Vandemark's Folly Part 13

2

Before starting-time in the morning, I had swapped two of my driving cows for four of their lame ones, and hauled up by the side of the road until I could break my new animals to the yoke and allow them to recuperate. I am a cattleman by nature, and was more greedy for stock than anxious to make time--maybe that's another reason for being called Cow Vandemark. The neighbors used to say that I laid the foundation of my present competence by trading one sound cow for two lame ones every few miles along the Ridge Road, coming into the state, and then feeding my stock on speculators' gra.s.s in the summer and straw that my neighbors would otherwise have burned up in the winter. What was a week's time to me? I had a lifetime in Iowa before me.

"Whose rig is that?" I asked, pointing to the carriage.

"Belongs to a man name of Gowdy," the mover told me. "Got a h.e.l.l-slew of wuthless land in Monterey County an' is going out to settle on it."

"How do you know it's worthless?" I inquired pretty sharply; for a man must stand up for his own place whether he's ever seen it or not.

"They say so," said he.

"Why?" I asked.

"Out in the middle of the Monterey Prairie," he said. "You can't live in this country 'less you settle near the timber."

"Instead of stopping at this farm," I said, "I should think he'd have gone on to the next settlement. Horses lame?"

"Best horses I've seen on the road," was the answer. "Kentucky horses.

Gowdy comes from Kentucky. Stopped because his wife is bad sick."

"Where's he?" I asked.

"Out shooting geese," said he. "Don't seem to fret his gizzard about his wife; but they say she's struck with death."

All the while I was cooking my supper I was thinking of this woman, "struck with death," and her husband out shooting geese, while she struggled with our last great antagonist alone. One of the women came over from the other camp with her husband, and I spoke to her about it.

"This man," said she, "jest acts out what all the men feel. A womern is nothing but a thing to want as long as she is young and can work. But this womern hain't quite alone. She's got a little sister with her that knows a hull lot better how to do for her than any darned man would!"

It grew dark and cold--a keen, still, frosty spring evening which filled the sky with stars and bespoke a sunny day for to-morrow, with settled warmer weather. The geese and ducks were still calling from the sky, and not far away the prairie wolves were howling about one of the many carca.s.ses of dead animals which the stream of immigration had already dropped by the wayside. I was dead sleepy, and was about to turn in, when my black-bearded man last seen in Dubuque with a constable holding him by the arm, came driving up, and went about among the various wagons as if looking for something. I knew he was seeking me, and spoke to him.

"Oh!" he said, as if all at once easier in his mind. "Where's my--"

"She's in the house," I said; "this is a kind of a tavern."

"Good!" said he. "I'm much obliged to you. Here's your supplies. I had to buy this light wagon and a team of horses in Dubuque, and it took a little time, it took a little time."

I now noticed that he had a way of repeating his words, and giving them a sort of friendly note as if he were taking you into his confidence.

When I offered to pay him for the supplies, he refused. "I'm in debt to you. I don't remember what they cost--got them with some things for myself; a trifle, a trifle. Glad to do more for you--no trouble at all, none whatever."

"Didn't you have any trouble in Dubuque?" I asked, thinking of the man who had threatened to shoot him in front of the post-office, and how the black-bearded man had called upon the bystanders to bear witness that he was about to shoot in self-defense. He gave me a sharp look; but it was too dark to make it worth anything to him.

"No trouble at all," he said. "What d'ye mean?"

Before I could answer there came up a man carrying a shotgun in one hand, and a wild goose over his shoulder. Following him was a darky with a goose over each shoulder. I threw some dry sticks on my fire, and it flamed up showing me the faces of the group. Buckner Gowdy, or as everybody in Monterey County always called him, Buck Gowdy, stood before us smiling, powerful, six feet high, but so big of shoulder that he seemed a little stooped, perfectly at ease, behaving as if he had always known all of us. He wore a little black mustache which curled up at the corners of his mouth like the tail feathers of a drake. His clothes were soaked and gaumed up with mud from his tramping and crawling through the marshes; but otherwise he looked as fresh as if he had just risen from his bed, while the negro seemed ready to drop.

When Buck Gowdy spoke, it was always with a little laugh, and that slight stoop toward you as if there was something between him and you that was a sort of secret--the kind of laugh a man gives who has had many a joke with you and depends on your knowing what it is that pleases him. His eyes were brown, and a little close together; and his head was covered with a ma.s.s of wavy dark hair. His voice was rich and deep, and pitched low as if he were telling you something he did not want everybody to hear. He swore constantly, and used nasty language; but he had a way with him which I have seen him use to ministers of the gospel without their seeming to take notice of the improper things he said.

There was something intimate in his treatment of every one he spoke to; and he was in the habit of saying things, especially to women, that had all sorts of double meanings--meanings that you couldn't take offense at without putting yourself on some low level which he could always vow was far from his mind. And there was a vibration in his low voice which always seemed to mean that he felt much more than he said.

"My name's Gowdy," he said; "all you people going west for your health?"

"I," said the black-bearded man, "am Doctor Bliven; and I'm going west, I'm going west, not only for my health, but for that of the community."

"Glad to make your acquaintance," said Gowdy; "and may I crave the acquaintance of our young Argonaut here?"

"Let me present Mr.--" said Doctor Bliven, "Mr.--Mr.--"

"Vandemark," said I.

"Let me present Mr. Vandemark," said the doctor, "a very obliging young man to whom I am already under many obligations, many obligations."

Buckner Gowdy took my hand, bringing his body close to me, and looking me in the eyes boldly and in a way which was quite fascinating to me.

"I hope, Mr. Vandemark," said he, "that you and Doctor Bliven are going to settle in the neighborhood to which I am exiled. Where are you two bound for?"

"I expect to open a drug store and begin the practise of medicine," said the doctor, "at the thriving town of Monterey Centre."

"I've got some land in Monterey County," said I; "but I don't know where in the county it is."

Doctor Bliven started; and Buckner Gowdy shook my hand again, and then the doctor's.

"A sort of previous neighborhood reunion," said he. "I expect one of these days to be one of the old residenters of Monterey County myself. I am a fellow-sufferer with you, Mr. Vandemark--I also have land there.

Won't you and the doctor join me in a night-cap in honor of our neighbors.h.i.+p; and drink to better acquaintance? And let's invite our fellow wayfarers, too. I have some game for them."

He looked across to the other camp, and we went over to it, Gowdy giving the third goose and the gun to the negro who had hard work to manage them. I had a roadside acquaintance with the movers, but did not know their names. In a jiffy Gowdy had all of them, and had found out that they expected to locate near Waverly. In five minutes he had begun discussing with a pretty young woman the best way to cook a goose; and soon wandered away with her on some pretense, and we could hear his subdued, vibratory voice and low laugh from the surrounding darkness, and from time to time her nervous giggle. Suddenly I remembered his wife, certainly very sick in the house, and the talk that she was "struck with death"--and he out shooting geese, and now gallivanting around with a strange girl in the dark.

There must be some mistake--this man with the bold eyes and the warm and friendly handclasp, with the fascinating manners and the neighborly ideas, could not possibly be a person who would do such things. But even as I thought this, and made up my mind that, after all, I would join him and the queer-behaving doctor in a friendly drink, a woman came flying out of the house and across the road, calling out, asking if any one knew where Mr. Gowdy was, that his wife was dying.

He and the girl came to the fire quickly, and as they came into view I saw a movement of his arm as if he was taking it from around her waist.

"I'm here," said he--and his voice sounded harder, somehow. "What's the matter?"

"Your wife," said the woman, "--she's taken very bad, Mr. Gowdy."

He started toward the house without a word; but before he went out of sight he turned and looked for a moment with a sort of half-smile at the girl. For a while we were all as still as death. Finally Doctor Bliven remarked that lots of folks were foolish about sick people, and that more patients were scared to death by those about them than died of disease. The girl said that that certainly was so. Doctor Bliven then volunteered the a.s.sertion that Mr. Gowdy seemed to be a fine fellow, and a gentleman if he ever saw one. Just then the woman came from across the road again and asked for "the man who was a doctor."

"I'm a doctor," said Bliven. "Somebody wants me?"

She said that Mr. Gowdy would like to have him come into the house--and he went hurriedly, after taking a medicine-case from his democrat wagon.

I saw my yellow-haired pa.s.senger of the Dubuque ferry meet him before the door, throw her arms about him and kiss him. He returned her greeting, and they went through the door together into the house.

3

I turned in, and slept several hours very soundly, and then suddenly found myself wide awake. I got up, and as I did almost every night, went out to look after my cattle. I found all but one of them, and fetched a compa.s.s about the barns and stables, searching until I found her. As I pa.s.sed in front of the door I heard moanings and cryings from a bench against the side of the house, and stopped. It was dawn, and I could see that it was either a small woman or a large child, huddled down on the bench crying terribly, with those peculiar wrenching spasms that come only when you have struggled long, and then quite given up to misery. I went toward her, then stepped back, then drew closer, trying to decide whether I should go away and leave her, or speak to her; and arguing with myself as to what I could possibly say to her. She seemed to be trying to choke down her weeping, burying her head in her hands, holding back her sobs, wrestling with herself. Finally she fell forward on her face upon the bench, her hands spread abroad and hanging down, her face on the hard cold wood--and all her moanings ceased. It seemed to me that she had suddenly dropped dead; for I could not hear from her a single sigh or gasp or breath, though I stepped closer and listened--not a sign of life did she give. So I put my arm under her and raised her up, only to see that her face was ghastly white, and that she seemed quite dead.

I picked her up, and found that, though she was slight and girlish, she was more woman than child, and carried her over to the well where there was cold water in the trough, from which I sprinkled a few icy drops in her face--and she gasped and looked at me as if dazed.

"You fainted away," I said, "and I brought you to."