"The kid's fifteen now," says he at last. "She's going to be a looker
like her ma. It's in her blood to grow up in the cow business
too--that's me. But she's got it in her, besides, like her ma, to do
something different.
"I don't like to do my duty no more than anybody else does, but it shore
is my duty to educate that kid and give her a chance for a bigger start
than she can get out here. It was that that was in her ma's mind all the
time. She didn't want her girl to grow up out here in Wyoming; she
wanted her to go back East and play the game--the big game--the limit
the roof. She ast it; and she's got to have it, though she's been dead
more than ten years now. As for you and me, it can't make much
difference. We've brought her up the best we knew this far."
"Well, you can't sell the Circle Arrow now," says I, "and I'll tell you
why."
"Tell me," says he.
"Well, let's figure on it," says I. "It'll take anyways four years to
develop Bonnie Bell ready to turn off the range, according to the way
such things run. She'll have to go to school for at least four years.
Why not let the thing run like it lays till then, while you send her
East?"
"You mean to some girls' college?" says he. "Well, I've been thinking
that all out. She'll have to go to the same kind of schools her ma did
and be made a lady of, like her ma." He looks a little more cheerful and
says to me: "That'll put it off four years anyways, won't it?"
"Shore it will," says I. "Maybe something will happen by that time. It
don't stand to reason that them syndicate people will be as foolish four
years from now as they are today; and like enough you can't sell the
range then nohow." That makes us both feel a lot cheerfuller.
Well, later on him and me begun looking up in books what was the best
college for girls, though none of 'em said anything about caring special
for girls that knew more of horses and cows than anything else. We seen
names of plenty of schools--Vassar and Ogontz and Bryn Mawr--but we
couldn't pronounce them names; so we voted against them all. At last I
found one that looked all right--it was named Smith.
"Here's the place!" says I to Old Man Wright; and I showed him on the
page. "This man Smith sounds like he had some horse sense. Let's send
Bonnie Bell to Old Man Smith and see what he'll do with her."
Well, we done that. Old Man Smith must of knew his business pretty well,
for what he done with Bonnie Bell was considerable. She was changed when
she got back to us the first time, come summer of the first year. I
didn't get East and I never did meet up with Old Man Smith at all; but I
say he must of knowed his business. His catalogue said his line was to
make girls appreciate the Better Things of life. He spelled Better
Things in big letters. Well, I don't know whether Bonnie Bell begun to
hanker after them Better Things or not, but she was changed after that
every year more and more when she come home. In four years she wasn't
the same girl.
She wasn't spoiled--you couldn't spoil her noways. She was as much
tickled as ever with the colts and the calves and the chickens and the
alfalfa and the mountains; and she could still ride anything they
brought along, and she hadn't forgot how to rope. Still, she was
different. Her clothes was different. Her hats was different. Her shoes
was different. Her hair was done up different. Somehow she had grew up
less like her pa and more like her ma. So then I seen that 'bout the
worst had happened to him and me that could happen. Them Better Things
was not such as growed in Wyoming.
Now, Old Man Wright and me, us two, had brought up the kid. Me being
foreman, that was part of my business too. We been busy. I could see we
was going to be a lot busier. Before long something was due to pop. At
last the old man comes to me once more.
"Curly," says he, "I was in hopes something would happen, so that this
range of ours wouldn't be no temptation to them irrigation colonizers; I
was hoping something would happen to them, so they would lose their
money. But they lost their minds instead. These last four years they
raised their bid on the Circle Arrow a half million dollars every year.
They've offered me more money than there is in the whole wide world.
They say now that for the brand and the range stock and the home ranch,
and all the hay lands and ditches that we put in so long ago, they'll
give me three million eight hundred thousand dollars, a third of it in
real money and the rest secured on the place. What do you think of
that?"
"I think somebody has been drunk," says I. "There ain't that much money
at all. I remember seeing Miss Anderson, Bonnie Bell's teacher down at
Meeteetse, make a million dollars on the blackboard, and it reached
clear acrost it--six ciphers, with a figure in front of it. And that was
only one million dollars. When you come to talking nearly four million
dollars--why, there ain't that much money. They're fooling you,
Colonel."
"I wisht they was," says he, sighing; "but the agent keeps pestering me.
He says they'll make it four million flat or maybe more if I'll just let
go. You see, Curly, we picked the ground mighty well years ago, and them
ditches we let in from the mountains for the stock years ago is what
they got their eyes on now. They say that folks can dry-farm the benches
up toward the mountains--they can't, and I don't like to see nobody try
it. I'm a cowman and I don't like to see the range used for nothing
else. But what am I going to do?"
"Well, what are you going to do, Colonel?" says I. "I know what you'll
do, but I'll just ast you."
"Of course," says he, "it ain't in my heart to sell the Circle
Arrow--you know that--but I got to. Here's Bonnie Bell. She's
finished--that is to say, she ain't finished, but just beginning. She's
at the limit of what the range will produce for her right now. We got to
move on."
I nodded to him. We both felt the same about it. It wasn't so much what
happened to us.
"Well," says he, "we got to pick out a place for her to live at after we
sell the range. I thought of St. Louis; but it's too hot, and I never
liked the market there. Kansas City is a good cowtown; but it ain't as
good as Chicago. I reckon Chicago maybe is as good a cowtown as there
is."
"Well, Colonel," says I, "I reckon here's where I go West."
"You go where?" says he to me, sharp.
"West," says I.
"There ain't no West," says he. "Besides, what do you mean? What are you
talking about, going anywheres?"
"You said you was going to sell the range," says I. "That ends my work,
don't it? I filed on eight or ten homesteads, and so did the other boys.
It's all surveyed and patented, and it's yours to sell."
He didn't say nothing for a while, his Adam's apple walking up and down
his neck.
"You been square to me all your life, Colonel," says I, "and I can't
kick. All cowpunchers has to be turned out to grass sometime and it's
been a long time coming for me. I'm as old as you are, Colonel, and I
can't complain."
"Curly," says he, "what you're saying cuts me a little more than
anything ever did happen to me. Ain't I always done right by you?"
"Of course you have, Colonel. Who said you hadn't?"
"Ain't you always been square with me?"
"Best I knew how," says I. "I never let my right hand know what my left
was doing with a running iron--and I was left-handed."
"That's right; you helped me get my start in the early days. I owe a lot
to you--a lot more than I've ever paid; but the least I could do for you
would be to give you a home and a place at my table as long as ever you
live, and more wages than you're worth--ain't that the truth?"
"I don't know how you figure that," says I.
"Yes; you do, too, know how I figure that--you know there ain't but one
way I could figure it. You stay with me till hell freezes under both of
us; and I don't want to hear no more talk about you going West or
nowheres else."
Folkses' Adam's apples bothers sometimes.
"We built this brand together," says he, "and what right you got to
shake it now?" says he; me not being able now to talk much. "We rode
this range, every foot of it, together, and more than once slept under
the same saddle blanket. I've trusted you to tally a thousand head of
steers for me a half dozen times a year. You've had the spring rodeo in
your hands ever since I can remember. You've been one-half pa of that
kid. Has times changed so much that you got a right to talk the way
you're talking?"
"You're going back into the States, though, Colonel," says I. "They turn
men out there when they're forty--and I'll never see forty again. I read
in the papers that forty is the dead line back there."
"It ain't in Wyoming," says he.
"We won't be in Wyoming no more, there," says I.
He set and looked off across the range toward the Gunsight Gap, at the
head of the river, and I could see him get white under his freckles. He
was game, but he was scared.
"We can't help it, Curly," says he. "We've raised the girl between us
and we've got to stick all the way through. You've been my foreman here
and you got to be my foreman there in the city. We'll land there with a
few million dollars or so and I reckon we'll learn the game after a
while."
"I'd make a hell of a vallay, wouldn't I, Colonel?" says I.
"I didn't ast you to be no vallay for me," says he. "I ast you to be my
foreman--you know damn well what I mean."
I did know, too, far as that's concerned, and I thought more of Old Man
Wright then than I ever did. Of course it's hard for men to talk much
out on the range, and we didn't talk. We only set for quite a while,
with our knees up, breaking sticks and looking off at the Gunsight Gap,
on top of the range--just as if we hadn't saw it there any day these
past forty years.
I was plenty scared about this new move and so was he. It's just like
riding into a ford where the water is stained with snow or mud and
running high, and where there ain't no low bank on the other side. You
don't know how it is, but you have to chance it. It looked bad to me and
it did to him; but we had rid into such places before together and we
both knew we had to do it now.
"Colonel," says I at last to him, "I don't like it none, but I got to go
through with you if you want me to."
He sort of hit the side of my knee with the back of his hand, like he
said: "It's a trade." And it was a trade.
That's how come us to move from Wyoming to Chicago, looking for some of
them Better Things.