Bonnie Bell was her real name--Bonnie Bell Wright. It sounds like a race
horse or a yacht, but she was a girl. Like enough that name don't suit
you exactly for a girl, but it suited her pa, Old Man Wright. I don't
know as she ever was baptized by that name, or maybe baptized at all,
for water was scarce in Wyoming; but it never would of been healthy to
complain about that name before Old Man Wright or me, Curly. As far as
that goes, she had other names too. Her ma called her Mary Isabel
Wright; but her pa got to calling her Bonnie Bell some day when she was
little, and it stuck, especial after her ma died.
That was when Bonnie Bell was only four years old, that her ma died, and
her dying made a lot of difference on the ranch. I reckon Old Man Wright
probably stole Bonnie Bell's ma somewhere back in the States when he was
a young man. She must of loved him some or she wouldn't of came to
Wyoming with him. She was tallish, and prettier than any picture in
colors--and game! She tried all her life to let on she liked the range,
but she never was made for it.
Now to see her throw that bluff and get away with it with Old Man
Wright--and no one else, especial me--and to see Old Man Wright
worrying, trying to figure out what was wrong, and not being able
to--that was the hardest thing any of us ever tried. The way he worked
to make the ma of Bonnie Bell happy was plain for anybody to see. He'd
stand and look at the place where he seen her go by last, and forget he
had a rope in his hand and his horse a-waiting.
We had to set at the table, all three of us, after she died--him and the
kid and me--and nobody at the end of the table where she used to
set--her always in clothes that wasn't just like ours. I couldn't hardly
stand it. But that was how game Old Man Wright was.
He wasn't really old. Like when he was younger, he was tall and
straight, and had sandy hair and blue eyes, and weighed round a hundred
and eighty, lean. Everybody on the range always had knew Old Man Wright.
He was captain of the round-up when he was twenty and president of the
cattle association as soon as it was begun. I don't know as a better
cowman ever was in Wyoming. He grew up at it.
So did Bonnie Bell grow up at it, for that matter. She pleased her pa a
plenty, for she took to a saddle like a duck, so to speak. Time she was
fifteen she could ride any of the stock we had, and if a bronc' pitched
when she rid him she thought that was all right; she thought it was just
a way horses had and something to be put up with that didn't amount to
much. She didn't know no better. She never did think that anything or
anybody in the world had it in for her noways whatever. She natural
believed that everything and everybody liked her, for that was the way
she felt and that was the way it shaped there on the range. There wasn't
a hand on the place that would of allowed anything to cross Bonnie Bell
in any way, shape or manner.
She grew up tallish, like her pa, and slim and round, same as her ma.
She had brownish or yellowish hair, too, which was sunburned, for she
never wore no bonnet; but her eyes was like her ma's, which was dark and
not blue, though her skin was white like her pa's under his shirt
sleeves, only she never had no freckles the way her pa had--some was
large as nickels on him in places. She maybe had one freckle on her
nose, but little.
Bonnie Bell was a rider from the time she was a baby, like I said, and
she went into all the range work like she was built for it. Wild she
was, like a filly or yearling that kicks up its heels when the sun
shines and the wind blows. And pretty! Say, a new wagon with red wheels
and yellow trimmings ain't fit for to compare with her, not none at all!
When her ma died Old Man Wright wasn't good for much for a long time,
for he was always studying over something. Though he never talked a word
about her I allow that somehow or other after she died he kind of come
to the conclusion that maybe she hadn't been happy all the time, and he
got to thinking that maybe he'd been to blame for it somehow. After it
was too late, maybe, he seen that she couldn't never have grew to be no
range woman, no matter how long she lived.
But still we all got to take things, and he done so the best he could;
and after the kid begun to grow up he was happier. All the time he was
a-rolling up the range and the stock, till he was richer than anybody
you ever did see, though his clothes was just about the same. But, come
round the time when Bonnie Bell was fourteen or fifteen years old, about
proportionate like when a filly or heifer is a yearling or so, he begun
to study more.
There was a room up in the half-story where sometimes we kept things we
didn't need all the time--the fancy saddles and bridles and things. Some
old trunks was in it. I reckon maybe Old Man Wright went up there
sometimes when he didn't say nothing about it to nobody. Anyhow once I
went up there for something and I seen him setting on the floor,
something in his hand that he was looking at so steady he never heard
me. I don't know what it was--picture maybe, or letter; and his face was
different somehow--older like--so that he didn't seem like the same man.
You see, Old Man Wright was maybe soft like on the inside, like plenty
of us hard men are.
I crept out and felt right much to blame for seeing what I had, though I
didn't mean to. Seems like all my life I had been seeing or hearing
things I hadn't no business to--some folks never do things right. That's
me. I never told Old Man Wright about my seeing him there and he don't
know it yet. But it wasn't so long after that he come to me, and he
hadn't been shaved for four days, and he was looking kind of odd; and he
says to me:
"Curly, we're up against it for fair!" says he.
"Why, what's wrong, Colonel?" says I, for I seen something was wrong all
right.
He didn't answer at first, but sort of throwed his hand round to show I
was to come along.
At last he says:
"Curly, we're shore up against it!" He sighed then, like he'd lost a
whole trainload of cows.
"What's up, Colonel?" says I. "Range thieves?"
"Hell, no!" says he. "I wish 'twas that--I'd like it."
"Well," says I, "we got plenty of this water, and we branded more than
our average per cent of calves this spring." For such was so that
year--everything was going fine. We stood to sell eighty thousand
dollars' worth of beef cows that fall.
He didn't say a word, and I ast him if there was any nesters coming in;
and he shook his head.
"I seen about that when I taken out my patents years ago. No; the range
is safe. That's what's the matter with it; the title is good--too good."
"Well, Colonel," says I, some disgusted and getting up to walk away, "if
ever you want to talk to me any send somebody to where I'm at. I'm
busy."
"Set down, Curly," says he, not looking at me.
So I done so.
"Son," says he to me--he often called me that along of me being his
segundo for so many years--"don't go away! I need you. I need
something."
Now I ain't nothing but a freckled cowpuncher, with red hair, and some
says both my eyes don't track the same, and I maybe toe in. Besides, I
ain't got much education. But, you see, I've been with Old Man Wright so
long we've kind of got to know each other--not that I'm any good for
divine Providence neither.
"Curly," says he after a while when he got his nerve up, "Curly, it
looks like I got to sell out--I got to sell the Circle Arrow!"
Huh! That was worse than anything that ever hit me all my life, and
we've seen some trouble too. I couldn't say a word to that.
After about a hour he begun again.
"I reckon I got to sell her," says he. "I got to quit the game. Curly,
you and me has got to make a change--I'm afraid I've got to sell her
out--lock, stock and barrel."
"And not be a cowman no more?" says I.
He nods. I look round to see him close. He was plumb sober, and his face
was solemn, like it was the time I caught him looking in the trunk.
"That irrigation syndicate is after me again," says he.
"Well, what of it?" says I. "Let 'em go some place else. It ain't
needful for us to make no more money--we're plumb rich enough for
anybody on earth. Besides, when a man is a cowman he's got as far as he
can go--there ain't nothing in the world better than that. You know it
and so do I."
He nods, for what I said was true, and he knowed it.
"Colonel," I ast him, "have you been playing poker?"
"Some," says he. "Down to the Cheyenne Club."
"How much did you lose?"
"I didn't lose nothing--I won several thousand dollars and eight hundred
head of steers last week," says he.
"Well, then, what in hell is wrong?" says I.
"It goes back a long ways," says he after a while, and now his face
looked more than ever like it did when he was there a-going through them
trunks. I turns my own face away now, so as not to embarrass him, for I
seen he was sort of off his balance.
"It's her," says the old man at last.
I might have knew that--might have knew it was either Bonnie Bell or her
ma that he had in his mind all the time; but he couldn't say a damn
word. He went on after a while:
"When she was sick I begun to get sort of afraid about things. One day
she taken Bonnie Bell by one hand and me by the other, and says she to
me: 'John Willie'--she called me that, though nobody knew it
maybe--'John Willie,' says she, 'I want to ask something I never dared
ask before, because I never did know before how much you cared for me
real,' says she. Oh, damn it, Curly, it ain't nobody's business what she
said."
After a while he went on again.
"'Lizzie,' says I to her, 'what is it? I'll do anything for you.'
"'Promise me, then, John Willie,' says she, 'that you'll educate my
girl and give her the life she ought to have.'
"'Why, Lizzie,' says I, 'of course I will. I'll do anything in the world
you say, the way you ask it.'
"'Then give her the place that she ought to have in life,' she says to
me."
He stopped talking then for maybe a hour, and at last he says again:
"Well, Curly, let it go at that. I can't talk about things. I couldn't
ever talk about her."