This was probably a unique case of a
secret marriage made in public; but there is no doubt as to its
validity. The editor remembers the Blivens as respected citizens. They
are dead long since, and left no descendants. Otherwise the historian
would not have told their story--which is not illustrative of anything
usual in our early history; but shows that in Iowa as in other new
countries there were those who were escaping from their past.--G.v.d.M.
I shall not close this history, without clearing up my record as to the
mares, Susie and Winnie, and the cutter, and Nick, the black-and-tan,
that saved Virginia's fingers from freezing, and the robes. First, I
kept the property, and every horse on the farm is descended from Susie
and Winnie. Second, I paid Buck Gowdy all the outfit was worth, though
he never knew it, and never would have taken pay: I drove a bunch of
cattle over into his corn-field the next fall and left them just before
day one morning, and he took them up, advertised them as estrays, and
finally, as N.V. says, reduced them to possession. And third, they were
legally mine, anyhow; for when I got home, I found this paper lying on
the bed, where he had slept those two nights when we were nesting in the
straw-pile:
BILL OF SALE
In consideration of one lesson in the manly art of self-defense, of two
days' board and lodging, and of one dollar ($1.00) to me in hand by J.T.
Vandemark, the receipt of which is hereby acknowledged, I hereby sell
and transfer to said J.
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