchanging
news, and sometimes altering their plans to take advantage of what
somebody else had found. Some had been looking for places where they
could establish stores or set up in some other business. Some had gone
to sell goods. Some were travelers for the purpose of preying on others.
I saw a good deal of the world, that summer, some of which I understood,
but not much. I understand it far better now as I look back upon it.
I noticed for the first time now that class of men with whom we became
so well acquainted later, the land speculators. These, and the bankers,
many of whom seemed to have a good deal of business in the West, formed
a class by themselves, and looked down from a far height on the working
people, the farmers, and the masses generally, who voyaged on the same
boats with them. They talked of development, and the growth of the
country, and the establishments of boats and the building of railways;
while the rest of us thought about homes and places to make our livings.
The young doctors and lawyers, and some old ones, too, who were going
out to try life on the frontiers, occupied places in between these
exalted folk and the rest of us. There were preachers among our
passengers, but most of them were going west. On almost every voyage
there would be a minister or missionary who would ask to have the
privilege of holding prayer on the boat; and Captain Sproule always
permitted it. The ministers, too, were among those who hunted up the
singers in the crowds and organized the song services from the
_Carmina Sacra_.
4
I was getting used to the life and liked it, and gradually I found my
resolve to go west getting less and less strong; when late in the summer
of 1854 something happened which restored it to me with tenfold
strength. We had reached Buffalo, had discharged our passengers and
cargo, and were about starting on our eastward voyage when I met Bill,
the sailor, as he was coming out of a water-front saloon. I ran to him
and called him by name; but at first he did not know me.
"This ain't little Jake, is it?" he said. "By mighty, I b'lieve it is!
W'y, you little runt, how you've growed. Come in an' have a drink with
your ol' friend Bill as nussed you when you was a baby!"
I asked to be excused; for I hadn't learned to drink more than a thin
glass of rum and water, and that only when I got chilled. I turned the
subject by asking him what he was doing; and at that he slapped his
thigh and said he had great news for me.
"I've found that hump-backed bloke," he said. "He came down on the boat
with us from Milwaukee. I knowed him as soon as I seen him, but I
couldn't think all the v'yage what in time I wanted to find him fer. You
jest put it in my mind!"
"Where is he?" I shouted. "You hain't lost him, have you?"
Bill stood for quite a while chewing tobacco, and scratching his head.
"Where is he?" I yelled.
"Belay bellering," said Bill. "I'm jest tryin' to think whuther he went
on a boat east, or a railroad car, or a stage-coach, or went to a
tavern. He went to a tavern, that's what he done. A drayman I know took
his dunnage!"
"Come on," I cried, "and help me find the drayman!"
"I'll have to study on this," said Bill. "My mind hain't as active as
usual. I need somethin' to brighten me up!"
"What do you need?" I inquired. "Can't you think where he stays?"
"A little rum," he answered, "is great for the memory. I b'lieve most
any doctor'd advise a jorum of rum for a man in my fix, to restore the
intellects."
I took him back into the grog-shop and bought him rum, taking a very
little myself, with a great deal of blackstrap and water. Bill's
symptoms were such as to drive me to despair. He sat looking at me like
an old owl, and finally took my glass and sipped a little from it.
"Hain't you never goin' to grow up?" he asked; and poured out a big
glass of the pure quill for me, and fiercely ordered me to drink it. By
this time I was desperate; so I smashed his glass and mine; and taking
him by the throat I shook him and told him that if he did not take me to
the hump-backed man or to the drayman, and that right off, I'd shut off
his wind for good. When he clinched with me I lifted him from the floor,
turned him upside down, and lowered him head-first into an empty barrel.
By this time the saloon-keeper was on the spot making all sorts of
threats about having us both arrested, and quite a crowd had gathered. I
lifted Bill out of the barrel and seated him in a chair, and paid for
the glasses; all the time watching Bill for fear he might renew the
tussle, and take me in flank; but he sat as if dazed until I had quieted
matters down, when he rose and addressed the crowd.
"My little son," said he, patting me on the shoulder. "Stoutest man of
his inches in the world. We'll be round here's evenin'--give a show.
C'mon, Jake!"
"Wot I said about growin' up," said he, as we went along the street, "is
all took back, Jake!"
We had not gone more than a quarter of a mile when we came to a place
where there was a stand for express wagons and drays; and Bill picked
out from the crowd, with a good deal of difficulty, I thought, a
hard-looking citizen to whom he introduced me as the stoutest man on the
Erie Canal. The drayman seemed to know me. He said he had seen me
wrestle. When I asked him about the hunchback he said he knew right
where he was; but there was no hurry, and tried to get up a wrestling
match between me and a man twice my size who made a specialty of hauling
salt, and bragged that he could take a barrel of it by the chimes, and
lift it into his dray. I told him that I was in a great hurry and begged
to be let off; but while I was talking they had made up a purse of
twenty-one shillings to be wrestled for by us two. I finally persuaded
the drayman to show me the hunchback's tavern, and promised to come back
and wrestle after I had found him; to which the stake-holder agreed, but
all the rest refused to consent, and the money was given back to the
subscribers. The drayman, Bill and I went off together to find the
tavern--which we finally did.
It was a better tavern than we were used to, and I was a little bashful
when I inquired if a man with a black beard was stopping there, and was
told that there were several.
"What's his name?" asked the clerk.
"'E's a hunchback," said Bill--I had been too diffident to describe him
so.
"Mr. Wisner, of Southport, Wisconsin," said the clerk, "has a back that
ain't quite like the common run of backs. Want to see him?"
He was in a nice room, with a fire burning and was writing at a desk
which opened and shut, and was carried with him when he traveled. He
wore a broadcloth, swallow-tailed coat, a collar that came out at the
sides of his neck and stood high under his ears; and his neck was
covered with a black satin stock. On the bed was a tall, black beaver,
stove-pipe hat. There were a great many papers on the table and the bed,
and the room looked as if it had been used by crowds of people--the
floor was muddy about the fireplace, and there were tracks from the door
to the cheap wooden chairs which seemed to have been brought in to
accommodate more visitors than could sit on the horsehair chairs and
sofa that appeared to belong in the room. Mr. Wisner looked at us
sharply as we came in, and shook hands first with Bill and then with me.
"Glad to see you again," said he heartily. "Glad to see you again! I
want to tell you some more about Wisconsin. I haven't told you the half
of its advantages."
I saw that he thought we had been there before, and was about to correct
his mistake, when Bill told him that that's what we had come for.
"What you said about Wisconsin," said Bill, winking at me, "has sort of
got us all worked up."
"Is it a good country for a boy to locate in?" I asked.
"A paradise for a boy!" he said, in a kind of bubbly way. "And for a
poor man, it's heaven! Plenty of work. Good wages. If you want a home,
it's the only God's country. What kind of land have you been farming in
the past?"
Bill said that he had spent his life plowing the seas, but that all the
fault I had was being a landsman. I admitted that I had farmed some
near Herkimer.
"And," sneered Mr. Wisner crushingly, "how long does it take a man to
clear and grub out and subdue enough land in Herkimer County to make a
living on? Ten years! Twenty years! Thirty years! Why, in Herkimer
County a young man doesn't buy anything when he takes up land: he sells
something! He sells himself to slavery for life to the stumps and
sprouts and stones! But in Wisconsin you can locate on prairie land
ready for the plow; or you can have timber land, or both kinds, or
opening's that are not quite woods nor quite prairie--there's every kind
of land there except poor land! It's a paradise, and land's cheap. I can
sell you land right back of Southport, with fine market for whatever you
raise, on terms that will pay themselves--pay themselves. Just go aboard
the first boat, and I'll give you a letter to my partner in
Southport--and your fortunes will be made in ten years!"
"The trouble is," said Bill, "that we'll be so damned lonesome out where
we don't know any one. If we could locate along o' some of our ol'
mates, somebody like old John Tucker,--it would be a--a paradise,
eh, Jake?"
"The freest-hearted people in the world," said Mr. Wisner. "They'll
travel ten miles to take a spare-rib or a piece of fresh beef to a new
neighbor. Invite the stranger in to stay all night as he drives along
the road. You'll never miss your old friends; and probably you'll find
old neighbors most anywhere. Why, this country has moved out to
Wisconsin. It won't be long till you'll have to go there to find
'em--ha, ha, ha!"
"If we could find a man out there named Tucker--"
"An old--sort of--of relative of mine," I put in, seeing that Bill was
spoiling it all, "John Rucker."
"I know him!" cried Wisner. "Kind of a tall man with a sandy beard? Good
talker? Kind of plausible talker? Used to live down east of Syracuse?
Pretty well fixed? Went out west three years ago? Calls himself
Doctor Rucker?"
"I guess that's the man," said I; "do you know where he is now?"
"Had a wife and no children?" asked Wisner. "And was his wife a quiet,
kind of sad-looking woman that never said much?"
"Yes! Yes!" 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 wagon, and rode on with him toward Tempe. I could
partly see, after I had thought over it for a day or so, just what this
new torture might mean to her.
I was about to start on foot for Madison, and looked up my stage-driver
acquaintance to ask him about the road.
"Why don't you go on the railroad?" he asked. "The damned thing has put
me out of business, and I'm no friend of it; but if you're in a hurry
it's quicker'n walkin'."
I had seen the railway station in Milwaukee, and looked at the train;
but it had never occurred to me that I might ride on it to Madison. Now
we always expect a railway to run wherever we want to go; but then it
was the exception--and the only railroad running out of Milwaukee was
from there to Madison. On this I took that day my first ride in a
railway car, reaching Madison some time after three. This seemed like
flying to me. I had seen plenty of railway tracks and trains in New
York; but I had to come to Wisconsin to patronize one.
I rode on, thinking little of this new experience, as I remember, so
filled was I with the hate of John Rucker which almost made me forget my
love for my mother. Perhaps the one was only the reverse side of the
other. I had made up my mind what to do. I would try hard not to kill
Rucker, though I tried him and condemned him to death in my own mind
several times for every one of the eighty miles I rode; but I knew that
this vengeance was not for me.
I would take my mother away from him, though, in spite of everything;
and she and I would move on to a new home, somewhere, living happily
together for the rest of our lives.
I was happy when I thought of this home, in which, with my new-found,
fresh strength, my confidence in myself, my knack of turning my hand to
any sort of common work, my ability to defend her against everything and
everybody--against all the Ruckers in the world--my skill in so many
things that would make her old age easy and happy, I would repay her for
all this long miserable time,--the cruelty of Rucker when she took me
out of the factory while he was absent, the whippings she had seen him
give me, the sacrifices she had made to give me the little schooling I
had had, the nights she had sewed to make my life a little easier, the
tears she dropped on my bed when she came and tucked me in when I was
asleep, the pangs of motherhood, and the pains worse than those of
motherhood which she had endured because she was poor, and married to
a beast.
I would make all this up to her if I could. I went into Madison, much as
a man goes to his wedding; only the woman of my dreams was my mother.
But I felt as I did that night when I returned to Tempe after my first
summer on the canal--full of hope and anticipation, and yet with a
feeling in my heart that again something would stand in my way.