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"I must think!" I said. "Let me be!"

Vandemark's Folly

BY HERBERT QUICK

1922

CONTENTS

• CHAPTER I. A Flat Dutch Turnip Begins ItsCareer.
• CHAPTER II. I Learn and Do SomeTeaching.
• CHAPTER III. I See the World, and Suffera Great Loss.
• CHAPTER IV. I Become a Sailor, and Find aClue.
• CHAPTER V. The End of a LongQuest.
• CHAPTER VI. I Become CowVandemark.
• CHAPTER VII. Adventure on the Old RidgeRoad.
• CHAPTER VIII. My Load Receives anEmbarrassing Addition.
• CHAPTER IX. The Grove ofDestiny.
• CHAPTER X. The Grove of Destiny Does ItsWork.
• CHAPTER XI. In Defense of theProprieties.
• CHAPTER XII. Hell Slew, AliasVandemark's Folly.
• CHAPTER XIII. The Plow Weds theSod.
• CHAPTER XIV. I Become a Bandit and aTerror.
• CHAPTER XV. I Save a Treasure, and Starta Feud.
• CHAPTER XVI. The Fewkeses in Clover atBlue-grass Manor.
• CHAPTER XVII. I Receive a Proposal--andAccept.
• CHAPTER XVIII. Rowena's Way Out--ThePrairie Fire.
• CHAPTER XIX. Gowdy Acknowledges HisSon.
• CHAPTER XX. Just as Grandma ThorndykeExpected.

INTRODUCTION

The work of writing the history of this township--I meanVandemark Township, Monterey County, State of Iowa--has been turnedover to me. I have been asked to do this I guess because I was thefirst settler in the township; it was named after me; I live on myown farm--the oldest farm operated by the original settler in thispart of the country; I know the history of these thirty-six squaremiles of land and also of the wonderful swarming of peoples whichmade the prairies over; and the agent of the Excelsior CountyHistory Company of Chicago, having heard of me as an authority onlocal history, has asked me to write this part of their new Historyof Monterey County for which they are now canvassing forsubscribers. I can never write this as it ought to be written, andfor an old farmer with no learning to try to do it may seemimpudent, but some time a great genius may come up who will put onpaper the strange and splendid story of Iowa, of Monterey County,and of Vandemark Township; and when he does write this, thegreatest history ever written, he may find such adventures as mineof some use to him. Those who lived this history are already few innumber, are fast passing away and will soon be gone. I lived it,and so did my neighbors and old companions and friends. So here Ibegin.

The above was my first introduction to this history; and justhere, after I had written a nice fat pile of manuscript, this workcame mighty close to coming to an end.