Vandemark's Folly Part 4

He was better dressed than I had ever seen him; his beard was trimmed, and he was the center of his group. He was talking to a hunchback--a strange-looking person with a black beard. I wondered what had made such a change in Rucker; but I was overjoyed at the thought that he was off on a peddling trip, and that I should not meet him at home.

We floated along toward Tempe in a brighter world than I had known since the time when I felt my bosom swell at the wearing of the new cap my mother had made for me, the day when I, too young to be sad, had thrown the clod over the stone fence as we went down to the great river to meet John Rucker.

5

We tied up for the night some seven miles west of Tempe, but I could not sleep. I felt that I must see my mother that night, and so I trudged along the tow-path in the light of a young moon, which as I plodded on threw my shadow along the road before me. I walked treading on my own shadow, a very different boy from the one who had come over this same route sobbing himself almost into convulsions not many months before.

I was ready to swap ca.n.a.l repartee with any of the ca.n.a.llers. It had become my world. I felt myself a good deal of a man. I could see my mother's astonished look as she opened the door, and heard me in the gruffest voice I could command asking her if she could tell me where Mrs. Rucker lived--and yet, I felt anxious. Somehow a fear that all was not right grew in me; and when I reached the path leading up to the house I turned pale, I feel sure, to see that there was no light.

I tapped at the door; but there was no response. I felt for the key in the place where we used to leave it, but no key was there.

There were no curtains, and as I looked into a room with windows at the opposite side, I saw no furniture. The house was vacant. I went to the little leanto which was used as a summer kitchen, and tried a window which I knew how to open. It yielded to my old trick, and I crawled in.

As I had guessed, the place was empty. I called to my mother, and was scared, I can't tell how much, at the echo of my voice in the deserted cabin. I ventured up the stairs, though I was mortally afraid, and found nothing save the litter of removal. I felt about the closet in my mother's bedroom, to find out if any of her clothes were there, half expecting that she would be where I wanted to find her even in the vacant house. Down in a corner I felt some small article, which I soon found was a worn-out shoe. With this, the only thing left to remember her by, I crawled out of the window, shut it carefully behind me--for I had been brought up to leave things as I found them--and stood alone, the most forlorn and deserted boy in America, as I truly believe.

The moon had gone down, and it was dark. There was frost on the dead gra.s.s, and I went out under the old apple-tree and sat down. What should I do? Where was my mother? She was the only one in the world whom I cared for or who loved me. She was gone, it was night, I was alone and hungry and cold and lost. Perhaps some of the neighbors might know where John Rucker had taken my mother--this thought came to me only after I had sat there until every house was dark. The people had all gone to bed. I tried to think of some neighbor to whom my mother might have told her destination when she moved; but I could recall none of that sort.

She had been too unhappy, here in Tempe, to make friends. So I sat there s.h.i.+vering until morning, unwilling to go away, altogether bewildered, quite at my wits' end, steeped in despair. The world seemed too hard and tough for me.

In the morning I asked at every house if the people knew Mrs. Rucker, and where she had gone, but got no help. One woman knew her, and had employed her as a seamstress; but had found the house vacant the last time she had sent her work.

"Is she a relative of yours?" she asked.

"She is my--" I remember I stopped here and looked away a long time before I could finish the reply, "She is my mother."

"And where were you, my poor boy," said she, "when she moved?"

"I was away at work," I replied.

"Well," said she, "she left word for you somewhere, you may be sure of that. Where did you stay last night?"

"I sat under a tree," said I, "in the yard--up where we used to live."

"And where did you get breakfast?" she asked.

"I wasn't hungry," I answered. "I've been hunting for my mother since daylight."

"You poor child!" said she. "Come right into the kitchen and I'll get you some breakfast. Come in, and we'll find out how you can find your mother!"

While she got me the breakfast which I needed as badly as any meal I ever ate, she questioned me as to relatives, friends, habits, and everything which a good detective would want to know in forming a theory as to how a clue might be obtained. She suggested that I find every man in the village who had a team and did hauling, and ask each one if he had moved Mr. Rucker's family.

"Why didn't she write to you?" she finally queried.

"She didn't know where I was," I replied.

"Did she ever leave word for you anywhere," asked the woman, "before you ran away?"

"We had a place we called our post-office," I answered. "An old hollow apple-tree. We used to leave letters for each other in that. It is the tree I sat under all night."

"Look there," said the woman. "You'll find her! She wouldn't have gone without leaving a trace."

Without stopping to thank her for her breakfast and her sympathy, I ran at the top of my speed for the old apple-tree. I felt in the hollow--it seemed to be filled with nothing but leaves. Just as I was giving up, I touched something stiffer than an autumn leaf, and pulling it out found a letter, all discolored by wet and mold, but addressed to me in my mother's handwriting. I tore it open and read:

"My poor, wandering boy: We are going away--I don't know where. This only I know, we are going west to settle somewhere up the Lakes. The lawsuit is ended, and we got the money your father left me, and are going west to get a new and better start in the world. If you will write me at the post-office in Buffalo, I will inquire there for mail. I wonder if you will ever get this! I wonder if I shall ever see you again! I shall find some way to send word to you. Mr. Rucker says he knows the captain of the boat you work on, and can get his address for me in Syracuse--then I will write you. I am going very far away, and if you ever see this, and never see me again, keep it always, and whenever you see it remember that I would always have died willingly for you, and that I am going to build up for you a fortune which will give you a better life than I have lived. Be a good boy always. Oh, I don't want to go, but I have to!"

It was not signed. I read it slowly, because I was not very good at reading, and turned my eyes west--where my mother had gone. I had lost her! How could any one be found who had disappeared into that region which swallowed up thousands every month? I had no clue. I did not believe that Rucker would try to help her find me. She had been kidnaped away from me. I threw myself down on the dead gra.s.s, and found the worn-out shoe I had picked up in the closet. It had every curve of her foot--that foot which had taken so many weary steps for me. I put my forehead down upon it, and lay there a long time--so long that when I roused myself and went down to the ca.n.a.l, I had not sat on my old stump a minute when I saw Captain Sproule's boat approaching from the west.

With a heavy heart I stepped aboard, carrying the worn-out shoe and the letter, which I have yet. The boat was the only home left me. It had become my world.

CHAPTER IV

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 Towns.h.i.+p. 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, was.h.i.+ng 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 pa.s.sed 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 ca.n.a.l; 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 pa.s.sed 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 ca.n.a.l 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 pa.s.sing 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 ca.n.a.l I surely should find some trace of her. In this I was doing what any detective would have done; for everything sooner or later pa.s.sed through the Erie Ca.n.a.l--news, goods and pa.s.sengers. 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 ca.n.a.l 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"