His hesitant glance at his staunch trail friend’s face decided the latter.

“I’ll stick for Oregon!” said Caleb Price.  “I’ve got my wife and children along.  I want my donation lands.”

“You, Hall?”

“I’ll go with you,” said Hall, the third column leader, slowly.  “Like to try a whirl in California, but if there’s so much gold there next year’ll do.  I want my lands.”

“Why, there’s almost ten thousand people in Oregon by now, or will be next year,” argued Wingate.  “It may get to be a territory—­maybe not a state, but anyways a territory, some time.  And it’s free!  Not like Texas and all this new Mexican land just coming in by the treaty.  What do you say, finally, Kelsey?”

The latter chewed tobacco for some time.

“You put it to me hard to answer,” said he.  “Any one of us’d like to try California.  It will open faster than Oregon if all this gold news is true.  Maybe ten thousand people will come out next year, for all we know.”

“Yes, with picks and shovels,” said Jesse Wingate.  “Did ever you see pick or shovel build a country?  Did ever you see steel traps make or hold one?  Oregon’s ours because we went out five years ago with wagons and plows—­we all know that.  No, friends, waterways never held a country.  No path ever held on a river—­that’s for exploring, not for farming.  To hold a country you need wheels, you need a plow.  I’m for Oregon!”

“You put it strong,” admitted Kelsey.  “But the only thing that holds me back from California is the promise we four made to each other when we started.  Our train’s fallen apart little by little.  I’m ole Kaintucky.  We don’t rue back, and we keep our word.  We four said we’d go through.  I’ll stand by that, I’m a man of my word.”

Imperiously as though he were Pizarro’s self, he drew a line in the dust of the trail.

“Who’s for Oregon?” he shouted; again demanded, as silence fell, “This side for Oregon!” And Kelsey of Kentucky, man of his word, turned the stampede definitely.

Wingate, his three friends; a little group, augmenting, crossed for Oregon.  The women and the children stood aloof,—­sunbonneted women, brown, some with new-born trail babes in arms, silent as they always stood.  Across from the Oregon band stood almost as many men, for the most part unmarried, who had not given hostages to fortune, and were resolved for California.  A cheer arose from these.

“Who wants my plow?” demanded a stalwart farmer, from Indiana, more than fifteen hundred miles from his last home.  “I brung her this fur into this damned desert.  I’ll trade her fer a shovel and make one more try fer my folks back home.”

He loosed the wires which had bound the implement to the tail of his wagon all these weary miles.  It fell to the ground and he left it there.

“Do some thinking, men, before you count your gold and drop your plow.  Gold don’t last, but the soil does.  Ahead of you is the Humboldt Desert.  There’s no good wagon road over the mountains if you get that far.  The road down Mary’s River is a real gamble with death.  Men can go through and make roads—­yes; but where are the women and the children to stay?  Think twice, men, and more than twice!” Wingate spoke solemnly.