ADVENTURE ON THE OLD RIDGE ROAD
Vandemark Township and Monterey County, as any one may see by looking at
the map of Iowa, had to be reached from Wisconsin by crossing the
Mississippi at Dubuque and then fetching across the prairie to the
journey's end; and in 1855 a traveler making that trip naturally fell in
with a good many of his future neighbors and fellow-citizens pressing
westward with him to the new lands.
Some were merely hunting country, and were ready to be whiffled off
toward any neck of the woods which might be puffed up by a wayside
acquaintance as ignorant about it as he. Some were headed toward what
was called "the Fort Dodge country," which was anywhere west of the Des
Moines River. Some had been out and made locations the year before and
were coming on with their stuff; some were joining friends already on
the ground; some had a list of Gardens of Eden in mind, and meant to
look them over one after the other until a land was found flowing with
milk and honey, and inhabited by roast pigs with forks sticking in their
backs and carving knives between their teeth.
Very few of the tillers of the soil had farms already marked down,
bought and paid for as I had; and I sometimes talked in such a way as
to show that I was a little on my high heels; but they were freer to
tack, go about, and run before the wind than I; for some one was sure to
stick to each of them like a bur and steer him to some definite place,
where he could squat and afterward take advantage of the right of
preemption, while I was forced to ferret out a particular square mile of
this boundless prairie, and there settle down, no matter how far it
might be from water, neighbors, timber or market; and fight out my
battle just as things might happen. If the woman in the wagon was
"scared to death" at the sight of the prairie, I surely had cause to be
afraid; but I was not. I was uplifted. I felt the same sense of freedom,
and the greatness of things, that came over me when I first found myself
able to take in a real eyeful in driving my canal-boat through the
Montezuma Marsh, or when I first saw big waters at Buffalo. I was made
for the open, I guess.
There were wagon trails in every westerly direction from all the
Mississippi ferries and landings; and the roads branched from Dubuque
southwestward to Marion, and on to the Mormon trail, and northwestward
toward Elkader and West Union; but I had to follow the Old Ridge Road
west through Dubuque, Delaware, Buchanan and Blackhawk Counties, and
westward. It was called the Ridge Road because it followed the knolls
and hog-backs, and thus, as far as might be, kept out of the slews.
The last bit of it so far as I know was plowed up in 1877 in the
northeastern part of Grundy County. I saw this last mile of the old road
on a trip I made to Waterloo, and remember it. This part of it had been
established by a couple of Hardin County pioneers who got lost in the
forty-mile prairie between the Iowa and Cedar Rivers about three years
before I came in and showed their fitness for citizenship by filling
their wagon with stakes on the way back and driving them on every
sightly place as guides for others--an Iowa Llano Estacado was
Grundy Prairie.
This last bit of it ran across a school section that had been left in
prairie sod till then. The past came rolling back upon me as I stopped
my horses and looked at it, a wonderful road, that never was a highway
in law, curving about the side of a knoll, the comb between the tracks
carrying its plume of tall spear grass, its barbed shafts just ripe for
boys to play Indian with, which bent over the two tracks, washed deep by
the rains, and blown out by the winds; and where the trail had crossed a
wet place, the grass and weeds still showed the effects of the plowing
and puddling of the thousands of wheels and hoofs which had poached up
the black soil into bubbly mud as the road spread out into a bulb of
traffic where the pioneering drivers sought for tough sod which would
bear up their wheels. A plow had already begun its work on this last
piece of the Old Ridge Road, and as I stood there, the farmer who was
breaking it up came by with his big plow and four horses, and stopped to
talk with me.
"What made that old road?" I asked.
"Vell," said he, "dot's more as I know. Somebody, I dank."
And yet, the history of Vandemark Township was in that old road that he
complained of because he couldn't do a good job of breaking across
it--he was one of those German settlers, or the son of one, who invaded
the state after the rest of us had opened it up.
The Old Ridge Road went through Dyersville, Manchester, Independence,
Waterloo, and on to Fort Dodge--but beyond there both the road and--so
far as I know--the country itself, was a vague and undefined thing. So
also was the road itself beyond the Iowa River, and for that matter it
got to be less and less a beaten track all the way as the wagons spread
out fanwise to the various fords and ferries and as the movers stopped
and settled like nesting cranes. Of course there was a fringe of
well-established settlements a hundred miles or so beyond Fort Dodge, of
people who, most of them, came up the Missouri River.
Our Iowa wilderness did not settle up in any uniform way, but was
inundated as a field is overspread by a flood; only it was a flood which
set up-stream. First the Mississippi had its old town, away off south of
Iowa, near its mouth; then the people worked up to the mouth of the
Missouri and made another town; then the human flood crept up the
Mississippi and the Missouri, and Iowa was reached; then the Iowa
valleys were occupied by the river immigration, and the tide of
settlement rose until it broke over the hills on such routes as the Old
Ridge Road; but these cross-country streams here and there met other
trickles of population which had come up the belts of forest on the
streams. I was steering right into the wilderness; but there were far
islands of occupation--the heft of the earliest settlements strongly
southern in character--on each of the Iowa streams which I was to cross,
snuggled down in the wooded bottom lands on the Missouri, and even away
beyond at Salt Lake, and farther off in Oregon and California where the
folk-freshet broke on the Pacific--a wave of humanity dashing against a
reef of water.
Of course, I knew very little of these things as I sat there, ignorant
as I was, looking out over the grassy sea, in my prairie schooner, my
four cows panting from the climb, and with the yellow-haired young woman
beside me, who had been wished on me by the black-bearded man on leaving
the Illinois shore. Most of it I still had to spell out through age and
experience, and some reading. I only knew that I had been told that the
Ridge Road would take me to Monterey County, if the weather wasn't too
wet, and I didn't get drowned in a freshet at a ferry or slewed down and
permanently stuck fast somewhere with all my goods.
"Gee-up," I shouted to my cows, and cracked my blacksnake over their
backs; and they strained slowly into the yoke. The wagon began
chuck-chucking along into the unknown.
"Stop!" said my passenger. "I've got to wait here for my--for my
husband."
"I can't stop," said I, "till I get to timber and water."
"But I must wait," she pleaded. "He can't help but find us here, because
it's the only way to come; but if we go on we may miss him--and--and--
I've just got to stop. Let me out, if you won't stop."
I whoaed up and she made as if to climb out.
"He may not get out of Dubuque to-day," I said. "He said so. And for you
to wait here alone, with all these movers going by, and with no place to
stay to-night will be a pretty pokerish thing to do."
Finally we agreed that I should drive on to water and timber, unless
the road should fork; in which case we were to wait at the forks no
matter what sort of camp it might be.
The Ridge Road followed pretty closely the route afterward taken by the
Illinois Central Railroad; but the railroad takes the easiest grades,
while the Ridge Road kept to the high ground; so that at some places it
lay a long way north or south of the railway route on which trains were
running as far as Manchester within about two years. It veered off
toward the head waters of White Water Creek on that first day's journey;
and near a new farm, where they kept a tavern, we stopped because there
was water in the well, and hay and firewood for sale. It was still
early. The yellow-haired woman, whose name I did not know, alighted, and
when I found that they would keep her for the night, went toward the
farm-house without thanking me--but she was too much worried about
something to think of that, I guess; but she turned and came back.
"Which way is Monterey Centre?" she asked.
"Away off to the westward," I answered.
"Is it far?"
"A long ways," I said.
"Is it on this awful prairie?" she inquired.
"Yes," said I, "I guess it is. It's farther away from timber than this I
calculate."
"My lord," she burst out. "I'll simply die of the horrors!"
She looked over the trail toward Dubuque, and then slowly went into the
house.
So, then, these two with all their strange actions were going to
Monterey County! They would be neighbors of mine, maybe; but probably
not. They looked like town people; and I knew already the distance that
separated farmers from the dwellers in the towns--a difference that as I
read history, runs away back through all the past. They were far removed
from what I should be--something that I realized more and more all
through my life--the difference between those who live on the farms and
those who live on the farmers.
There was a two-seated covered carriage standing before the house, and
across the road were two mover-wagons, with a nice camp-fire blazing,
and half a dozen men and women and a lot of children about it cooking a
meal of victuals. I pulled over near them and turned my cows out, tied
down head and foot so they could bait and not stray too far. I noticed
that their cows, which were driven after the wagon, had found too fast
for them the pace set by the horse teams, had got very foot-sore, and
were lying down and not feeding--for I drove them up to see what was the
matter with them.
2
Before starting-time in the morning, I had swapped two of my driving
cows for four of their lame ones, and hauled up by the side of the road
until I could break my new animals to the yoke and allow them to
recuperate. I am a cattleman by nature, and was more greedy for stock
than anxious to make time--maybe that's another reason for being called
Cow Vandemark. The neighbors used to say that I laid the foundation of
my present competence by trading one sound cow for two lame ones every
few miles along the Ridge Road, coming into the state, and then feeding
my stock on speculators' grass in the summer and straw that my neighbors
would otherwise have burned up in the winter. What was a week's time to
me? I had a lifetime in Iowa before me.
"Whose rig is that?" I asked, pointing to the carriage.
"Belongs to a man name of Gowdy," the mover told me. "Got a hell-slew of
wuthless land in Monterey County an' is going out to settle on it."
"How do you know it's worthless?" I inquired pretty sharply; for a man
must stand up for his own place whether he's ever seen it or not.
"They say so," said he.
"Why?" I asked.
"Out in the middle of the Monterey Prairie," he said. "You can't live in
this country 'less you settle near the timber."
"Instead of stopping at this farm," I said, "I should think he'd have
gone on to the next settlement. Horses lame?"
"Best horses I've seen on the road," was the answer. "Kentucky horses.
Gowdy comes from Kentucky. Stopped because his wife is bad sick."
"Where's he?" I asked.
"Out shooting geese," said he. "Don't seem to fret his gizzard about his
wife; but they say she's struck with death."
All the while I was cooking my supper I was thinking of this woman,
"struck with death," and her husband out shooting geese, while she
struggled with our last great antagonist alone. One of the women came
over from the other camp with her husband, and I spoke to her about it.
"This man," said she, "jest acts out what all the men feel. A womern is
nothing but a thing to want as long as she is young and can work. But
this womern hain't quite alone. She's got a little sister with her that
knows a hull lot better how to do for her than any darned man would!"
It grew dark and cold--a keen, still, frosty spring evening which filled
the sky with stars and bespoke a sunny day for to-morrow, with settled
warmer weather. The geese and ducks were still calling from the sky, and
not far away the prairie wolves were howling about one of the many
carcasses of dead animals which the stream of immigration had already
dropped by the wayside. I was dead sleepy, and was about to turn in,
when my black-bearded man last seen in Dubuque with a constable holding
him by the arm, came driving up, and went about among the various wagons
as if looking for something. I knew he was seeking me, and spoke to him.
"Oh!" he said, as if all at once easier in his mind. "Where's my--"
"She's in the house," I said; "this is a kind of a tavern."
"Good!" said he. "I'm much obliged to you. Here's your supplies. I had
to buy this light wagon and a team of horses in Dubuque, and it took a
little time, it took a little time."
I now noticed that he had a way of repeating his words, and giving them
a sort of friendly note as if he were taking you into his confidence.
When I offered to pay him for the supplies, he refused. "I'm in debt to
you. I don't remember what they cost--got them with some things for
myself; a trifle, a trifle. Glad to do more for you--no trouble at all,
none whatever."
"Didn't you have any trouble in Dubuque?" I asked, thinking of the man
who had threatened to shoot him in front of the post-office, and how the
black-bearded man had called upon the bystanders to bear witness that he
was about to shoot in self-defense. He gave me a sharp look; but it was
too dark to make it worth anything to him.
"No trouble at all," he said. "What d'ye mean?"
Before I could answer there came up a man carrying a shotgun in one
hand, and a wild goose over his shoulder. Following him was a darky with
a goose over each shoulder. I threw some dry sticks on my fire, and it
flamed up showing me the faces of the group. Buckner Gowdy, or as
everybody in Monterey County always called him, Buck Gowdy, stood before
us smiling, powerful, six feet high, but so big of shoulder that he
seemed a little stooped, perfectly at ease, behaving as if he had always
known all of us. He wore a little black mustache which curled up at the
corners of his mouth like the tail feathers of a drake. His clothes were
soaked and gaumed up with mud from his tramping and crawling through the
marshes; but otherwise he looked as fresh as if he had just risen from
his bed, while the negro seemed ready to drop.
When Buck Gowdy spoke, it was always with a little laugh, and that
slight stoop toward you as if there was something between him and you
that was a sort of secret--the kind of laugh a man gives who has had
many a joke with you and depends on your knowing what it is that pleases
him. His eyes were brown, and a little close together; and his head was
covered with a mass of wavy dark hair. His voice was rich and deep, and
pitched low as if he were telling you something he did not want
everybody to hear. He swore constantly, and used nasty language; but he
had a way with him which I have seen him use to ministers of the gospel
without their seeming to take notice of the improper things he said.
There was something intimate in his treatment of every one he spoke to;
and he was in the habit of saying things, especially to women, that had
all sorts of double meanings--meanings that you couldn't take offense at
without putting yourself on some low level which he could always vow was
far from his mind. And there was a vibration in his low voice which
always seemed to mean that he felt much more than he said.
"My name's Gowdy," he said; "all you people going west for your health?"
"I," said the black-bearded man, "am Doctor Bliven; and I'm going west,
I'm going west, not only for my health, but for that of the community."
"Glad to make your acquaintance," said Gowdy; "and may I crave the
acquaintance of our young Argonaut here?"
"Let me present Mr.--" said Doctor Bliven, "Mr.--Mr.--"
"Vandemark," said I.
"Let me present Mr. Vandemark," said the doctor, "a very obliging young
man to whom I am already under many obligations, many obligations."
Buckner Gowdy took my hand, bringing his body close to me, and looking
me in the eyes boldly and in a way which was quite fascinating to me.
"I hope, Mr. Vandemark," said he, "that you and Doctor Bliven are going
to settle in the neighborhood to which I am exiled. Where are you two
bound for?"
"I expect to open a drug store and begin the practise of medicine," said
the doctor, "at the thriving town of Monterey Centre."
"I've got some land in Monterey County," said I; "but I don't know where
in the county it is."
Doctor Bliven started; and Buckner Gowdy shook my hand again, and then
the doctor's.
"A sort of previous neighborhood reunion," said he. "I expect one of
these days to be one of the old residenters of Monterey County myself. I
am a fellow-sufferer with you, Mr. Vandemark--I also have land there.
Won't you and the doctor join me in a night-cap in honor of our
neighborship; and drink to better acquaintance? And let's invite our
fellow wayfarers, too. I have some game for them."
He looked across to the other camp, and we went over to it, Gowdy giving
the third goose and the gun to the negro who had hard work to manage
them. I had a roadside acquaintance with the movers, but did not know
their names. In a jiffy Gowdy had all of them, and had found out that
they expected to locate near Waverly. In five minutes he had begun
discussing with a pretty young woman the best way to cook a goose; and
soon wandered away with her on some pretense, and we could hear his
subdued, vibratory voice and low laugh from the surrounding darkness,
and from time to time her nervous giggle. Suddenly I remembered his
wife, certainly very sick in the house, and the talk that she was
"struck with death"--and he out shooting geese, and now gallivanting
around with a strange girl in the dark.
There must be some mistake--this man with the bold eyes and the warm
and friendly handclasp, with the fascinating manners and the neighborly
ideas, could not possibly be a person who would do such things. But even
as I thought this, and made up my mind that, after all, I would join him
and the queer-behaving doctor in a friendly drink, a woman came flying
out of the house and across the road, calling out, asking if any one
knew where Mr. Gowdy was, that his wife was dying.
He and the girl came to the fire quickly, and as they came into view I
saw a movement of his arm as if he was taking it from around her waist.
"I'm here," said he--and his voice sounded harder, somehow. "What's the
matter?"
"Your wife," said the woman, "--she's taken very bad, Mr. Gowdy."
He started toward the house without a word; but before he went out of
sight he turned and looked for a moment with a sort of half-smile at the
girl. For a while we were all as still as death. Finally Doctor Bliven
remarked that lots of folks were foolish about sick people, and that
more patients were scared to death by those about them than died of
disease. The girl said that that certainly was so. Doctor Bliven then
volunteered the assertion that Mr. Gowdy seemed to be a fine fellow, and
a gentleman if he ever saw one. Just then the woman came from across the
road again and asked for "the man who was a doctor."
"I'm a doctor," said Bliven. "Somebody wants me?"
She said that Mr. Gowdy would like to have him come into the house--and
he went hurriedly, after taking a medicine-case from his democrat wagon.
I saw my yellow-haired passenger of the Dubuque ferry meet him before
the door, throw her arms about him and kiss him. He returned her
greeting, and they went through the door together into the house.
3
I turned in, and slept several hours very soundly, and then suddenly
found myself wide awake. I got up, and as I did almost every night, went
out to look after my cattle. I found all but one of them, and fetched a
compass about the barns and stables, searching until I found her. As I
passed in front of the door I heard moanings and cryings from a bench
against the side of the house, and stopped. It was dawn, and I could see
that it was either a small woman or a large child, huddled down on the
bench crying terribly, with those peculiar wrenching spasms that come
only when you have struggled long, and then quite given up to misery. I
went toward her, then stepped back, then drew closer, trying to decide
whether I should go away and leave her, or speak to her; and arguing
with myself as to what I could possibly say to her. She seemed to be
trying to choke down her weeping, burying her head in her hands, holding
back her sobs, wrestling with herself. Finally she fell forward on her
face upon the bench, her hands spread abroad and hanging down, her face
on the hard cold wood--and all her moanings ceased. It seemed to me that
she had suddenly dropped dead; for I could not hear from her a single
sigh or gasp or breath, though I stepped closer and listened--not a sign
of life did she give. So I put my arm under her and raised her up, only
to see that her face was ghastly white, and that she seemed quite dead.
I picked her up, and found that, though she was slight and girlish, she
was more woman than child, and carried her over to the well where there
was cold water in the trough, from which I sprinkled a few icy drops in
her face--and she gasped and looked at me as if dazed.
"You fainted away," I said, "and I brought you to."
"I wish you hadn't!" she cried. "I wish you had let me die!"
"What's the matter, little girl?" I asked, seating her on the bench once
more. "Is there anything I can do?"
"Oh! oh! oh! oh!" she cried, maybe a dozen times--and nothing more,
until finally she burst out: "She was all I had in the world. My God,
what will become of me!" And she sprang up, and would have run off, I
believe, if Buckner Gowdy had not overtaken her, and coaxingly led her
back into the house.
* * * * *
We come now into a new state of things in the history of Vandemark
Township.
We meet not only the things that made it, but the actors in the play.
Buckner Gowdy, Doctor Bliven, their associates, and others not yet
mentioned will be found helping to make or mar the story all through the
future; for an Iowa community was like a growing child in this, that its
character in maturity was fixed by its beginnings.
I know communities in Iowa that went into evil ways, and were blighted
through the poison distilled into their veins by a few of the earliest
settlers; I know others that began with a few strong, honest, thinking,
reading, praying families, and soon began sending out streams of good
influence which had a strange power for better things; I knew other
settlements in which there was a feud from the beginning between the bad
and the good; and in some of them the blight of the bad finally
overwhelmed the good, while in others the forces of righteousness at
last grappled with the devil's gang, and, sometimes in violence,
redeemed the neighborhood to a place in the light.
In one of these classes Monterey County, and even Vandemark Township,
took its place. Buckner Gowdy and Doctor Bliven, the little girl who
fainted away on the wooden bench in the night, and the yellow-haired
woman who stole a ride with me across the Dubuque ferry had their part
in the building up of our great community--and others worked with them,
some for the good and some for the bad.
Now I come to people whose histories I know by the absorption of a
lifetime's experience. I know that it was Mrs. Bliven's husband--we
always called her that, of course--who expected to arrest the pair of
them as they crossed the Dubuque ferry; and that I was made a cat's-paw
in slipping her past her pursuers and saving Bliven from arrest. I know
that Buckner Gowdy was a wild and turbulent rakehell in Kentucky and
after many bad scrapes was forced to run away from the state, and was
given his huge plantation of "worthless" land--as he called it--in Iowa;
that he had married his wife, who was a poor girl of good family named
Ann Royall, because he couldn't get her except by marrying her.
I know that her younger sister, Virginia Royall, came with them to Iowa,
because she had no other relative or friend in the world except Mrs.
Gowdy. I pretty nearly know that Virginia would have killed herself that
night on the prairie by the Old Ridge Road, because of a sudden feeling
of terror, at the situation in which she was left, at the prairies and
the wild desolate road, at Buck Gowdy, at life in general--if she had
had any means with which to destroy her life. I know that Buck Gowdy
took her into the house and comforted her by telling her that he would
care for her, and send her back to Kentucky.
* * * * *
A funeral by the wayside! This was my first experience with a kind of
tragedy which was not quite so common as you might think. Buckner Gowdy
instead of giving his wife a grave by the road, as many did, sent the
man of the house back to Dubuque for a hearse, the women laid out the
corpse, and after a whole day of waiting, the hearse came, and went back
over the road down the Indian trail through the bluffs to some graveyard
in the old town by the river. Virginia Royall sat in the back seat of
the carriage with Buckner Gowdy, and the darky, Pinckney Johnson--we all
knew him afterward--drove solemnly along wearing white gloves which he
had found somewhere. Virginia shrank away over to her own side of the
seat as if trying to get as far from Buckner Gowdy as possible.
The movers moved on, leaving me four of their cows instead of two of
mine, and I went diligently to work breaking them to the yoke. New
prairie schooners came all the time into view from the East, and others
went over the sky-line into the West.
4
And that day the Fewkes family hove into sight in a light democrat wagon
drawn by a good-sized apology for a horse, poor as a crow, and carrying
sail in the most ferocious way of any beast I ever saw. He had had a bad
case of poll-evil and his head was poked forward as if he was just about
to bite something, and his ears were leered back tight to his head with
an expression of the most terrible anger--I have known people who went
through the world in a good deal the same way for much the same reasons.
Old Man Fewkes was driving, and sitting by him was Mrs. Fewkes in a
faded calico dress, her shoulders wrapped in what was left of a shawl.
Fewkes was letting old Tom take his own way, which he did by rushing
with all vengeance through every bad spot and then stopping to rest as
soon as he reached a good bit of road. The old man was thin and
light-boned, with a high beak of a nose which ought to have indicated
strength of character, I suppose; but the other feature that also tells
a good deal, the chin, was hidden by a gray beard which hung in long
curving locks over his breast and saved him the expense of a collar or
cravat. His hands were like claws--I never saw such hands doing much of
the hard work of the world--and, like his face, were covered with great
patches which, if they had not been so big would have been freckles. His
wife was a perfect picture of those women who had the life drailed out
of them by a yielding to the whiffling winds of influence that carried
the dead leaves of humanity hither and yon in the advance of the
frontier. She sat stooped over on the stiff broad seat, with her
shoulders drawn down as no shoulders but hers could be drawn. It was her
one outstanding point that she had no collar-bones. It doesn't seem
possible that this could be so; but she could bring her shoulders
together in front until they touched. She was rather proud of this--I
suppose every one must have something to be proud of.
I guess the old man's chin must have been pretty weak; for the boys, who
were seated on the back seat, both had high noses and no chins to speak
of. The oldest was over twenty, I suppose, and was named Celebrate. His
mother explained to me that he was born on the Fourth of July, and they
called him at first Celebrate Independence Fewkes; but finally changed
it to Celebrate Fourth--I am telling you this so as to give you an idea
as to what sort of folks they were. Celebrate was tall and well-built,
and could be a good hand if he tried; which he would do once in a while
for half a day or so if flattered. The second son was named Surajah
Dowlah Fewkes--the name was pronounced Surrager by everybody. Old Man
Fewkes said they named him this because a well-read man had told them it
might give him force of character; but it failed. He was a harmless
little chap, and there was nothing bad about him except that he was
addicted to inventions. When they came into camp that day he was
explaining to Celebrate a plan for catching wild geese with fish-hooks
baited with corn, and that evening came to me to see if he couldn't
borrow a long fish-line.
"I can ketch meat for a dozen outfits with it," he said, "if I can
borrow a fish-hook."
Walking along behind the wagon came the fifth member of the family,
Rowena, a girl of seventeen. She went several rods behind the wagon, and
as they rushed and plodded along according to old Tom's temper, I
noticed that she rambled over the prairie a good deal picking flowers;
and you would hardly have thought to look at her that she belonged to
the Fewkes outfit at all. I guess that was the way she wanted it to
look. She was as vigorous as the others were limpsey and boneless; and
there was in her something akin to the golden plovers that were running
in hundreds that morning over the prairies--I haven't seen one for
twenty-five years! That is, she skimmed over the little knolls rather
than walked, as if made of something lighter than ordinary human clay.
Her dress was ragged, faded, and showed through the tears in it a
tattered quilted petticoat, and she wore no bonnet or hat; but carried
in her hand a boy's cap--which, according to the notions harbored by us
then, it would have been immodest for her to wear. Her hair was brown
and blown all about her head, and her face was tanned to a rich brown--a
very bad complexion then, but just the thing the society girl of to-day
likes to show when she returns from the seashore.
When her family had halted, she did not come to them at once, but made a
circuit or two about the camp, like a shy bird coming to its nest, or as
if she hated to do it; and when she did come it was in a sort of defiant
way, swinging herself and tossing her head, and looking at every one as
bold as brass. I was staring at the astonishing horse, the queer wagon,
and the whole outfit with more curiosity than manners, I reckon, when
she came into the circle, and caught my unmannerly eye.
"Well," she said, her face reddening under the tan, "if you see anything
green throw your hat at it! Sellin' gawp-seed, or what is your
business?"
"I beg your pardon," "I meant no offense," and even "Excuse me" were
things I had never learned to say. I had learned to fight any one who
took offense at me; and if they didn't like my style they could lump
it--such was my code of manners, and the code of my class. To beg pardon
was to knuckle under--and it took something more than I was master of in
the way of putting on style to ask to be excused, even if the element of
back-down were eliminated. Remember, I had been "educated" on the canal.
So I tried to look her out of countenance, grew red, retreated, and went
about some sort of needless work without a word--completely defeated. I
thought she seemed rather to like this; and that evening I went over and
offered Mrs. Fewkes some butter and milk, of which I had a plenty.
I was soon on good terms with the Fewkes family. Old Man Fewkes told me
he was going to Negosha--a region of which I had never heard. It was
away off to the westward, he said; and years afterward I made up my mind
that the name was made up of the two words Nebraska and Dakota--not very
well joined together. Mrs. Fewkes was not strong for Negosha; and when
Fewkes offered to go to Texas, she objected because it was so far.
"Why," said the old man indignantly, "it hain't only a matter of fifteen
hundred mile! An' the trees is in constant varder!"
He still harped on Negosha, though, and during the evening while we were
fattening up on my bread and meat, which I had on a broad hint added to
our meal, he told me that what he really wanted was an estate where he
could have an artificial lake and keep some deer and plenty of ducks and
geese. Swans, too, he said could be raised at a profit, and sold to
other well-to-do people. He said that by good farming he could get
along with only a few hundred acres of plow land. Mrs. Fewkes grew more
indulgent to these ideas as the food satisfied her hungry stomach.
Celebrate believed that if he could once get out among 'em he could do
well as a hunter and trapper; while Surajah kept listening to the
honking of the wild geese and planning to catch enough of them with
baited hooks to feed the whole family all the way to Negosha, and
provide plenty of money by selling the surplus to the emigrants. Rowena
sat in her ragged dress, her burst shoes drawn in under her skirt,
looking at her family with an expression of unconcealed scorn. When she
got a chance to speak to me, she did so in a very friendly manner.
"Did you ever see," said she, "such a set of darned infarnal fools as we
are?"
Before the evening was over, however, and she had hidden herself away in
her clothes under a thin and ragged comforter in their wagon, she had
joined in the discussion of their castle in Spain in a way that showed
her to be a legitimate Fewkes. She spoke for a white saddle horse, a
beautiful side-saddle, a long blue riding-habit with shot in the seam,
and a man to keep the horse in order. She wanted to be able to rub the
horse with a white silk handkerchief without soiling it. Ah, well!
dreams hovered over all our camps then. The howling of the wolves
couldn't drive them away. Poor Rowena!