The Jack-Knife Man

by Ellis Parker Butler

He lifted the boy again and plodded on, and when he reached the roughly wooded Illinois shore he pushed in among the grapevine festooned trees until he was well hidden from the river. There he made a fire and rested until he and Buddy were warmed through. Then out upon the river again and, keeping close to the bank, up stream. Here he was sheltered from the cutting wind, and the walking was surer, for the sand had blown upon the ice in many places, but his progress was slow for all that. About noon he halted again and made a fire and ate, and then went on. Toward four o'clock, coming abreast of a tall, lightning scarred sycamore, Peter plunged into the brush until he came to a clearing on the edge of a small slough. Here stood an old log cattle shed, and here, with a fire burning on the dirt floor, they spent the night, Buddy huddled in Peter's arms, with his back to the fire.

They had covered half the distance to Riverbank.

“Where are we going now, Uncle Peter?” asked Buddy the next morning.

“I guess we won't go nowhere to-day,” said Peter. “We ain't likely to be bothered here, this time of the year, so we'll just make a good fire and stay right here and be comfortable, and to-night we 're going to start over across to your Aunt Jane's house.”

“Is Aunt Jane's house like this house?” asked Buddy.

“Well, it's quite considerable better,” said Peter. “You'll see what it's like when you get to it. If everything turns out the way I hope it will, you and me will live at Aunt Jane's quite some time.”

Not until well toward nine o'clock did Peter awaken Buddy that night. He was haunted by the fear that, once he touched Iowa soil, every eye would be watching for him and every hand eager to tear Buddy from him. If, however, he could get Buddy safely into Jane's care Peter believed he could make a fight against Briggles or any other man, for Jane's house was a home—there was a woman in it—Peter meant to time his trip to reach Jane's in the early morning.

The moon was full and bright, glaring bright on the river, as Peter started, and the cold was benumbing.

The long, diagonal course across the river brought Peter and Buddy to the Iowa shore some three miles below Riverbank, just before sunrise. On shore new difficulties met him. A road ran along the shore, but Peter's destination lay straight back in the hills, and two miles of sandy farm land, in frozen furrows, crossed by many barbed wire fences, lay between Peter and the foot of the hills. The sun came up while he was still struggling across the plowed land, and by the time he reached the road that led up the hillside it was glaring day. Twice early farmers, bound to town, passed him as he trudged along the winding road, staring at him curiously, and Peter dropped to the creek bed that followed the road. Here he could hide if he heard an approaching team. Just below his sister's house the road crossed the creek and here Peter climbed the bank. A wind had risen with the sun and Peter's blanket flapped against his legs. At his sister's gate he paused behind a mass of leafless elderberry bushes, and deposited Buddy on the low bank that edged the road.

“Now, you stay right here, Buddy,” said Peter to the boy, “and just sort of look at the landscape over there whilst I run up and tell your Aunt Jane you're coming. She don't like to be surprised.”