"Which?" asked Willock, somewhat taken aback. "Where?"
"In him—in Wilfred."
"As how so?"
"Going into that wilderness-life, instead of taking his place in the world!"
"Well, honey if he hadn't come to THIS wilderness, you'd never of saw him."
"Yes—but he wasn't settled, and now he's settled in it. Is that the way to be a man? There's all those other people to do the thing he's doing. Then what's the use of him?"
"Ain't we in the same box?"
"Yes, and that's why I mean to get out of it, some day. But it's different with him. He's chosen his box, and gone in, and shut the lid on himself! I'm disappointed in him. I've been thinking him a real man. I guess I'm still to see what I'm looking for," added Lahoma, shaking her head.
"We'll let it go at that," muttered Bill who was anxious to turn Lahoma's mind from thoughts of Wilfred. "We'll just go ahead and look for new prospects."
"Not till I make a remark," said Willock, laying aside his pipe. "Honey, do yon know what I mean by a vision? It calls for a big vision to take in a big person, and you ain't got it. Maybe it wasn't meant for women, or at least a girl of fifteen to see further than her own foot-tracks, so no blame laid and nobody judged, according. If you don't see nothing in that army of settlers going into a raw land and falling to work to make it bloom like the rose, a-setting out to live in solitude for years that in due time the world may be richer by a great territory, why, you ain't got a big vision. I've got it, for I was born in the West, and I've lived all my life, peaceable and calm, right out here or hereabouts. You've got to breathe western air to get the big vision. You've got to see towns rise out of the turf over night and bust into cities before the harvest-fields is ripe, to know what can be did when men is free, not hampered by set-and-bound rules as holds 'em down to the ways of their fathers. Back East, folks is straining themselves to make over, and improve, and polish up what they found ready-to-hand—but here out West, we creates. It takes a big vision to see the bigness of the West, and you can't get no true idee by squinting at the subject."