Her eyes drank in the breadth of it, until her tears blinded her. Then the Genius of the Divide, the great, free spirit which breathes across it, must have bent lower than it ever bent to a human will before. The history of every country begins in the heart of a man or a woman.
Alexandra reached home in the afternoon.
That evening she held a family council and told her brothers all that she had seen and heard.
"I want you boys to go down yourselves and look it over. Nothing will convince you like seeing with your own eyes. The river land was settled before this, and so they are a few years ahead of us, and have learned more about farm-ing. The land sells for three times as much as this, but in five years we will double it. The rich men down there own all the best land, and they are buying all they can get. The thing to do is to sell our cattle and what little old corn we have, and buy the Linstrum place. Then the next thing to do is to take out two loans on our half-sections, and buy Peter Crow's place;raise every dollar we can, and buy every acre we can.""Mortgage the homestead again?" Lou cried.
He sprang up and began to wind the clock furiously. "I won't slave to pay off another mortgage. I'll never do it. You'd just as soon kill us all, Alexandra, to carry out some scheme!"Oscar rubbed his high, pale forehead. "How do you propose to pay off your mortgages?"Alexandra looked from one to the other and bit her lip. They had never seen her so ner-vous. "See here," she brought out at last.