strangest, most delightful, sternest, most wonderful thing in the
world--the Iowa prairie--that made me think of my mother. If I only
could have found her alive! If I only could have had her with me! And as
I thought of this I realized that the woman of the ferry had climbed
over the back of the spring-seat and was sitting beside me.

"I don't wonder," said she, "that you cry. Gosh! It scares me to death!"

CHAPTER VII

ADVENTURE ON THE OLD RIDGE ROAD

Vandemark Township and Monterey County, as any one may see by looking at
the map of Iowa, had to be reached from Wisconsin by crossing the
Mississippi at Dubuque and then fetching across the prairie to the
journey's end; and in 1855 a traveler making that trip naturally fell in
with a good many of his future neighbors and fellow-citizens pressing
westward with him to the new lands.

Some were merely hunting country, and were ready to be whiffled off
toward any neck of the woods which might be puffed up by a wayside
acquaintance as ignorant about it as he. Some were headed toward what
was called "the Fort Dodge country," which was anywhere west of the Des
Moines River. Some had been out and made locations the year before and
were coming on with their stuff; some were joining friends already on
the ground; some had a list of Gardens of Eden in mind, and meant to
look them over one after the other until a land was found flowing with
milk and honey, and inhabited by roast pigs with forks sticking in their
backs and carving knives between their teeth.

Very few of the tillers of the soil had farms already marked down,
bought and paid for as I had; and I sometimes talked in such a way as
to show that I was a little on my high heels; but they were freer to
tack, go about, and run before the wind than I; for some one was sure to
stick to each of them like a bur and steer him to some definite place,
where he could squat and afterward take advantage of the right of
preemption, while I was forced to ferret out a particular square mile of
this boundless prairie, and there settle down, no matter how far it
might be from water, neighbors, timber or market; and fight out my
battle just as things might happen. If the woman in the wagon was
"scared to death" at the sight of the prairie, I surely had cause to be
afraid; but I was not. I was uplifted. I felt the same sense of freedom,
and the greatness of things, that came over me when I first found myself
able to take in a real e