I know
that Buckner Gowdy was a wild and turbulent rakehell in Kentucky and
after many bad scrapes was forced to run away from the state, and was
given his huge plantation of "worthless" land--as he called it--in Iowa;
that he had married his wife, who was a poor girl of good family named
Ann Royall, because he couldn't get her except by marrying her.
I know that her younger sister, Virginia Royall, came with them to Iowa,
because she had no other relative or friend in the world except Mrs.
Gowdy. I pretty nearly know that Virginia would have killed herself that
night on the prairie by the Old Ridge Road, because of a sudden feeling
of terror, at the situation in which she was left, at the prairies and
the wild desolate road, at Buck Gowdy, at life in general--if she had
had any means with which to destroy her life. I know that Buck Gowdy
took her into the house and comforted her by telling her that he would
care for her, and send her back to Kentucky.
* * * * *
A funeral by the wayside! This was my first experience with a kind of
tragedy which was not quite so common as you might think. Buckner Gowdy
instead of giving his wife a grave by the road, as many did, sent the
man of the house back to Dubuque for a hearse, the women laid out the
corpse, and after a whole day of waiting, the hearse came, and went back
over the road down the Indian trail through the bluffs to some graveyard
in the old town by the river.
Pages:
123
124
125
126
127
128
129
130
131
132
133
134
135
136
137
138
139
140
141
142
143
144
145
146
147