I can truly say that of all those years of camp and cabin life, I do not look upon them as years of hardship. To be sure, our food was plain as well as dress, our hours of labor long and labor frequently severe, and that the pioneers appeared rough and uncouth, yet underlying all this, there ran a vein of good cheer, of hopefulness, of the intense interest always engendered with strife to overcome difficulties where one is the employer as well as the employed. We never watched for the sun to go down, or for the seven o'clock whistle, or for the boss to quicken our steps, for the days were always too short, and interest in our work always unabated.
The cabin could not be seen for a long distance on the trail, but I thought I caught sight of a curl of smoke and then immediately knew I did, and that settled it that all was well in the cabin. But when a little nearer, a little lady in almost bloomer dress was espied milking a cow, and a frisking, fat calf in the pen was seen, then I knew, and all solicitude vanished. The little lady never finished milking that cow, nor did she ever milk others when the husband was at home, though she knew how well enough, and never felt above such work if a necessity arose, but we parceled out duties on a different basis, with each to their suited parts. The bloom on the cheek of the little wife, the baby in the cabin as fat as the calf, told the story of good health and plentitude of food, and brought good cheer with the welcome home. The dried potato eyes had just been planted, although it was then the first week of July, following the receding waters of the June freshet up the Columbia, and were sprouting vigorously. I may say, in passing, there came a crop from these of nearly four hundred bushels at harvest time.
It did seem there were so many things to talk about that one could scarcely tell where to begin or when to stop. "Why, at Olympia, eggs were a dollar a dozen. I saw them selling at that. That butter you have there on the shelf would bring a dollar a pound as fast as you could weigh it out; I saw stuff they called butter sell for that; then potatoes were selling for $3.00 a bushel and onions at $4.00. Everything the farmer raises sells high." "Who buys?" "Oh, almost everybody has to buy; there's the ships and the timber camps, and the hotels, and the—"
"Where do they get the money?"
"Why, everybody seems to have money. Some take it there with them. Then men working in the timber camps get $4.00 a day and their board. I saw one place where they paid $4.00 a cord for wood to ship to San Francisco, and one can sell all the shingles he can make at $4.00 a thousand, and I was offered 5 cents a foot for piles. If we had Buck and Dandy over there we could make twenty dollars a day putting in piles."
"Where could you get the piles?"
"Off the government land, of course. All help themselves to all they want. Then there are the fish, and the clams, and the oysters, and—"
"But what about the land for a claim?"
That question was a stumper. The little wife never lost sight of that bargain made before we were married, that we were going to be farmers; and here now I found myself praising a country I could not say much for its agricultural qualities, but other things quite foreign to that interest.