STEEP TRAILS 



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 rat- 

 tle 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 Willam- 

 ette Falls, and I told him: ' Young man, just 

 wait a little and you'll find falls enough with- 

 out 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 



282 



