After a few minutes of looking about, Burns found my
southwest corner. We made back to the edge of the slope, and Henderson
L. looked off to the north in despair.
"My boy," said he, "I've actually located your two south corners, and
you can run the south line yourself from these stakes. The north line is
three hundred and twenty rods north of and parallel to it--and the east
and west lines will run themselves when you locate the north
corners--but I'll have to wait till the ground freezes, or get Darius
Green to help me--and the great tide of immigration hain't brought him
to this neck of the woods yet."
"But where's my land?" I queried: for I did not understand all this
hocus-pocus of locating any given spot in the Iowa prairies in 1855.
"Where's my land?"
"The heft of it," said he, "is right down there in Hell Slew. It's all
pretty wet; but I think you've got the wettest part of it; the best duck
ponds, and the biggest muskrat-houses. This slew is the only blot in the
'scutcheon of this pearl of counties, Mr. Vandemark--the only blot; and
you've got the blackest of it."
I leaned back against the buggy, completely unnerved. Magnus put out his
hand as if to grasp mine, but I did not take it. There went through my
head that rhyme of Jackway's that he hiccoughed out as he drank with his
cronies--on my money--that day last winter back in Madison: "Sold again,
and got the tin, and sucked another Dutchman in!" This huge marsh was
what John Rucker, after killing my mother, had deeded me for my
inheritance!
In that last word I had from her, the poor stained letter she left in
the apple-tree--perhaps it was her tears, and not the rain that had
stained it so--she had said: "I am going very far away, and if you ever
see this, keep it always, and whenever you see it remember that I would
always have died willingly for you, and that I am going to build up for
you a fortune which will give you a better life than I have lived.
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