Arguments such as these did not lack and were not needed with the emigrants.  It took but a leap to the last conclusion.  Go to California?  Why should they not go?  Had it not been foreordained that they should get the news here, before it was too late?  Fifty miles more and they had lost it.  A week earlier and they would not have known it for a year.  Go to Oregon and plow?  Why not go to California and dig in a day what a plow would earn in a year?

Call it stubbornness or steadfastness, at least Jesse Wingate’s strength of resolution now became manifest.  At first almost alone, he stayed the stampede by holding out for Oregon in the council with his captains.

They stood near the Wingate wagon, the same which had carried him into Indiana, thence into Illinois, now this far on the long way to Oregon.  Old and gray was Mary Ann, as he called his wagon, by now, the paint ground from felly, spoke and hub, the sides dust covered, the tilt disfigured and discolored.  He gazed at the time-worn, sturdy frame with something akin to affection.  The spokes were wedged to hold them tight, the rims were bound with hide, worn away at the edges where the tire gave no covering, the tires had been reset again and again.  He shook the nearest wheel to test it.

“Yes,” said he, “we all show wear.  But I see little use in changing a plan once made in a man’s best sober judgment.  For me, I don’t think all the world has been changed overnight.”

“Oh, well, now,” demanded Kelsey, his nomad Kentucky blood dominant, “what use holding to any plan just for sake of doing it?  If something better comes, why not take it?  That stands to reason.  We all came out here to better ourselves.  These men have done in six months what you and I might not do in ten years in Oregon.”

“They’d guide us through to California, too,” he went on.  “We’ve no guide to Oregon.”

Even Caleb Price nodded.

“They all say that the part from here on is the worst—­drier and drier, and in places very rough.  And the two fords of the Snake—­well, I for one wish we were across them.  That’s a big river, and a bad one.  And if we crossed the Blue Mountains all right, there’s the Cascades, worse than the Blues, and no known trail for wagons.”

“I may have to leave my wagons,” said Jesse Wingate, “but if I do I aim to leave them as close to the Willamette Valley as I can.  I came out to farm.  I don’t know California.  How about you, Hall?  What do your neighbors say?”

“Much as Price says.  They’re worn out and scared.  They’re been talking about the Snake crossings ever since we left the Soda Springs.  Half want to switch for California.  A good many others would like to go back home—­if they thought they’d ever get there!”

“But we’ve got to decide,” urged Wingate.  “Can we count on thirty wagons to go through?  Others have got through in a season, and so can we if we stick.  Price?”