"You have?"
"That's right, and I'll take Missouri."
"You didn't like it?"
"I like this better. Man, the west's no land of milk and honey. The rain's as wet there, the snow's as cold, the bugs bite as hard, and it's to heck and gone from any other place."
"How about free land?"
"There's that if a man has to have it."
"Depends on how you look at things, don't it?"
The other gave him a searching glance. "That's right. When do you aim to leave?"
"Don't know yet that I will leave. I just wanted to find out."
"Tell you what," John Seeley suggested, "I've been only once over the California Road or, as some call it, the Oregon Trail. But my father spent most of his life in the west. Talk to him; he'll be up soon. Reckon you saw Sophie?"