Vandemark's Folly Part 26

The next and the last stop, was away down on Section Thirty-five--two miles farther. I was feeling rather warnble-cropped, because of the memory of that poor fellow with the tar in his eyes--but I went all the same.

There was a little streak of light in the east when we got to the place, but we could not at first locate the claim-jumpers. They had gone down into a hollow, right in the very corner of the section, as if trying barely to trespa.s.s on the land, so as to be able almost to deny that they were on it at all, and were seemingly trying to hide. We could scarcely see their outfit after we found it, for they were camped in tall gra.s.s, and their little shanty was not much larger than a dry-goods box. Their one horse was staked out a little way off, their one-horse wagon was standing with its cover on beside a mound of earth which marked where a shallow well had been dug for water. I heard a rustling in the wagon as we pa.s.sed it, like that of a bird stirring in the branches of a tree.

McGill pounded on the door.

"Come out," he shouted. "You've got company!"

There was a scrabbling and hustling around in the shanty, and low talking, and some one asked who was there; to which McGill replied for them to come out and see. Pretty soon, a little doddering figure of a man came to the door, pulling on his breeches with trembling hands as he stepped, barefooted, on the bare ground which came right up to the door-sill.

"What's wanted, gentlemen?" he quavered. "I cain't ask you to come in--jist yit. What's wanted?"

He had not said two words when I knew him for Old Man Fewkes, whom I had last seen back on the road west of Dyersville, on his way to "Negosha." Where was Ma Fewkes, and where were Celebrate Fourth and Surajah Dowlah? And where, most emphatically, where was Rowena? I stepped forward at McGill's side. Surely, I thought, they were not going to tar and feather these harmless, good-for-nothing waifs of the frontier; and even as I thought it, I saw the glimmering of the fire they were kindling under the tar-kettle.

"We want you, you infernal claim-jumper!" said McGill. "We'll show you that you can't steal the land from us hard-working settlers, you set of sneaks! Take off your clothes, and we'll give you a coat that will make you look more like buzzards than you do now."

"There's some of 'em runnin' away!" yelled one of the crowd. "Catch 'em!"

There was a flight through the gra.s.s from the back of the shanty, a rush of pursuit, some feeble yells jerked into bits by rough handling; and presently, Celebrate and Surajah were dragged into the circle of light, just as poor Ma Fewkes, with her shoulder-blades drawn almost together came forward and tried to tear from her poor old husband's arm the hand of an old neighbor of mine whose name I won't mention even at this late day. I will not turn state's evidence notwithstanding the Statute of Limitations has run, as N.V. Creede advises me, against any one but d.i.c.k McGill--and the reason for my exposing him is merely t.i.t for tat. Ma Fewkes could not unclasp the hands; but she produced an effect just the same.

"Say," said a man who had all the time sat in one of the wagons, holding the horses. "You'd better leave out the stripping, boys!"

They began dragging the boys and the old man toward the tar-kettle, and McGill, with his hat drawn down over his eyes, went to the slimy ma.s.s and dipped into it a wooden paddle with which they had been stirring it.

Taking as much on it as it would carry, he made as if to smear it over the old man's head and beard. I could not stand this--the poor harmless old coot!--and I ran up and struck McGill's arm.

"What in h.e.l.l," he yelled, for some of the tar went on him, "do you mean!"

"Don't tar and feather 'em," I begged. "I know these folks. They are a poor wandering family, without money enough to buy land away from any one."

"We jist thought we'd kind o' settle down," said Old Man Fewkes whimperingly; "and I've got the money promised me to buy this land. So it's all right and straight!"

The silly old leatherhead didn't know he was doing anything against public sentiment; and told the very thing that made a case against him.

I have found out since who the man was that promised him the money and was going to take the land; but that was just one circ.u.mstance in the land craze, and the man himself was wounded at Fort Donelson, and died in hospital--so I won't tell his name. The point is, that the old man had turned the jury against me just as I had finished my plea.

"You have got the money promised you, have you?" repeated McGill. "Grab him, boys!"

All this time I was wondering where Rowena could be. I recollected how she had always seemed to be mortified by her slack-twisted family, and I could see her as she meeched off across the prairie hack along the Old Ridge Road, as if she belonged to another outfit; and yet, I knew how much of a Fewkes she was, as she joined in the conversation when they planned their great estates in the mythical state of Negosha, or in Texas, or even in California. I grew hot with anger as I began to realize what a humiliation this tarring and feathering would be to her--and I kept wondering, as I have said, where she could be, even as I felt the thrill a man experiences when he sees that he must fight: and just as I felt this thrill, one of our men closed with the old fellow from behind, and wrenching his bird's-claw hands behind his back, thrust the wizened old bearded face forward for its coat of tar.

I clinched with our man, and getting a rolling hip-lock on him, I whirled him over my head, as I had done with so many wrestling opponents, and letting him go in mid-air, he went head over heels, and struck ten feet away on the ground. Then I turned on McGill, and with the flat of my hand, I slapped him over against the shanty, with his ears ringing. They were coming at me in an undecided way: for my onset had been both sudden and unexpected; when I saw Rowena running from the rear with a shotgun in her hand, which she had picked up as it leaned against a wagon wheel where one of our crowd had left it.

"Stand back!" she screamed. "Stand back, or I'll blow somebody's head off!"

I heard a chuckling laugh from a man sitting in one of the wagons, and a word or two from him that sounded like, "Good girl!" Our little mob fell back, the man I had thrown limping, and d.i.c.k McGill rubbing the side of his head. The dawn was now broadening in the east, and it was getting almost light enough so that faces might be recognized; and one or two of the crowd began to retreat toward the wagons.

"I'll see to it," said I, "that these people will leave this land, and give up their settlement on it."

"No we won't," said Rowena. "We'll stay here if we're killed."

"Now, Rowena," said her father, "don't be so sot. We'll leave right off.

Boys, hitch up the horse. We'll leave, gentlemen. I was gittin' tired of this country anyway. It's so tarnal cold in the winter. The trees is in constant varder in Texas, an' that's where we'll go."

By this time the mob had retreated to their wagons, their courage giving way before the light of day, rather than our resistance; though I could see that the settlers had no desire to get into a row with one of their neighbors: so shouting warnings to the Fewkeses to get out of the country while they could, they drove off, leaving me with the claim-jumpers. I turned and saw poor Rowena throw herself on the ground and burst into a most frightful fit of hysterical weeping. She would not allow her father or her brothers to touch her, and when her mother tried to comfort her, she said "Go away, ma. Don't touch me!" Finally I went to her, and she caught my hand in hers and pressed it, and after I had got her to her feet--the poor ragged waif, as limpsey as a rag, and wearing the patched remnants of the calico dress I had bought for her on the way into Iowa the spring before--she broke down and cried on my shoulder. She sobbed out that I was the only man she had ever known. She wished to G.o.d she were a man like me. The only way I could stop her was to tell her that her face ought to be washed; when I said that to her, she stopped her sitheing and soon began making herself pretty: and she was quite gay on the road to my place, where I took them because I couldn't think of anything else to do with them, though I knew that the whole family, not counting Rowena, couldn't or wouldn't do enough work to pay the board of their horse.

3

They hadn't more than got there and eaten a solid meal, than Surajah asked me for tools so he could work on a patent mouse-trap he was inventing, and when I came in from work that evening, he was explaining it to Magnus Thorkelson, who had come over to borrow some sugar from me.

Magnus was pretending to listen, but he was asking his questions of Rowena, who stood by more than half convinced that Surrager had finally hit upon his great idea--which was a mouse-trap that would always be baited, and with two compartments, one to catch the mice, and one to hold them after they were caught. When they went into the second compartment, they tripped a little lever which opened the door for a new captive, and at the same time baited the trap again.

It seemed as if Magnus could not understand what Surajah said, but that Rowena's speech was quite plain to him. After that, he came over every evening and Rowena taught him to read in McGuffey's _Second Reader._ I knew that Magnus had read this through time and again; but he said he could learn to speak the words better when Rowena taught him. The fact was, though, that he was teaching her more than she him; but she never had a suspicion of this. That evening Magnus came over and brought his fiddle. Pa Fewkes was quite disappointed when Magnus said he could not play the _Money Musk_ nor _Turkey in the Straw_, nor the _Devil's Dream,_ but when he went into one of his musical trances and played things with no tune to them but with a great deal of harmony, and some songs that almost made you cry, Rowena sat looking so lost to the world and dreamy that Magnus was moist about the eyes himself. He shook hands with all of us when he went away, so as to get the chance to hold Rowena's hand I guess.

Every day while they were there, Magnus came to see us; but did not act a bit like a boy who came sparking. He did not ask Rowena to sit up with him, though I think she expected him to do so; but he talked with her about Norway, and his folks there, and how lonely it was on his farm, and of his hopes that one day he would be a well-to-do farmer.

After one got used to her poor clothes, and when she got tamed down a little on acquaintance and gave a person a chance to look at her, and especially into her eyes, she was a very pretty girl. She had grown since I had seen her the summer before, and was fuller of figure. Her hair was still of that rich dark brown, just the color of her eyes and eyebrows. She had been a wild girl last summer, but now she was a woman, with spells of dreaming and times when her feelings were easily hurt.

She still was ready to flare up and fight at the drop of the hat--because, I suppose, she felt that everybody looked down on her and her family; but to Magnus and me she was always gentle and sometimes I thought she was going to talk confidentially to me.

After she had had one of her lessons one evening she said to me, "I wish I wa'n't so darned infarnal ignorant. I wish I could learn enough to teach school!"

"We're all ignorant here," I said.

"Magnus ain't," said she. "He went to a big school in the old country.

He showed me the picture of it, and of his father's house. It's got four stone chimneys."

"I wonder," said I, "if what they learn over there is real learning."

And that ended our confidential talk.

About the time I began wondering how long they were to stay with me, Buck Gowdy came careering over the prairie, driving his own horse, just as I was taking my nooning and was looking at the gun which Rowena had used to drive back the Settlers' Club, and which we had brought along with us. I thought I remembered where I had seen that gun, and when Buck came up I handed it to him.

"Here's your shotgun," I said. "It's the one you shot the geese with back toward the Mississippi."

"Good goose gun," said he. "Thank you for keeping it for me. I see you have caught me out getting acquainted with Iowa customs. If you had needed any help that night, you'd have got it."

"I came pretty near needing it," I said; "and I had help."

"I see you brought your help home with you," he said. "I think I recognize that wagon, don't I?" I nodded. "I wonder if they could come and help me on the farm. I'd like to see them. I need help, inside the house and out."

I left him talking with the whole Fewkes family, except Rowena, who kept herself out of sight somewhere, and went out to the stable to work.

Gowdy was talking to them in that low-voiced, smiling way of his, with the little sympathetic tremor in his voice like that in the tone of an organ. He had already told Surajah that his idea for a mouse-trap looked like something the world had been waiting for, and that there might be a fortune in the scheme. Ma Fewkes was looking up at him, as if what he said must be the law and gospel. He had them all hypnotized, or as we called it then, mesmerized--so I thought as I went out of sight of them.

After a while, Rowena came around the end of a haystack, and spoke to me.

"Mr. Gowdy wants us all to go to work for him," she said. "He wants pa and the boys to work around the place, and he says he thinks some of Surrager's machines are worth money. He'll give me work in the house."

"It looks like a good chance," said I.

"You know I don't know much about housework," said she; "poor as we've always been."

"You showed me how to make good bread," I replied.

"I could do well for a poor man," said Rowena, looking at me rather sadly. Then she waited quite a while for me to say something.