The Jack-Knife Man

by Ellis Parker Butler

The shanty-boat was moored in Rapp's slough, and had been there three days. The cold weather, which continued unabated, had sealed the boat in by spreading a sheet of ice over the surface of the slough, but Peter did not like the way the river was behaving. Between the new-formed ice and the shore a narrow strip of water appeared faster than the cold could freeze it and the ice that covered the slough cracked now and then in long, irregular lines, all telling that the river was rising, and rising rapidly. This meant that the cold snap was merely local and that up the river unseasonably warm weather had brought rains or a great thaw. There was no great danger of a long period of high water so late in the season, for cold waves were sure to freeze the North soon, but the present high water was not only apt to be inconvenient but actually dangerous for the shanty-boat. A rise of another foot would cover the lowland, and if the weather turned warm Buddy and Peter would be cut off from the hill farms by two miles of water-covered “bottom,” to wade across which in Peter's thin shoes would be most unpleasant.

The danger was that the wind which now blew steadily toward the Iowa side and down stream, might force the huge weight of floating ice into the head of the slough, pushing and pressing it against the newly formed slough ice and crumbling it—cracked and loosened at the edges as it was—and thus pile the whole mass irresistibly against the little shanty-boat. In such an event the boat would either be overwhelmed by one of those great ice hills that pile up when the river ice meets an obstruction or, borne before the tons of pressure, be carried out of the slough with the moving ice and forced down the river for many miles, perhaps, before Peter could work the boat into clear water and find shelter behind some point. The water reached the height of the bank of the slough the third day, and Peter made every possible preparation to save the boat should the ice begin to move. There was not much he could do. He unshipped his small mast and drove a spike in its butt, to use as a pike pole, stowed his skiff in a safe place between two large trees on the shore, and saw to the hitch that held the boat, that he might cast off promptly if the strain became too great.

Peter did not blame himself for the position in which the untimely rise had placed him. The slough should have been a safe place. Once let the ice firmly seal the slough—any slough—and all the weight of all the floating ice of the whole river could not disturb the boat. When the ice moved out of the river in the spring it would pile up in a mountain at the head of the island formed by the slough, choking the entrance, and not until the slough ice softened and rotted and honeycombed and at last dissolved in the sun, could anything move the shanty-boat. A big rise in November is rare indeed.

“But I want your jack-knife, Uncle Peter,” said the boy insistently. “I want to whittle.”

“And I wouldn't give two cents for a boy that didn't want to whittle,” said Peter. “A jack-knife is one of the things I've got to get you when I go up town, and I'll put it right down now.”

From his clock shelf—still lacking its alarm-clock—he took a slip of paper and a pencil stub. It was his list of goods to be bought, and it was growing daily.

Coffee
Rubber boots for B
Lard
Sweter for B. red one
Bibel
Sope
Hymn Book
Stokings for B
A. B. C. blocks for B
60 thread. 80 too

Under this he added “Jack-knife for B.” and replaced the list and pencil. He shook his head as he did so. He had forty cents in his pocket, and the small pile of wooden spoons that represented his trading capital had not increased. Getting settled for the winter had taken most of his time, and while his jack-knife was busy each evening its work was explained by the toys with which Buddy had littered the floor. These were crudely whittled and grotesque animals—a horse, a cow, two pigs and a cat much larger than the cow, all of clean white maplewood—the beginnings of a complete farm-yard. Of them all Buddy preferred the “funny cat,” and a funny cat it was.

Peter had his own ideas on the question of when a small boy should go to bed, but Buddy had other ideas, and Peter was not sorry to have the boy playing about the cabin long after normal bed-time. When, on the night of the funeral, it became a matter of plain decency for Buddy to retire, and he wouldn't, Peter had compromised by agreeing to whittle a cat if Buddy would go to bed like a little soldier as soon as the cat was completed. The result was a very hasty cat. Peter made it with twenty quick motions of his jack-knife—which was putting up a job on Buddy—but Buddy was satisfied. The cat had no ears. It might have been a rabbit or a bear, if Peter had chosen to call it so. It was a most impressionistic cat. But Buddy loved it.

“Ho! ho!” he laughed, throwing his legs in the air, as was his way when he was much amused. “That's a funny cat, Uncle Peter. Make another funny cat.”