Virginia and I arrived in Waterloo about two days after we left the Grove of Destiny, as my granddaughter Gertrude insists on calling the place at which we camped after we left Independence. We went in a sort of rather-guess way back to the Ridge Road, very happy, talking to each other about ourselves all the while, and admiring everything we saw along the way.
The wild sweet-williams were in bloom, now, and scattered among them were the brilliant orange-colored puccoons; and the grass even on the knolls was long enough to wave in the wind like a rippling sea. It was a cool and sunny spell of weather, with fleecy clouds chasing one another up from the northwest like great ships under full sail running wing-and-wing before the northwest wind which blew strong day and night. It was a new sort of weather to me--the typical high-barometer weather of the prairies after a violent "low." The driving clouds on the first day were sometimes heavy enough to spill over a scud of rain (which often caught Virginia like a cold splash from a hose), and were whisked off to the southeast in a few minutes, followed by a brilliant burst of sunshine--and all the time the shadows of the clouds raced over the prairie in big and little bluish patches speeding forever onward over a groundwork of green and gold dotted with the white and purple and yellow of the flowers.
We were now on terms of simple trust and confidence. We played. We bet each other great sums of money as to whether or not the rain-scud coming up in the west would pass over us, or miss us, or whether or not the shadow of a certain cloud would pass to the right or the left. People with horse teams who were all the time passing us often heard us laughing, and looked at us and smiled, waving their hands, as Virginia would cry out, "I won that time!" or "You drove slow, just to beat me!" or "Well, I lost, but you owe me twenty-five thousand dollars yet!"
Once an outfit with roan horses and a light wagon stopped and hailed us. The woman, sitting by her husband, had been pointing at us and talking to him.
"Right purty day," he said.
"Most of the time," I answered; for it had just sloshed a few barrels of water from one of those flying clouds and forced us to cover ourselves up.
"Where's your folks?" he asked.
"We ain't too old to travel alone," I replied; "but we'll catch up with the young folks at Waterloo!"
He laughed and whipped up his team.
"Go it while you're young!" he shouted as he went out of hearing.
We were rather an unusual couple, as any one could see; though most people doubtless supposed that there were others of our party riding back under the cover. Virginia had not mentioned Buckner Gowdy since we camped in the Grove of Destiny; and not once had she looked with her old look of terror at an approaching or overtaking team, or scuttled back into the load to keep from being seen. I guess she had come to believe in the sufficiency of my protection.
Waterloo was a town of seven or eight years of age--a little straggling village on the Red Cedar River, as it was then called, building its future on the growth of the country and the water-power of the stream. It was crowded with seekers after "country," and its land dealers and bankers were looking for customers. It seemed to be a strong town in money, and I had a young man pointed out to me who was said to command unlimited capital and who was associated with banks and land companies in Cedar Rapids and Sioux City,--I suppose he was a Greene, a Weare, a Graves, a Johnson or a Lusch. Many were talking of the Fort Dodge country, and of the new United States Land Office which was just then on the point of opening at Fort Dodge. They tried to send me to several places where land could be bought cheaply, in the counties between the Cedar and the Iowa Rivers, and as far west as Webster County; but when I told them that I had bought land they at once lost interest in me.
We camped down by the river among the trees, and it was late before we were free to sleep, on account of the visits we received from movers and land men; but finally the camp-fires died down, the songs ceased, the music of accordions and fiddles was heard no more, and the camp of emigrants became silent.
Virginia bade me good night, and I rolled up in my blankets under the wagon. I began wondering, after the questions which had been asked as to our relationship, just what was to be the end of this strange journey of the big boy and the friendless girl. We were under some queer sort of suspicion--that was clear. Two or three wives among the emigrants had tried to get a word with Virginia in private; and some of the men had grinned and winked at me in a way that I should have been glad to notice according to my old canal habits; but I had sense enough to see that that would never do.
Virginia was now as free from care as if she had been traveling with her brother; and what could I say? What did I want to say? By morning I had made up my mind that I would take her to my farm and care for her there, regardless of consequences--and I admit that I was not clear as to the proprieties. Every one was a stranger to every one else in this country. Whose business was it anyhow? Doctor Bliven and his companion--I had worked out a pretty clear understanding of their case by this time--were settling in the new West and leaving their past behind them. Who could have anything to say against it if I took this girl with me to my farm, cared for her, protected her; and gave her the home that nobody else seemed ready to give?
"Do you ever go to church?" asked Virginia. "It's Sunday."
"Is there preaching here to-day?" I asked.
"Don't you hear the bell?" she inquired.
"Let's go!" said I.
We were late; and the heads of the people were bowed in prayer as we went in; so we stood by the door until the prayer was over. The preacher was Elder Thorndyke. I was surprised at seeing him because he had told me that he and his wife were going to Monterey Centre; but there he was, laboring with his text, speaking in a halting manner, and once in a while bogging down in a dead stop out of which he could not pull himself without giving a sort of honk like a wild goose. It was his way. I never sat under a preacher who had better reasoning powers or a worse way of reasoning. Down in front of him sat Grandma Thorndyke, listening intently, and smiling up to him whenever he got in hub-deep; but at the same time her hands were clenched into fists in her well-darned black-silk gloves.
I did not know all this then, for her back was toward us; but I saw it so often afterward! It was that honking habit of the elder's which had driven them, she often told me, from New England to Ohio, then to Illinois, and finally out to Monterey Centre. The new country caught the halt like Elder Thorndyke, the lame like the Fewkeses, the outcast like the Bushyagers and the Blivens, the blind like me, the far-seeing like N.V. Creede, the prophets like old Dunlap the Abolitionist and Amos Thatcher, and the great drift of those who felt a drawing toward the frontier like iron filings to a magnet, or came with the wind of emigration like tumble-weeds before the autumn blast.
I remembered that when Virginia was with me back there by the side of the road that first day, Elder Thorndyke and his wife had come by inquiring for her; and I did not quite relish the idea of being found here with her after all these long days; so when church was out I took Virginia by the hand and tried to get out as quickly as possible; but when we reached the door, there were Elder Thorndyke and grandma shaking hands with the people, and trying to be pastoral; though it was clear that they were as much strangers as we. The elder was filling the vacant pulpit that day by mere chance, as he told me; but I guess he was really candidating a little after all. It would have been a bad thing for Monterey Centre if he had received the call.
They greeted Virginia and me with warm handclasps and hearty inquiries after our welfare; and we were passing on, when Grandma Thorndyke headed us off and looked me fairly in the face.
"Why," said she, "you're that boy! Wait a minute."
She stepped over and spoke to her husband, who seemed quite in the dark as to what she was talking about. She pointed to us--and then, in despair, she came back to us and asked us if we wouldn't wait until the people were gone, as she wanted us to meet her husband.
"Oh, yes," said Virginia, "we'll be very glad to."
"Let us walk along together," said grandma, after the elder had joined us. "Ah--this is my husband, Mr. Thorndyke, Miss--"
"Royall," said Virginia, "Virginia Royall. And this is Jacob Vandemark."
"Where do you live?" asked grandma.
"I'm going out to my farm in Monterey County," I said; "and Virginia is--is--riding with me a while."
"We are camping," said Virginia, smiling, "down by the river. Won't you come to dinner with us?"
Grandma ran to some people who were waiting, I suppose, to take them to the regular minister's Sunday dinner, and seemed to be making some sort of plea to be excused. What it could have been I have no idea; but I suspect it must have been because of the necessity of saving souls; some plea of duty; anyhow she soon returned, and with her and the elder we walked in silence down to the grove where our wagon stood among the trees, with my cows farther up-stream picketed in the grass.
"Just make yourselves comfortable," said I; "while I get dinner."
"And," said the elder, "I'll help, if I may."
"You're company," I said.
"Please let me," he begged; "and while we work we'll talk."
In the meantime Grandma Thorndyke was turning Virginia inside out like a stocking, and looking for the seamy side. She carefully avoided asking her about our whereabouts for the last few days, but she scrutinized Virginia's soul and must have found it as white as snow. She found out how old she was, how friendless she was, how--but I rather think not why--Virginia had run away from Buck Gowdy; and all that could be learned about me which could be learned without entering into details of our hiding from the world together all those days alone on the trackless prairie. That subject she avoided, though of course she must have had her own ideas about it. And after that, she came and helped me with the dinner, talking all the time in such a way as to draw me out as to my past. I told her of my life on the canal--and she looked distrustfully at me. I told her of my farm, and of how I got it; and that brought out the story of my long hunt for my mother, and of my finding of her unmarked grave. Of my relations with Virginia she seemed to want no information. By the time our dinner was over--one of my plentiful wholesome meals, with some lettuce and radishes and young onions I had bought the night before--we were chatting together like old friends.
"That was a better dinner," said the elder, "than we'd have had at Mr. Smith's."
"But Jacob, here," said grandma, "is not a deacon of the church."
"That doesn't lessen my enjoyment of the dinner," said the elder.
"No," said Grandma Thorndyke dryly, "I suppose not. But now let us talk seriously. This child"--taking Virginia's hand--"is the girl they were searching for back there along the road."
"Ah," said the elder.
"She had perfectly good reasons for running away," went on Grandma Thorndyke, "and she is not going back to that man. He has no claim upon her. He is not her guardian. He is only the man who married her sister--and as I firmly believe, killed her!"
"I wouldn't say that," said the elder.
"Now I calculate," said Grandma Thorndyke, "and unless I am corrected I shall so report--and I dare any one to correct me!--that this child"--squeezing Virginia's hand--"had taken refuge at some dwelling along the road, and that this morning--not later than this morning--as Jacob drove along into Waterloo he overtook Virginia walking into town where she was going to seek a position of some kind. So that you two children were together not longer than from seven this morning until just before church. You ought not to travel on the Sabbath!"
"No, ma'am," said I; for she was attacking me.
"Now we are poor," went on Grandma Thorndyke, "but we never have starved a winter yet; and we want a child like you to comfort us, and to help us--and we mustn't leave you as you are any longer. You must ride on with Mr. Thorndyke and me."
This to Virginia--who stretched out her hands to me, and then buried her face in them in Grandma Thorndyke's lap. She was crying so that she did not hear me when I asked:
"Why can't we go on as we are? I've got a farm. I'll take care of her!"
"Children!" snorted grandma. "Babes in the wood!"
I think she told the elder in some way without words to take me off to one side and talk to me; for he hummed and hawed, and asked me if I wouldn't show him my horses. I told him that I was driving cows, and went with him to see them. I now had six again, besides those I had left with Mr. Westervelt back along the road toward Dubuque; and it took me quite a while to explain to him how I had traded and traded along the road, first my two horses for my first cows, and then always giving one sound cow for two lame ones, until I had great riches for those days in cattle.
He thought this wonderful, and said that I was a second Job; and had every faculty for acquiring riches. I had actually made property while moving, an operation that was so expensive that it bankrupted many people. It was astonishing, he insisted; and began looking upon me with more respect--making property being the thing in which he was weakest, except for laying up treasures in Heaven. He was surprised, too, to learn that cows could be made draught animals. He had always thought of them as good for nothing but giving milk. In fact I found myself so much wiser than he was in the things we had been discussing that when he began to talk to me about Virginia and the impossibility of our going together as we had been doing, it marked quite a change in our relationship--he having been the scholar and I the teacher.
"Quite a strange meeting," said he, "between you and Miss Royall."
"Yes," said I, thinking it over, from that first wolf-hunted approach to my camp to our yesterday of clouds and sunshine; "I never had anything like it happen to me."
"Mrs. Thorndyke," said he, "is a mighty smart woman. She knows what'll do, and what won't do better than--than any of us."
I wasn't ready to admit this, and therefore said nothing.
"Don't you think so?" he asked.
"I do' know," I said, a little sullenly.
"A girl," said he, "has a pretty hard time in life if she loses her reputation."
Again I made no reply.
"You are just two thoughtless children," said he; "aren't you now?"
"She's nothing," said I, "but a little innocent child!"
"Now that's so," said he, "that's so; but after all she's old enough so that evil things might be thought of her--evil things might be said; and there'd be no answer to them, no answer. Why, she's a woman grown--a woman grown; and as for you, you're getting a beard. This won't do, you know; it is all right if there were just you and Miss Royall and my wife and me in the world; but you wouldn't think for a minute of traveling with this little girl the way you have been--the way you speak of doing, I mean--if you knew that in the future, when she must make her way in the world with nothing but her friends, this little boy-and-girl experience might take her friends from her; and when she will have nothing but her good name you don't want, and would not for the world have anything thoughtlessly done now, that might take her good name from her. You are too young to understand this as you will some day--"
"The trouble with me," I blurted out, "is that I've never had much to do with good women--only with my mother and Mrs. Fogg--and they could never have anything said against them--neither of them!"
"Where have you lived all your life?" he asked.
Then I told him of the way I had picked up my hat and come up instead of being brought up, of the women along the canal, of her who called herself Alice Rucker, of the woman who stole across the river with me--but I didn't mention her name--of as much as I could think of in my past history; and all the time Elder Thorndyke gazed at me with increasing interest, and with something the look we have in listening to tales of midnight murder and groaning ghosts. I must have been an astonishing sort of mystery to him. Certainly I was a castaway and an outcast to his ministerial mind; and boy as I was, he seemed to feel for me a sort of awed respect mixed up a little with horror.
"Heavenly Father!" he blurted out. "You have escaped as by the skin of your teeth."
"I do' know," said I.
"But don't you understand," he insisted, "that this trip has got to end here? Suppose your mother, when she was a child in fact, but a woman grown also, like Miss Royall, had been placed as she is with a boy of your age and one who had lived your life--"
"No," said I, "it won't do. You can have her!"
I really felt as if I was giving up something that had belonged to me. I felt the pangs of renunciation.
We walked back to the wagon in silence, and found Virginia and Grandma Thorndyke sitting on the spring seat with grandma's arm about the girl, with a handkerchief in her hand, just as if she had been wiping the tears from Virginia's eyes; but the girl was laughing and talking in a manner more lively than I had ever seen her exhibit. She was as happy, apparently, as I was gloomy and downcast.
I wanted the Thorndykes to go away so that I could have a farewell talk with Virginia; but they stayed on and stayed on, and finally, after dark, grandma rose with a look at Virginia which she seemed to understand, and they took my girl's satchel and all walked off together toward the tavern.
I sat down and buried my face in my hands, Virginia's good-by had been so light, so much like the parting of two mere strangers. And after all what was I to her but a stranger? She was of a different sort from me. She had lived in cities. She had a good education--at least I thought so. She was like the Thorndykes--city folks, educated people, who could have no use for a clodhopper like me, a canal hand, a rough character. And just as I had plunged myself into the deepest despair, I heard a light footfall, and Virginia knelt down before me on the ground and pulled my hands from my eyes.
"Don't cry," said she. "We'll see each other again. I came back to bid you good-by, and to say that you've been so good to me that I can't think of it without tears! Good-by, Jacob!"
She lifted my face between her two hands, kissed me the least little bit, and ran off. Back in the darkness I saw the tall figure of Grandma Thorndyke, who seemed to be looking steadily off into the distance. Virginia locked arms with her and they went away leaving me with my cows and my empty wagon--filled with the goods in which I took so much pride when I left Madison.
With the first rift of light in the east I rose from my sleepless bed under the wagon--I would not profane her couch inside by occupying it--and yoked up my cattle. Before noon I was in Cedar Falls; and from there west I found the Ridge Road growing less and less a beaten track owing to decreasing travel; but plainly marked by stakes which those two pioneers had driven along the way as I have said for the guidance of others in finding a road which they had missed themselves.
We were developing citizenship and the spirit of America. Those wagon loads of stakes cut on the Cedar River in 1854 and driven in the prairie sod as guides for whoever might follow showed forth the true spirit of the American pioneer.
But I was in no frame of mind to realize this. I was drawing nearer and nearer my farm, but for a day or so this gave me no pleasure. My mind was on other things. I was lonelier than I had been since I found Rucker in Madison. I talked to no one--I merely followed the stakes--until one morning I pulled into a strange cluster of houses out on the green prairie, the beginning of a village. I drew up in front of its blacksmith shop and asked the name of the place. The smith lifted his face from the sole of the horse he was shoeing and replied, "Monterey Centre."
I looked around at my own county, stretching away in green waves on all sides of the brand-new village; which was so small that it did not interfere with the view. I had reached my own county! I had been a part of it on this whole wonderful journey, getting acquainted with its people, picking up the threads of its future, now its history.
Prior to this time I had been courting the country; now I was to be united with it in that holy wedlock which binds the farmer to the soil he tills. Out of this black loam was to come my own flesh and blood, and the bodies, and I believe, in some measure, the souls of my children. Some dim conception of this made me draw in a deep, deep breath of the fresh prairie air.
That last night before I reached my "home town" of Monterey Centre, I had camped within two or three miles of the settlement. I forgot all that day to inquire where I was: so absent-minded was I with all my botheration because of losing Virginia. I was thinking all the time of seeing her again, wondering if I should ever see her alone or to speak to her, ashamed of my behavior toward her--in my thoughts at least--vexed because I had felt toward her, except for the last two or three days, things that made it impossible to get really acquainted and friendly with her. I was absorbed in the attempt to figure out the meaning of her friendly acts when we parted, especially her coming back, as I was sure she had, against the will of Grandma Thorndyke; and that kiss she had given me was a much greater problem than making time on my journey: I lived it over and over again a thousand times and asked myself what I ought to have done when she kissed me, and never feeling satisfied with myself for not doing more of something or other, I knew not what. It was well for me that my teams were way-wised so that they drove themselves. I could have made Monterey Centre easily that night; for it was only about eight o'clock by the sun next morning when I pulled up at the blacksmith shop, and was told by Jim Boyd, the smith, that I was in Monterey Centre.
And now I did not know what to do. I did not know where my land was, nor how to find out. Monterey Prairie was as blank as the sea, except for a few settlers' houses scattered about within a mile or two of the village. I sat scratching my head and gazing about me like a lunkhead while Boyd finished shoeing a horse, and had begun sharpening the lay of a breaking-plow--when up rode Pitt Bushyager on one of the horses he and his gang had had in the Grove of Destiny back beyond Waterloo.
I must have started when I saw him; for he glanced at me sharply and suspiciously, and his dog-like brown eyes darted about for a moment, as if the dog in him had scented game: then he looked at my jaded cows, at my muddy wagon, its once-white cover now weather-beaten and ragged, and at myself, a buttermilk-eyed, tow-headed Dutch boy with a face covered with down like a month-old gosling; and his eyes grew warm and friendly, as they usually looked, and his curly black mustache parted from his little black goatee with a winning smile. After he had turned his horse over to the smith, he came over and talked with me. He said he had seen cows broken to drive by the Pukes--as we used to call the Missourians--but never except by those who were so "pore" that they couldn't get horses, and he could see by my nice outfit, and the number of cows I had, that I could buy and sell some of the folks that drove horses. What was my idea in driving cows?
"They are faster than oxen," I said, "and they'll make a start in stock for me when I get on my farm; and they give milk when you're traveling. I traded my horses for my first cows, and I've been trading one sound cow for two lame ones all along the road. I've got some more back along the way."
"Right peart notion," said he. "I reckon you'll do for Iowa. Where you goin'?"
Then I explained about my farm, and my problem in finding it.
"Oh, that's easy!" said he. "Oh, Mr. Burns!" he called to a man standing in a doorway across the street. "Come over here, if you can make it suit. He's a land-locater," he explained to me. "Makes it a business to help newcomers like you to get located. Nice man, too."
By this time Henderson L. Burns had started across the street. He was dressed stylishly, and came with a sort of prance, his head up and his nostrils flaring like a Jersey bull's, looking as popular as a man could appear. We always called him "Henderson L." to set him apart from Hiram L. Burns, a lawyer that tried to practise here for a few years, and didn't make much of an out of it.
"Mr. Burns," said Pitt Bushyager, "this is Mr.--"
"Vandemark," said I: "Jacob Vandemark"--you see I did not know then that my correct name is Jacobus.
"Mine's Bushyager," said he, "Pitt Bushyager, Got a raft of brothers and sisters--so you'll know us better after a while. Mr. Burns, this is Mr. Vandemark."
"Glad to meet you, Mr. Vandemark," said Henderson L., flaring his nostrils, and shaking my hand till it ached. "Hope you're locating in Monterey County. Father with you?"
"No," said I, "I am alone in the world--and this outfit is all I've got."
"Nice outfit," said he. "Good start for a young fellow; and let me give you a word of advice. Settle in Monterey County, as close to Monterey Centre as you can get. People that drive through, hunting for the earthly paradise, are making a great mistake; for this is the garden spot of the garden of the world. This is practically, and will without a shadow of doubt be permanently the county-seat of the best county in Iowa, and that means the best in the known world. We are just the right distance from the river to make this the location of the best town in the state, and probably eventually the state capital. Land will increase in value by leaps and bounds. No stumps, no stones, just the right amount of rainfall--the garden spot of the West, Mr. Vandemark, the garden spot--"
"This boy," said Pitt Bushyager, "has land already entered. I told him you'd be able to show it to him."
"Land already entered?" he queried. "I don't seem to remember the name of Vandemark on the records. Sure it's in this county?"
I went back to the little flat package in the iron-bound trunk, found my deed, and gave it to him. He examined it closely.
"Not recorded," said he. "Out near Hell Slew, somewhere. Better let me take you over to the recorder's office, and have him send it in for record. Name of John Rucker on the records. I think the taxes haven't been paid for a couple of years. Better have him send and get a statement. I'll take you to the land. That's my business--guarantee it's the right place, find the corners, and put you right as a trivet all for twenty-five dollars."
"To-day?" I asked. "I want to get to breaking."
"Start as soon as we get through here," said he as we entered the little board shack which bore the sign, "County Offices." "No time to lose if you're going to plant anything this year. Le'me have that deed. This is Mr. Vandemark, Bill."
I don't remember what "Bill's" full name was, for he went back to the other county as soon as the government of Monterey was settled. He took my deed, wrote a memorandum of filing on the back of it, and tossed it into a basket as if it amounted to nothing, after giving me a receipt for it. Henderson L. had some trouble to get me to leave the deed, and the men about the little substitute for a court-house thought it mighty funny, I guess; but I never could see anything funny about being prudent. Then he got his horse, hitched to a buckboard buggy, and wanted me to ride out to the land with him; but I would not leave my cows and outfit. Henderson L. said he couldn't bother to wait for cows; but when he saw my shotgun, and the twenty-five dollars which I offered him, he said if I would furnish the gun and ammunition he would kill time along the road, so that the whole outfit could be kept together. He even waited while I dickered with Jim Boyd for a breaking plow, which I admitted I should need the first thing, as soon as Jim mentioned it to me[10].
[10]The date on the deed shows this to have been May 25, 1855--the day the author first saw what has since become Vandemark Township. Although its history is so far written, the township was not yet legally in existence.--G.v.d.M.
"This is Mr. Thorkelson," said he as he rejoined me after two or three false starts. "He's going to be a neighbor of yours. I'm going to locate him on a quarter out your way--Mr. Vandemark, Mr. Thorkelson."
Magnus Thorkelson gave me his hand bashfully. He was then about twenty-five; and had on the flat cap and peasant's clothes that he wore on the way over from Norway. He had red hair and a face spotted with freckles; and growing on his chin and upper lip was a fiery red beard. He was so tall that Henderson L. tried to tell him not to come to the Fourth of July celebration, or folks might think he was the fireworks; but Magnus only smiled. I don't believe he understood: for at that time his English was not very extensive; but after all, he is as silent now as he was then. We looked down on all kinds of "old countrymen" then, and thought them much below us; but Magnus and I got to be friends as we drove the cows across the prairie, and we have been friends ever since. It was not until years after that I saw what a really remarkable man Magnus was, physically, and mentally--he was so mild, so silent, so gentle. He carried a carpetbag full of belongings in one hand, which he put in the wagon, and a fiddle in its case in the other. It was a long time, too, before I began to feel how much better his fiddling was than any I had ever heard. It didn't seem to have as much tune to it as the old-style fiddling, and he would hardly ever play for dances; but his fiddle just seemed to sing. He became a part of the history of Vandemark Township; and was the first fruits of the Scandinavian movement to our county so far as I know.
As we turned back over the way I had come for about half a mile, we met coming into town, the well-known spanking team of horses of Buckner Gowdy; but now it was hitched to a light buggy, but was still driven by Pinck Johnson, who had the horses on a keen gallop as if running after a doctor for snake-bite or apoplexy. It was the way Gowdy always went careering over the prairies, killing horses by the score, and laughingly answering criticisms by saying that there would be horses left in the world after he was gone. He said he hadn't time to waste on saving horses; but he always had one or two teams that he took good care of; and once in a while Pinck Johnson went back, to Kentucky, it was said, and brought on a fresh supply. As they came near to us the negro pulled up, and halted just after they had passed us. We stopped, and Gowdy came back to my wagon.
"How do you do, Mr. Vandemark," he said. "I am glad to see that you survived all the dangers of the voyage."
"How-de-do," I answered, looking as blank as I could; for Virginia was on my mind as soon as I saw him. "I come slow, but I'm here."
All through this talk, Gowdy watched my face as if to catch me telling something crooked; and I made up my mind to give him just enough of the truth to cover what he was sure to find out whether I told him or not.
"Did you pick up any passengers as you came along?" he asked, with a sharp look.
"Yes," I said. "I had a lawyer with me for a day or two--Mr. Creede."
"Heard of him," said Gowdy. "Locating over at our new town of Lithopolis, isn't he? See anybody you knew on the way?"
"Yes," I said. "I saw your sister-in-law in Waterloo. She was with a minister and his wife--a Mr. and Mrs. Thorndyke--or something like that."
"Yes," said Gowdy, trying to be calm. "Friends of ours--of hers."
"They're here in the city," said Henderson L. "He's going to be the new preacher."
"I know," said Gowdy. "I know. Able man, too. How did it happen that I didn't see your outfit, Mr. Vandemark? I went back over the road after I passed you there at the mud-hole, and returned, and wondered why I didn't see you. Thought you had turned off and given Monterey County up. Odd I didn't see you." And all the time he was looking at me like a lawyer cross-examining a witness.
"Oh," said I, "I went off the road a few miles to break in some cattle I had traded for, and to let them get over their sore-footedness, and to leave some that I couldn't bring along. I had so many that I couldn't make time. I'm going back for them as soon as I can get around to it. You must have missed me that way."
"Trust Mr. Vandemark," said he, "to follow off any cattle track that shows itself. He is destined to be the cattle king of the prairies, Mr. Burns. I'm needing all the men I can get, Mr. Vandemark, putting up my house and barns and breaking prairie. I wonder if you wouldn't like to turn an honest penny by coming over and working for me for a while?"
He had been astonished and startled at the word that Virginia, after escaping from him, had found friends, and tried to pass the matter off as something of which he knew; but now he was quite his smiling, confidential self again, talking as if his offering me work was a favor he was begging in a warm and friendly sort of manner. I explained that I myself was getting my farm in condition to live upon, but might be glad to come to him later; and we drove on--I all the time sweating like a butcher under the strain of this getting so close to my great secret--and Virginia's.
Would it not all have to come out finally? What would Gowdy do to get Virginia back? Would he try at all? Did he have any legal right to her control and custody? I trusted completely in Grandma Thorndyke's protection of her--an army with banners would not have given me more confidence; for I could not imagine any one making her do anything she thought wrong, and ten armies with all the banners in the world could not have forced her to allow anything improper--and she had said that she and the elder were going to take care of the poor friendless girl--yet, I looked back at the Gowdy buggy flying on toward the village, in two minds as to whether or not I ought to go back and do--something. If I could have seen what that something might have been, I should probably have gone back; but I could not think just where I came into the play here.
So I went on toward the goal of all my ambitions, my square mile of Iowa land, steered by Henderson L. Burns, who, between shooting prairie chickens, upland plover and sickle-billed curlew, guided me toward my goal by pointing out lone boulders, and the mounds in front of the dens of prairie wolves and badgers. We went on for six miles, and finally came to a place where the land slopes down in what is a pretty steep hill for Iowa, to a level bottom more than a mile across, at the farther side of which the land again rises to the general level of the country in another slope, matching the one on the brow of which we halted. The general course of the two hills is easterly and westerly, and we stood on the southern side of the broad flat valley.
As I write, I can look out over it. The drainage of the flat now runs off through a great open ditch which I combined with my neighbors to have dredged through by a floating dredge in 1897. The barge set in two miles above me, and after it had dug itself down so as to get water in which to float, it worked its way down to the river eight miles away. The line of this ditch is now marked by a fringe of trees; but in 1855, nothing broke the surface of the sea of grass except a few clumps of plum trees and willows at the foot of the opposite slope, and here and there along the line of the present ditch, there were ponds of open water, patches of cattails, and the tent-like roofs of muskrat-houses. I had learned enough of the prairies to see that this would be a miry place to cross, if a crossing had to be made; so I waited for Henderson L. to come up and tell me how to steer my course.
"This is Hell Slew," said he as he came up. "But I guess we won't have to cross. Le's see; le's see! Yes, here we are."
He looked at his memorandum of the description of my land, looked about him, drove off a mile south and came back, finally put his horse down the hill to the base of it, and out a hundred yards in the waving grass that made early hay for the town for fifteen years, he found the corner stake driven by the government surveyors, and beckoned for me to come down.
"This is the southeast corner of your land," said he. "Looks like a mighty good place for a man with as good a shotgun as that--ducks and geese the year round!"
"Where are the other corners?" I asked.
"That's to be determined," he answered.
To determine it, he tied his handkerchief about the felly of his buggy wheel, held a pocket compass in his left hand to drive by, picked out a tall rosin-weed to mark the course for me, and counted the times the handkerchief went round as the buggy traveled on. He knew how many turns made a mile. The horse's hoofs sucked in the wet sod as we got farther out into the marsh, and then the ground rose a little and we went up over a headland that juts out into the marsh; then we went down into the slew again, and finally stopped in a miry place where there was a flowing spring with tall yellow lady's-slippers and catkined willows growing around it. After a few minutes of looking about, Burns found my southwest corner. We made back to the edge of the slope, and Henderson L. looked off to the north in despair.
"My boy," said he, "I've actually located your two south corners, and you can run the south line yourself from these stakes. The north line is three hundred and twenty rods north of and parallel to it--and the east and west lines will run themselves when you locate the north corners--but I'll have to wait till the ground freezes, or get Darius Green to help me--and the great tide of immigration hain't brought him to this neck of the woods yet."
"But where's my land?" I queried: for I did not understand all this hocus-pocus of locating any given spot in the Iowa prairies in 1855. "Where's my land?"
"The heft of it," said he, "is right down there in Hell Slew. It's all pretty wet; but I think you've got the wettest part of it; the best duck ponds, and the biggest muskrat-houses. This slew is the only blot in the 'scutcheon of this pearl of counties, Mr. Vandemark--the only blot; and you've got the blackest of it."
I leaned back against the buggy, completely unnerved. Magnus put out his hand as if to grasp mine, but I did not take it. There went through my head that rhyme of Jackway's that he hiccoughed out as he drank with his cronies--on my money--that day last winter back in Madison: "Sold again, and got the tin, and sucked another Dutchman in!" This huge marsh was what John Rucker, after killing my mother, had deeded me for my inheritance!
In that last word I had from her, the poor stained letter she left in the apple-tree--perhaps it was her tears, and not the rain that had stained it so--she had said: "I am going very far away, and if you ever see this, keep it always, and whenever you see it remember that I would always have died willingly for you, and that I am going to build up for you a fortune which will give you a better life than I have lived." And this was the fortune which she had built up for me! I hated myself for having been gulled--it seemed as if I had allowed my mother to be cheated more than myself. Good land, I thought, was selling in Monterey County for two dollars an acre. The next summer when I bought an eighty across the road so as to have more plow-land, I paid three dollars and a half an acre, and sorrowed over it afterward: for in 1857 I could have got all I wanted of the best land--if I had had the money, which I had not--at a dollar and a quarter. At the going price then, in 1855, this section of land, if it had been good land, would have been worth only twelve or thirteen hundred dollars. At that rate, what was this swamp worth? Nothing!
I can still feel sorry for that poor boy, myself, green as grass, and without a friend in the world to whom he could go for advice, halted in his one-sided battle with the world, out there on the bare prairie, looking out on what he thought was the scene of his ruin, and thinking that every man's hand had been against him, and would always be. Where were now all my dreams of fat cattle, sleek horses, waddling hogs, and the fine house in which I had had so many visions of spending my life, with a more or less clearly-seen wife--especially during those days after Rowena Fewkes had told me how well she could cook, and proved it by getting me my breakfast; and the later days of my stay in the Grove of Destiny with Virginia Royall. Any open prairie farm, with no house, nothing with which to make a house, and no home but a wagon, and no companions but my cows would have been rather forbidding at first glance; but this--I was certain I was ruined; I suppose I must have looked a little bad, for Henderson L. laid his hand on my shoulder.
"Don't cave in, my boy," said he. "You're young--and there's oceans of good land to be had. Keep a stiff upper lip!"
"I'll kill him!" I shouted. "I'll kill John Rucker!"
"Don't, till you catch him," said Burns. "And what good would it do anyhow?"
"Is there any plow-land on it?" I asked, after getting control of myself.
"Some," said Henderson L. cheerfully. "Don't you remember that we drove up over a spur of the hill back there? Well, all the dry land north of our track is yours. Finest building-spot in the world, Jake. We'll make a farm of this yet. Come back and I'll show you."