The noise lost volume as if the wagons had of a sudden plunged over a precipice. Cameron urged his horse through the gray wall and found the cow herd driving in front of him; he pushed around it and alongside the train until the trees vanished once more. Through the mist he made out the spire of a church. A screeching of brakes and a cry of warning was born back down the line. “Watch fer the grade! Turn yore wagons out o’ line at the foot o’ the hill--goin’ into camp!” Cameron cut through and galloped along the side, descending a precipitous hill. In this pocket the fog thinned, and before his astonished vision stood the city mentioned by a thousand camp fires, the Mecca of the West. One narrow street wavered between a double row of frame houses and cabins. To the left reared the gray shadow of the basaltic bluff the travelers were descending. On the other hand Cameron heard the sheeting sound of the rain pouring on a river. This, he decided, would be the Wallamet, for the roar of the falls, likewise famed in a hundred reports, thundered down the mud-bogged street. The houses were weather-beaten; across the false fronts of a few stood painted captions. A store, a grain shed, a pit saw and--witness of civilization’s march--a newspaper. In all the length of the rain-drenched thoroughfare there was not a single sign of life. Cameron arrived at a glaring sign across one such false front announcing “Rickerson’s Gen’l M’ch’d’se.” On impulse he slid from the dispirited horse and entered the place, slamming the door against the wind. There, at last, he saw people; one sallow woman stood behind the counter and fixed her snapping eyes at a tall, loosely jointed character against the wall. “Honest?” she asked in a shrill voice. “Did I say you wa’n’t honest? But ef you was Governor Abernethy himself I wouldn’t give a nickel’s credit! How can a body make a living that a way? You are like every other shiftless man--wantin’ to run off to Californy and hunt gold while the crops go to pot here and poor wimmenfolk near starve!” “Ma’m, I reckon my credit ought to be good. Yore husband never denied me what I needed. It’s only a sack o’ flour and a shovel I’m askin’.” “To traipse off to Californy with. Fools’ gold! Stay home, I say, and grow wheat. That’s better’n gold. Ef my husband guv you credit, why, go an’ hunt him up.” She turned toward Cameron with a bitter smile. “Nary an able-bodied man left in Oregon any more since this turrible gold fever. January it was they discovered it at Sutter’s Mill. A bad January for Oregon. Women and children plowin’ the ground and the pesky Indians bolder’n ever. My husband gone off with the first, vowin’ to git rich. Not a word have I heard since. But what would you be wantin’?” “Some tobacco,” said Cameron. “And a few sticks of that dry kindling wood by the stove, if I may.”