“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.”