“THUNDERING cats!” cried Peter with exasperation when the tramp had “ha,
ha'd” and grinned through two more verses of the idiotic song; “I've got
to go outside and tend to this boat!”
“You play with your toys a minute, now, Buddy,” said Booge, as soon as
Peter was outside. “My voice is such a delicate voice I got to rest it
between songs or it's liable to get sick and die away for good. You wait
'til I rest it and I'll sing about that funny dog you've got there, if
you remember to ask me.”
He took his few belongings from the valise and hung them before the fire
and then, crawling into the bunk, settled himself comfortably, and went
to sleep. When Peter came in a minute later, with feet and legs chilled,
Booge was snoring.
“Get up, here!” said Peter, shaking him.
“You better not wake up Booge, Uncle Peter,” said Buddy, “he's got to
get his voice rested up.”
“You get up and get your boots on quick, and come out here and help
me,” Peter commanded the tramp. “We got to get this boat afloat quick or
we'll be here all winter.”
“All right, Captain Kidd,” said Booge cheerfully. “And you remember to
ask me to sing you that song about the funny dog,” he told Buddy.
The slough was now free from floating river ice, but Peter noticed that
the wind was still from the east. This should have kept the ice running
through the slough. He knew the ice must have jammed at the head of the
slough, and that it might act as a dam, lowering the water in the slough
enough to make it impossible to move the boat. He was working at the
pike-pole, but with poor success, and when Booge came out their combined
efforts seemed to accomplish no more. But Peter knew the boat must be
moved, and long after Booge wanted to give it up as a bad job, Peter
made him labor at the pole. By standing on the landward edge of the
deck and joggling the boat as they pushed on the pole they succeeded in
inching the shanty-boat toward deeper water, and at length she floated
free and swung down the current. Where the lake narrowed and ended Peter
ran the boat against the shore, letting her rest against a fallen tree.
It was a precarious position, and one in which it would not be safe to
leave the boat if the river ice ran again, but just above this where the
lake widened, Peter saw a safe harbor. Fifty feet out from the southern
shore of the lake a bar had formed, and between the bar and the
shore there was deep water enough to float the boat. To break the ice of
this cove, warp the boat around the point and into this snug harbor was
Peter's intention. His only cable had snapped close to the boat when she
broke away, and he made Booge hold the bow of the boat close against the
bank while he hastily twisted a makeshift rope of trot-lines--hooks and
all.
With Booge on the shore dragging at the rope end, and Peter breaking
the ice with his pike-pole from the deck, and pushing with the pole, the
shanty-boat moved slowly out of the current of the slough and into the
quiet water where, as the river fell, it would be stranded with its hull
in the mud, as safe from danger as if on top of one of the hills two
miles back from the slough.
It was hard work--the hardest Booge had tackled for years--and it
consumed the balance of the day. When the two men went inside Peter did
not complain when Booge threw himself on the bunk.
If Booge imagined he had won an easy and permanent victory, leading to
a life of listless ease, he misestimated Buddy and Peter. Buddy alone
could have kept him busy, but Peter let Booge know immediately that if
he was to stay even a day he must earn his food and lodging.
The tramp was an odd combination of good nature and laziness; of good
intentions and poor fulfilments. He could twang a banjo, when he had one
to twang, and his present low estate was due to the untimely end of
the career of a “medicine show,” one of those numerous half-vaudeville,
half-peddling aggregations that at that time filled the country, charging
a dime for admission to the “show” and a dollar a bottle for the
“remedy.” Out of a hidden past Booge had dropped into the position of
general “roustabout” for the show, caring for the tent, doing a banjo
“turn” when the “artist” went on his regular spree, and driving the
wagon when the show moved from town to town. When the final catastrophe
came, Booge sold his banjo and started on the trail of another
medicine-show. It fled as he advanced, and his garments decayed, were
replaced with cast-off clothes, until he awoke one morning with a sharp
realization that he was no longer a specialist seeking a position, but a
common, every-day tramp. It did not annoy him at all. Being a tramp had
advantages. He accepted it as his ultimate destiny.
Caught near Riverbank by the cold weather, he recalled Lone Tree Lake,
where the duck hunters usually had a shack or a shanty-boat, vacant
at this season, and he left the main road only to find nothing but the
scant shelter of the duck blind. Peter's boat, when it appeared, had
seemed a gift from the gods.
The shore against which the boat now lay was a thicket of willows so
close of growth that it was almost impossible to fight through them,
and while most were no larger than whips some were as large as a man's
wrist. Against the low bank the boat lay broadside and so close that the
willow branches reached over her roof, and as soon as Booge had brought
his valise inside Peter reached far under the bunk and brought forth an
ax.
“Now, Booge ain't going to have time to sing songs to you daytimes,
Buddy, because everybody that lives in this boat has work to do,” said
Peter, “and as I've got to make some spoons, Booge is going to take this
ax and clear away a path through the willows. And you want to cut them
off close down to the roots,” he warned Booge, “or you'll have to do
it over again. You cut a path from the front door through that willow
clump, so we can pass in and out and get fire-wood, and when you 've got
the path you can fetch the fire-wood. I'm going to stay in to-day and
make spoons.”
Booge took the ax and looked at it quizzically.
“Well, if this ain't my old friend wood-splitter I've been dodging for
years and years,” he said good naturedly. “How-do, wood-splitter? How's
your cousin buck saw? Is all the little saw-bucks well?”
“You'd better get at them willows,” said Peter.
“I just wanted to enquire about them old friends of mine,” said Booge.
“You'll have time enough to talk to Mr. Wood-ax before you get done with
him,” said Peter dryly, and Booge laughed and went out.
That evening, when Buddy was in bed Peter put down his jack-knife long
enough to scribble down the new variations of the “Tell the Little Baby”
song.
“Writin' a book?” Booge asked.
“Writing home to my folks to tell them how much I'm enjoying your
visit,” Peter said, “and how sorry I am you 've got to be moving along
in a day or so.”
But Booge did not move along. After Peter had ostentatiously bathed once
or twice Booge became painfully clean. He would come in from the jobs
Peter set him and wash his face and hands violently.
“You 're getting as clean as them fellows that get five dollars' worth
of baths at the Y. M. C. A., ain't you?” Peter said scornfully.
“A feller can get lots of things at the Y. M. C. A. for five dollars
that he can't get without it,” said Booge good naturedly. “You don't
want to knock me all the time, Peter. A horse crops grass one way, and a
cow crops it another way, and the Lord is the maker of them all, as the
feller said. So long as a man has a clean conscience and a clear eye he
can walk right up to any bull alive--if the bull wants to let him.”
“I'm glad you got a clean conscience,” said Peter. “Maybe that's why you
don't worry.”
“If you feed a pig regular it don't ask to be petted,” said Booge, “and
that's the way with me, but you ought to give me some credit for the way
I pitched in and labored in this here driftwood vineyard when you said
to. I bet the prodigal son hated to get down to work after his
pa's party, and yet he got to be quite a respected feller in his
neighborhood. You oughtn't to think a man can't work because he don't.
There's lots of fellers never seen the sea that has eat salt codfish.”
“I guess you read that in a book,” said Peter.
“I guess not,” said Booge. “I never read but one book in my life. I read
the Bible, unexpurgated edition, when I was a kid, and it sort of cured
me of book readin'. There ain't hardly a comfortable word in it for an
easy-goin' man. If the Bible had been published to-day it would have got
some mighty severe criticism.”
“Booge,” said Peter suddenly, “how'd you ever happen to become a tramp?”
“How'd you ever happen to become a shanty-boatman?” asked Booge,
grinning, but Peter was serious.
“I guess you 're right about that,” he said. “I hadn't ought to object
to what you are, when I'm what I am. I just let myself slide, was how.
I had bad lungs was what was the matter with me, when I was a kid, so
my pa bought me a farm and put a man on it to run it for me, and I just
fooled around and tried to get husky and stout and by the time I was old
enough to run the farm Father busted, and then a--certain circumstances
took the farm from me, and I took to the river. It seemed like me and
the river was old friends from ever so far back. So I stuck to it and it
stuck to me, and--that's the story.”
“Just run down hill,” commented Booge cheerfully. “It's funny, ain't it,
that water's about the only thing that don't get blamed for runnin' down
hill? You and the river sort of run down together. What started me was
something just about as common as lungs--it was wives. Yes sir, just
plain wives!”
“Don't mean to say you had two of 'em?” asked Peter.
“Almost,” said Booge. “I had one-half of that many. I'm a naturally
happy man, and I've had all sorts of ups and downs, and as near as I can
make out, a man can be happy in most any circumstances except where he
don't give his wife the clothes she wants. My notion of hell is a place
where a man has fifty wives and no money to buy clothes for 'em. My wife
got to goin' through my pockets every night for money to buy clothes, so
I skipped out.”
“You don't mean to say a woman would rob a man's pockets whilst he was
asleep?” asked Peter. “Was that what she done? Took money from them?”
“No, the trouble was she didn't find no money to take,” said Booge.
“Light on money and strong on breath was what was my trouble.”
He made an expressive drinking motion with his hand.
“Booze,” he said. “Booze done it.”
“You'd ought to quit it,” Peter said. “You don't seem like a common
tramp. I wouldn't let you stay here if you was. Look at the harm
booze done you. Look at what it done when you went to sleep in that
duck-blind.”
“That's so,” agreed Booge. “It got me a good shanty-boat to sleep in
and three square meals a day and a place to practise my voice in. But I
suppose you mean it got me where I have to listen to temp'rance lectures
from you.”
That was sort of hard on Peter, although he would not have admitted it,
he was growing fond of the careless, happy-go-lucky tramp. Booge had a
fund of rough philosophy and, more than all else, he was good to Buddy,
and had not Peter resolved to be a different man himself on Buddy's
account, he would have liked nothing better than to have Booge make his
winter home in the shanty-boat, but he felt that Booge must go. The
trouble was to drive him away. Booge would not drive, and Peter thought
of a hundred quite impossible schemes for getting rid of him before he
hit on the one he finally decided to put into effect.
He had noticed that the farmer on the hill back of the lake, where Buddy
had spent the day of his mother's funeral, had a huge pile of cord wood
in his yard, and he tramped across the lowland to the farmer's house and
dickered for the sawing of the wood. It was a large contract, and Peter
as a rule did not care to saw wood except in dire straits, but he had
decided that if he was to be a man of worth he must be a man of work to
begin with, and the wood pile was opportunity. It was while walking home
after making his bargain with his farmer friend that he had his happy
idea--Booge must saw wood! His food supply would be cut off otherwise!
He explained it to Booge that evening. Here they were in the
shanty-boat, Peter explained, the two of them and Buddy, all eating from
the common store of food, and that store dwindling daily. Buddy could
not work, but Peter could, and Booge must. Then he explained about the
pile of wood, a good winter's work for the two of them. Booge listened
in silence. He was silent for several minutes after Peter ceased
talking, and then he grinned.
“The man that says he wouldn't rather find a silver dollar in the road
than earn five dollars a-workin', is like that man that got killed with
a thunderbolt for careless conversation,” he said cheerfully, “so I
won't say it. Wood-sawin' and me has been enemies ever since I became a
tourist. I guess I'll have to go--”
“I bet you would!” said Peter.
“Yes,” said Booge, “I'll have to go--up to that farmer's and saw wood.”
His eyes twinkled as he saw Peter's face fall. And he was as good as
his word. The two men, taking turns carrying Buddy or leading him by
the hand, walked across the snow-covered bottom to the farm the next
morning, and while Booge did not over-exert himself, he at least sawed
wood. He sawed enough to prevent any unduly harsh criticism from Peter.
For Buddy the trips were pleasure jaunts. He was able to play all day
with the farmer's little daughter, just enough older than he to hold her
own against his imperious little will, and Booge might have developed
into an excellent sawer of wood, but one morning, the little girl did
not come out to play with Buddy. She was sick, and in due time Buddy
became sick too--plain, simple measles.
“Now, then,” said Peter when one morning he awakened to find Buddy's
face covered with the red spots and the boy complaining, “one of us has
got to stay here in the boat and take care of Buddy.”
“You'd better stay,” said Booge promptly. “You stay, Peter, and I'll go
on up and saw wood. I'm gettin' quite fond of it.”
Peter hesitated. He ran his hand over the boy's white head lovingly.
“Who do you want to stay with you, Buddy?” he asked.
“I don't care, Uncle Peter,” said Buddy listlessly.
It was a full minute before Peter took his hand from Buddy's curls.
“I guess you'd better stay, Booge,” he said then. “You can sing what he
likes better'n I can.”
“Well, if you think I can amuse him better'n you can, I'll stay,
Peter,” said Booge reluctantly. “If he seems to hanker for you, I'll
fire the shot-gun and you can come to him.”
So one of these two men went to his work, and the other seated himself
on the floor of the cabin with his back against the wall and sang “Go
Tell the Little Baby, the Baby, the Baby,” through his nose, and made
faces, to amuse a freckle-faced little boy with a very light attack of
the measles.