“The Reverend Thomas Rogers might manage to get this far on the way toward the setting sun without much money,” smiled Mrs. Ranger, meaningly. “The children favor our stopping here, on Missouri soil,” she added, as her husband joined the group. “Don’t you think the idea a good one, John?”
“What! And let the word go back among our people at home that we’d flunked? No! I’d die first, and then I wouldn’t do it,” exclaimed her husband, petulantly.
Mrs. Ranger burst into tears.
“There, there, Annie! Don’t worry. But don’t ask me to settle, with my children, in a slave State. Father left Kentucky when I was a boy to get away from slavery and its inevitable accompaniment of poor white trash. There is an irrepressible conflict between freedom and every form of involuntary servitude that exists under the sun. This nigger business will lead to a bloody war long before Uncle Sam is done with it, and I doubt if even war will settle it.”
“But Oregon may come into the Union as a slave State, John. You know that the extension of slavery is the chief theme that is agitating Congress now.”
“I’ll have a chance to fight the curse in Oregon, Annie. But it is a settled condition here. I’ll fight it to the bitter end, if I get a chance!” He strode away to look after the cattle and men.
“Dear, patient mother!” cried Jean, stroking her mother’s cheek tenderly. “Your head is as clear as a bell. But there’s a whole lot o’ common-sense in what daddie says, too. We’ll soon have settled weather; then you won’t mind travelling. We all think you’ll be well and strong as soon as we get settled in Oregon.”
“Maybe so, if I could only live to get there,” faltered the feeble woman. “But—”
“But what, mother?”
“Nothing. I was only thinking.”