Well, if I was following them, there would be a race, and they wished me well! But why go East, instead of West?
Then they began to question me regarding Oregon.

How was the land?
Would it raise wheat and corn and hogs?
How was the weather?
Was there much game?
Would it take much labor to clear a farm?
Was there any likelihood of trouble with the Indians or with the Britishers?
Could a man really get a mile square of good farm land without trouble?
And so on, and so on, as we sat in the blinding sun in the sage-brush desert until midday.
Of course it came to politics.

Yes, Texas had been annexed, somehow, not by regular vote of the Senate.

There was some hitch about that.

My leader reckoned there was no regular treaty.