This went on until I was thirteen years old. I was little and not very strong, and had a cough, caused, perhaps, by the hard steady work, and the lint in the air of the factory. There were a good many cases every year of the working people there going into declines and dying of consumption; so my mother had taken me out of the factory every time Rucker went away, and tried to make me play. It was so in all the factories in those days, I guess. I did not feel like playing, and had no playmates; but I used to go down by the canal and watch the boats go back and forth. Sometimes the captains of the boats would ask me if I didn't want a job driving; but I scarcely knew what they meant. I must have been a very backward child, and I surely was a scared and conquered one. I used to sit on a stump by the tow-path, and so close to it that the boys driving the mules or horses drawing the boats could almost strike me with their whips, which they often tried to do as they went by. Then I would scuttle back into the brush and hide. There was a lock just below, but I seldom went to it because all the drivers were egged on to fight each other during the delay at the locks, and the canallers would have been sure to set them on me for the fun of seeing a fight.
On the most eventful evening of my life, perhaps, I sat on this stump, watching a boat which, after passing me, was slowing down and stopping. I heard the captain swearing at some one, and saw him come ashore and start back along the tow-path toward me as if looking for something. He was a tall man whom I had seen pass at other times, and I was wondering whether he would speak to me or not, when I felt somebody's hand snatch at my collar, and a whip came down over my thin shirt with a cut which as I write I seem to feel yet. It was John Rucker, coming home when we were not expecting him, and mad at finding me out of the factory.
"I'll learn yeh to steal my time!" he was saying. "I'll learn your mother to lie to me about your workin'. A great lubber like you traipsin' around idle, and my woman bringin' a doctor's bill on me by workin' night an' day to make up your wages to me--and lyin' to her husband! I'll track you by the blood! Take that--and that--and that!"
I had never resisted him: and even now I only tried to wiggle away from him. He held me with one hand, though; and at every pause in his scolding he cut me with the whip. Weeks after the welts on my back and shoulders turned dark along the line of the whip, and greenish at the edges. I did not cry. I felt numbed with fright and rage. Suddenly, however, the tall canal-boat captain, coming back along the tow-path, put in his oar by striking the whip out of John Rucker's hand; and snatched me away from him.
"I'll have the law on you!" snarled Rucker.
"The devil you will!" said the captain.
"I'll put you through!" screamed Rucker.
The captain eased himself forward by advancing his left foot, and with his right fist he smashed Rucker somewhere about the face. Rucker went down, and the captain picked up the whip, and carefully laying Rucker on his face stripped up his shirt and revenged me, lash for lash; and counting each cut stopped when he reached ten.
"I guess that's the number," said he, taking a look at my bloody back; "but for fear of fallin' short, here's another!" And he drew the whip back, and brought it down with a quick, sharp, terrible whistle that proved its force. "Now," said he, "you've got somethin' to put me through fer!"
Then he started back toward the boat, after picking up a clevis which it seems the driver-boy had dropped. I looked at Rucker a moment wondering what to do. He was slowly getting on his feet, groaning, bloody of face and back, miserable and pitiable. But when he saw me his look of hatred drove out of my mind my first impulse to help him. I turned and ran after the captain. That worthy never looked at me; but when he reached the boat he said to some one on board: "Bill, I call you to bear witness that I refused Bubby here a chance to run away."
"Ay, ay, sir," responded a voice from the boat.
The captain took me gently by the hand and helped me over the gunwale.
"Get out o' here," he shouted, "an' go back to your lovin' father!"
I sought to obey, but he winked at me and motioned me into the little cabin forward.
"An' now, my buck," said he, "that you've stowed yourself away and got so far from home that to put you ashore would be to maroon you in the wilderness, do you want to take a job as driver? That boy I've got lives in Salina, and we'll take you on if you feel like a life on the ocean wave. Can you drive?"
"I do' know!" said I.
"Have you ever worked?" he asked.
"I've worked ever since I was six," I answered.
"Would you like to work for me?" said he.
I looked him in the face for a moment, and answered confidently, "Yes."
"It's a whack," said he. "Maybe we'd better doctor that back o' your'n a little, and git yeh heartened up for duty."
And so, before I knew it, I was whisked off into a new life.
CHAPTER II
I LEARN AND DO SOME TEACHING
I lay in a bunk in one of the two little forward cabins next the stable, shivering and sobbing, a pitiful picture of misery, I suppose, as any one ever saw. I began bawling as soon as the captain commenced putting arnica on my back--partly because it smarted so, and partly because he was so very gentle about it; although all the time he was swearing at John Rucker and wishing he had skinned him alive, as he pretty nearly did. To feel a gentle hand on my shredded back, and to be babied a little bit--these things seemed to break my heart almost, though while Rucker was flogging me I bore it without a cry or a tear. The captain dressed my back, and said, "There, there, Bubby!" and went away, leaving me alone.
I could hear the ripple of the water against the side of the boat, and once in a while a gentle lift as we passed another boat; but there was nothing much in these things to cheer me up. I was leaving John Rucker behind, it was true, but I was also getting farther and farther from my mother every minute. What would she do without me? What should I do without her? I should be free of the slavery of the factory; but I did not think of that. I should have been glad to the bottom of my heart if I could have blotted out of my life all this new tragedy and gone back to the looms and spindles. The factory seemed an awful place now that I was free, but it was familiar; and being free was awful, too; but I never once thought of going back. I knew I could learn to drive the horses, and I knew I should stay with the captain who had flogged John Rucker. I who had never thought of running away was just as much committed to the new life as if I had planned for it for years. Inside my spirit I suppose I had been running away every time I had gone down and watched the boats float by; and something stronger than my conscious will floated me along, also. I fought myself to keep from crying; but I never thought of running up on deck, jumping ashore and going home, as I could easily have done at any time within an hour of boarding the boat. I buried my face in the dirty pillow with no pillow-case on it, and filled my mouth with the patchwork quilt. It seemed as though I should die of weeping. My breath came in long spasmodic draughts, as much deeper and bitterer than sighs as sighs are sadder and more pitiful than laughter. My whipped back pained and smarted me, but that was not what made me cry so dreadfully; I was in the depths of despair; I was humiliated; I was suffering from injustice; I had lost my mother--and at this thought my breath almost refused to come at all. Presently I opened my eyes and found the captain throwing water in my face. He never mentioned it afterward; but I suppose I had fainted away. Then I went to sleep, and when I awoke it was dark and I did not know where I was, and screamed. The captain himself quieted me for a few minutes, and I dropped off to sleep again. He had moved me without my knowing it, from the drivers' cabin forward to his own. But I must not spend our time on these