THE GROVE OF DESTINY
When I had got up in the morning and rounded up my cows I started a fire
and began whistling. I was not in the habit of whistling much; but I
wanted her to wake up and dress so I could get the makings of the
breakfast out of the wagon. After I had the fire going and had whistled
all the tunes I knew--_Lorena, The Gipsy's Warning, I'd Offer Thee This
Hand of Mine,_ and _Joe Bowers_, I tapped on the side of the wagon, and
said "Virginia!"
She gave a scream, and almost at once I heard her voice calling in
terror from the back of the wagon; and on running around to the place I
found that she had stuck her head out of the opening of the wagon cover
and was calling for help and protection.
"Don't be afraid," said I. "There's nobody here but me."
"Somebody called me 'Virginia,'" she cried, her face pale and her whole
form trembling. "Nobody but that man in all this country would call
me that."
She hardly ever called Gowdy by any other name but "that man," so far as
I have heard. Something had taken place which struck her with a sort of
dumbness; and I really believe she could not then have spoken the name
Gowdy if she had tried. What it was that happened she never told any
one, unless it was Grandma Thorndyke, who was always dumb regarding the
sort of thing which all the neighbors thought took place. To Grandma
Thorndyke sex must have seemed the original curse imposed on our first
parents; eggs and link sausages were repulsive because they suggested
the insides of animals and vital processes; and a perfect human race
would have been to her made up of beings nourished by the odors of
flowers, and perpetuated by the planting of the parings of finger-nails
in antiseptic earth--or something of the sort. My live-stock business
always had to her its seamy side and its underworld which she always
turned her face away from--though I never saw a woman who could take a
new-born pig, calf, colt or fowl, once it was really brought forth so it
could be spoken of, and raise it from the dead, almost, as she could.
But every trace of the facts up to that time had to be concealed, and if
not they were ignored by Grandma Thorndyke. New England all over!
If Gowdy was actually guilty of the sort of affront to little Virginia
for which the public thought him responsible, I do not see how the girl
could ever have told it to grandma. I do not see how grandma could ever
have been made to understand it. I suspect that the worst that grandma
ever believed, was that Gowdy swore or used what she called vulgar
language in Virginia's presence. Knowing him as we all did afterward, we
suspected that he attempted to treat her as he treated all women--and as
I believe he could not help treating them. It seems impossible of
belief--his wife's orphan sister, the recent death of Ann Gowdy, the
girl's helplessness and she only a little girl; but Buck Gowdy was Buck
Gowdy, and that escape of his wife's sister and her flight over the
prairie was the indelible black mark against him which was pointed at
from time to time forever after whenever the people were ready to
forgive those daily misdoings to which a frontier people were not so
critical as perhaps they should have been. Indeed he gained a certain
popularity from his boast that all the time he needed to gain control
over any woman was half an hour alone with her--but of that later, if
at all.
"That was me that called you 'Virginia,'" said I. "I want to get into
the wagon to get things for breakfast--after you get up."
"I never thought of your calling me Virginia," she answered--and I had
no idea what was in her mind. I saw no reason why I shouldn't call her
by her first name. "Miss" Royall would have been my name for the wife of
a man named Royall. It was not until long afterward that I found out how
different my manners were from those to which she was accustomed.
I never thought of such a thing as varying from my course of conduct on
her account; and just as would have been the case if my outfit had been
a boat for which time and tide would not wait, I yoked up, after the
breakfast was done, and prepared to negotiate the miry crossing of the
creek and pull out for Monterey County, which I hoped to reach in time
to break some land and plant a small crop. We did not discuss the matter
of her going with me--I think we both took that for granted. She stood
on a little knoll while I was making ready to start, gazing westward,
and when the sound of cracking whips and the shouts of teamsters told of
the approach of movers from the East, even though we were some distance
off the trail, she crept into the wagon so as to be out of sight. She
had eaten little, and seemed weak and spent; and when we started, I
arranged the bed in the wagon for her to lie upon, just as I had done
for Doctor Bliven's woman, and she seemed to hide rather than anything
else as she crept into it. So on we went, the wagon jolting roughly at
times, and at times running smoothly enough as we reached dry roads worn
smooth by travel.
Sometimes as I looked back, I could see her face with the eyes fixed
upon me questioningly; and then she would ask me if I could see any one
coming toward us on the road ahead.
"Nobody," I would say; or, "A covered wagon going the wrong way," or
whatever I saw. "Don't be afraid," I would add; "stand on your rights.
This is a free country. You've got the right to go east or west with any
one you choose, and nobody can say anything against it. And you've got a
friend now, you know."
"Is anybody in sight?" she asked again, after a long silence.
I looked far ahead from the top of a swell in the prairie and then back.
I told her that there was no one ahead so far as I could see except
teams that we could not overtake, and nobody back of us but outfits even
slower than mine. So she came forward, and I helped her over the back of
the seat to a place by my side. For the first time I could get a good
look at her undisturbed--if a bashful boy like me could be undisturbed
journeying over the open prairie with a girl by his side--a girl
altogether in his hands.
First I noticed that her hair, though dark brown, gave out gleams of
bright dark fire as the sun shone through it in certain ways. I kept
glancing at that shifting gleam whenever we turned the slow team so that
her hair caught the sun. I have seen the same flame in the mane of a
black horse bred from a sorrel dam or sire. As a stock breeder I have
learned that in such cases there is in the heredity the genetic unit of
red hair overlaid with black pigment. It is the same in people.
Virginia's father had red hair, and her sister Ann Gowdy had hair which
was a dark auburn. I was fascinated by that smoldering fire in the
girl's hair; and in looking at it I finally grew bolder, as I saw that
she did not seem to suspect my scrutiny, and I saw that her brows and
lashes were black, and her eyes very, very blue--not the buttermilk blue
of the Dutchman's eyes, like mine, with brows and lashes lighter than
the sallow Dutch skin, but deep larkspur blue, with a dark edging to the
pupil--eyes that sometimes, in a dim light, or when the pupils are
dilated, seem black to a person who does not look closely. Her skin,
too, showed her ruddy breed--for though it was tanned by her long
journey in the sun and wind, there glowed in it, even through her
paleness, a tinge of red blood--and her nose was freckled. Glimpses of
her neck and bosom revealed a skin of the thinnest, whitest
texture--quite milk-white, with pink showing through on account of the
heat. She had little strong brown hands, and the foot which she put on
the dashboard was a very trim and graceful foot like that of a
thoroughbred mare, built for flight rather than work, and it swelled
beautifully in its grass-stained white stocking above her slender ankle
to the modest skirt.
A great hatred for Buck Gowdy surged through me as I felt her beside me
in the seat and studied one after the other her powerful
attractions--the hatred, not for the man who misuses the defenseless
girl left in his power by cruel fate; but the lust for conquest over the
man who had this girl in his hands and who, as she feared, was searching
for her. I mention these things because, while they do not excuse some
things that happened, they do show that, as a boy who had lived the
uncontrolled and, by association, the evil life which I had lived, I was
put in a very hard place.
2
After a while Virginia looked back, and clutched my arm convulsively.
"There's a carriage overtaking us!" she whispered. "Don't stop! Help me
to climb back and cover myself up!"
She was quite out of sight when the carriage turned out to pass, drove
on ahead, and then halted partly across the road so as to show that the
occupants wanted word with me. I brought my wagon to a stop beside them.
"We are looking," said the man in the carriage, "for a young girl
traveling alone on foot over the prairie."
The man was clearly a preacher. He wore a tall beaver hat, though the
day was warm, and a suit of ministerial black. His collar stood out in
points on each side of his chin, and his throat rested on a heavy
stock-cravat which went twice around his neck and was tied in a stout
square knot under his chin on the second turn. Under this black choker
was a shirt of snowy white, as was his collar, while his coat and
trousers looked worn and threadbare. His face was smooth-shaven, and his
hair once black was now turning iron-gray. He was then about sixty
years old.
"A girl," said I deceitfully, "traveling afoot and alone on the prairie?
Going which way?"
The woman in the carriage now leaned forward and took part in the
conversation. She was Grandma Thorndyke, of whom I have formerly made
mention. Her hair was white, even then. I think she was a little older
than her husband; but if so she never admitted it. He was a slight small
man, but wiry and strong; while she was taller than he and very spare
and grave. She wore steel-bowed spectacles, and looked through you when
she spoke. I am sure that if she had ever done so awful a thing as to
have put on a man's clothes no one would have seen through her disguise
from her form, or even by her voice, which was a ringing tenor and was
always heard clear and strong carrying the soprano in the First
Congregational Church of Monterey Centre after Elder Thorndyke had
succeeded in getting it built.
"Her name is Royall," said Grandma Thorndyke--I may as well begin
calling her that now as ever--"Genevieve Royall. When last seen she was walking
eastward on this road, where she is subject to all sorts of dangers from
wild weather and wild beasts. A man on horseback named Gowdy, with a
negro, came into Independence looking for her this morning after
searching everywhere along the road from some place west back to the
settlement. She is sixteen years old. There wouldn't be any other girl
traveling alone and without provision. Have you passed such a person?"
"No, I hain't," said I. The name "Genevieve" helped me a little in this
deceit.
"You haven't heard any of the people on the road speak of this wandering
girl, have you?" asked Elder Thorndyke.
"No," I answered; "and I guess if any of them had seen her they'd have
mentioned it, wouldn't they?"
"And you haven't seen any lone girl or woman at all, even at a
distance?" inquired Grandma Thorndyke.
"If she passed me," I said, turning and twisting to keep from telling an
outright lie, "it was while I was camped last night. I camped quite a
little ways from the track."
"She has wandered off upon the trackless prairie!" exclaimed Grandma
Thorndyke. "God help her!"
"He will protect her," said the elder piously.
"Maybe she met some one going west," I suggested, rather truthfully, I
thought, "that took her in. She may be going back west with some one."
"Mr. Gowdy told us back in Independence," returned Elder Thorndyke,
"that he had inquired of every outfit he met from the time she left him
clear back to that place; and he overtook the only two teams on that
whole stretch of road that were going east. It is hard to understand.
It's a mystery."
"Was he going on east?" I asked--and I thought I heard a stir in the bed
back of me as I waited for the answer.
"No," said the elder, "he is coming back this way, hunting high and low
for her. I have no doubt he will find her. She can not have reached a
point much farther east than this. She is sure to be found somewhere
between here and Independence--or within a short distance of here. There
is nothing dangerous in the weather, the wild animals, or anything, but
the bewilderment of being lost and the lack of food. God will not allow
her to be lost."
"I guess not," said I, thinking of the fate which led me to my last
night's camp, and of Gowdy's search having missed me as he rode by in
the night.
They drove on, leaving us standing by the roadside. Virginia crept
forward and peeked over the back of the seat after them until they
disappeared over a hillock. Then she began begging me to go where Gowdy
could not find us. He would soon come along, she said, with that tool of
his, Pinck Johnson, searching high and low for her as that man had said.
Everybody would help him but me. I was all the friend she had. Even
those two good people who were inquiring were helping Gowdy. I must
drive where he could not find us. I must!
"He can't take you from me," I declared, "unless you want to go!"
"What can you do?" she urged wildly. "You are too young to stand in his
way. Nobody can stand in his way. Nobody ever did! And they are two to
one. Let us hide! Let us hide!"
"I can stand in anybody's way," I said, "if I want to."
I was not really afraid of them if worst came to worst, but I did see
that it was two to one; so I thought of evading the search, but the
hiding of a team of four cows and a covered wagon on the open Iowa
prairie was no easy trick. If I turned off the road my tracks would
show for half a mile. If once the problem of hiding my tracks was
solved, the rest would be easy. I could keep in the hollows for a few
miles until out of sight of the Ridge Road, and Gowdy might rake the
wayside to his heart's content and never find us except by accident; but
I saw no way of getting off the traveled way without advertising my
flight. Of course Gowdy would follow up every fresh track because it was
almost the only thing he could do with any prospect of striking the
girl's trail. I thought these things over as I drove on westward. I
quieted her by saying that I had to think it out.
It was a hot afternoon by this time, and looked like a stormy evening.
The clouds were rolling up in the north and west in lofty thunderheads,
pearl-white in the hot sun, with great blue valleys and gorges below,
filled with shadows. Virginia, in a fever of terror, spent a part of her
time looking out at the hind-end of the wagon-cover for Gowdy and Pinck
Johnson, and a part of it leaning over the back of the seat pleading
with me to leave the road and hide her. Presently the clouds touched the
sun, and in a moment the day grew dark. Far down near the horizon I
could see the black fringe of the falling rain under the tumbling
clouds, and in a quarter of an hour the wind began to blow from the
storm, which had been mounting the sky fast enough to startle one. The
storm-cloud was now ripped and torn by lightning, and deep rumbling
peals of thunder came to our ears all the time louder and nearer. The
wind blew sharper, and whistled shrilly through the rigging of my
prairie schooner, there came a few drops of rain, then a scud of finer
spray: and then the whole plain to the northwest turned white with a
driving sheet of water which came on, swept over us, and blotted
everything from sight in a great commingling of wind, water, fire
and thunder.
Virginia cowered on the bed, throwing the quilt over her. My cattle
turned their rumps to the storm and stood heads down, the water running
from their noses, tails and bellies, and from the bows and yokes. I had
stopped them in such a way as to keep us as dry as possible, and tried
to cheer the girl up by saying that this wasn't bad, and that it would
soon be over. In half an hour the rain ceased, and in an hour the sun
was shining again, and across the eastern heavens there was displayed a
beautiful double rainbow, and a faint trace of a third.
"That means hope," I said.
She looked at the wonderful rainbow and smiled a little half-smile.
"It doesn't mean hope," said she, "unless you can think out some way of
throwing that man off our track."
"Oh," I answered, with the brag that a man likes to use when a helpless
woman throws herself on his resources, "I'll find some way if I make up
my mind I don't want to fight them."
"You mustn't think of that," said she. "You are too smart to be so
foolish. See how well you answered the questions of that man and woman."
"And I didn't lie, either," said I, after getting under way again.
"Wouldn't you lie," said she, "for me?"
It was, I suppose, only a little womanly probe into character; but it
thrilled me in a way the poor girl could not have supposed possible.
"I would do anything for you," said I boldly; "but I'd a lot rather
fight than lie."
3
The cloud-burst had flooded the swales, and across the hollows ran broad
sheets of racing water. I had crossed two or three of these, wondering
whether I should be able to ford the next real watercourse, when we came
to a broad bottom down the middle of which ran a swift shallow stream
which rose over the young grass. For a few rods the road ran directly
down this casual river of flood water, and as I looked back it all at
once came into my mind that I might follow this flood and leave no
track; so instead of swinging back into the road I took instantly the
important resolution to leave the Ridge Road. By voice and whip I turned
my cattle down the stream to the south, and for a mile I drove in water
half-hub deep.
Looking back I saw that I left no trace except where two lines of open
water showed through the grass on the high spots where cattle and wheels
had passed, and I knew that in an hour the flood would run itself off
and wipe out even this trace. I felt a sense of triumph, and mingled
with this was a queer thrill that set my hands trembling at the
consciousness that the prairie had closed about me and this girl with
the milk-white neck and the fire in her hair who had asked me if I would
not even lie "for her."
We wound down the flooded swale, we left the Ridge Road quite out of
sight, we finally drew up out of the hollow and took to the ridges and
hog-backs making a new Ridge Road for ourselves. Nowhere in sight was
there the slightest trace of humanity or human settlement. We were
alone. Still bearing south I turned westwardly, after rolling up the
covers to let in the drying wind. I kept looking back to see if we were
followed; for now I was suddenly possessed of the impulse to hide, like
a thief making for cover with stolen goods. Virginia, wearied out with
the journey, the strain of her escape, and the nervous tension, was
lying on the couch, often asking me if I saw any one coming up
from behind.
The country was getting more rolling and broken as we made our way down
toward the Cedar River, or some large creek making into it--but, of
course, journeying without a map or chart I knew nothing about the lay
of the land or the watercourses. I knew, though, that I was getting into
the breaks of a stream. Finally, in the gathering dusk I saw ahead of me
the rounded crowns of trees; and pretty soon we entered one of those
beautiful groves of hardwood timber that were found at wide distances
along the larger prairie streams--I remember many of them and their
names, Buck Grove, Cole's Grove, Fifteen Mile Grove, Hickory Grove,
Crabapple Grove, Marble's Grove, but I never knew the name of this, the
shelter toward which we had been making. I drove in between scattered
burr oaks like those of the Wisconsin oak openings, and stopped my
cattle in an open space densely sheltered by thickets of crabapple, plum
and black-haw, and canopied by two spreading elms. Virginia started up,
ran to the front of the wagon and looked about.
"Where are we?" she asked.
"This is our hiding-place," I replied.
"But that man--won't he follow our tracks?"
"We didn't leave any tracks," I said.
"How could we come without leaving tracks?" she queried, standing close
to me and looking up into my face.
"Did you notice," said I, "that for miles we drove in the water--back
there on the prairie after the rain?"
"Yes."
"We drove in the water when we left the road, and we left no tracks. Not
even an Indian could track us. We can't be tracked. We've lost
Gowdy--forever."
I thought at first that she was going to throw her arms about my neck;
but instead she took both my hands and pressed them in a long clasp. It
was the first time she had touched me, or shown emotion toward
me--emotion of the sort for which I was now eagerly longing. I did not
return her pressure. I merely let her hold my hands until she dropped
them. I wanted to do a dozen things, but there is nothing stronger than
the unbroken barriers of a boy's modesty--barriers strong as steel,
which once broken down become as though they never were; while a woman
even in her virgin innocence, is always offering unconscious invitation,
always revealing ways of seeming approach, always giving to the stalled
boy, arguments against his bashfulness--arguments which may prove absurd
or not when he acts upon them. It is the way of a maid with a man,
Nature's way--but a perilous way for such a time and such a situation.
That night we sat about the tiny camp-fire and talked. She told me of
her life in Kentucky, of her grief at the loss of her sister, of many
simple things; and I told her of my farm--a mile square--of my plans,
of my life on the canal--which seemed to impress her as it had Rowena
Fewkes as a very adventurous career. I was sure she was beginning to
like me; but of one thing I did not tell her. I did not mention my long
unavailing search for my mother, nor the worn shoe and the sad farewell
letter in the little iron-bound trunk in the wagon. I searched for tales
which would make of me a man; but when it grew dark I put out the fire.
I was not afraid of Buck Gowdy's finding us; but I did not want any one
to discover us. And that night I drew out the loads of chicken shot from
my gun and reloaded it with buckshot.
I could not sleep. After Virginia
had lain down in the wagon, I walked about silently so as not to rouse
her, prowling like a wolf. I crept to the side of the wagon and listened
for her breathing; and when I heard it my hands trembled, and my heart
pounded in my breast. All the things through which I had lived without
partaking of them came back into my mind. I thought of what I heard
every day on the canal--that all women were alike; that they existed
only for that sort of companionship with men with which my eyes were so
ignorantly familiar; that all their protestations and refusals were for
effect only; that a man need only to be a man, to know what he wanted,
and conquer it. And I felt rising in me like a tide the feeling that I
was now a man. The reader who has believed of me that I passed through
that canal life unspotted by its vileness has asked too much of me. The
thing was not possible. I now thought of the irregular companionships of
that old time as inexplicable no longer. They were the things for which
men lived--the inevitable things for every real man. Only this which
agitated me so terribly was different from them--no matter what
happened, it would be pure and blameless--for it would be us!
4
I suppose it may have been midnight or after, when I heard a far-off
splashing sound in the creek far above us. At first I thought of
buffalo--though there were none in Iowa so far as I knew at that
time--and only a few deer or bear; but finally, as the sound, which was
clearly that of much wading, drew even with my camp, I began to hear the
voices of men--low voices, as if even in that wilderness the speakers
were afraid of being overheard.
"I'm always lookin'," said one, "to find some of these damned movers
campin' in here when we come in with a raise."
"If I find any," said another, "they will be nepoed, damned quick."
This, I knew--I had heard plenty of it--was the lingo of thieves and
what the story-writers call bandits--though we never knew until years
afterward that we had in Iowa a distinct class which we should have
called bandits, but knew it not. They stole horses, dealt in counterfeit
money, and had scattered all over the West from Ohio to the limits of
civilization a great number of "stations" as they called them where any
man "of the right stripe" might hide either himself or his unlawful or
stolen goods. "A raise" was stolen property. "A sight" was a prospect
for a robbery, and to commit it was, to "raise the sight," or if it was
a burglary or a highway robbery, the man robbed was "raked down." A man
killed was "nepoed"--a word which many new settlers in Wisconsin got
from the Indians[9].
[9] This bit of frontier argot was rather common in the West in the
'fifties. The reappearance in the same sense of "napoo" for death in the
armies of the Allies in France is a little surprising.--G.v.d.M.
In a country in which horses constitute the means of communication, the
motive power for the farm and the most easily marketable form of
property, the stealing of horses was the commonest sort of crime; and
where the population was so sparse and unorganized, and unprovided with
means of sending news abroad, horse-stealing, offering as it did to the
criminally inclined a ready way of making an easy living, gradually grew
into an occupation which flourished, extended into other forms of crime,
had its connections with citizens who were supposed to be honest,
entered our politics, and finally was the cause of a terrible crisis in
the affairs of Monterey County, and, indeed, of other counties in Iowa
as well as in Illinois.
I softly reached for my shotgun, and then lay very quiet, hoping that
the band would pass our camp by. There were three men as I made them
out, each riding one horse and leading another. They had evidently made
their way into the creek at some point higher up, and were wading
down-stream so as to leave no trail. Cursing as their mounts plunged
into the deep holes in the high water, calling one another and their
steeds the vilest of names seemingly as a matter of ordinary
conversation, they went on down-stream and out of hearing. It did not
take long for even my slow mind to see that they had come to this grove
as I had done, for the purpose of hiding, nor to realize that it might
be very unsafe for us to be detected in any discovery of these men in
possession of whatever property they might have seized. It did not seem
probable that we should be "nepoed"--but, after all, why not? Dead men
tell no tales, cattle as well as merchandise were salable; and as for
Virginia, I could hardly bring myself to look in the face the dangers to
which she might be exposed in this worst case which I found myself
conjuring up.
I listened intently for any sound of the newcomers, but everything was
as silent as it had been before they had passed like evil spirits of the
night; and from this fact I guessed that, they had made camp farther
down-stream among the trees. I stepped to the back of the wagon, and
putting in my hand I touched the girl's hair. She took my hand in hers,
and then dropped it.
"What is it?" she whispered.
"Don't be scared," I said, "but be very still. Some men just went by,
and I'm afraid they are bad."
"Is it that man?" she asked.
"No," said I, "strangers--bad characters. I want them to go on without
knowing we're here."
She seemed rather relieved at that, and told me that she was not
frightened. Then she asked me where they went. I told her, and said that
when it got lighter I meant to creep after them and see if they were
still in the grove.
"Don't leave me," said she. "I reckon I'm a little frightened, after
all, and it's very lonesome in here all alone. Please get into the
wagon with me!"
I said nothing. Instead I sat for some time on the wagon-tongue and
asked myself what I should do, and what she meant by this invitation.
At last I started up, and trembling like a man climbing the gallows, I
climbed into the wagon. There, sitting in the spring seat in the gown
she had worn yesterday, with her little shoes on the dashboard, sat
Virginia trying to wrap herself in the buffalo-robe.
I folded it around her and took my seat by her side. With scarcely a
whisper between us we sat there and watched the stars wheel over to the
west and down to their settings. At last I felt her leaning over against
my shoulder, and found that she was asleep; and softly putting my arms
about her outside the warm buffalo-robe, I held her sleeping like a baby
until the shrill roundelays of the meadow-larks told me it was morning.
Then after taking away my arms I awakened her.