HELL SLEW, ALIAS VANDEMARK'S FOLLY
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.
2
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.
3
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."
4
So we went back and looked over all the dry ground I possessed, and
agreed that there were about forty acres of it, and as Burns insisted,
sixty in a dry season; and he stuck to it that a lot of that slew was as
good pasture especially in a dry time as any one could ask for. This
would be fine for a man as fond of cows as I was, though, of course,
cows could range at will all over the country. It was fine hay land, he
said, too, except in the wettest places; but it was true also, that any
one could make hay anywhere.
I paid Henderson L., bade good-by to Magnus Thorkelson, drove my outfit
up on the "building-spot," and camped right where my biggest silo now
stands. I sat there all the afternoon, not even unhitching my teams,
listening as the afternoon drew on toward night, to the bitterns crying
"plum pudd'n'" from the marsh, to the queer calls of the water-rail, and
to the long-drawn "whe-e-ep--whe-e-e-ew!" of the curlews, as they
alighted on the prairie and stretched their wings up over their backs.
I could never be much of a man, I thought, on a forty-acre farm, nor
build much of a house. I had come all the way from York State for this!
The bubble had grown brighter and brighter as I had made my strange way
across the new lands, putting on more and more of the colors of the
rainbow, and now, all had ended in this spot of water on the floor of
the earth. I compared myself with the Fewkeses, as I remembered how I
had told Virginia just how the rooms of the house should be arranged,
and allowed her to change the arrangement whenever she desired, and even
to put great white columns in front as she said they did in Kentucky. We
had agreed as to just what trees should be set out, and what flowers
should be planted in the blue-grass lawn.
All this was gone glimmering now--and yet as I sit here, there are the
trees, and there are the flowers, very much as planned, in the soft
blue-grass lawn; about the only thing lacking being the white columns.
I was lying on the ground, looking out across the marsh, and as my
misfortunes all rolled back over my mind I turned on my face and cried
like a baby. Finally, I felt a large light hand laid softly on my head.
I looked up and saw Magnus Thorkelson bending over me.
"Forty acres," said he, "bane pretty big farm in Norvay. My fadder on
twenty acres, raise ten shildren. Not so gude land like dis. Vun of dem
shildern bane college professor, and vun a big man in leggislatur. Forty
acre bane gude farm, for gude farmer."
I turned over, wiped my sleeve across my eyes, and sat up.
"I guess I dropped asleep," I said.
"Yass," he said. "You bane sleep long time. I came back to ask if I stay
vith you. I halp you. You halp me. Ve halp each udder. Ve be neighbors
alvays. I get farm next you. I halp you build house, an' you halp me.
Maybe ve lif togedder till you git vooman, or I git vooman--if American
vooman marry Norwegian man. I stay?"
I took his hand and pressed it. After a few days' studying over it, I
made up my mind that in the kindness of his heart he had come back just
to comfort me. And all that he had said we would do, we did. Before long
we had a warm dugout barn built in the eastern slope of the hillside,
partly sheltered from the northwestern winds, and Magnus and I slept in
one end of it on the sweet hay we cut in the marsh while the cows ranged
on the prairie. Together we broke prairie, first on his land, then on
mine. Together we hauled lumber from the river for my first
little house.
If we first settlers in Iowa had possessed the sense the Lord gives to
most, we could have built better and warmer, and prettier houses than
the ones we put up, of the prairie sod which we ripped up in long black
ribbons of earth; but we all were from lands of forests, and it took a
generation to teach our prairie pioneers that a sod house is a good
house. I never saw any until the last of Iowa was settling up, out in
the northwestern part of the state, in Lyon, Sioux and Clay Counties.
All that summer, every wagon and draught animal in Monterey County was
engaged in hauling lumber--some of it such poor stuff as basswood sawed
in little sawmills along the rivers; and it was not until in the
'eighties that the popular song, _The Little Old Sod Shanty on the
Claim_ proved two things--that the American pioneer had learned to build
with something besides timber, and that the Homestead Law had come into
effect. What Magnus and I were doing, all the settlers on the Monterey
County farms were doing--raising sod corn and potatoes and buckwheat
and turnips, preparing shelter for the winter, and wondering what they
would do for fuel. Magnus helped me and I helped him.
A lot is said nowadays about the Americanization of the foreigner; but
the only thing that will do the thing is to work with the foreigner, as
I worked with Magnus--let him help me, and be active in helping him. The
Americanization motto is, "Look upon the foreigner as an equal. Help
him. Let him help you. Make each other's problems mutual problems--and
then he is no longer a foreigner." When Magnus Thorkelson came back on
foot across the prairie from Monterey Centre, to lay his hand on the
head of that weeping boy alone on the prairie, and to offer to live with
him and help him, his English was good enough for me, and to me he was
as fully naturalized as if all the judges in the world had made him lift
his hand while he swore to support the Constitution of the United States
and of the State of Iowa. He was a good enough American for Jacobus
Teunis Vandemark.