“Mr. Gowdy wants us all to go to work for him,” she said.  “He wants pa and the boys to work around the place, and he says he thinks some of Surrager’s machines are worth money.  He’ll give me work in the house.”

“It looks like a good chance,” said I.

“You know I don’t know much about housework,” said she; “poor as we’ve always been.”

“You showed me how to make good bread,” I replied.

“I could do well for a poor man,” said Rowena, looking at me rather sadly.  Then she waited quite a while for me to say something.

“Shall I go, Jake?” she asked, looking up into my face.

“It looks like a good chance for all of you,” I answered.

“I don’t want to,” said she, “I couldn’t stay here, could I? ...  No, of course not!”

So away went the Fewkeses with Buck Gowdy.  That is, Rowena went away with him in his buggy, and the rest of the family followed in a day or so with the cross old horse—­now refreshed by my hay and grain, and the rest we had given him,—­in their rickety one-horse wagon.  I remember how Rowena looked back at us, her hair blowing about her face which looked, just a thought, pale and big-eyed, as the Gowdy buggy went off like the wind, with Buck’s arm behind the girl to keep her from bouncing out.

This day’s work was not to cease in its influence on Iowa affairs for half a century, if ever.  State politics, the very government of the commonwealth, the history of Monterey County and of Vandemark Township, were all changed when Buck Gowdy went off over the prairie that day, holding Rowena Fewkes in the buggy seat with that big brawny arm of his.  Ma Fewkes seemed delighted to see Mr. Gowdy holding her daughter in the buggy.

“Nobody can tell what great things may come of this!” she cried, as they went out of sight over a knoll.

She never said a truer thing.  To be sure, it was only the hiring by a very rich man, as rich men went in those days, of three worthless hands and a hired girl; but it tore the state’s affairs in pieces.  Whenever I think of it I remember some verses in the Fifth Reader that my children used in school: 

     “Somewhere yet that atom’s force
     Moves the light-poised universe[11].”

[11] See Gowdy vs.  Buckner, et al, Ia.  Rep.  Also accounts of relations of the so-called Gowdy Estate litigation to “The Inside of Iowa Politics” by the editor of these MSS.—­in press.—­G.v.d.M.

It was a great deal more important then, though, that on that afternoon I was arrested for a great many things—­assault with intent to commit great bodily injury, assault with intent to kill, just simple assault, unlawful assembly, rioting, and I don’t know but treason.  Dick McGill, I am sure it was, told the first claim-jumper we visited that I was at the head of the mob, and he had me arrested.  I was taken to Monterey Centre by Jim Boyd, the blacksmith, who was deputy sheriff; but he did the fair thing and allowed me to get Magnus Thorkelson to attend to my stock while I was gone.