Vandemark's Folly Part 25

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I found Magnus Thorkelson surrounded by a group of people arguing with him about something; and Magnus in a dreadful pucker to know what to do.

In one group were Judge Horace Stone, N.V. Creede and Forrest Bushyager, then a middle-aged man, and an active young fellow of twenty-five or so named d.i.c.k McGill, afterward for many years the editor of the Monterey Centre _Journal_. These had a pet.i.tion asking that the county-seat be located at Lithopolis, Judge Stone's new town, and they wanted Magnus to sign it. I suppose he would have done so, if it had not been for the other delegation, consisting of Henderson L. Burns and Doctor Bliven, who had another pet.i.tion asking for the establishment of the county-seat permanently "at its present site," Monterey Centre. They took me into the confabulation as soon as I weighed anchor in front of the house; and just as they had begun to pour their arguments into me they were joined by another man, who drove up in a two-seated democrat wagon drawn by a fine team of black horses, and in the back seat I saw a man and woman sitting. I thought the man looked like Elder Thornd.y.k.e; but the woman's face was turned away from me, and I did not recognize her at first. She had on a new calico dress that I hadn't seen before. It was Virginia.

The man who got out and joined the group was a red-faced, hard-visaged man of about fifty, dressed in black broadcloth, and wearing a beaver hat. He had a black silk cravat tied about a standing collar, with high points that rolled out in front, and he looked rich and domineering. He was ever afterward a big man in Monterey County, and always went by the name of Governor Wade, because he was a candidate for governor two or three times. He was the owner of a big tract of land over to the southwest, next to the Gowdy farm the largest in the county. He came striding over to us as if whatever he said was the end of the law. With him and Henderson L. and N.V. Creede pitching into a leatherhead like me, no wonder I did not recognize Virginia in her new dress; I was in such a stew that I hardly knew which end my head was on.

Each side seemed to want to impress me with the fact that in signing one or the other of those pet.i.tions I had come to the parting of the ways.

They did not say much about what was best for the county, but bore down on the fact that the way I lined up on that great question would make all the difference in the world with me. Each tried to make me think that I should always be an outsider and a maverick if I didn't stand with his crowd.

"Why," said N.V., "I feel sure that it won't take you long to make up your mind. This little group of men we have here," pointing to Henderson L. and Governor Wade, "are the County Ring that's trying to get this new county in their clutches--the County Ring!"

This made a little grain of an impression on me; and it was the first time I had ever heard the expression so common in local history "the County Ring." I looked at Governor Wade to see what he would say to it.

His face grew redder, and he laughed as if Creede were not worth noticing; but he noticed him for all that.

"Young man," said he, "or young men, I should say, both of you want to be somebody in this new community. Monterey Centre represents already, the brains--"

"Like a dollar sign," said d.i.c.k McGill, "it represents it, but it hasn't any."

"--the brains," went on Governor Wade, glaring at him, "the culture, the progress and the wealth--"

"That they hope to steal," put in d.i.c.k McGill.

"--the wealth," went on the Governor, who hated to be interrupted, "of this Gem of the Prairies, Monterey County. Don't make the mistake, which you can never correct, of taking sides with this little gang of town-site sharks led by my good friend Judge Stone."

Here was another word which I was to hear pretty often in county politics--Gang. One crowd was called a Ring; the other a Gang, I looked at N.V. to see how wrathy he must be, but he only smiled sarcastically, as I have often seen him do in court; and shaking his head at me waved his hand as if putting Governor Wade quite off the map. Just then my team began acting up--they had not been unhitched and were thirsty and hungry; and I went over to straighten them out, leaving the Ring and the Gang laboring with Magnus, who was sweating freely--and then I went over to speak with the elder.

"How do you do, Teunis?" said Virginia very sweetly. "You'll sign our pet.i.tion, won't you?"

"We don't want to influence your judgment," said the elder, "but I wanted to say to you that if the county-seat remains at Monterey Centre, it will be a great thing for the religious work which under G.o.d I hope to do. It will give me a parish. I should like to urge that upon you."

"Do you want me to sign it?" I asked him, looking at Virginia.

"Yes," said he, "if you have no objection."

"Please do!" said Virginia. "I know you can't have any objection."

I turned on my heel, went back to Governor Wade, and signed the pet.i.tion for Monterey Centre; and then Magnus Thorkelson did the same. Then we both signed another pet.i.tion carried by both parties, asking that an election be called by the judge of the county south which had jurisdiction over us, for the election of officers. And just as I had expected one side to begirt crowing over the other, and I had decided that there would be a fight, both crowds jumped into their rigs and went off over the prairie, very good naturedly it seemed to me, after the next settler.

"Jake," said N.V., as they turned their buggy around, "you'll make some woman a d.a.m.ned good husband, some day!" and he took off his hat very politely to Virginia, who blushed as red as the reddest rose then blooming on the prairie.

That was the way counties were organized in Iowa. It is worth remembering because it was the birth of self-government. The people made their counties and their villages and their townships as they made their farms and houses and granaries. Everybody was invited to take part--and it was not until long afterward that I confessed to Magnus that I had never once thought when I signed those pet.i.tions that I was not yet a voter; and then he was frightened to realize that he was not either. He had not yet been naturalized. The only man in the county known to me who took no interest in the contest was Buck Gowdy. When Judge Stone asked him why, he said he didn't give a d.a.m.n. There was too much government for him there already, he said.

We did get the election called, and after we had elected our officers there was no county-seat for them to dwell in; so that county judge off to the south appointed a commission to locate the county-seat, which after driving over the country a good deal and drinking a lot of whisky, according to d.i.c.k McGill, made Monterey Centre the county town, which it still remains. The Lithopolis people gained one victory--they elected Judge Horace Stone County Treasurer. Within a month N.V. Creede had opened a law office in Monterey Centre, d.i.c.k McGill had begun the publication of the Monterey Centre _Journal_ of fragrant memory, Lithopolis began to advertise its stone quarries, and Grizzly Reed, an old California prospector, who had had his ear torn off by a bear out in the mountains, began prospecting for gold along the creek, and talking mysteriously. The sale of lots in Lithopolis went on faster than ever.

CHAPTER XIV

I BECOME A BANDIT AND A TERROR

When General Weaver was running for governor, a Populist worker called on my friend Wilbur Wheelock, who was then as now a stock buyer at our little town of Ploverdale, and asked him if he were a Populist.

"No," said Wilbur, "but I have all the qualifications, sir!"

"What do you regard as the qualifications?" asked the organizer.

"I've run for county office and got beat," said Wilbur: "and that takes you in, too, don't it, Jake?" he asked, turning to me.

Wilbur, like most of our older people, has a good memory. Most of the folks hereabouts had already forgotten that I was a candidate on Judge Stone's Reform and Anti-Monopoly ticket, for County Supervisor, in 1874, and that I was defeated with the rest. This was the only time I ever had anything to do with politics, more than to be a delegate to the county convention two or three times. I mention it here, because of the chance it gave d.i.c.k McGill to rake me over the coals in his scurrilous paper, the Monterey Centre _Journal_, that most people have always said was never fit to enter a decent home, but which they always subscribed for and read as quick as it came.

Within fifteen minutes after McGill got his paper to Monterey Centre he and what he had called the County Ring were as thick as thieves, and always stayed so as long as d.i.c.k had the county printing. So when I was put on the independent ticket to turn this ring out of office, d.i.c.k went after me as if I had been a horse-thief, and made a great to-do about what he called "Cow Vandemark's criminal record." Now that I have a chance to put the matter before the world in print, I shall take advantage of it; for that "criminal record" is a part of this history of Vandemark Township.

The story grew out of my joining the Settlers' Club in 1856. The rage for land speculation was sweeping over Iowa like a prairie fire, getting things all ready for the great panic of 1857 that I have read of since, but of which I never heard until long after it was over. All I knew was that there was a great fever for buying and selling land and laying out and booming town-sites--the sites, not the towns--and that afterward times were very hard. The speculators had bought up a good part of Monterey County by the end of 1856, and had run the price up as high as three dollars and a half an acre.

This made it hard for poor men who came in expecting to get it for a dollar and a quarter; and a number of settlers in the township, as they did all over the state, went on their land relying on the right to buy it when they could get the money--what was called the preemption right.

I could see the houses of William Trickey, Ebenezer Junkins and Absalom Frost from my house; and I knew that Peter and Amos Bemisdarfer and Flavius Bohn, Dunkards from Pennsylvania, had located farther south. All these settlers were located south of h.e.l.l Slew, which was coming to be known now, and was afterward put down on the map, as "Vandemark's Folly Marsh."

And now there came into the county and state a cla.s.s of men called "claim-jumpers," who pushed in on the claims of the first comers, and stood ready to buy their new homes right out from under them. It was pretty hard on us who had pushed on ahead of the railways, and soaked in the rain and frozen in the blizzards, and lived on moldy bacon and hulled corn, to lose our chance to get t.i.tle to the lands we had broken up and built on. It did not take long for a settler to see in his land a home for him and his dear ones, and the generations to follow; and we felt a great bitterness toward these claim-jumpers, who were no better off than we were.

My land was paid for, such as it was; but when the people who, like me, had drailed out across the prairies with the last year's rush, came and asked me to join the Settlers' Club to run these intruders off, it appeared to me that it was only a man's part in me to stand to it and take hold and do. I felt the old urge of all landowners to stand together against the landless, I suppose. What is t.i.tle to land anyhow, but the right of those who have it to hold on to it? No man ever made land--except my ancestors, the Dutch, perhaps. All men do is to get possession of it, and run everybody else off, either with clubs, guns, or the sheriff.

I did not look forward to all the doings of the Settlers' Club, but I joined it, and I have never been ashamed of it, even when d.i.c.k McGill was slangwhanging me about what we did. I never knew, and I don't know now, just what the law was, but I thought then, and I think now, that the Settlers' Club had the right of it. I thought so the night we went over to run the claim-jumper off Absalom Frost's land, within a week of my joining.

It was over on Section Twenty-seven, that the claim-jumper had built a hut about where the schoolhouse now is, with a stable in one end of it, and a den in which to live in the other. He was a young man, with no dependents, and we felt no compunctions of conscience, that dark night, when two wagon-loads of us, one of which came from the direction of Monterey Centre, drove quietly up and knocked at the door.

"Who's there?" he said, with a quiver in his voice.

"Open up, and find out!" said a man in the Monterey Centre crowd, who seemed to take command as a matter of course. "Kick the door open, Dutchy!"

As he said this he stepped aside, and pushed me up to the door. I gave it a push with my knee, and the leader jerked me aside, just in time to let a charge of shot pa.s.s my head.

"It's only a single-barrel gun," said he. "Grab him!"

I was scared by the report of the gun, scared and mad, too, as I clinched with the fellow, and threw him; then I pitched him out of the door, when the rest of them threw him down and began stripping him. At the same time, some one kindled a fire under a kettle filled with tar, and in a few minutes, they were smearing him with it. This looked like going too far, to me, and I stepped back--I couldn't stand it to see the tar smeared over his face, even if it did look like a map of the devil's wild land, as he kicked and scratched and tried to bite, swearing all the time like a pirate. It seemed a degrading kind of thing to defile a human being in that way. The leader came up to me and said, "That was good work, Dutchy. Lucky I was right about its being a single-barrel, ain't it? Help get his team hitched up. We want to see him well started."

"All right, Mr. McGill," I said; for that was his name, now first told in all the history of the county.

"Shut up!" he said. "My name's Smith, you lunkhead!"

Well, we let the claim-jumper put on his clothes over the tar and feathers, and loaded his things into his wagon, hitched up his team, and whipped them up to a run and let them go over the prairie. All the time he was swearing that he would have blood for this, but he never stopped going until he was out of sight and hearing.

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("What a disgraceful affair!" says my granddaughter Gertrude, as she finishes reading that page. "I'm ashamed of you, grandpa; but I'm glad he didn't shoot you. Where would I have been?" Well, it does seem like rather a shady transaction for me to have been mixed up in. The side of it that impresses me, however, is the lapse of time as measured in conditions and inst.i.tutions. That was barbarism; and it was Iowa! And it was in my lifetime. It was in a region now as completely developed as England, and it goes back to things as raw and primitive as King Arthur's time. I wonder if his knights were not in the main, pretty shabby rascals, as bad as d.i.c.k McGill--or Cow Vandemark? But Gertrude has not yet heard all about that night's work.)

"Now," said McGill, "for the others! Load up, and come on. This fellow will never look behind him!"

But he did!