I SAVE A TREASURE, AND START A FEUD
In the month of May, 1857, I went to a party.
This was a new thing for me; for parties had been something of which I
had heard as of many things outside of the experience of a common fellow
like me, but always had thought about as a thing only to be read of,
like _porte cochères_ and riding to hounds, and butlers and books of
poems. Stuff for story-books, and not for Vandemark Township; though
when I saw the thing, it was not so very different from the dances and
"sings" we used to have on the boats of the Grand Canal, as the Erie
Ditch was then called when you wanted to put on a little style.
The party was at the "great Gothic house" of Governor Wade, just
finished, over in Benton Township. The Governor was not even a citizen
of Vandemark Township, but he had some land in it. Buck Gowdy's great
estate lapped over on one corner of the township, Governor Wade's on the
other, and Hell Slew, nicknamed Vandemark's Folly Marsh cut it through
the middle, and made it hard for us to get out a full vote on anything
after we got the township organized.
The control shifted from the north side of the slew to the south side
according to the weather; for you couldn't cross Vandemark's Folly in
wet weather. Once what was called the Cow Vandemark crowd got control
and kept it for years by calling the township meetings always on our own
side of the slew; and then Foster Blake sneaked in a full attendance on
us when we weren't looking by piling a couple of my haystacks in the
trail to drive on, and it was five years before we got it back. But in
the meantime we had voted taxes on them to build some schoolhouses and
roads. That was local politics in Iowa when Ring was a pup.
But Governor Wade's party was not local politics, or so N.V. Creede
tells me. He says that this was one of the moves by which the governor
made Monterey County Republican. It had always been Democratic. The
governor had always been a Democrat, and had named his township after
Thomas H. Benton; but now he was the big gun of the new Republican Party
in our neck of the woods, and he invited all the people who he thought
would be good wheel-horses.
You will wonder how I came to be invited. Well, it was this way. I
called on Judge Stone at the new court-house, the building of which
created such a scandal. He was county treasurer. He had been elected the
fall before. I wanted to see him about a cattle deal. He was talking
with Henderson L. Burns when I went in.
"I don't see how I can go," said he. "I've got to watch the county's
money. If there was a safe in this county-seat any stronger than a
cheese box, I'd lock it up and go; but I guess my bondsmen are sitting
up nights worrying about their responsibility now. I'll have to decline,
I reckon."
"Oh, darn the money!" said Henderson L. "You can't be expected to set
up with it like it had typhoid fever, can you? Take it with you, and put
it in Wade's big safe."
"I might do that," said Judge Stone, "if I had a body-guard."
"I'd make a good guard," said Henderson L. "Let me take care of it."
"I'd have to win it back in a euchre game if I ever saw it again," said
the judge. "I hate to miss that party. There'll be some medicine made
there. I might go with a body-guard, eh?"
"So if the Bunker gang gets after you," suggested H. L., "there'd be
somebody paid to take the load of buckshot. Well, here's Jake. He's our
local desperado. Ask Dick McGill, eh, Jake? He dared the shotgun the
night they run that claim-jumper off. I know a feller that was there,
and seen it--when he wa'n't seared blind. Take Jake."
2
The Bunker gang was a group of bandits that had their headquarters in
the timber along the Iowa River near Eldora. They were afterward
caught--some of them--and treated very badly by the officers who started
to Iowa City with them. The officers, making quite a little posse,
stopped at a tavern down in Tama County, I think it was at Fifteen Mile
Grove, and took a drink or two too much. They had Old Man Bunker and one
of the boys in the wagon tied or handcuffed, I never knew which; and
while the posse was in the tavern getting their drinks the boy worked
himself loose, and lay there under the buffalo robe when the men came
back to take them on their journey to jail.
When they had got well started again, it was decided by the sheriff or
deputy in charge that they would make Old Man Bunker tell who the other
members were of their gang. So they took him out of the wagon and hung
him to a tree to make him confess. When they let him down he stuck it
out and refused. They strung him up again, and just as they got him
hauled up they noticed that the boy--he wasn't over my age--was running
away. They ran after the boy and, numbed as he was lying in the wagon in
the winter's cold, he could not run fast, and they caught him. Then they
remembered that they had left Old Man Bunker hanging when they chased
off after the boy; and when they cut him down he was dead.
They were scared, drunk as they were, and after holding a council of
war, they decided that they would make a clean sweep and hang the boy
too--I forgot this boy's name. This they did, and came back telling the
story that the prisoners had escaped, or been shot while escaping. I do
not recall which. It was kind of pitiful; but nothing was ever done
about it, though the story leaked out--being too horrible to stay
a secret.
There was a great deal of sympathy with the Bunkers all over the
country, I know where one of the men who did the deed lives now, out in
Western Iowa, near Cherokee. He was always looked upon as a murderer
here--and so, of course, he was, if he consented.
At the time when this conversation took place in Judge Stone's office,
the Bunkers were in the heyday of their bad eminence, and while they
were operating a good way off, there was some terror at the mention of
their name. The judge looked me over for a minute when Henderson L.
suggested me for the second time as a good man for his body-guard.
"Will you go, Jake?" he asked. "Or are you scared of the Bunkers?"
Now, as a general rule, I should have had to take half an hour or so to
decide a thing like that; but when he asked me if I was scared of the
Bunkers, it nettled me; and after looking from him to Henderson L. for
about five minutes, I said I'd go. I was not invited to the party, of
course; for it was an affair of the big bugs; but I never thought that
an invitation was called for. I felt just as good as any one, but I was
a little wamble-cropped when I thought that I shouldn't know how
to behave.
"How you going, Judge?" asked Henderson L.
"In my family carriage," said the judge.
"The only family carriage I ever saw you have," said Henderson L., "is
that old buckboard."
"I traded that off," answered the judge, "to a fellow driving through to
the Fort Dodge country. I got a two-seated covered carriage. When it was
new it was about such a rig as Buck Gowdy's."
"That's style," said Burns. "Who's going with you--of course there's you
and your wife and now you have Jake; but you've got room for one more."
"My wife," said the judge, "is going to take the preacher's adopted
daughter. The preacher's wife thought there might be worldly doings that
it might be better for her and the elder to steer clear of, but the girl
is going with us."
"Well, Jake," said Henderson L., "you're in luck. You'll ride to the
party with your old flame, in a carriage. My wife and I are going on a
load of hay. Jim Boyd is the only other man here that's got a rig with
springs under it. The aristocracy of Monterey County, a lot of it, will
ride plugs or shank's mares. You're getting up among 'em, Jakey, my boy.
Never thought of this when you were in jail, did you?"
Nobody can realize how this talk made me suffer; and yet I kind of liked
it. I suffered more than ever, because I had not seen Virginia for a
long time for several reasons. I quit singing in the choir in the fall,
when it was hard getting back and forth with no horses, and the heavy
snow of the winter of 1855-6 began coming down.
It was a terrible winter. The deer were all killed in their stamping
grounds in the timber, where they trod down the snow and struggled to
get at the brush and twigs for forage. The settlers went in on snowshoes
and killed them with clubs and axes. We never could have preserved the
deer in a country like this, where almost every acre was destined to go
under plow--but they ought to have been given a chance for their lives.
I remember once when I was cussing[12] the men who butchered the pretty
little things while Magnus Thorkelson was staying all night with me to
help me get my stock through a bad storm--it was a blizzard, but we had
never heard the word then--and as I got hot in my blasting and
bedarning of them (though they needed the venison) he got up and grasped
my hand, and made as if to kiss me.
[12] "Cussing" and "cursing" are quite different things, insists the
author. He would never have cursed any one, he protests; but a man is
always justified in cussing when a proper case for it is
presented.--G.v.d.M.
"It is murder," said he, and backed off.
I felt warmed toward him for wanting to kiss me, though I should have
knocked him down if he had. He told me it was customary for men to kiss
each other sometimes, in Norway. The Dunkards--like the Bohns and
Bemisdarfers--were the only Americans I ever knew anything about (if
they really were Americans, talking Pennsylvania Dutch as they did) who
ever practised it. They greeted each other with a "holy kiss" and washed
each other's feet at their great communion meeting every year. I never
went but once. The men kissed the men and the women the women. So I
never went but once; though they "fed the multitude" as a religious
function--and if there are any women who can cook bread and meat so it
will melt in your mouth, it is the Pennsylvania Dutch women. And the
Bohn and Bemisdarfer women seem to me the best cooks among them, they
and the Stricklers. They taught most of our wives the best cookery
they know.
I was disappointed when we started from Monterey Centre, with Judge
Horace Stone and me in the front seat, and Virginia in the back. As I
started to say a while back, I had not been singing in the choir during
the winter. The storms kept me looking out for my stock until the snow
went off in the February thaw that covered Vandemark's Folly with water
from bluff to bluff; and by that time I had stayed out so long that I
thought I ought to be coaxed back into the choir by Virginia or Grandma
Thorndyke in order to preserve my self-respect. But neither of them
said anything about it. In fact, I thought that Grandma Thorndyke was
not so friendly in the spring as she had been in the fall--and, of
course, I could not put myself forward. I had the pure lunkhead pride.
So I had not seen Virginia for months. We early Iowa settlers, the men
and women who opened up the country to its great career of development,
shivered through that winter and many like it, in hovels that only broke
the force of the tempest but could not keep it back. The storms swept
across without a break in their fury as we cowered there, with no such
shelters as now make our winters seemingly so much milder. Now it is
hard to convince a man from the East that our state was once
bare prairie.
"It's funny," said the young doctor that married a granddaughter of mine
last summer, "that all your groves of trees seem to be in rows. Left
them that way, I suppose, when you cut down the forest."
The country looks as well wooded as the farming regions of Ohio or
Indiana. Trees grew like weeds when we set them out; and we set them out
as the years passed, by the million. I never went to the timber when the
sap was down, without bringing home one or more elms, lindens, maples,
hickories or even oaks--though the latter usually died. Most of the
lofty trees we see in every direction now, however, are cottonwoods,
willows and Lombardy poplars that were planted by the mere sticking in
the ground of a wand of the green tree. They hauled these "slips" into
Monterey County by the wagon-load after the settlers began their great
rush for the prairies; and how they grew! It was no bad symbol of the
state itself--a forest on four wheels.
What I began to write a few moments ago, though concerned the difference
between our winter climate then and now. Then the snow drifted before
our northwest winds in a moving ocean unbroken by corn-field, grove, or
farmstead. It smothered and overwhelmed you when caught out in it; and
after a drifting storm, the first groves we could see cast a shadow in
the blizzard; and there lay to the southeast of every block of trees a
long, pointed drift, diminishing to nothing at the point where ended the
influence of the grove--this new foe to the tempest which civilization
was planting. Our groves were yet too small of course to show themselves
in this fight against the elements that first winter, and there I had
hung like a leaf caught on a root in a freshet, an eighteen-year-old
boy, lonely, without older people to whom I could go for advice or
comfort, and filled with dreams, visions and doubts, and with no bright
spot in my frosty days and frostier nights but my visions and dreams.
And I suppose my loneliness, my hardships, my lack of the fireplaces of
York State and the warm rooms that we were used to in a country where
fuel was plentiful, made my visions and dreams more to me than they
otherwise would have been. It is the hermit who loses the world in his
thoughts. And I dreamed of two things--my mother, and Virginia. Of my
mother I found myself thinking with less and less of that keenness of
grief which I had felt at Madison the winter before, and on my road
west; so I used to get out the old worn shoe and the rain-stained letter
she had left for me in the old apple-tree and try to renew my grief so
as to lose the guilty feeling of which I was conscious at the waning
sense of my loss of her. This was a strife against the inevitable; at
eighteen--or at almost any other age, to the healthy mind--it is the
living which calls, not the dead.
In spite of myself, it was Virginia Royall to whom my dreams turned all
the time. Whether in the keen cold of the still nights when the howl of
the wolves came to me like the cries of torment, or in the howling
tempests which roared across my puny hovel like trampling hosts of wild
things, sifting the snow in at my window, powdering the floor, and
making my cattle in their sheds as white as sheep, I went to sleep every
night thinking of her, and thinking I should dream of her--but never
doing so; for I slept like the dead. I held her in my arms again as I
had done the night Ann Gowdy had died back there near Dubuque, all
senseless in her faint; or as I had when I scared the wolves away from
her back along the Old Ridge Road; or as when I had carried her across
the creek back in our Grove of Destiny--and she always, in my dreams,
was willing, and conscious that I held her so tight because I loved her.
I saw her again as she played with her doll under the trees. Again I
rode by her side into Waterloo; and again she ran back to me to bid me
her sweet good-by after I had given her up. Often I did not give her up,
but brought her to my new home, built my house with her to cheer me; and
often I imagined that she was beside me, sheltered from the storm and
happy while she could be by my side and in my arms. Oh, I lived whole
lives over and over again with Virginia that lonely winter. She had
been such a dear little creature. I had been able to do so much for her
in getting her away from what she thought a great danger. She had done
so much for me, too. Had not she and I cried together over the memory of
my mother? Had she not been my intimate companion for weeks, cooked for
me, planned for me, advised me, dreamed with me? It was not nearly so
lonely as you might think, in one sense of the word.
And now I had not seen her for such a long time that I wondered if she
were not forgetting me. No wonder that I was a little flighty, as I
crowded myself into my poor best suit which I was so rapidly outgrowing,
and walked into Monterey Centre in time to be Judge Horace Stone's
body-guard the night of the party--I heard it called a reception--at
Governor DeWitt Clinton Wade's new Gothic house, over in Benton Township
that was to be.
I was proportionately miserable when I called at Elder Thorndyke's, to
find that Virginia was not ready to see me, and that Grandma Thorndyke
seemed cool and somehow different toward me. When she left me, I slipped
out and went to Stone's.
"Thought you wasn't coming, Jake," said he. "Almost give you up. Just
time for you to get a bite to eat before we start."
3
When we did start, his wife came out in a new black silk dress--for the
Stones were quality--and was helped into the back seat, and the judge
came out of the house carrying a satchel which when he handed it to me I
found to be very heavy. I should say, as I have often stated, that it
weighed about fifty to sixty pounds, and when he shoved it back under
the seat before sitting down, it gave as I seemed to remember afterward
a sort of muffled jingle.
"The treasures of Golconda, or Goldarnit," said he, "or some of those
foreign places. Hear 'em jingle? Protect them with your life, Jake."
"All right," I said, as glum as you please; for he had left the only
vacant place in the carriage back with Mrs. Stone. This was no way to
treat me! But I was almost glad when Virginia came out to the carriage
wearing a pink silk dress, and looking so fearful to the eyes of her
obscure adorer that he could scarcely speak to her--she was so
unutterably lovely and angelic-looking.
"How do you do, Teunis!" said she, and paused for some one to help her
in. Judge Stone waited a moment, and gave her a boost at the elbow as
she skipped up the step. I could have bitten myself. I was the person
who should have helped her in. I was a lummox, a lunkhead, a lubber, a
fool, a saphead--I was everything that was awkward and clumsy and
thumb-hand-sided! To let an old married man get ahead of me in that way
was a crime. I slouched down into the seat, and the judge drove off,
after handing me a revolver. I slipped it into my pocket.
"Jake's my body-guard to-night, Miss Royall," said the judge. "We've got
the county's money here. Did you hear it jingle?"
"No, Judge, I didn't," said she, and she never could remember any jingle
afterward.
"Aren't you afraid, Teunis?"
"What of?" I inquired, looking around at her, just as she was spreading
a beautiful Paisley shawl about her shoulders. I dared now take a long
look at her. A silk dress and a Paisley shawl, even to my eyes, and I
knew nothing about their value or rarity at that time and place, struck
me all of a heap with their gorgeousness. They reminded me of the fine
ladies I had seen in Albany and Buffalo.
"Of the Bunker boys," said she. "If they knew that we were out with all
this money, don't you suppose they would be after it? And what could you
and Mr. Stone do against such robbers?"
"I've seen rougher customers than they are," said I; and then I wondered
if the man I had seen with the Bushyagers back in our Grove of Destiny
had not been one of the Bunker boys. They certainly had had a bunch of
stolen horses. If he was a member of the Bunker gang, weren't the
Bushyagers members of it also? And was it not likely that they, being
neighbors of ours, and acquainted with everything that went on in
Monterey Centre, would know that we were out with the money, and be
ready to pounce upon us? I secretly drew my Colt from my pocket and
looked to see that each of the five chambers was loaded, and that each
tube had its percussion cap. I wished, too, that I had had a little more
practise in pistol shooting.
"What do you think of Virginia's dress and shawl?" asked Mrs. Stone, as
we drove along the trail which wound over the prairie, in disregard of
section lines, as all roads did then. The judge and I both looked at
Virginia again.
"They're old persimmons," commented the judge. "You'll be the belle of
the ball, Virginia."
"They're awful purty," said I, "especially the dress. Where did you get
'em, Virginia?"
"They were found in Miss Royall's bedroom," said Mrs. Stone emphasizing
the "Miss"--for my benefit, I suppose; but it never touched me. "But I
guess she knows where they come from."
"They were Ann's," said Virginia, a little sadly, and yet blushing and
smiling a little at our open admiration, "my sister's, you know."
I scarcely said another word during all that trip. I was furious at the
thought of Buck Gowdy's smuggling those clothes into Virginia's room, so
she could have a good costume for the party. How did he know she was
invited, or going? To be sure, her sister Ann's things ought to have
been given to the poor orphan girl--that was all right; but back there
along the road she would never speak his name. Had it come to pass in
all these weeks and months in which I had not seen her that they had
come to be on speaking terms again? Had that scoundrel who had killed
her sister, after a way of speaking, and driven Virginia herself to run
away from him, and come to me, got back into her good graces so that she
was allowing him to draw his wing around her again? It was gall and
wormwood to think of it. But why were the dress and shawl smuggled into
her room, instead of being brought openly? Maybe they were not really on
terms of association after all. I wished I knew, or that I had the right
to ask. I forgot all about the Bunkers, until the judge whipped up the
horses as we turned into the Wade place, and brought us up standing
at the door.
"Well," said he, with a kind of nervous laugh, "the Bunkers didn't get
us after all!"
I was out before him this time, and helped Virginia and Mrs. Stone to
get down. The judge was wrestling with the heavy bag. The governor came
out to welcome us, and he and Judge Stone carried it in. Mrs. Wade, a
scared-looking little woman, stood in the hall and gave me her hand as
I went in.
"Good evening, Mr.----," said she.
"Mr. Vandemark," said the judge. "My body-guard, Mrs. Wade."
The good lady looked at my worn, tight-fitting corduroys, at my clean
boiled shirt which I had done up myself, at my heavy boots, newly
greased for the occasion, and at my bright blue and red silk
neckerchief, and turned to other guests. After all I was dressed as well
as some of the rest of them. There are many who may read this account of
the way the Boyds, the Burnses, the Flemings, the Creedes, the Stones
and others of our county aristocracy, came to this party in alpacas,
delaines, figured lawns, and even calicoes, riding on loads of hay and
in lumber wagons with spring seats, who may be a little nettled when a
plain old farmer tells it; but they should never mind this: the time
will come when their descendants will be proud of it. For they were the
John Aldens, the Priscillas, the Miles Standishes and the Dorothy Q's of
as great a society as the Pilgrim Fathers and Pilgrim Mothers set
a-going: the society of the great commonwealth of Iowa.
The big supper--I guess they would call it a dinner now--served in the
large room on a long table and some smaller ones, was the great event of
the party. The Wades were very strict church-members. Such a thing as
card playing was not to be thought of, and dancing was just as bad.
Both were worldly amusements whose feet took hold on hell. We have lost
this strictness now, and sometimes I wonder if we have not lost our
religion too.
The Wades were certainly religious--that is the Governor and Mrs. Wade.
Jack Wade, the John P. Wade who was afterward one of the national bosses
of the Republican party, and Bob, the Robert S. Wade who became so
prominent in the financial circles of the state, were a little worldly.
A hired hand I once had was with the Wades for a while, and said that
when he and the Wade boys were out in the field at work (for they worked
as hard as any of the hands, and Bob was the first man in our part of
the country who ever husked a hundred bushels of corn in a day) the Wade
boys and the hired men cussed and swore habitually. But this scamp, when
they were having family worship, used to fill in with "Amen!" and "God
grant it!" and the like pious exclamations when the governor was
offering up his morning prayer. But one morning Bob Wade brought a
breast-strap from off the harness, and took care to kneel within easy
reach of the kneeling hired man's pants. When he began with his
responses that morning, a loud slap, and a smothered yell disturbed the
governor--but he only paused, and went on.
"What in hell," asked the hired man when they got outside, "did you hit
me for with that blasted strap?"
"To show you how to behave," said Bob. "When the governor is talking to
the Lord, you keep your mouth shut."
I tell this, because it shows how even our richest and most aristocratic
family lived, and how we were supposed to defend religion against
trespass. I am told that in some countries the wickedest person is
likely to be a praying one. It seems, however, that in this country the
church-members are expected to protect their monopoly of the ear of God.
Anyhow, Bob Wade felt that he was doing a fitting if not a very seemly
thing in giving this physical rebuke to a man who was pretending to be
more religious than he was. The question is a little complex; but the
circumstance shows that there could be no cards or dancing at the
Wade's party.
Neither could there be any drinking. The Wades had a vineyard and made
wine. The Flemings lived in the next farm-house down the road, and when
our party took place, the families were on fairly good terms; though the
governor and his wife regarded the Flemings as beneath them, and this
idea influenced the situation between the families when Bob Wade began
showing attentions to Kittie Fleming, a nice girl a year or so older
than I. Charlie Fleming, the oldest of the boys, was very sick one fall,
and they thought he was going to die. Doctor Bliven prescribed wine, and
the only wine in the neighborhood was in the cellar of Governor Wade;
so, even though the families were very much at the outs, owing to the
fuss about Bob and Kittie going together, Mrs. Fleming went over to the
Wades' to get some wine for her sick boy.
"We can't allow you to have it," said the governor, with his jaws set a
little closer than usual. "We keep wine for sacramental purposes only."
This proves how straight they were about violating their temperance
vows, and how pious. Though there are some lines of poetry in the _Fifth
Reader_ which seem to show that the governor missed a real sacrament.
They read:
"Who gives himself with his alms feeds three--
Himself, his hungering neighbor, and Me;"
but Governor Wade was a practical man who made his religion fit what he
wanted to do, and what he felt was the proper thing. Bob and Jack were
worldly, like the rest of us. The governor got the reputation of being a
hard man, and the wine incident did a good deal to add to it. The point
is that there had to be some other way of entertaining the company at
the party, besides drinking, card-playing, or dancing. Of course the
older people could discuss the price of land, the county organization
and the like; but even the important things of the country were mostly
in the hands of young people--and young folks will be young folks.
4
Kittie Fleming was a pretty black-eyed girl, who afterward made the
trouble between Bob Wade and his father. At this party the thing which
made it a sad affair to me was the attentions paid to Virginia by Bob. I
might have been comforted by the nice way Kittie Fleming treated me, if
I had had eyes for any one but Virginia; but when Kittie smiled on me, I
always thought how much sweeter was Virginia's smile. But _her_ smiles
that evening were all for Bob Wade. In fact, he gave nobody else a
chance. It really seemed as if the governor and his wife were pleased to
see him deserting Kittie Fleming, but whether or not this was because
they thought the poor orphan Virginia a better match, or for the reason
that any new flame would wean him from Kittie I could not say. And I
suppose they thought Kittie's encouraging behavior to me was not only a
proof of her low tastes, or rather her lack of ambition, but a sure sign
to Bob that she was not in his class. So far as I was concerned I was
wretched, especially when the younger people began turning the gathering
into a "play party."
Now there was a difference between a play party and a kissing party or
kissing bee, as we used to call it. The play party was quite
respectable, and could be indulged in by church-members. In it the
people taking part sang airs each with its own words, and moved about in
step to the music. The absence of the fiddle and the "calling off" and
the name of dancing took the curse off. They went through figures a lot
like dances; swung partners by one hand or both; advanced and retreated,
"balanced to partners" bowing and saluting; clasping hands, right and
left alternately with those they met; and balanced to places, and the
like. Sometimes they had a couple to lead them, as in the dance called
the German, of which my granddaughter tells me; but usually they were
all supposed to know the way the play went, and the words were always
such as to help. Here is the one they started off with that night:
"We come here to bounce around,
We come here to bounce around,
We come here to bounce around,
Tra, la, la!
Ladies, do si do,
Gents, you know,
Swing to the right,
And then to the left,
And all promenade!"
Oh, yes! I have seen Wades and Flemings and Holbrooks and all the rest
singing and hopping about to the tune of _We Come Here to Bounce
Around_; and also _We'll All Go Down to Rowser_; and _Hey, Jim Along,
Jim Along Josie_; and _Angelina Do Go Home_; and _Good-by Susan Jane_;
and _Shoot the Buffalo_; and _Weevilly Wheat_; and _Sandy He Belonged to
the Mill_; and _I've Been to the East, I've Been to the West, I've Been
to the Jay-Bird's Altar_; and _Skip-to-My-Lou_; and _The Juniper Tree_;
and _Go In and Out the Window_; and _The Jolly Old Miller_; and _Captain
Jinks_; and lots more of them. Boyds and Burnses and Smythes tripping
the light fantastic with them, and not half a dozen dresses better than
alpacas in the crowd, and the men many of them in drilling trousers--and
half of them with hayseed in their hair from the load on which they rode
to the party! So, ye Iowa aristocracy, put that in your pipes and smoke
it, as ye bowl over the country in your automobiles--or your airships,
as I suppose it may be before you read this!
I went round with the rest of them, for I had seen all these plays on
the canal boats, and had once or twice taken part in them. Kittie
Fleming, very graceful and gracious as she bowed to me, and as I swung
her around, was my partner. Bob Wade still devoted himself to Virginia,
who was like a fairy in her fine pink silk dress.
"This is enough of these plays," shouted Bob at last, after looking
about to see that his father and mother were not in the room. "Let's
have the 'Needle's Eye'!"
"The 'Needle's Eye'!" was the cry, then.
"I won't play kissing games!" said one or two of the girls.
"Le's have 'The Gay Balonza Man'!" shouted Doctor Bliven, who was in
the midst of the gaieties, while his wife too, plunged in as if to
outdo him.
"Oh, yes!" she said, smiling up into the face of Frank Finster, with
whom she had been playing. "Let's have 'The Gay Balonza Man!' It's
such fun[13]!"
[13] One here discovers a curious link between our recent past and olden
times in our Old Home, England. This game has like most of the kissing
or play-party games of our fathers (and mothers) more than one version.
By some it was called "The Gay Galoney Man," by others "The Gay Balonza
Man." It is a last vestige of the customs of the sixteenth century and
earlier in England. It was brought over by our ancestors, and survived
in Iowa at the time of its settlement, and probably persists still in
remote localities settled by British immigrants. The "Gay Balonza Man"
must be the character--the traveling beggar, pedler or tinker,--who was
the hero of country-side people, and of the poem attributed to James V.
called _The Gaberlunzie-Man_ (1512-1542) in which the event is summed up
in two lines relating to a peasant girl, "She's aff wi the
gaberlunzie-man." The words of the play run in part as follows:
"See the gay balonza-man, the charming gay balonza-man; We'll do all
that ever we can, To cheat the gay balonza-man!"
The things he was to be cheated of seemed to be osculations.--G.v.d.M.
"The Needle's Eye" won, and we formed in a long line of couples--Wades,
Finsters, Flemings, Boyds and the rest of the roll of present-day
aristocrats, and marched, singing, between a boy and a girl standing on
chairs with their hands joined. Here is the song--I can sing the
tune to-day:
"The needle's eye,
Which doth supply
The thread which runs so true;
{And many a lass
{Have I let pass
or
{And many a beau
{Have I let go
Because I wanted you!"
At the word "you," the two on the chairs--they were Lizzie Finster and
Charley McKim at first--brought their arms down and caught a
couple--they caught Kittie and me--who were at that moment passing
through between the chairs--which were the needle's eye; and then they
sang, giving us room to execute:
"And they bow so neat!
And they kiss so sweet!
We do intend before we end, to have this couple meet!"
Crimson of face, awkward as a calf, I bowed to Kittie and she to me; and
then she threw her arms about me and kissed me on the lips. And then I
saw her wink slyly at Bob Wade. Then Kittie and I became the needle's
eye and she worked it so we caught Bob Wade and Virginia, even though it
was necessary to wait a moment after the word "you"--she meant to do it!
As Bob's lips met Virginia's I groaned, and turning my back on Kittie
Fleming, I rushed out of the room. Judge Stone tried to stop me.
5
"Jake, Jake!" Judge Stone whispered in my ear, looking anxiously around,
"have you seen the governor in the last half or three-quarters of
an hour?"
"He hain't been in here," I said, jerking away from him.
"Sure?" he persisted. "I've looked everywhere except in his office where
he put the money--and that's locked."
I broke away from him and went out. I had no desire to see Governor
Wade or any one else. I wanted to be alone. I had seen Virginia kissed
by Bob Wade--and they were still singing that sickish play in there.
They would be kissing and kissing all the rest of the night. She to be
kissed in this way, and I had been so careful of her, when I was all
alone with her for days, and would have given my right hand for a kiss!
It was terrible. I walked back and forth in the yard, and then came up
on the porch and sat down on a bench, so as to hear the play-singing.
They were singing _The Gay Balonza-Man_, now. I started up once to walk
home, but I thought that Judge Stone was paying me wages for guarding
the county's money, and turned to go back where I could watch the games,
lured by a sort of fascination to see how many times Virginia would
allow herself to be kissed. A woman came out of the house, and in
passing saw and recognized me. It was Mrs. Bliven. She dropped down on
the bench.
"My God!" she sobbed. "I'll go crazy! I'll kill myself!"
I sat down again on the bench. She had been so happy a few minutes ago,
to all appearances, that I was astonished; but after waiting quite a
while I could think of nothing to say to her. So I turned my face away
for fear that she might see what I felt must show in it.
"You're in trouble, too," she said. "You babies! My God, how I'd like to
change places with you! Did you see him kissing them?"
"Who?" I asked.
"My man," she cried. "Bliven. You know how it is, with us. You're the
only one that knows about me--about us--Jake. I've been scared to death
for fear you'd tell ever since I found you were coming here to live; and
I dasn't tell him--he don't know you know. And now I almost wish you
would tell--put it in Dick McGill's paper. He wants somebody else
already. A woman that's done as I have--he can throw me away like an old
shoe! But I want you to promise me that if he ever shelves me you'll let
the world know. Did you see him hugging them girls? He's getting ready
to shelve me, I tell you!"
I sat for some time thinking this matter over. Finally I spoke, and she
seemed surprised, as if she had forgotten I was there.
"I'll tell you what I'll do," said I. "I won't tell on you just because
you think you want me to. What would happen if everything in the lives
of us folks out here was to be told, especially as it would be told in
Dick McGill's paper? But if you ever find out for sure that he is going
to--going to--to shelve you, why, come to me, and I'll go to him. I
think he would be a skunk to--to shelve you. And I don't see
that--that--that he--was any more fairce to hug and kiss than--than some
others. Than you!"
"Or you," said she, sort of snickering through her tears.
"I hated it!" I said.
"So did I," said she.
"Maybe Doc did, too," I suggested.
"No," she replied, after a while. "I'll tell you, Jake, I'll hold you to
your promise. Sometime I may come to you or send for you. May I?"
"Any time," I answered, and she went in, seeming quite cheered up. I
suppose she needed that blow-off, like an engine too full of steam. I
wonder if it was wrong to feel for her? But it must be remembered that I
had very little religious bringing up.
Well, the party came to an end presently, and Judge Stone came out and
holloed for me to bring the team. When I drove up to the door he asked
me in a low tone to come and help carry the money out. The governor
unlocked his office, and then the safe, and took out the bag, which he
handed to Judge Stone.
"Heavy as ever," said the judge. "Catch hold here, Jake, and help me
carry it."
"A heavy responsibility at least," said the governor. The governor's
hired people of whom he had always a large force had not taken part in
the proceedings of the party, but most of them were gathered about as we
took our departure. They were to a great extent the younger men among
the settlers, and the governor in later times never got tired of saying
how much he had done for the early settlers in giving them employment.
N.V. Creede in answering him in campaigns always said that if he gave
the boys work, they gave the governor labor in return, and at a dollar a
day it seemed to him that the governor was the one who was under
obligations to them. It is a curious thing that people who receive money
are supposed to be under obligations to those who pay it, no matter what
the deal may be. We say "thank you" to the man who pays us for a day's
wages; but why, if the work is worth the money?
Well, as I looked about among the governor's working people, as I have
said, I saw a head taller than the rest, the big form of Pitt
Bushyager. He was looking at me with that daredevil smile of his, the
handsomest man there, with his curling brown mustache and goatee; and
nodded at me as the judge got into the carriage in the back seat with
Mrs. Stone, and Virginia came up in her pretty pink silk, with the
Paisley shawl around her shoulders, to be helped up into the front seat
with me. The satchel of money was placed under the seat where the judge
could feel it with his feet.
We drove off in that silence which comes with the drowsiness that
follows excitement, especially along toward morning. The night was dark
and still. Virginia's presence reminded me of those days of happiness
wher we drove into Iowa alone together; but I was not happy I had lived
with this girl in my dreams ever since, and now I faced the wrench of
giving her up; for I repeated in my own mind over and over again that
she would never think of me with such big bugs as Bob Wade shining
around her.
The Judge and Mrs. Stone were talking together now, and I heard
references to the money. Then I began to turn over in my slow mind the
fact, known to me alone, that there was a man at the Wade farm who was
one of a band of thieves, and who knew about our having the money. If he
really was connected with the Bunker boys, what was more likely than
that he had ways of passing the word along to some of them who might be
waiting to rob us on our way home? But the crime that I was sure had
been committed back along the road the spring before had been
horse-stealing. I wondered whether or not the business of outlawry was
not specialized, so that some stole horses, others robbed banks, others
were highwaymen, and the like.
All this time Virginia seemed to be snuggling up a little closer. Maybe
Pitt Bushyager and his brothers were just plain horse-thieves, and
nothing else. Perhaps they were just hired to help drive in the horses;
but why, then, did Pitt have two animals in Monterey Centre when I saw
him there the morning I arrived?
6
Jim Boyd's light buggy had got far ahead of us, out of hearing, and the
lumber wagons, with the bulk of the crowd, were far in the rear. We were
alone. As we came to a road which wound off to the south toward where
there was a settlement of Hoosiers who had made a trail to the Wade
place, I turned off and followed it, knowing that when I got to the
Hoosier settlement, I should find a road into the Centre. It was a
mistake made a-purpose, done on that instinct which protects the man who
feels that he may be trailed. I was on an unexpected path to any one
waiting for us. Finally Virginia spoke to me.
"How is our farm?" she asked.
Now I had not forgotten how she had been kissed by Bob Wade, and
probably, while I was outside sulking, by a dozen others. By instinct
again--the instinct of a jealous boy--I started in to punish her.
"All right," I said surlily.
"What crops have you planted?" she went on.
"About ten acres of wheat," I said, "and the rest of my breaking in corn
and oats. You see, I have to put in all the time I can in breaking."
"How is the white heifer?" she asked, inquiring as to one of my cattle
that she had petted a lot.
"She has a calf," said I.
"Oh, has she? How I wish I could see it! What color is it?"
"Spotted."
There followed a long silence, during which we went farther and farther
off the road.
"Jake," said the judge, "whose house is that we just passed?"
"It's that new Irishman's," said I. "Mike Cosgrove, ain't that his
name?"
"Well, then," said the judge, "we're off the road. Stop!"
"Yes," I said, "I made the wrong turn back there. It's only a little
farther."
The judge was plainly put out about this. He even wanted to go back to
the regular road again, and when I explained that we would soon reach a
trail which would lead right into the Centre, he still persisted.
"If we were to be robbed on this out-of-the-way road," said he, "it
would look funny."
"It would look funnier," I said, "if we were to go back and then get
robbed. Any one waiting to rob us would be on the regular road,
wouldn't they?"
So I stubbornly drove on, the judge grumbling all the while for a mile
or so. Then he and Mrs. Stone began talking in a low tone, under the
cover of which Virginia resumed her conversation with me.
"You are a stubborn Dutchman," said she. To which I saw no need of
making any reply.
"You seemed to have a good time," she said, presently.
"I didn't," said I. "I'm nobody by the side of such people as Bob Wade.
I wasn't even invited. I'm just paid to come along with the judge to
protect the county's money. You'll never see me again at any of your
grand kissing parties."
"It was the first I ever went to," said she; "but you seemed to know
what to do pretty well--you and Kittie Fleming."
This stumped me for a while, and we drove on in silence.
"I didn't kiss her," I said.
"It looked like it," said Virginia.
"She kissed me," I protested.
"You seemed to like it," she insisted.
"I didn't!" I said, mad all over. "And I quit just as soon as the
kissing began."
"You ought to have stayed," she said stiffly. "The fun was just
beginning when you flounced out."
And then came one of the interesting events of this eventful night. We
turned into the main road to Monterey Centre, just where Duncan
McAlpine's barn now stands, and I thought I saw down in the hollow where
it was still dark, though the light was beginning to dawn in the east, a
clump of dark objects like cattle or horses--or horsemen. As I looked,
they moved into the road as if to stop us. I drew my pistol, fired it
over their heads, and they scattered. Then, I was scared still more, by
a sound as of a cavalry or a battery of artillery coming behind us. It
was three loads of people on the hayracks, who had overtaken us on
account of our having gone by the roundabout way; coming at a keen
gallop down the hill to have the credit of passing a fancy carriage.
They passed us like a tornado; shouting as they went by, asking what I
had shot at, and telling us to hurry up so as to get home by breakfast
time. The horsemen ahead, whatever might have been their plans, did not
seem to care to argue matters with so large a force, and rode off in
several directions, while I pressed close to the rear of the last
hayrack. Thus we drove into Monterey Centre.
"What did you shoot for?" asked the judge as we stopped at his house.
"I wanted to warn a lot of men on horseback that were heading us off,
that there'd be trouble if they tried to stop us," I answered.
"Damned foolishness," said the judge. "Well, come in and let's have a
bite to eat."
7
Virginia was staying with them the rest of the night; but as I helped
her out, feeling in her stiffness that she was offended with me, I
insisted that I would go on home. The judge, who had been ready to abuse
me a moment before, now took hold of me and forced me into the house. As
we went in carrying the satchel, he lifted it up on the table.
"We may as well take a look at it," said he.
Mrs. Stone and Virginia and I all stood by the table as he unsnapped the
catch and opened the bag. It was full almost to the top.
"That ain't the way I packed that money!" said the judge.
His hands trembled as he pulled the contents out. It was full of the
bags and wrappers in which the money had been packed, according to the
judge's tell; but there was no money in the wrappers, and the bags were
full, not of coins, but of common salt. That was what made it so heavy;
and that was what always made it such a mystery: for all the salt used
in Monterey County then was common barrel salt. It was the same kind,
whether it was got from the barrel from which the farmer salted his
cattle, or from the supply in the kitchen of the dweller in the town.
There was no clue in it. It was just salt! We all cried out in surprise,
not understanding that we were looking at the thing which was to be
fought over until either Judge Stone or Governor Wade was destroyed.
"I am ruined!" Judge Stone fell back into a chair groaning. Then he
jumped to his feet. "They've taken it out while we were at the party!"
he shouted. "The damned, canting, sniveling old thief! No wonder he's
got money! He probably stole it where he came from! Jake, we've got to
go back and make him give this money back--come on!"
"Make who give it back?" I asked.
"Who?" said he. "Why old DeWitt Clinton Wade, the old thief! Who else
had the key to the office or knew how to open that safe? Come on, Jake,
and bring your pistol!"
I handed him the pistol.
"I agreed to guard you and the county's money," I said, "and that's all.
You hain't got the county's money, it seems, and my job's over. I've got
to break prairie to-day, and I guess I'd better be going!"
I passed out of the door, and as I went I heard them--the judge and his
wife, and I thought Virginia joined in--condemning me for deserting
them. But I needed to think this thing over before I could see into it.
It looked pretty dark for some one then, and I saw it was a matter to
see N.V. about before taking any further part.
I never have seen through it. There it was: The money in the treasury,
and supposed to be in the bag, and placed in Governor Wade's safe. There
were the two men, both supposed to be rich. There was the time, when the
kissing games were going on, when the governor was not seen by any of
his guests. The governor was rich always afterward, while the judge
struggled along with adversity and finally went away from the county
poor as a church mouse. Then there was the jingle I seemed to remember
at starting, and Judge Stone's twice speaking of it--the jingle Virginia
did not hear. Salt does not jingle.
For a long time it appeared to me that these things seemed to prove that
the governor got the money; but lately, since both the men have passed
away, I have had my doubts. Judge Stone was a much nicer man than the
governor to meet up with, but--well, what's the use? It is long past. It
was past for me, too, as I walked out to my farm that morning as the
dawn broadened into day, with the prairie-chickens singing their
wonderful morning song, and the blue-joint grass soaking me with dew
to my knees.
At that moment, or soon after, in a stormy encounter at the Wade farm,
with witnesses that the judge took with him, began the great Wade-Stone
feud of Monterey County, Iowa. It lasted until the flood of new settlers
floated it away in a freshet of new issues during and after the great
Civil War.
I took the story to N.V. as soon as I went to town. He sat looking at
me with a mysterious grin on his face, as I told him of the loss of the
county funds.
"Well," said he, "this will make history. I venture the assertion that
the case will be compromised. I can't see this close corporation of a
county government making Stone's bondsmen pay the loss. Or Stone either.
And I can't see any one getting that amount of money out of old Wade,
whether it was in the bag when it went into his safe or not. Your
testimony on the jingle feature ain't worth a cuss. The Bunker boys had
that bag marked for their own; for we know now that they were out on a
raid that night and cleaned up several good horses. I must say, Jake,
that you are a hell of a hired man. If you had kept the main road, this
trouble which will raise blazes with things in this county till you and
I are gray-headed, never would have happened. The Bunkers would have had
that salt, and everybody else would have had an alibi. Maybe it was
Judge Stone's instinct for party harmony that made him cross at you for
dodging the Bunkers by driving down by the Hoosier settlement. He was
cross, wasn't he? Instinct is a great matter, says Falstaff. He was mad
on instinct, I reckon! And you drove off the road on instinct. Beware
instinct,' say I on the authority aforesaid. It would have smoothed
matters all out if the Bunker boys had got that salt!"