It's a mighty high notion, too,
let me tell you; and the man that gits up to it'll have to climb.
Bet your life on that!
"But that's all no matter. I reckon you'll be glad to know how
she's gettin' on out here, anyhow. She come here not a great while
after I did; but, bless your stars, she wasn't as green as I, not
by any manner of means. She didn't want to hide out in a quiet
part of the country, where the world didn't turn around but once
in two days. No, sir! She was keen--just as keen as a razor-blade.
She run her eye over the map and got inside the railroad projects
somehow, blessed if I know how; and then she just went off fifty
miles out of the track others was taking, and bought up all the
land she could pay for, and got trusted for all the credit that
that brought her; and here she is now, with Eupolia building right
up on her land, and just a-busting up her quarter-sections into
city lots, day after day, till you can't rest.
"Just think on't, Moyne! It's only three years ago and she was
teaching a nigger school, there in Red Wing; and now, God bless
you, here she is, just a queen in a city that wasn't nowhere then.
I tell you, she's a team! Just as proud as Lucifer, and as wide-awake
as a hornet in July. She beats anything I ever did see. She's given
away enough to make two or three, and I'll be hanged if it don't
seem to me that every cent she gives just brings her in a dollar.
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