"Shall I go, Jake?" she asked, looking up into my face.
"It looks like a good chance for all of you," I answered.
"I don't want to," said she, "I couldn't stay here, could I? ... No, of
course not!"
So away went the Fewkeses with Buck Gowdy. That is, Rowena went away
with him in his buggy, and the rest of the family followed in a day or
so with the cross old horse--now refreshed by my hay and grain, and the
rest we had given him,--in their rickety one-horse wagon. I remember how
Rowena looked back at us, her hair blowing about her face which looked,
just a thought, pale and big-eyed, as the Gowdy buggy went off like the
wind, with Buck's arm behind the girl to keep her from bouncing out.
This day's work was not to cease in its influence on Iowa affairs for
half a century, if ever. State politics, the very government of the
commonwealth, the history of Monterey County and of Vandemark Township,
were all changed when Buck Gowdy went off over the prairie that day,
holding Rowena Fewkes in the buggy seat with that big brawny arm of his.
Ma Fewkes seemed delighted to see Mr. Gowdy holding her daughter in
the buggy.
"Nobody can tell what great things may come of this!" she cried, as they
went out of sight over a knoll.
She never said a truer thing. To be sure, it was only the hiring by a
very rich man, as rich men went in those days, of three worthless hands
and a hired girl; but it tore the state's affairs in pieces. Whenever I
think of it I remember some verses in the _Fifth Reader_ that my
children used in school:
"Somewhere yet that atom's force
Moves the light-poised universe[11].
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