"They've done it for religion, Jess. Oregon ain't no religion for me."

"Yet it has music for a man's ears, Molly."

"Hush! I've heard it all for the last two years. What happened to the
Donners two years back? And four years ago it was the Applegates left
home in old Missouri to move to Oregon. Who will ever know where their
bones are laid? Look at our land we left--rich--black and rich as any in
the world. What corn, what wheat--why, everything grew well in
Illinois!"

"Yes, and cholera below us wiping out the people, and the trouble over
slave-holding working up the river more and more, and the sun blazing in
the summer, while in the wintertime we froze!"

"Well, as for food, we never saw any part of Kentucky with half so much
grass. We had no turkeys at all there, and where we left you could kill
one any gobbling time. The pigeons roosted not four miles from us. In
the woods along the river even a woman could kill coons and squirrels,
all we'd need--no need for us to eat rabbits like the Mormons. Our
chicken yard was fifty miles across. The young ones'd be flying by
roasting-ear time--and in fall the sloughs was black with ducks and
geese. Enough and to spare we had; and our land opening; and Molly
teaching the school, with twelve dollars a month cash for it, and Ted
learning his blacksmith trade before he was eighteen. How could we ask
more? What better will we do in Oregon?"

"You always throw the wet blanket on Oregon, Molly."