Several days of tedious, laborious travel brought the wanderers into an open, sparsely timbered, almost unsettled part of the State of Missouri. The snow and sleet gave way to brighter skies, the roads and sloughs were drying up, and the higher grounds were gradually arraying themselves in robes of green and gold. “Here is vacant land, and lots of it,” said Mary, as she viewed the virgin prospect of a mighty settlement in undisguised admiration. “This is a beautiful world!” and she sighed deeply, her face toward the rising sun. “Don’t look backward,” cried Jean. “Remember Lot’s wife.” “There’s no use in trying to look backward,” urged Hal. “Dad will never halt till he lands us on the western shore of the continent, on the eastern hem of the Pacific Ocean. He says this country’s too old for him. The wild turkeys are all killed off, or scared out o’ sight; the deer and elk are gone for good; and the country’s played out.” “Wait a few years, and there’ll be railroads gridironing this whole great valley of the Mississippi,” said Jean. “There’ll be towns and cities springing up in a hundred places. Farms and orchards and handsome country homes will cover these rolling prairies. The native groves will be more than quadrupled by cultivation, and schoolhouses and churches will spring into existence everywhere.” “I wish you’d talk like this to your father! Won’t you, Jean?” asked Mrs. Ranger. “You couldn’t hire him to live in a slave State!” cried Jean. “The Reverend Thomas Rogers might manage to get this far on the way toward the setting sun without much money,” smiled Mrs. Ranger, meaningly. “The children favor our stopping here, on Missouri soil,” she added, as her husband joined the group. “Don’t you think the idea a good one, John?” “What! And let the word go back among our people at home that we’d flunked? No! I’d die first, and then I wouldn’t do it,” exclaimed her husband, petulantly. Mrs. Ranger burst into tears. “There, there, Annie! Don’t worry. But don’t ask me to settle, with my children, in a slave State. Father left Kentucky when I was a boy to get away from slavery and its inevitable accompaniment of poor white trash. There is an irrepressible conflict between freedom and every form of involuntary servitude that exists under the sun. This nigger business will lead to a bloody war long before Uncle Sam is done with it, and I doubt if even war will settle it.” “But Oregon may come into the Union as a slave State, John. You know that the extension of slavery is the chief theme that is agitating Congress now.” “I’ll have a chance to fight the curse in Oregon, Annie. But it is a settled condition here. I’ll fight it to the bitter end, if I get a chance!” He strode away to look after the cattle and men.