One letter Peter wrote, soon after the visit to his boat, which was to Mrs. Vandyne. It brought this answer: “My husband called at the place you mentioned, but the little girl is there no longer. I can find no trace of her. Mr. Briggles, I understand, has had to leave this state and no one knows where he is.”
Peter had no time to go to town. Mrs. Montgomery had been as good as her word, and had, on her return to New York in midseason, introduced the “Peter Lane Jack-Knife Toys” to her Arts and Crafts Club, and to two of those small shops on the Avenue that seem so inconspicuous and yet are known to every one. The toys, after their first few weeks as a fashionable fad, settled into a vogue and James Vandyne, whom Mrs. Montgomery had wisely asked to act as Peter's agent, received letters from other shops, and from wholesalers, asking for them. The toys were, of course, almost immediately counterfeited by other dealers, and it was Vandyne who wisely secured copyrights on Peter's models, and who, later in the winter, sent Peter a small branding-iron with which he could burn his autograph on each toy.
Peter's farmer friend stopped at the bank on each trip to town, delivering the toys, which Vandyne tagged and turned over to the express company. The farmer brought back such supplies as Peter had commissioned him to buy. The entire business was crude and unsystematic, even to Peter's method of packing the toys in hay and sewing the parcels in gunny-sacking, but it all served. It was naïve.
When the ice in the river went out, and that in Big Tree Lake softened and honeycombed, Peter put aside his jack-knife for a few days and repaired the old duck-blind that had been Booge's damp and temporary home, and built two more, knowing George Rapp and his friends would be down before long. He built two more bunks in the narrow shanty-boat and cleared a tent space on the highest ground near the boat, constructing a platform four feet above the ground, in case the high water should come with the ducks. All this put a temporary close to his toy-making, but Peter was ready for Rapp when the first flock of ducks dropped into the lake, and that night he sent the farmer's hired man to town with a message to Rapp. Late the next evening Rapp and his two friends found Peter waiting for them at the road, and the best part of the night was spent getting the provisions and duck-boats to the slough. The four men dropped asleep the instant they touched their beds, and it was not until the next morning, when Peter was cooking breakfast that he had an opportunity to ask a question that had been in his mind.
“George,” he said, “you didn't ever hear where they took Buddy to, did you?”
Rapp looked up, and stared at Peter until the match with which he had been lighting his pipe burned his fingers, and he snapped them with pain.
“Do you mean to tell me you don't know where that boy is?” he asked. “Well—I'll—be—Petered! Why, Mrs. Potter's got him!”
Peter was holding a plate, but he was quick, and he caught it before it struck the floor.
“I—I caught that one,” he said in silly fashion.
“You're going to catch something else when Widow Potter sees you,” said George Rapp.