Before starting-time in the morning, I had swapped two of my driving cows for four of their lame ones, and hauled up by the side of the road until I could break my new animals to the yoke and allow them to recuperate. I am a cattleman by nature, and was more greedy for stock than anxious to make time--maybe that's another reason for being called Cow Vandemark. The neighbors used to say that I laid the foundation of my present competence by trading one sound cow for two lame ones every few miles along the Ridge Road, coming into the state, and then feeding my stock on speculators' grass in the summer and straw that my neighbors would otherwise have burned up in the winter. What was a week's time to me? I had a lifetime in Iowa before me. "Whose rig is that?" I asked, pointing to the carriage. "Belongs to a man name of Gowdy," the mover told me. "Got a hell-slew of wuthless land in Monterey County an' is going out to settle on it." "How do you know it's worthless?" I inquired pretty sharply; for a man must stand up for his own place whether he's ever seen it or not. "They say so," said he. "Why?" I asked. "Out in the middle of the Monterey Prairie," he said. "You can't live in this country 'less you settle near the timber." "Instead of stopping at this farm," I said, "I should think he'd have gone on to the next settlement. Horses lame?" "Best horses I've seen on the road," was the answer. "Kentucky horses. Gowdy comes from Kentucky. Stopped because his wife is bad sick." "Where's he?" I asked. "Out shooting geese," said he. "Don't seem to fret his gizzard about his wife; but they say she's struck with death." All the while I was cooking my supper I was thinking of this woman, "struck with death," and her husband out shooting geese, while she struggled with our last great antagonist alone. One of the women came over from the other camp with her husband, and I spoke to her about it. "This man," said she, "jest acts out what all the men feel. A womern is nothing but a thing to want as long as she is young and can work. But this womern hain't quite alone. She's got a little sister with her that knows a hull lot better how to do for her than any darned man would!" It grew dark and cold--a keen, still, frosty spring evening which filled the sky with stars and bespoke a sunny day for to-morrow, with settled warmer weather. The geese and ducks were still calling from the sky, and not far away the prairie wolves were howling about one of the many carcasses of dead animals which the stream of immigration had already dropped by the wayside. I was dead sleepy, and was about to turn in, when my black-bearded man last seen in Dubuque with a constable holding him by the arm, came driving up, and went about among the various wagons as if looking for something. I knew he was seeking me, and spoke to him. "Oh!" he said, as if all at once easier in his mind. "Where's my--" "She's in the house," I said; "this is a kind of a tavern."