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' grass 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 hell-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.
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