CHAPTER VI

I BECOME COW VANDEMARK

I was off with the spring rush of 1855 for the new lands of the West! I
kept thinking as I drove along of Lawyer Jackway's sarcastic toast,
"Sold again, and got the tin, and sucked another Dutchman in!" But after
all I couldn't keep myself from feeling pretty proud, as I watched the
play of my horses' ears as they seemed to take in each new westward view
as we went over the tops of the low hills, and as I listened to the
"chuck, chuck" of the wagon wheels on their well-greased skeins. Rucker
and Jackway might have given me a check on the tow-path; but yet I felt
hopeful that I was to make a real success of my voyage of life to a home
and a place where I could be somebody. There was pleasure in looking
back at my riches in the clean, hard-stuffed straw-tick, the stove, the
traveling home which belonged to me.

It seems a little queer to me now to think of it as I look out of my
bay-window at my great fields of corn, my pastures dotted with stock, my
feedyard full of fat steers; or as I sit in the directors' room of the
bank and take my part as a member of the board. But I am really not as
rich now as I was then.

I was going to a country which seemed to be drawing everybody else, and
must therefore be a good country--and I had a farm. I had a great farm.
It was a mile square. It was almost like the estate that General Cantine
had near the canal at Ithaca I thought. To my boy's mind it looked too