The Jack-Knife Man

hands in the pockets of his huge bear-skin coat, his round face glowing, lo

" he said, "I'll give you thir

George," said Peter. "I

in on top of his head. His face was brown and weather-seamed. It was difficult to guess just how old Peter Lane might be. When his eyes were closed he looked rather old-quite like a thin, tired old man-but

a home-made pine table, a small sheet-iron cook-stove, two wooden pegs for Peter's shotgun, a shelf for his alarm-clock, a breadbox, some driftwood for the stove, and a wall lamp with a silvered glass reflector. In one corner was a tangle of nets and tro

in clock like this is a grand thing for a man like me. I can take this clock to pieces, George, and mend her, and put her together ag

rty dollars for the boat,"

ct, all day long. I can mend her right up, and wind her and set her right in the morning, and set the alarm to go off at four o'clock in the afternoon, and at four o'clock what do you think she'll

ve fifty dollars for the boat, and five dollars for

k at her right now, that she could go out in a minute, would you? But she can. Why, when she wants to, that stove can start in and get red hot all over, stove-pipe and legs and all, until it's so hot in here the tar melts off them

the boat, or won't

got my plans all laid out to float down river next spring, soon as the ice goes out, and when I get to New Orleans I'm going to load this boat on to a ship, and I'm going to take her to the Amazon River, and tra

down to Florida next spring and shoot

y, but in a moment his

ad mistake. It looks to me like alligator skin was going out of fashion. I'd be foolish to take thi

ind there was no market for chinchillas. It looks to me as if the style was

want to, and you give me odd jobs, and clothes-and I appreciate it, George, but a man don't like to get rid of his home, if he can help it. I haven't had a home I could call my own since I was fourteen years old, as you might say, and I'm going on fifty years old now. Ever since Jane got tired havin' me 'round I've been livin' i

id Amazon a minut

d. Rocky Mountain air is just what I need. It is grand air. If I can get seventy or eighty dollars together, and a

sun, "somehow you always land right back in Widow Potter's cove for the winter, don't you? Sh

ay and stood up, a look o

-boat and looked out. The cove in which the boat was tied was on the Iowa side of the Mississippi, and during the summer it had been crowded with a small colony of worthless shanty-boatmen and their ill-kempt wives and children, direly poor and afflicted with all the ills that dirt is heir to. Here, each summer, they gathered, coming from up-river in their shanty-boats and floating on downriver just ahead of the cold weather in the fall. All summer

the boat, as he did everything for himself, irregularly and at odd moments, and the boat had been completed but a few days before George Rapp drove up from town, hoping to buy it. Peter believed he loved solitude

of their woes, and to waste thankless days on them. Yet he never thought of making one of their colony. He would row the two miles to reach them, but he rowed back again each evening. It was because he was better at heart, and not because he thought he was better, that he remained aloof to this extent.

tool in his hand. When he was not making shapely boats for the shanty-boat kids, or whittling for the mere pleasure of whittling, his jack-knife shaped wooden kitchen spoons and other small househol

ross the ice was cold and long. The Iowa side was more thickly populated, too, for the Iowa "bottom" was narrow, the hills coming quite to the river in places, while on the Illinois side five or six miles of untillable "bottom" stretched between the river and the prosperous hill farms. The Iowa side offered opportunities for

ast by looping his line under the railway track that skirted the bank, he was wet and weary. His tin breadbox was empty and he had but a handful of coffee left, but he was too tired to go to town, and he had nothing to trade if he went, and he knew by experience that an appeal to a farmer-even to W

all he needed. Some of his surplus he had just paid for a tract of low, wooded bottom-land, in the section where ducks were most plentiful in their seasons. The land was swamp, for the most part, and all so low that the river spread over it at every spring "rise" and often in the autumn. It was cut by a slough (or bayou, as they are called farther south) and held a rice lake which was no more than a widening of the slough. This piece of property, far below the tow

lf hid the hillside where Widow Potter's low, white farmhouse, with its green shutters, stood in the midst of a decaying apple orchard. "I wisht the widow lived farther off. There ain't no place like this cove to winter a boat, and when I'm here I've got to saw wood for her, and

s!" said G

red. It was her way of showing Peter unusual attention, but Peter never suspected that when she glared at him and told him he was a worthless, good-for-nothing loafer and a lazy, paltering, river-rat, and a no-account, idling vagabond she was showing him a flattering partiality. He knew she could make him squirm. It was Love-in-Chapped-Hands, but Mrs. Potter herself did not kno

e cats and dogs," said Peter. "I don't go near her u

good house and cook-stove. If you make up your mind to go housekeeping and to sel

about the boat, George,"

he door and

ling himself to his task of reassemblin

d strengthened and turned colder, slapping the rain and snow against the small, four-paned window and freezing it there. It was blowing up colder every minute and Peter put his handful of coffee in his coffee-pot and set it on th

!" He set the clock on its shelf where it ticked loudly while he drew his table

long as there ain't anything to eat I

ny further whetting meant a wire edge, he took a crumpled newspaper from under the pillow of his bunk and read again the article on the increased demand for chinchilla fur, but it had lost interest. T

door quickly, for the night was worse, the rain freezing as it fell and the wind howling through the telegraph wires. With a sigh of satisfaction that he was alone, and that he had a snug shanty-boat in which to spend the winter, Peter propped himself up in his bunk and began carving the head of an owl on the end of the gun peg, screwing his face to one side to keep the cigar smoke out of his eyes. He was holding the half-completed carving at a distance, to judge o

t of wind, clattered against the cabin wall. A woman, one hand extended, stood in the doorway. Her face was deathly white, and her left hand held