“Besides”—­and the frontier now spoke in him—­“this country is too old, too long settled.  My father killed his elk and his buffalo, too, in Kentucky; but that was before my day.  I want the buffalo.  I crave to see the Plains, Molly.  What real American does not?”

Mrs. Wingate threw her apron over her face.

“The Oregon fever has witched you, Jesse!” she exclaimed between dry sobs.

Wingate was silent for a time.

“Corn ought to grow in Oregon,” he said at last.

“Yes, but does it?”

“I never heard it didn’t.  The soil is rich, and you can file on six hundred and forty acres.  There’s your donation claim, four times bigger than any land you can file on here.  We sold out at ten dollars an acre—­more’n our land really was worth, or ever is going to be worth.  It’s just the speculators says any different.  Let ’em have it, and us move on.  That’s the way money’s made, and always has been made, all across the United States.”

“Huh!  You talk like a land speculator your own self!”

“Well, if it ain’t the movers make a country, what does?  If we don’t settle Oregon, how long’ll we hold it?  The preachers went through to Oregon with horses.  Like as not even the Applegates got their wagons across.  Like enough they got through.  I want to see the country before it gets too late for a good chance, Molly.  First thing you know buffalo’ll be getting scarce out West, too, like deer was getting scarcer on the Sangamon.  We ought to give our children as good a chance as we had ourselves.”

“As good a chance!  Haven’t they had as good a chance as we ever had?  Didn’t our land more’n thribble, from a dollar and a quarter?  It may thribble again, time they’re old as we are now.”

“That’s a long time to wait.”

“It’s a long time to live a life-time, but everybody’s got to live it.”

She stood, looking at him.

“Look at all the good land right in here!  Here we got walnut and hickory and oak—­worlds of it.  We got sassafras and pawpaw and hazel brush.  We get all the hickory nuts and pecans we like any fall.  The wild plums is better’n any in Kentucky; and as for grapes, they’re big as your thumb, and thousands, on the river.  Wait till you see the plum and grape jell I could make this fall!”

“Women—­always thinking of jell!”

“But we got every herb here we need—­boneset and sassafras and Injun physic and bark for the fever.  There ain’t nothing you can name we ain’t got right here, or on the Sangamon, yet you talk of taking care of our children.  Huh!  We’ve moved five times since we was married.  Now just as we got into a good country, where a woman could dry corn and put up jell, and where a man could raise some hogs, why, you wanted to move again—­plumb out to Oregon!  I tell you, Jesse Wingate, hogs is a blame sight better to tie to than buffalo!  You talk like you had to settle Oregon!”