was in demand as "a hand, but he had a head and he "hated a boss." He wouldn't stick to a good job, no matter how good it was. He must "move on," seeking liberty—freedom to do his own work in his own way. He couldn't. The best pay for a blacksmith was in big organizations like the copper mines of Lake Superior. He tried farming. He led his family West, from Wisconsin to Nebraska; over into Colorado; back to Wisconsin; down again to Wyoming and Colorado. It was no use. Father and sons, they all worked as only border farmers work; they couldn't earn enough ahead to buy their liberty; or, if they got a start, something set them back.
U'Ren visualized one tragic day out of this life for me. His father had taken up a homestead in Nebraska, and they had made a farm of it. William remembers halting, on his way to town one morning, to look back from a hill over the rich, yellow level of their crops spread out .under the sun. When he came home that afternoon, he stopped, stunned, on that same hill-top. The sun still shone, but the homestead, the whole country, was bare and brown. The boy understood then what one of the plagues of Egypt was. The grasshoppers had passed, a cyclone of them, and in four hours the U'Rens were ruined.
