matter with them.



2

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.