Chapter 6

THE END OF A LONG QUEST

I went to seek my mother in my best clothes. I had bought some new things in Milwaukee, and was sure that my appearance would comfort her greatly. Instead of being ragged, poverty-stricken, and neglected-looking, I was a picture of a clean, well-clothed working boy. I had on a good corduroy suit, and because the weather was cold, I wore a new Cardigan jacket. My shirt was of red flannel, very warm and thick; and about my neck I tied a flowered silk handkerchief which had been given me by a lady who was very kind to me once during a voyage by canal, and was called "my girl" by the men on the boat. I wore good kip boots with high tops, with shields of red leather at the knees, each ornamented with a gilt moon and star--the nicest boots I ever had; and I wore my pants tucked into my boot-tops so as to keep them out of the snow and also to show these glories in leather. With clouded woolen mittens on my hands, given me as a Christmas present by Mrs. Fogg, Captain Sproule's sister, that winter I worked for her near Herkimer, and a wool cap, trimmed about with a broad band of mink fur, and a long crocheted woolen comforter about my neck, I was as well-dressed a boy for a winter's day as a body need look for. I took a look at myself in the glass, and felt that even at the first glance, my mother would feel that in casting her lot with me she would be choosing not only the comfort of living with her only son but the protection of one who had proved himself a man.

I glowed with pride as I thought of our future together, and of all I would do to make her life happy and easy. I never was a better boy in my life than on that winter evening when I went up the hilly street from the tavern in Madison to the place on a high bluff overlooking a sheet of ice, stretching away almost as far as I could see, which they told me was Fourth Lake, to the house in which I was informed Doctor Rucker lived--a small frame house among stocky, low burr oak trees, on which the dead leaves still hung, giving forth a dreary hiss as the bitter north wind blew through them.

I knocked at the door, and was answered by a red-haired young woman, with a silly grin on her face, the smirk flanked on each side with cork-screw curls which hung down over her bright blue dress; which, as I could see, was pulled out at the seams under her round and shapely arms. She put out a soft and plump hand to me, but I did not take it. She looked in my face, and shrank back as if frightened.

"Where's Rucker?" I asked; but before I had finished the question he came forward from the other room, clothed in dirty black broadcloth, his patent-medicine-pedler's smile all over his face, with a soiled frilled shirt showing back of his flowered vest, which was unbuttoned except at the bottom, to show the nasty finery beneath. He had on a broad black scarf filling the space between the points of his wide-open standing collar, and sticking out on each side. I afterward recalled the impression of a gold watch-chain, and a broad ring on his finger. He was quite changed in outward appearance from the poverty-stricken skunk I had once known; but was if anything more skunk-like than ever: yet I had to look twice to be sure of him.

"I am exceedingly glad to see you in the flesh," said he, coming forward with his hand stuck out--a hand which I stared at but never touched--"exceedingly glad to see you, my young brother. I have had a spiritual vision of you. Honor us by coming in by the fire!"

"Where's my mother?" I asked, still standing in the open door.

Rucker started at the sound of my voice, which had changed from the boy's soprano into a deep bass--much deeper than it is now. It was the hoarse croak of the hobbledehoy.

The young woman had shrunk back behind him now.

"Your mother?" said he, in a sort of panther-like purr. "A spirit has been for three days seeking to speak to a lost child through my daughter. Come in, and let us see. Let us see if my daughter can not pierce the mysteries of the unseen in your case. Come in!"

The cold was blowing in at the open door, and his tone was a little like that of a man who wants to say, but does not feel it wise to do so, "Come in and shut the door after you!"

"Your daughter!" I said, trying to think of something to say that would show what I thought of him, her, and their dirty pretense; "your daughter! Hell!"

"Young man," said he, drawing himself up stiffly, "what do you mean--?"

"I mean to find my mother!" I cried. "Where is she?"

Suddenly the thought of being halted thus longer, and the fear that my mother was not there, drove me crazy. I lunged at Rucker, and with a sweep of my arms, threw him staggering across the room. The girl screamed, and ran to, and behind him. I stormed through to the kitchen, expecting to find my mother back there, working for this smooth, sly, scroundrelly pair; but the place was deserted. There were dirty pots and pans about; and a pile of unwashed dishes stacked high in the sink--and this struck me with despair. If my mother had been about, and able to work, such a thing would have been impossible. So she either was not there or was not able to work--my instinct told me that; and I ran to the foot of the stairs, and calling as I had so often done when a child, "Ma, Ma! Where are you, ma!" I waited to hear her answer.

Rucker, pale as a sheet, came up to me, his quivering mouth trying to work itself into a sneaking sort of smile.

"Why, Jacob, Jakey," he drooled, "is this you? I didn't know you. Sit down, my son, and I'll tell you the sad, sad news!"

I heard him, but I did not trust nor understand him, and I went through that house from cellar to garret, looking for her; my heart freezing within me as I saw how impossible it would be for her to live so. There were two bedrooms, both beds lying just as they had been left in the morning--and my mother always opened her beds up for an airing when she rose, and made them up right after breakfast.

The room occupied by the young woman was the room of a slut; the clothes she had taken off the night before, or even before that, lay in a ring about the place where her feet had been when she dropped them in the dust and lint which rolled about in the corners like feathers. Her corset was thrown down in a corner; shoes and stockings littered the floor; her comb was clogged with red hair like a wire fence with dead grass after a freshet; dingy, grimy underclothing lay about. I peered into a closet, in which there were more garments on the floor than on the nails. The other bedroom was quite as unkempt; looking as if the occupant must always do his chamber work at the last moment before going to bed. They were as unclean outwardly as inwardly.

After ransacking the house up-chamber, I ran down-stairs and went into the room from which Rucker had come, where I found the girl hiding behind a sofa, peeking over the back of it at me, and screaming "Go away!" All the walls in this room were hung with some thin black cloth, and it looked like the inside of a hearse. There was a stand in one corner, and a large extension table in the middle of the room, with chairs placed about it. In the corner across from the stand was a spiritualist medium's cabinet; and hanging on the walls were a guitar, a banjo and a fiddle. A bell stood in the middle of the table, and there were writing materials, slates, and other things scattered about, which theatrical people call "properties," I am told. I tore the black draperies down, and searched for a place where my mother might be--in bed I expected to find her, if at all; but she was not there. I tried the cellar, but it was nothing but a vegetable cave, dug in the earth, with no walls, and dark as a dungeon when the girl shut down the trap-door and stood on it: from which I threw her by putting my back under it and giving a surge. When I came up she was staggering to her feet, and groaning as she felt of her head for the results of some suspected cut or bump from her fall. Rucker was following me about calling me Jacob and Jakey, a good deal as a man will try to smooth down or pacify a vicious horse or mule; and after I had looked everywhere, I faced him, took him by the throat, and choked him until his tongue stuck out, and his face was purple.

"My God," said the girl, who had grown suddenly quiet, "you're killing him!"

I looked at his empurpled face, and my madness came back on me like a rush of fire through my veins--and I shut down on his throat again until I could feel the cords draw under my fingers like taut ropes.

She laid her hand rather gently on my breast, and looked me steadily in the eye.

"Fool!" she almost whispered. "Your mother's dead! Will it bring her back to life for you to stretch hemp?"

I guess that by that action she saved my life; but it has been only of late years that I have ceased to be sorry that I did not kill him. I looked back into her eyes for a moment--I remember yet that they were bright blue, with a lighter band about the edge of the sight, instead of the dark edging that most of us have; and as I understood her meaning I took my hands from Rucker's throat, and threw him from me. He lay on the floor for a minute, and as he scrambled to his feet I sank down on the nearest chair and buried my face in my hands.

It was all over, then; my long lone quest for my mother--a quest I had carried on since I was a little, scared, downtrodden child. I should never have the chance to serve her in my way as she had served me in hers--my way that would never have been anything but a very small and easy one at the most; while hers had been a way full of torment and servitude. All my strength was gone; and the girl seemed to know it; for she came over to me and patted me on the shoulder in a motherly sort of way.

"Poor boy!" she said. "Poor boy! To-morrow, come to me and I'll show you your mother's grave. I'll take you to the doctor that attended her. I know how you feel."

I had passed a sleepless night before I remembered to feel revolted at the sympathy of this hussy who had helped to bring my mother to her death--and I did not go near her. But I inquired my way from one doctor to another--there were not many in Madison then--until I found one, named Mix, who had treated my mother in her last illness. She was weak and run down, he said, and couldn't stand a run of lung fever, which had carried her off.

"Did she mention me?" I asked.

"At the very last," said Doctor Mix, "she said once or twice, 'He had to work too hard!' I don't know who she meant. Not Rucker, eh?"

I shook my head--I knew what she meant.

"And," said he, "if you can see your way clear to arrange with old Rucker to pay my bill--winter is on now, and I could use the money."

I pulled out my pocketbook and paid the bill.

"Thank you, my boy," said he, "thank you!"

"I'm glad to do it," I answered--and turned away my head.

"Anything more I can do for you?" asked Doctor Mix, much kinder than before.

"I'd be much obliged," I replied, "if you could tell me where I can find some one that'll be able to show me my mother's grave."

"I'll take you there," he said quickly.

We rode to the graveyard in his sleigh, the bells jingling too merrily by far, I thought; and then to a marble-cutter from whom I bought a headstone to be put up in the spring. I worked out an epitaph which Doctor Mix, who seemed to see through the case pretty well, put into good language, reading as follows: "Here lies the body of Mary Brouwer Vandemark, born in Ulster County, New York, in 1815; died Madison, Wisconsin, October 19, 1854. Erected to her memory by her son, Jacob T. Vandemark." So I cut the name of Rucker from our family record; but, of course, he never knew.

Then the doctor took me back to the tavern, trying to persuade me on the way to locate in Madison. He had some vacant lots he wanted to show me; and said that he and a company of friends had laid out new towns at half a dozen different places in Wisconsin, and even in Minnesota and Iowa. Before we got back he saw, though I tried to be civil, that I was not thinking about what he was saying, and so he let me think in peace; but he shook hands with me kindly at parting, and wished I could have got there in September.

"Things might have been different," said he. "You're a darned good boy; and if you'll stay here till spring I'll get you a job."

2

There was no fire in my room, and it was cold; so there was no place to sit except in the barroom, which I found deserted but for one man, when I went back and sat down to think over my future. Should I go back to the canal? I hated to do this, though all my acquaintances were there, and the work was of the sort I had learned to do best; besides, here I was in the West, and all the opportunities of the West were before me, though it looked cold and dreary just now, and no great chances seemed lying about for a boy like me. I was perplexed. I had lost my desire for revenge on Rucker; and just then I felt no ambition, and saw no light. I was ready, I suppose, to begin a life of drifting; this time with no aim, not even a remote one--for my one object in life had vanished. But something in the way of guidance always has come to me at such times; and it came now. The one man who was in the bar when I came in got up, and moving over by me, sat down in a chair by my side.

"Cold day," said he.

I agreed, and looked him over carefully. He was a tall man who wore a long black Prince Albert coat which came down below his knees, a broad felt hat, and no overcoat. He looked cold, and rather shabby; but he talked with a good deal of style, and used many big words.

"Stranger here?" he asked.

I admitted that I was.

"May I offer," said he, "the hospitalities of the city in the form of a hot whisky toddy?"

I thanked him and asked to be excused.

"Your name," he ventured, after clearing his throat, "is Vandemark."

Then I looked at him still more sharply. How did he know my name?

"I have been looking for you," said he, "for some months--some months; and I was so fortunate as to observe the fact when you made a call last evening on our fellow-citizen, Doctor Rucker. I was--ahem--consulted professionally by the late lamented Mrs. Rucker--I am a lawyer, sir--before her death, for the purpose of securing my services in looking after the interests of her son, Mr. Jacob H. Vandemark."

"Jacob T. Vandemark," said I.

"Why, damn me," said he, looking again at his book, "it _is_ a 'T.' Lawyer's writing, Jacob, lawyer's writing--notoriously bad, you know."

I sat thinking about the expression, "the interests of Jacob T. Vandemark," for a long time; but the truth did not dawn an me, my mind working slowly as usual.

"What interests?" I asked finally.

"The interest," said he, "of her only child in the estate of Mrs. Rucker."

Then there recurred to my mind the words in my mother's last letter; that the money had been paid on the settlement of my father's estate, and that she and Rucker were coming out West to make a new start in life. I had never given it a moment's thought before, and should have gone away without asking anybody a single question about it, if this scaly pettifogger, as I now know him to have been, had not sidled up to me.

"The estate," said my new friend, "is small, Jacob; but right is right, and there is no reason why this man Rucker should not be made to disgorge every cent that's coming to you--every cent! I know Doctor Rucker slightly, and I hope I shall not shock you if I say that in my opinion he would steal the Lord's Supper, and wipe his condemned lousy red whiskers and his freckled claws with the table-cloth! That's the kind of pilgrim and stranger Rucker is. He will cheat you out of your eye teeth, sir, unless you are protected by the best legal talent to be had--the best to be had--the talent and the advice of the man to whom your late lamented mother went for counsel."

"Yes," said I after a while, "I think he will."

"That is why your mother," he went on, "advised with me; for even if I have to say it, I'm a living whirlwind in court. Suppose we have a drink!"

I sat with my drink before me, slowly sipping it, and trying to see through this man and the new question he had brought up. Certainly, I was entitled to my mother's property--all of it by rights, whatever the law might be--for it came through my father. Surely this lawyer must be a good man, or my mother wouldn't have consulted him. But when I mentioned to my new friend, whose name was Jackway, my claim to the whole estate he assured me that Rucker was the legal owner of his share in it--I forget how much.

"And," said he, "I make no doubt the old scoundrel has reduced the whole estate to possession, and is this moment," lowering his voice secretively, "acting as executor _de son tort_--executor _de son tort_, sir! I wouldn't put it past him!"

I wrote this, with some other legal expressions in my note-book.

"How can I get this money away from him?" said I, coming to the point.

"Money!" said he. "How do we know it is money? It may be chattels, goods, wares or merchandise. It may be realty. It may be _choses in action_. We must require of him a complete discovery. We may have to go back to the original probate proceedings through which your mother became seized of this property to obtain the necessary information. How old are you?"

I told him that I was sixteen the twenty-seventh of the last July.

"A minor," said he; "in law an infant. A guardian _ad litem_ will have to be appointed to protect your interests, and to bring suit for you. I shall be glad to serve you, sir, in the name of justice; and to confound those with whom robbery of the orphan is an occupation, sir, a daily occupation. Come up to my office with me, and we will begin proceedings to make Rucker sweat!"

3

But this was too swift for a Vandemark. In spite of his urging, I insisted that I should have to think it over. He grew almost angry at me at last, I thought; but he went away finally, after I had taken the hint he gave and bought him another drink. The next morning he was back again, urging me to proceed immediately, "so that the property might not be further sequestrated and wasted." He did not know how slow I was to think and act; and suspected that I was going to some other lawyer, I now believe; for I noticed him shadowing me, as the detectives say, every time I walked out. On the third day, while I was still studying the matter, and making no progress, Rucker himself came into the tavern, with his neck bandaged and his head on one side, and in his best clothes; and sitting on the edge of his chair between me and the door, as if ready to take wing at any hostile movement on my part, he broached the subject of my share in my mother's estate.

"I want to deal with you," said he in that dangerous whine of his, "as with my own son, Jacob, my own son."

There was nothing to say to this, and I said nothing. I only looked at him. He was studying me closely, but had never taken pains to learn my peculiarities when I lived with him, and had to study a total stranger, and a person who was too old to be treated as a child, but who at the same time must be very green in money matters. I was a puzzle to him, and my lack of words made me still more of a problem.

"You know, of course," he finally volunteered, "that the estate when it was finally wound up had mostly been eaten up by court expenses and lawyers' fees--the robbers!"

I could see he was in earnest in this last remark: but of course lawyers' fees and court expenses were all a mystery to me. I did not even know that lawyers and courts had anything to do with estates. I did not know what an estate was--so I continued to keep still.

"There was hardly anything left," said he.

I was astonished at this; and I did not believe it. After thinking it over for a few minutes, earnestly, and without any thought of saying anything to catch him up, I said: "You traveled in good style coming west on the canal. You took a steamer up the Lakes. You have been dressing fine ever since the money came in; and you're keeping a woman."

He made no reply, except to say that I did not understand, but would when he showed me where every cent of the estate money had gone which he had spent, and just how much was left. As for his daughter--he supposed I knew--but he never finished this speech. I rose to my feet; and he left hurriedly, saying that he would show me a statement in the morning. "I expect to pay your board here," said he, "for a few days, you know--until you decide to move on--or move back."

For a week or so I refused to talk with Rucker or Jackway; but sat around and tried to make up my mind what to do. To hire Jackway would take all my savings; and the schedules which Rucker brought me on legal-cap paper I refused even to touch with my hands. I am sure, now, that Rucker had sent Jackway to me in the first place, never suspecting that the matter of the estate had been so far from my mind; and thereby, by too much craft, he lost the opportunity of stealing it all. Jackway kept telling me of Rucker's rascalities, so as to get into my good graces and confidence, in which he succeeded better than he knew; and urging me to pay him a few dollars--just a few dollars--"to begin proceedings to stay waste and sequestration"; but I did not give him anything because it seemed a first step into something I had not understood.

4

I began calling on land agents, thinking I might use what little money I had left to make a first payment on a farm; but the land around Madison was too high in price for me. Two or three of these real estate agents were also lawyers; and I caught Rucker and Jackway together, looking worried and anxious, when I came from the office of one of them who very kindly informed me that, if he were in my place, he would go across the Mississippi and settle in Iowa. He had been as far west as Fort Dodge, and described to me the great prairies, unbroken by the plow, the railroads which were just ready to cross the Mississippi, the rich soil, the chance there was to get a home, and to become my own master. I began to feel an interest in Iowa.

I think these days must have been anxious ones for Rucker, greedy as he was for my little fortune, ignorant as he was of the depth of the ignorance of the silent stupid boy with whom he was dealing--and a boy, too, who had made that one remark about his way of living and traveling that seemed to show a knowledge of just what he was doing, and had done. I could see after that, that he thought me much sharper than I was. Lawyer Jackway haunted the hotel, and was spending more money--Rucker's money, I know. He had bought a new overcoat, and was drinking a good deal more than was good for him; but he wormed out of me something about my desire for a farm, and after having had a chance to see Rucker he began talking of a compromise.

"The old swindler," said he, "has all the evidence in his own hands; and he and that red-headed spiritual partner of his will swear to anything. As your legal adviser," said he, "and the legal adviser of your sainted mother, I'd advise you to take anything he is willing to give--within bounds, of course, within bounds."

So the next time Rucker sidled into the tavern, and began beslavering me about the way the money left by my mother was being eaten up by expenses and debts, I blurted out: "Well, what will you give me to clear out and let you and your red-headed woodpecker alone?"

"Now," said he, "you are talking sensibly--sensibly. There is a little farm-out near Blue Mounds that I could, by a hard struggle, let you have; but it would be more than your share--more than your share."

This was forty acres, and would have a mortgage on it. I waited a day or so, and told him I wouldn't take it. What I was afraid of was the mortgage; but I didn't give my reasons. Then he came back with a vacant lot in Madison, and then three vacant lots, which I went and looked at, and found in a swamp. Then I told him I wanted money or farm land; and he offered me a lead mine near Mineral Point. All the time he was getting more and more worried and excited; he used to tremble when he talked to me; and as the winter wore away, and the season drew nearer when he wanted to go on his travels, or deal with the properties in which I had found out by this time he was speculating with my mother's money, just as everybody was speculating then, in mines, town sites, farm lands, railway stocks and such things, he was on tenter-hooks, I could see that, to get rid of me, whom he thought he had given the slip forever. Finally he came to me one morning, just as a warm February wind had begun to thaw the snow, and said, beaming as if he had found a gold mine for me: "Jacob, I've got just what you want--a splendid farm in Iowa."

And he laid on the table the deed to my farm in Vandemark Township, a section of land in one solid block a mile square. "Of course," said he, "I can't let you have all of it--'but let us say eighty acres, or even I might clean up a quarter-section, here along the east side,"--and he pointed to a plat of it pinned fast to the deed.

"The whole piece," said I, "is worth eight hundred dollars, and not a cent more--if it's all good land. That ain't enough."

"All good land!" said he--and I could see he was surprised at the fact that I knew Iowa land was selling at a dollar and a quarter an acre. "Why, there ain't anything but good land there. You can put a plow in one corner of that section, and plow every foot of it without taking the share out of the ground."

"All or nothing," said I, "and more."

Next day he came back and said he would let me have the whole section; but that it would break him. He wanted to be fair with me--more than fair. People had set me against him, he said, looking at Jackway who was drinking at the bar; but nobody could say that he was a man who would not deal fairly with an ignorant boy.

"I've got to have a team, a wagon, a cover for the wagon, and provisions for the trip," I said, "and a few hundred dollars to live on for a while after I get to Iowa."

At this he threw his hands up, and left me, saying that if I wanted to ruin him I would have to do it through the courts. He had gone as far as he would go, and I would never have another offer as generous as he had made me. The next day I met on the street the red-headed girl, who went by the name of Alice Rucker, and was notorious as a medium. She stopped me, and asked why I hadn't been to see her--carrying the conversation off casually, as if we had been ordinary acquaintances. All I could say--for I was a little embarrassed, was "I do' know"--which was what I had told Rucker and Jackway, in answer to a thousand questions, until they were crazy to know how to come at me.

"Let me tell you something," said she. "If you want that Iowa farm, pa--"

"Who?" said I.

"Rucker," said she, brazening it out with me. "He'll give you the land, and your outfit. Don't let them fool you out of the team and wagon."

"Thank you for telling me," said I; "but I guess I'll have to have more."

"If you go into court he'll beat you," said she, "and I'm telling you that as a friend, even if you don't believe me."

"I'm much obliged," I said; and I believed then, and believe now, that she was sincere.

"And when you start," said she, "if you want some one to cook and take care of you, let me know. I like traveling."

I turned red at this; and halted and mumbled, until she tripped away, laughing, but looking back at me; but I remembered what she had said, and within a week I had consented that Jackway be appointed guardian _ad litem_ for me in the court proceedings; and in a short time I received a good team of mares, a bay named Fanny and a sorrel named Flora, good, twelve hundred pound chunks, but thin in flesh--I would not take geldings--a wagon, nearly new, a set of wagon bows, enough heavy drilling to make a cover, some bedding, a stove, an old double-barreled shotgun, two pounds of powder and a lot of shot, harness for the team, horse-feed, and as complete an outfit as I could think of, even to the box of axle-grease swinging under the wagon-box. Rucker groaned at every addition; and finally balked when I asked him for a hundred dollars in cash. The court entered up the proper decree, I put my deeds in my pocket, and after making a feed-box for the horses to hang on the back of the wagon-box, I pulled out for Iowa three weeks too soon--for the roads were not yet settled.

5

The night before I started, I sat in the warm barroom, half pleased and half frightened at the new world into which I was about to enter, thinking of my new wagon and the complete equipage of emigration now shown to be mine by the bills of sale and deeds in my pocket, and occasionally putting my fingers to my nose to catch the good smell of the horse which soap and water had not quite removed. This scent I had acquired by currying and combing my mares for hours, clipping their manes and fetlocks, and handling them all over to see if they were free from blemishes. The lawyer, Jackway, my guardian _ad litem_, came into the tavern in a high and mighty and popular way, saying "How de do, ward?" in a way I didn't like, went to the bar and throwing down a big piece of money began drinking one glass after another.

As he drank he grew boastful. He bragged to the men about him of his ability. Nobody ever hired Jackway to care for his interests, said he, without having his interests taken care of.

"You can go out," said he to a peaceful-looking man who stood watching him, "into the street there, and stab the first man you meet, and Jackway'll get you clear. I'm a living whirlwind! And," looking at me as I sat in the chair by the wall, "you can steal a woman's estate and I'll get it away from her heirs for you."

I wondered if he meant me. I hardly believed that he could; for all the while he had made a great to-do about protecting my interests; and I now remembered that he had taken an oath to do so. But he kept sneering at me all the evening, and just as I was leaving to go to bed, he called the crowd up to drink with him.

"This is on the estate," he hiccoughed--for he was very drunk by this time--"and I'll give you a toast."

They all lined up, slapping him on the back; and as I stood in the door, they all lifted their glasses, and Jackway gave them what he called his "toast," which ran as follows:

"Sold again And got the tin, And sucked another Dutchman in!"

He paid out of a fat pocketbook, staggering, and pointing at me and looking like a tipsy imp of some sort; and finally he started over toward me, saying, "Hey, Dutchman! Wait a minute an' I'll tell you how you got sucked in!"

I grew suddenly very angry; and slammed the door in his face to prevent myself from doing him harm. I had not yet seen why I ought to do him harm; and along the road to Iowa, I was all the time wondering why I got madder and madder at Jackway; and that rhyme kept running through my mind, oftener and oftener, as I drew nearer and nearer my journey's end:

"Sold again And got the tin, And sucked another Dutchman in!"

It was in the latter part of March. There were snowdrifts in places along the road, and when I reached a place about where Mt. Horeb now is, I had to stop and lie up for three days for a snow-storm. I was ahead of the stream of immigrants that poured over that road in the spring of 1855 in a steady tide.

As I made my start from Madison I saw Rucker and Alice standing at the door of the tavern seemingly making sure that I was really getting out of town. He dodged back into the house when I glanced at them; but she walked out into the street and stopped me, as bold as brass.

"I'm waiting," said she. "Where shall I ride?" And she put one foot on the hub and stepped up with the other into the wagon box.

"I'm just pulling out for Iowa," I said, my face as red as her hair, I suppose.

"_We're_ just pulling out," said she.

"I've got to move on," said I; "be careful or you'll get your dress muddy on the wheel."

She couldn't have expected me to take her, of course; but I thought she looked kind of hurt. There seemed to be something like tears in her eyes as she put her arms around my neck.

"Kiss your little step-sister good-by," she said. "She's been a better friend of yours than you'll ever know--you big, nice, blundering greenhorn!"

She laid her lips on mine. It was the first kiss I had ever had from any one since I was a little boy; and as I half struggled against but finally returned it, it thrilled me powerfully. Afterward I was disgusted with myself for kissing this castaway; but as I drove on, leaving her standing in the middle of the road looking after me, it almost seemed as if I were leaving a friend. Perhaps she was, in her way, the nearest thing to a friend I had then in the world--strange as it seems. As for Rucker, he was rejoicing, of course, at having trimmed neatly a dumb-head of a Dutch boy--a wrong to my poor mother, the very thought of which even after all these years, makes my blood boil.