just
finished, over in Benton Township. The Governor was not even a citizen
of Vandemark Township, but he had some land in it. Buck Gowdy's great
estate lapped over on one corner of the township, Governor Wade's on the
other, and Hell Slew, nicknamed Vandemark's Folly Marsh cut it through
the middle, and made it hard for us to get out a full vote on anything
after we got the township organized.

The control shifted from the north side of the slew to the south side
according to the weather; for you couldn't cross Vandemark's Folly in
wet weather. Once what was called the Cow Vandemark crowd got control
and kept it for years by calling the township meetings always on our own
side of the slew; and then Foster Blake sneaked in a full attendance on
us when we weren't looking by piling a couple of my haystacks in the
trail to drive on, and it was five years before we got it back. But in
the meantime we had voted taxes on them to build some schoolhouses and
roads. That was local politics in Iowa when Ring was a pup.

But Governor Wade's party was not local politics, or so N.V. Creede
tells me. He says that this was one of the moves by which the governor
made Monterey County Republican. It had always been Democratic. The
governor had always been a Democrat, and had named his township after
Thomas H. Benton; but now he was the big gun of the new Republican Party
in our neck of the woods, and he invited all the people who he thought
would be good wheel-horses.

You will wonder how I came to be invited. Well, it was this way. I
called on Judge Stone at the new court-house, the building of which
created such a scandal. He was county treasurer. He had been elected the
fall before. I wanted to see him about a cattle deal. He was talking
with Henderson L. Burns when I went in.

"I don't see how I can go," said he. "I've got to watch the county's
money. If there was a safe in this county-seat any stronger than a
cheese box, I'd lock it up and go; but I guess my bondsmen are sitting
up nights worrying about their responsibility now. I'll have to decline,
I reckon."

"Oh, darn the money!" said Henderson L. "You can't be expected to set
up with it like it had typhoid fever, can you? Take it with you, and put
it in Wade's big safe."

"I might do that," said Judge Stone, "if I had a body-guard."

"I'd make a good guard," said Henderson L. "Let me take care of it."

"I'd have to win it back in a euchre game if I ever saw it again,"