was plenty of government
hand. He talked of Honey Lake, of Shasta County, and of Humboldt.

"But you can't tackle it at this time of year, with winter comin' on,"
he advised Saxon. "The thing for you to do is head south for warmer
weather--say along the coast. It don't snow down there. I tell you what
you do. Go down by San Jose and Salinas an' come out on the coast at
Monterey. South of that you'll find government land mixed up with forest
reserves and Mexican rancheros. It's pretty wild, without any roads to
speak of. All they do is handle cattle. But there's some fine redwood
canyons, with good patches of farming ground that run right down to the
ocean. I was talkin' last year with a fellow that's been all through
there. An' I'd a-gone, like you an' Billy, only Sarah wouldn't hear of
it. There's gold down there, too. Quite a bunch is in there prospectin',
an' two or three good mines have opened. But that's farther along and in
a ways from the coast. You might take a look."

Saxon shook her head. "We're not looking for gold but for chickens and
a place to grow vegetables. Our folks had all the chance for gold in the
early days, and what have they got to show for it?"

"I guess you're right," Tom conceded. "They always played too big a
game, an' missed the thousand little chances right under their nose.
Look at your pa. I've heard him tell of selling three Market street
lots in San Francisco for fifty dollars each. They're worth five hundred
thousand right now. An' look at Uncle Will. He had ranches till the
cows come home. Satisfied? No. He wanted to be a cattle king, a regular
Miller and Lux. An' when he died he was a night watchman in Los Angeles
at forty dollars a month. There's a spirit of the times, an' the spirit
of the times has changed. It's all big business now, an' we're the
small potatoes. Why, I've heard our folks talk of livin' in the Western
Reserve. That was all around what's Ohio now. Anybody could get a farm
them days. All they had to do was yoke their oxen an' go after it, an'
the Pacific Ocean thousands of miles to the west, an' all them thousands
of miles an' millions of farms just waitin' to be took up. A hundred an'
sixty acres? Shucks. In the early days in Oregon they talked six hundred
an' forty acres. That was the spirit of them times--free land, an'
plenty of it. But when we reached the Pacific Ocean them times was
ended. Big business begun; an' big business means big business men;
an' ever