“Same old cautious Vandemark!” said he, laughing.  “Well, that’s why I picked you to do this, if you will be so good.  You can look the matter over in case it comes to anything, and act if you think best; but I think you will decide to act.  Please go to Lusch in Waterloo and ask for a packet of papers I left there, to be opened in your presence and at your request if I wink out in this irrepressible conflict.  Remember, I shall be on the other side of Jordan or some other stream.  Inside of the outer envelope will be a letter to Rowena, which please deliver.  There will also be one for you, with some securities and other things to be held in trust for the benefit of Rowena’s boy—­and mine.  I hate that ‘Owen Lovejoy’ part of his name; but he is entitled to the name of Gowdy, and in view of the fact that he has it, I want him to have a good chance—­as good as he can have in view of the irregularity of his birth.  To tell you the plain truth, as my affairs are now situated, I’m giving him more than he could take as my son if he were legitimate—­for as neighbor to neighbor, I’m practically bu’sted.  All I’m doing is hanging on for land to rise.  Now this isn’t much to do, and you won’t have to act unless you want to.  Will you have the papers opened, and act for the dead scoundrel if it seems the proper thing to do?  You see, there’s hardly anybody else who is satisfactory to me, and at the same time a friend to the other parties.”

“I’ll have the papers opened,” said I; “but remember, this don’t take back what I said a few minutes ago.  I think you ought to be killed.”

“Thank you,” said he.  “Private Vandemark!  You may go!”

Now I have told this story over and over again in court, to commissioners taking testimony, to lawyers in their offices, to lawyers out at my farm.  It has been printed in court records, including the Reports of the Supreme Court of Iowa.  Judges of the Supreme Court of Iowa have been nominated or refused nomination because of their views, or their lack of views, or their refusal to state in advance off in some hole and corner, what their views would be on the legal effect of this conversation between me and Buckner Gowdy in the cabin of the transport on the morning of the first day’s battle of Shiloh—­so N.V. says—­but this is the first time I have had a chance to tell it as it was, without some squirt of a lawyer pointing his finger at me and trying to make me change the story; or some other limb of the law interrupting me with objections that it was incompetent, irrelevant and immaterial, not the best evidence, hearsay, a privileged communication, and a lot of other balderdash.  This is what took place, just as I have stated it; and this is all the Vandemark Township, Monterey County, or Iowa history there was in the battle so far as I know—­except that Iowa had more men in that fight than any other state in proportion to her population.