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there.
    â€”What d’yuh think about this here slavery question, son? Grampa Peters said. Do you think they’d ought to keep slavery out of them new lands?
    Young Mr. Doniphant strummed softly on his banjo.
    â€”Well, he said softly, I don’t know how you folks feel about it around here. Me and the folks I been travellin’ with goin’ West don’t want no slave labor to compete with in the new lands.
    â€”But have they a constitutional right to prohibit it? Grampa Peters said. That’s the question. There ain’t any right under the Constitution to prohibit it. That’s all I say.
    â€”Maybe they ain’t, the young man said. But I don’t figger there’ll be any slavery in the new lands.
    He strummed softly on the banjo, humming,
    â€”O, Californy!
    There’s the land for me.
    I’ve tooken quite a journey from
    My home in Tennessee.
    â€”If we keep slavery from spreading, T. D. said, it will die natural of its own accord. Slavery’s a wrong, and nothing can make it right. I take a more or less hope——
    Something bit and tore the mildly spoken words. Young Mr. Doniphant stood up, ashamed and scared.
    â€”D’yuh think——
    â€”She’s all right, T. D. said. It’s natural. The pains are getting sharper.
    â€”No good baby was ever got without a lot of yellin’, Grampa Peters said.
    Ellen and some other women went back into the house.
    â€”Take it easy, son, T. D. said. This may go on all day.
    â€”By the way, T. D., Grampa Peters said, could you let me have another bottle of them pokeberry bitters sometime? My stummick’s been actin’ up on me agin. Sometimes I think I can’t hardly stand it.
    Mr. Doniphant sat down slowly and kept picking nervously at the banjo and humming,
    â€”O, Californy!
    That’s the place for me!
    â€”What route do you figure on takin’ to git out there? the thin man said.
    â€”Why, I don’t know yet. I aim to take the safest.
    â€”After what happened to them Donners, Grampa Peters said, I reckon you can’t be too careful. I wonder if you ain’t goin’ to have to winter over somewhere before you try it.
    â€”Maybe so, the young man said.
    â€”Have you seen any Mormons along the way? T. D. said.
    â€”Not as I know of. They say the Mormons has all gone out and got them a place out there somewheres.
    â€”I seen a book, Grampa Peters said, and it had a picture in it of a Mormon goin’ to bed with his wives. That there bed was simply swarmin’ with women pullin’ each other’s hair and feedin’ babies.
    â€”One woman’s more’n enough fer me, the thin man said. They’d ought to take and burn all them Mormons at the stake.
    Those days, people were always going West. Johnny had heard it said that along the National Pike there was a wagon every hour regular and at times a whole train. Nothing could stop the people from going West. They had babies along the way, like Mr. and Mrs. Doniphant. They died in the snow on the mountains and ate each other to keep from starving, like the Donners. They had a scad of wives in one bed like the Mormons. Most of them were slightly crazy some way. But they kept right on going. Perhaps it had something to do with the sun that made an arc day after day above the National Pike. Johnny thought of the western land under the far setting of the sun, wide plains in purple evening through which on softly thundering hooves the buffalo herds were running, he thought of Indians, riding swift ponies toward the flanks of purple mountains, wagontrains streaming thinly westward, he thought of shining rivers, green slopes, blue ocean on the distant shore of evening.
    Those days, Johnny thought much of gold, Indians, great rivers, buffalo, and men who carried guns. Before the war, the West was a vagueness, a direction, a place of few names that belonged mostly to someone else. Now, however, it was good to