Page:History of Oregon Literature.djvu/248



Reader, as we wish to give you a general idea of the different classes of Oregonians, we propose to take you to a mountain home, where lives the proprietor of a section claim, ....

Gustavus Willard soon found himself immensely rich. But as the rapid accumulation of property too often increases a desire for more, he became eager to hold more of the valley prairie than as a bachelor, he was entitled to claim.

Gustavus Willard must have a wife. That was settled. If he couldn't get somebody, he must take nobody, or her sister. A squatter lived about three miles from our bachelor's ranche. He had a daughter thirteen years of age, "verdant" as the grass she trod; more thoughtless than the cows she milked. Our bachelor called at the residence of the mountain lassie. He thought she wasn't much like the dark-eyed niece who kept house for him at his ranche, neither did she suit his fancy like Fanny Waters, who wouldn't have him.

"But then," he mused, "she'll hold that splendid half section of land in the bottom, if I'll marry her, and I can't think of giving it up. I'll be compelled to, though, by next December, if I don't marry somebody."