else on the Pacific coast—comes in from the Sandwich Islands on every ship, an’ hit’s powerful cheap, too. Ye wun’t have ter stent the younguns none on sugar. Hain’t I allus said thet trade on the Pacific Ocean’d be the makin’s o’ the farmers?”
“Cheap sugar in a fruit country,” exulted Martha. “Think, children, that means preserves for our bread in the winter.”
“Yes,” said Uncle Adzi. “And cheap sugar hain’t the hull story; hit’ll mean other nedcessities cheap in time; the ship thet carries sugar takes back whut we raise. Hain’t I been lookin’ all my nateral life for a frontier where there war a market for craps?”
“God help us to hold on until we can raise a crop,” Martha muttered in the depths of her sunbonnet.
John Bainbridge came up the trail from Oregon City just as Martha was dishing up the steaming supper. He walked with the long stride that takes men rapidly over the road, although there was no undue haste in his movements. He carried over his
shoulder a hemp sack containing about twenty pounds of wheat and in one hand half of a large salmon dried after the Indian fashion.
He was very tall, and stooped a little as if from the carrying of too heavy loads. But his shoulders were broad and his muscles bulging and hard under his butternut blouse. He had a grave, inscrutable face deeply furrowed and lined. His eyes were blue and kindly, small and deep-set, yet twinkling with interest and animation when he spoke, which he seldom did, unless he had something very definite to say. He took the hardships of Martha and the
