“I’m glad to hear it,” said she.
“Yes; I’ll have to hire a clerk, because I’ve got to ’tend to my outside work. I’ve been paintin’ a sign to go over the front, and I tell you that name don’t look so bad when it’s in print, neither.”
“It isn’t a name to be ashamed of, I’m sure,” she cheered. “It’s just as good as any other name, as far as I can see.”
“Phogenphole has got a good many shanks to it when you come to write it, though,” reflected Smith. “It looks a lot better printed out. I think I’ll git me one of these here typewritin’-machines. But say! Stop in and take a look at that sign the first time you’re passin’; will you?”
Agnes assured him that she would. Smith upended his board as if to go. 279
“That feller, Boyle, he’s gone,” said he, nodding as if to confirm his own statement. “I saw him ride off up the river an hour or so ago.”
“Yes; I believe he went to Meander also.”
“He’s a bad egg,” Smith continued, “and he comes out of a basket of bad eggs. His old man, he’s doin’ more to keep this state down than anything you can name. He’s got millions–and when I say millions, ma’am, I mean millions–of acres of government land fenced and set off to his own use, and school lands, and other lands belongin’ to you and me and the high-minded citizens of this country, and he don’t pay a cent for the use of ’em, neither. Taxes? That man don’t know what taxes is.”
“Why do the people permit him to do it?”
“People! Huh! He’s got rings in their noses, that’s why. What he don’t own he’s got cowed. I tell you, I know of a town with three or four thousand people in it, and a schoolhouse as big as one of them old-country castles up on a hill, that ranchers has to go forty miles around to git to. Can’t put a road through Boyle’s land–government land, every inch of it. What do you think of that?”