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.
2
("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 institutions. 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 Dick 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!
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 trespass on the land, so as to be able almost to deny that
they were on it at all, and were seemingly trying to hide.
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