Vandemark's Folly Part 6

"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 towns.h.i.+p 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 pa.s.sage 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 a.s.suring me that if it weren't for the fact that he had several families along the ca.n.a.l 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. G.o.d 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' s.h.i.+p 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 pa.s.sage.

"If there's a crime," said he, "it's a feller like you payin' his pa.s.sage. 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 ca.n.a.l boats for years, and would do my best. He swore at his luck in having to s.h.i.+p land-lubbers, but took me on; and before we reached Southport--now Kenosha--I was good enough so that he wanted me to s.h.i.+p 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 ca.n.a.llers--and I guess not so rough.

I was sorry, many a time, on the voyage, that I had not taken pa.s.sage 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 anch.o.r.ed 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 ash.o.r.e 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 carpet-bag 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 pa.s.sage to Madison sometime, as he remembered it, in May or June--or it might have been July, but it was certainly before the Fourth o 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 n.o.body, 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 pa.s.s 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 d.a.m.ned 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 ca.n.a.l--full of hope and antic.i.p.ation, and yet with a feeling in my heart that again something would stand in my way.

CHAPTER V

THE END OF A LONG QUEST

I went to seek my mother in my best clothes. I had bought some new things in Milwaukee, and was sure that my appearance would comfort her greatly. Instead of being ragged, poverty-stricken, and neglected-looking, I was a picture of a clean, well-clothed working boy.

I had on a good corduroy suit, and because the weather was cold, I wore a new Cardigan jacket. My s.h.i.+rt was of red flannel, very warm and thick; and about my neck I tied a flowered silk handkerchief which had been given me by a lady who was very kind to me once during a voyage by ca.n.a.l, and was called "my girl" by the men on the boat. I wore good kip boots with high tops, with s.h.i.+elds of red leather at the knees, each ornamented with a gilt moon and star--the nicest boots I ever had; and I wore my pants tucked into my boot-tops so as to keep them out of the snow and also to show these glories in leather. With clouded woolen mittens on my hands, given me as a Christmas present by Mrs. Fogg, Captain Sproule's sister, that winter I worked for her near Herkimer, and a wool cap, trimmed about with a broad band of mink fur, and a long crocheted woolen comforter about my neck, I was as well-dressed a boy for a winter's day as a body need look for. I took a look at myself in the gla.s.s, and felt that even at the first glance, my mother would feel that in casting her lot with me she would be choosing not only the comfort of living with her only son but the protection of one who had proved himself a man.

I glowed with pride as I thought of our future together, and of all I would do to make her life happy and easy. I never was a better boy in my life than on that winter evening when I went up the hilly street from the tavern in Madison to the place on a high bluff overlooking a sheet of ice, stretching away almost as far as I could see, which they told me was Fourth Lake, to the house in which I was informed Doctor Rucker lived--a small frame house among stocky, low burr oak trees, on which the dead leaves still hung, giving forth a dreary hiss as the bitter north wind blew through them.

I knocked at the door, and was answered by a red-haired young woman, with a silly grin on her face, the smirk flanked on each side with cork-screw curls which hung down over her bright blue dress; which, as I could see, was pulled out at the seams under her round and shapely arms.