"Well, I remember when I was a little girl, like. How my Grandma always used to tell me about her Grandma, when she was a little girl.
"She was saying about how in the old days, before there even was an Angelisco—when her Grandma came out here in a covered wagon. Just think, honey, she was younger than I am, and she come thousands and thousands of miles in a wagon! With real horses, like! Wasn't any houses, no people or nothing. Except Indians that shot at them. And they climbed up the mountains and they crossed over the deserts and went hungry and thirsty and had fights with those Indians all the way. But they never stopped until they got here. Because they was the pioneers."
"Pioneers?"
"That's what Grandma said her Grandma called herself. A pioneer. She was real proud of it, too. Because it means having the courage to cut loose from all the old things and try something new when you need to. Start a whole new world, a whole new kind of life."
She sighed. "I always wanted to be a pioneer, like, but I never thought I'd get the chance."
"What are you talking about? What's all this got to do with us, or having a kid?"
"Don't you see? Taking these shots, having a baby this new way—it's sort of being a pioneer, too. Gonna help bring a new kind of people into a new kind of world. And if that's not being a pioneer, like, it's the closest I can come to it. It sounds right to me now."
Minnie smiled and nodded. "I guess I made up my mind just now. I'm taking the shots."
"Hell you are!" Frank told her. "We'll talk about it some more in the morning."
But Minnie continued to smile.