"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."
[pg 37]
"Huh! You talk like a land speculator your own self!"