Last Fall
The Hay Was Out And The Wood Was Out, And The Cabin Leaked, And I Made
Up My Mind To Try California The First Chance."
"Well, if you be a horned toad or coyote," the seeker of moisture
would reply, "then maybe you can stand it.
Just keep right on by the
Alabama Settlement to Tulare and you can have my place on Big Dry
Creek and welcome. You'll be drowned there mighty seldom. The wagon
spokes and tires will rattle and tell you when you come to it."
"All right, partner, we'll swap square, you can have mine in Yamhill
and the rain thrown in. Last August a painter sharp came along one
day wanting to know the way to Willamette Falls, and I told him:
Young man, just wait a little and you'll find falls enough without
going to Oregon City after them. The whole dog-gone Noah's flood of a
country will be a fall and melt and float away some day.'" And more to
the same effect.
But no one need leave Oregon in search of fair weather. The wheat and
cattle region of eastern Oregon and Washington on the upper Columbia
plains is dry enough and dusty enough more than half the year. The
truth is, most of these wanderers enjoy the freedom of gypsy life and
seek not homes but camps. Having crossed the plains and reached the
ocean, they can find no farther west within reach of wagons, and are
therefore compelled now to go north and south between Mexico and
Alaska, always glad to find an excuse for moving, stopping a few
months or weeks here and there, the time being measured by the size of
the camp-meadow, conditions of the grass, game, and other indications.
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