"This ain't little Jake, is it?" he said. "By mighty, I b'lieve it is! W'y, you little runt, how you've growed. Come in an' have a drink with your ol' friend Bill as nussed you when you was a baby!"
I asked to be excused; for I hadn't learned to drink more than a thin glass of rum and water, and that only when I got chilled. I turned the subject by asking him what he was doing; and at that he slapped his thigh and said he had great news for me.
"I've found that hump-backed bloke," he said. "He came down on the boat with us from Milwaukee. I knowed him as soon as I seen him, but I couldn't think all the v'yage what in time I wanted to find him fer. You jest put it in my mind!"
"Where is he?" I shouted. "You hain't lost him, have you?"
Bill stood for quite a while chewing tobacco, and scratching his head.
"Where is he?" I yelled.
"Belay bellering," said Bill. "I'm jest tryin' to think whuther he went on a boat east, or a railroad car, or a stage-coach, or went to a tavern. He went to a tavern, that's what he done. A drayman I know took his dunnage!"
"Come on," I cried, "and help me find the drayman!"
"I'll have to study on this," said Bill. "My mind hain't as active as usual. I need somethin' to brighten me up!"
"What do you need?" I inquired. "Can't you think where he stays?"
"A little rum," he answered, "is great for the memory. I b'lieve most any doctor'd advise a jorum of rum for a man in my fix, to restore the intellects."
I took him back into the grog-shop and bought him rum, taking a very little myself, with a great deal of blackstrap and water. Bill's symptoms were such as to drive me to despair. He sat looking at me like an old owl, and finally took my glass and sipped a little from it.
"Hain't you never goin' to grow up?" he asked; and poured out a big glass of the pure quill for me, and fiercely ordered me to drink it. By this time I was desperate; so I smashed his glass and mine; and taking him by the throat I shook him and told him that if he did not take me to the hump-backed man or to the drayman, and that right off, I'd shut off his wind for good. When he clinched with me I lifted him from the floor, turned him upside down, and lowered him head-first into an empty barrel. By this time the saloon-keeper was on the spot making all sorts of threats about having us both arrested, and quite a crowd had gathered. I lifted Bill out of the barrel and seated him in a chair, and paid for the glasses; all the time watching Bill for fear he might renew the tussle, and take me in flank; but he sat as if dazed until I had quieted matters down, when he rose and addressed the crowd.
"My little son," said he, patting me on the shoulder. "Stoutest man of his inches in the world. We'll be round here's evenin'--give a show. C'mon, Jake!"
"Wot I said about growin' up," said he, as we went along the street, "is all took back, Jake!"
We had not gone more than a quarter of a mile when we came to a place where there was a stand for express wagons and drays; and Bill picked out from the crowd, with a good deal of difficulty, I thought, a hard-looking citizen to whom he introduced me as the stoutest man on the Erie Canal. The drayman seemed to know me. He said he had seen me wrestle. When I asked him about the hunchback he said he knew right where he was; but there was no hurry, and tried to get up a wrestling match between me and a man twice my size who made a specialty of hauling salt, and bragged that he could take a barrel of it by the chimes, and lift it into his dray. I told him that I was in a great hurry and begged to be let off; but while I was talking they had made up a purse of twenty-one shillings to be wrestled for by us two. I finally persuaded the drayman to show me the hunchback's tavern, and promised to come back and wrestle after I had found him; to which the stake-holder agreed, but all the rest refused to consent, and the money was given back to the subscribers. The drayman, Bill and I went off together to find the tavern--which we finally did.
It was a better tavern than we were used to, and I was a little bashful when I inquired if a man with a black beard was stopping there, and was told that there were several.
"What's his name?" asked the clerk.
"'E's a hunchback," said Bill--I had been too diffident to describe him so.
"Mr. Wisner, of Southport, Wisconsin," said the clerk, "has a back that ain't quite like the common run of backs. Want to see him?"
He was in a nice room, with a fire burning and was writing at a desk which opened and shut, and was carried with him when he traveled. He wore a broadcloth, swallow-tailed coat, a collar that came out at the sides of his neck and stood high under his ears; and his neck was covered with a black satin stock. On the bed was a tall, black beaver, stove-pipe hat. There were a great many papers on the table and the bed, and the room looked as if it had been used by crowds of people--the floor was muddy about the fireplace, and there were tracks from the door to the cheap wooden chairs which seemed to have been brought in to accommodate more visitors than could sit on the horsehair chairs and sofa that appeared to belong in the room. Mr. Wisner looked at us sharply as we came in, and shook hands first with Bill and then with me.
"Glad to see you again," said he heartily. "Glad to see you again! I want to tell you some more about Wisconsin. I haven't told you the half of its advantages."
I saw that he thought we had been there before, and was about to correct his mistake, when Bill told him that that's what we had come for.
"What you said about Wisconsin," said Bill, winking at me, "has sort of got us all worked up."
"Is it a good country for a boy to locate in?" I asked.
"A paradise for a boy!" he said, in a kind of bubbly way. "And for a poor man, it's heaven! Plenty of work. Good wages. If you want a home, it's the only God's country. What kind of land have you been farming in the past?"
Bill said that he had spent his life plowing the seas, but that all the fault I had was being a landsman. I admitted that I had farmed some near Herkimer.
"And," sneered Mr. Wisner crushingly, "how long does it take a man to clear and grub out and subdue enough land in Herkimer County to make a living on? Ten years! Twenty years! Thirty years! Why, in Herkimer County a young man doesn't buy anything when he takes up land: he sells something! He sells himself to slavery for life to the stumps and sprouts and stones! But in Wisconsin you can locate on prairie land ready for the plow; or you can have timber land, or both kinds, or opening's that are not quite woods nor quite prairie--there's every kind of land there except poor land! It's a paradise, and land's cheap. I can sell you land right back of Southport, with fine market for whatever you raise, on terms that will pay themselves--pay themselves. Just go aboard the first boat, and I'll give you a letter to my partner in Southport--and your fortunes will be made in ten years!"
"The trouble is," said Bill, "that we'll be so damned lonesome out where we don't know any one. If we could locate along o' some of our ol' mates, somebody like old John Tucker,--it would be a--a paradise, eh, Jake?"
"The freest-hearted people in the world," said Mr. Wisner. "They'll travel ten miles to take a spare-rib or a piece of fresh beef to a new neighbor. Invite the stranger in to stay all night as he drives along the road. You'll never miss your old friends; and probably you'll find old neighbors most anywhere. Why, this country has moved out to Wisconsin. It won't be long till you'll have to go there to find 'em--ha, ha, ha!"
"If we could find a man out there named Tucker--"
"An old--sort of--of relative of mine," I put in, seeing that Bill was spoiling it all, "John Rucker."
"I know him!" cried Wisner. "Kind of a tall man with a sandy beard? Good talker? Kind of plausible talker? Used to live down east of Syracuse? Pretty well fixed? Went out west three years ago? Calls himself Doctor Rucker?"
"I guess that's the man," said I; "do you know where he is now?"
"Had a wife and no children?" asked Wisner. "And was his wife a quiet, kind of sad-looking woman that never said much?"
"Yes! Yes!"