"Certainly. I know about that cow, too. She was twenty years old and
on her last legs. Road kills her, and all at once she becomes a dream
of heifer loveliness. _I_ know."

"I reckon," said Colonel Blount, still more grimly, "I reckon if that
damned claim agent was to come here, he would just about say that
fifteen dollars was enough for my filly."

"I shouldn't wonder. Now, look here, Colonel Blount. You see, I'm a
railroad man, and I'm able to see the other side of these things. We
come down here with our railroad. We develop your country. We give
you a market and we put two cents a pound on top of your cotton
price. We fix it so that you can market your cotton at five dollars a
bale cheaper than you used to. We double and treble the price of
every acre of land within thirty miles of this road. And yet, if we
kill a chance cow, we are held up for it. The sentiment against this
road is something awful."

"Oh, well, all right," said Blount, "but that don't bring my filly
back. You can't get Himyah blood every day in the week. That filly
would have seen Churchill Downs in her day, if she had lived."

"Yes; and if she had, you would have had to back her, wouldn't you?
You would have trained that filly and paid a couple of hundred for
it. You would have fitted her at the track and paid several hundred
more. You would have bet a couple of thousand, anyway, as a matter of
principle, and, like enough, you'd have lost it. Now, if this road
paid you fifteen dollars for that filly and saved you twenty-five
hundred or three thousand into the bargain, how ought you to feel