Paradise was nothing like he expected. For one thing, it was brighter. Sunlight stretched the blue sky high and thin and lit every dark hill. Also, there was more pine, and where the pine was cleared, wheat and peas grew profusely. There were more cattle and more horses than version of heaven he had ever conjured.
“Hog Heaven” someone told him. That had been the name because the pigs loved the Camas bulbs that grew everywhere, but they soon found that the fertile soil was more generally Providential, and changed the name accordingly.
Of course, there was no rail line yet to Paradise. Perhaps that was fitting. Paradise was only to be reached by stagecoach and uneven roads. “Narrow is the path,” Peter thought as the coach jolted in yet another rut, but he knew, too, that this Paradise held no guarantees of happiness.
A sudden and savage gust of September wind hit the side of the coach like a punch to the gut, and outside the un-curtained windows, dirt devils ran along the road. A hawk screeched above, voicing his irritation as the uncertainty in the currents he road. No, this Paradise was beyond anything Peter would have imagined.
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