Vandemark's Folly Part 15

The prairie chickens now became the musicians of the morning and evening on the uplands, with their wild and intense and almost insane chorus, repeated over and over until it seemed as if the meaning of it must be forced upon every mind like a figure in music played with greatening power by a violinist so that the heart finally almost breaks with it--"Ka-a-a-a-a-a, ka, ka, ka, ka! _Ka-a-a-a-a-a-a,_ ka, ka, ka, ka, ka, ka, ka! KA-A-A-A-A-A-A, ka, ka, ka, ka, ka, ka, ka, ka!"--Oh, there is no way to tell it!--And then the c.o.c.k filled in the harmony with his lovely contribution: facing the courted hen, he swelled out the great orange globes at the sides of his head, fluffed out his feathers, strutted forward a few steps, and tolled his deep-toned bell, with all the skill of a ventriloquist, making it seem far away when he was on a near-by knoll, like a velvet gong sounded with no stroke of the hammer, as if it spoke from some inward vibration set up by a mysterious current--a liquid "Do, re, me," here full and distinct, there afar off, the whole air tremulous with it, the harmony to the ceaseless fugue in the soprano clef of the rest of the flock--n.o.body will ever hear it again! n.o.body ever drew from it, and from the howling of the wolves, the honking of the geese, the calls of the ducks, the strange cries of the cranes as they soared with motionless wings high overhead, or rowed their way on with long slow strokes of their great wings, or danced their strange reels and cotillions in the twilight; and from the myriad voices of curlew, plover, gopher, bob-o-link, meadowlark, d.i.c.k-cissel, killdeer and the rest--day-sounds and night-sounds, dawn-sounds and dusk-sounds--more inspiration than did the stolid Dutch boy plodding west across Iowa that spring of 1855, with his fortune in his teams of cows, in the covered wagon they drew, and the deed to his farm in a flat packet of treasures in a little iron-bound trunk--among them a rain-stained letter and a worn-out woman's shoe.

2

I got the saleratus at Dyersville, and just as I came out of the little store which was, as I remember it, the only one there, I saw the Gowdy carriage come down the short street, the horses making an effort to prance under the skilful management of Pinck Johnson, who occupied the front seat alone, while Virginia Royall sat in the back seat with Buckner Gowdy, her arm about the upright of the cover, her left foot over the side as it might be in case of a person who was ready to jump out to escape the danger of a runaway, an overturn, or some other peril.

Gowdy did not recognize me, or if he did he did not speak to me. He got out of the carriage and went first into the store, coming out presently with some packages in his hand which he tossed to the darky, and then he joined the crowd of men in front of the saloon across the way. Soon I saw him go into the gin-mill, the crowd following him, and the noise of voices grew louder. I had had enough experience with such things to know pretty well what was going on; the stink of spilled drinks, and profanity and indecency--there was nothing in them to toll me in from the flowery prairie.

As I pa.s.sed the carriage Virginia nodded to me; and looking at her I saw that she was pale and tremulous, with a look in her eyes like that of a crazy man I once knew who imagined that he was being followed by enemies who meant to kill him. There is no word for it but a hunted look.

She came to my wagon, pretty soon, and surprised me by touching my arm as I was about to start on so as to make a few more miles before camping. I had got my team straightened out, and ready to start, when I felt her hand on my arm, and on turning saw her standing close to me, and speaking almost in a whisper.

"Do you know any one," she asked, "good people--along the road ahead--people we'll overtake--that would be friends to a girl that needs help?"

"Be friends," I blundered, "be friends? How be friends?"

"Give her work," she said; "take her in; take care of her. This girl needs friends--other girls--women--some one to take the place of a mother and sisters. Yes, and she needs friends to take the place of a father and brothers. A girl needs friends--friends all the time--as you were to me back there in the night."

I wondered if she meant herself; and after thinking over it for two or three days I made up my mind that she did; and then I was provoked at myself for not understanding: but what could I have done or said if I had understood? I remembered, though, how she had skithered[7] back to the carriage as she saw Pinck Johnson coming out of the saloon with Buck Gowdy; and had then clambered out again and gone into the little hotel where they seemed to have decided to stay all night; while I went on over roads which were getting more and more miry as I went west. I had only been able to tell her of the Fewkes family--Old Man Fewkes, with his bird's claws and a beard where a chin should have been, Surajah Dowlah Fewkes with no thought except for silly inventions, Celebrate Fourth Fewkes with no ideas at all--

[7] A family word, to the study of which one would like to direct the attention of the philologists, since traces of it are found in the conversation of folk of unsophisticated vocabulary outside the Clan van de Marck. Doubtless it is of Yankee origin, and hence old English. It may, of course, be derived according to Alice-in-Wonderland principles from "skip" and "hither" or "thither" or all three; but the claim is here made that it comes, like monkeys and men, from a common linguistic ancestor.--G.v.d.M.

"But isn't there a man among them?" she had asked.

"A man!" I repeated.

"A man that knows how to shoot a pistol, or use a knife," she explained; "and who would shoot or stab for a weak girl with n.o.body to take cart of her."

I shook my head. Not one of these was a real man in the Kentucky, or other proper sense: and Ma Fewkes with her boneless shoulders was not one of those women of whom I had seen many in my life, who could be more terrible to a wrong-doer than an army with bowie-knives.

"There's only two in the outfit," I went on, "that have got any sprawl to them; and they are old Tom their bunged-up horse, and Rowena Fewkes."

"Who is she?" inquired Virginia Royall.

"A girl about your age," said I. "She's ragged and dirty, but she has a little gumption."

And then she had skipped away, as I finally concluded, to keep Gowdy from seeing her in conversation with me.

3

I pulled out for Manchester with Nathaniel Vincent Creede, whom everybody calls just "N.V.," riding in the spring seat with me, and his carpet-bag and his law library in the back of the wagon.

His library consisted of _Blackstone's Commentaries_--I saw them in his present library in Monterey Centre only yesterday--_Chitty on Pleading_, the _Code of Iowa of_ 1851, the _Session Laws_ of the state so far as it had any session laws--a few thin books bound in yellow and pink boards.

Even these few books made a pretty heavy bundle for a man to carry in one hand while he lugged all his other worldly goods in the other.

"Books are d.a.m.ned heavy, Mr. Vandemark," said he; "law books are particularly heavy. My library is small; but there is an adage in our profession which warns us to beware of the man of one book. He's always likely to know what's in the d.a.m.ned thing, you know, Mr. Vandemark; and the truth being a seamless web, if a lawyer knows all about the law in one book, he's p.r.o.ne to make a h.e.l.l of a straight guess at what's in the rest of 'em. Hence beware of the man of one book. I may safely lay claim to being that man--in a figurative way; though there are half a dozen volumes or so back there--the small pedestal on which I stand reaching up toward a place on the Supreme Bench of the United States."

He had had a drink or two with Buckner Gowdy back there in the saloon, and this had taken the brakes off his tongue--if there were any provided in his temperament. So, aside from Buck Gowdy, I was the first of his fellow-citizens of Monterey County to become acquainted with N.V.

Creede. He reminded me at first of Lawyer Jackway of Madison, the guardian _ad litem_ who had sung the song that still recurred to me occasionally--

"Sold again, And got the tin, And sucked another Dutchman in!"

But N.V. looked a little like Jackway from the fact only that he wore a long frock coat, originally black, a white s.h.i.+rt, and a black cravat. He was very tall, and very erect, even while carrying those books and that bag. He was smooth-shaven, and was the first man I ever saw who shaved every day, and could do the trick without a looking-gla.s.s. His eyes were black and very piercing; and his voice rolled like thunder when he grew earnest--which he was likely to do whenever he spoke. He would begin to discuss my cows, the principles of farming, the sky, the birds of pa.s.sage, the flowers, the sucking in of the Dutchman--which I told him all about before we had gone five miles--the mire-holes in the slews, anything at all--and rising from a joke or a flighty notion which he earnestly advocated, he would lower his voice and elevate his language and utter a little gem of an oration. After which he would be still and solemn for a while--to let it sink in I thought.

N.V. was at that time twenty-seven years old. He; came from Evansville, Indiana, by the Ohio from Evansville to St. Louis, and thence up the Mississippi. From Dubuque he had partly walked and partly ridden with people who were willing to give him a lift.

"I am like unto the Apostle Peter," he said when he asked for the chance to ride with me, "silver and gold have I none; but such as I have I give unto thee."

"What do you mean?" I asked; for it is just as well always to be sure beforehand when it comes to pay-though, of course, I should have been glad to have him with me without money and without price.

"In the golden future of Iowa," he said, "you will occasionally want legal advice. I will accept transportation in your very safe, but undeniably slow equipage as a retainer."

"Captain Sproule used to say," I said, "that what you pay the lawyer is the least of the matter when you go to law."

"Wise Captain Sproule," replied N.V.; "and my rule shall be to keep my first client, Mr. Jacob T. Vandemark, out of the courts; and in addition to my prospective legal services, I can wield the goad-stick and manipulate the blacksnake. Moreover, when these feet of mine get their blisters healed, I can help drive the cattle; and I can gather firewood, kindle fires, and perhaps I may suggest that my conversation may not be entirely unprofitable."

I told him I would take him in as a pa.s.senger; and there our life-long friends.h.i.+p began. His conversation was not unprofitable. He had the vision of the future of Iowa which I had until then lacked. He could see on every quarter-section a prosperous farm, and he knew what the building of the railways must mean. As we forded the Maquoketa he laughed at the settlers working at the timber, grubbing out stumps, burning off the logs, struggling with roots.

"Your ancestors, the Dutch," said he, "have been held up to ridicule because they refused to establish a town until they found a place where d.y.k.es had to be built to keep out the sea, though there were plenty of dry places available. These settlers are acting just as foolishly. They have been used to grubbing, and they go where grubbing has to be done.

Two miles either way is better land ready for the plow! Why can't every one be wise like us?"

"They have to have wood for houses, stables, and fuel," I said. "I hope my land has timber on it."

"The railroads are coming," said he, "and they will bring you coal and wood and everything you want. They are racing for the crossings of the Mississippi. Soon they will reach the Missouri--and some day they will cross the continent to the Pacific. No more Erie Ca.n.a.ls; no more Aaron Burr conspiracies for the control of the mouth of the Mississippi.

Towns! Cities! Counties! States! We are pioneers; but civilization is treading on our heels. I feel it galling my kibes[8]--and what are a few blisters to me! I see in my own adopted city of Lithopolis, Iowa, a future Sparta or Athens or Rome, or anyhow, a Louisville or Cincinnati or Dubuque--a place in which to achieve greatness--or anyhow, a chance to deal in town lots, defend criminals, or prosecute them, and where the unsettled will have to be settled in the courts as well as on the farm.

On to Lithopolis! G'lang, Whiteface, g'lang!"

[8] The editor acknowledges the invaluable a.s.sistance of Honorable N.V.

Creede in the editing of the proofs of this and a few other pa.s.sages.--G.v.d.M.

"I thought you were going to Monterey Centre," I said.

"Not if the court knows itself," he said, "and it thinks it does.

Lithopolis is the permanent town in Monterey County, and Monterey Centre is the mushroom."

4

Monterey County, like all the eastern counties of Iowa, all the counties along the Missouri, and every other county which was crossed by a considerable river, was dotted with paper towns. We pa.s.sed many of these staked-out sites on the Old Ridge Road; and we heard of them from buyers of and dealers in their lots.

Lithopolis was laid out by Judge Horace Stone, the great outsider in the affairs of the county until he died. He platted a town in Howard County when the town-lot fever first broke out, at a place called Stone's Ferry, and named it Lithopolis, because his name was Stone, and for the additional reason that there was a stone quarry there. I've been told that the word means Stone City. The people insisted upon calling it Stone's Ferry and would not have the name Lithopolis. Judge Stone raved and tore, but he was voted down, and pulled up stakes in disgust, sold out his interests and went on to Monterey County, where he could establish a new city and name it Lithopolis. He seemed to care more for the name than anything else, and never seemed to see how funny it was that he felt it possible to make a city wherever he decreed. This was a part of the spirit of the time. The prairies were infested with Romuluses and Remuses, flouris.h.i.+ng, not on the milk of the wolves, but seemingly on their howls, of which they often gave a pretty fair imitation.

"But Monterey Centre is the county-seat," I suggested.

"It just thinks it's going to be," said N.V. "The fact is that Monterey County is not organized, but is attached to the county south of it for judicial purposes. Let me whisper in your ear that it will soon be organized, and that the county-seat will not be Monterey Centre, but Lithopolis--that cla.s.sic munic.i.p.ality whose sonorous name will be the admiration of all true Americans and the despair of the spelling cla.s.ses in our schools. Lithopolis! It has the cadence of Alexander, and Alcibiades, and Numa Pompilius, and Belisarius--it reeks of greatness!

Monterey Centre--ever been there? Ever seen that poverty-stricken, semi-hamlet, squatting on the open prairie, and inhabited by a parcel of dreaming Nims.h.i.+es?"

"No," said I; "have you?"