inia'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.T. Vandemark, possession having already been
given, the following described personal property, to wit:

1 Bay Mare called Susie, weight 1150 lbs., with star in forehead, and
white left hind foot, five years old;

1 Bay Mare called Winnie, weight 1175 lbs., with star in forehead, and
two white hind feet, six years old;

1 one-seated, swell-body cutter, one fine army blanket, one coonskin
robe lined with flannel, one large buffalo robe.

It is hereby understood that if any of said animals are ever returned to
me at Blue-grass Manor or elsewhere they will be hamstrung by the
undersigned and turned out to die.

Signed, J. Buckner Gowdy.

One of my grandsons, Frank McConkey, has just read over this chapter,
and remarks, "He was a dead game sport!" But he had also read what
Captain Gowdy had interlined, or rather written on the margin to go in
after the description of the property conveyed: "Also one blue-blooded
black-and-tan terrier name 'Nicodemus.' The tail goes with the hide,
Jacob!" Since his death, I have grown to liking the man much better; in
fact ever since I whaled him.

* * * * *

Here ends the story, so far as I can tell it. It is not my story. There
are some fifteen hundred townships in Iowa; and each of them had its
history like this; and so had every township in all the great, wonderful
West of the prairie. The thing in my mind has been to tell the truth;
not the truth of statistics; not just information: but the living truth
as we lived it. Every one of these townships has a history beginning in