I never had lived in town this long, not in all my life before, and, far
as I know, the boss hadn't, neither. We wasn't used to this way of
living. We'd been used to riding some every day. Out in the parks, even
in the winter, once in a while you could see somebody riding--or
thinking they was riding, which they wasn't.
One day Old Man Wright, come spring, he goes down to the stockyards and
buys a good saddle horse for Bonnie Bell to ride. It cost him
twenty-five dollars a month to keep that horse, so he would eat his head
off in about three months at the outside. Old Man Wright tells me that
I'll have to ride out with the kid whenever she wanted to go. That
suited me. Of course that meant we had to buy another horse for me. That
made the stable bill fifty dollars a month. I never did know what we
paid for our rooms at the hotel, but it was more every month than would
keep a family a year in Wyoming.
Bonnie Bell she could ride a man's saddle all right, and she had a
outfit for it. When it got a little warmer in the spring we used to go
in the parks every once in a while. One day we rid on out into a narrow
sort of place along the lake. There was houses there--a row of them, all
big, all of stone or brick; houses as big as the penitentiary in Wyoming
and about as cheerful.
We stopped right in front of a big brick-and-stone house, which had
trees and flower beds and hedges all along; and says she:
"Curly, how would you like to live in a house like that?"
"I wouldn't live in the damn place if you give it to me, Bonnie Bell,"
says I, cheerful.
She looked at me kind of funny.
"That's the kind of a house the best people have in this town," says
she. "For instance, that house we're looking at looks as though the best
architects in town had designed it. That place, Curly, cost anywhere
from a half to three-quarters of a million, I'll betcha."
"Well, that's a heap more money than anybody ought to pay for a place to
live in," says I. "They ought to spend it for cows."
"But it fronts the lake," says she, "and it's right in with the best
people."
"Is that so?" says I. "Then here is where we ought to of come--some
place like that; for what we're here for is to break in with the best
people. Ain't that the truth, Bonnie Bell?"
"Maybe," says she after a while--"bankers, I suppose, merchants,
wholesale people--hides, leather, packing----"
"And not cowmen?" says I.
"Certainly not!" says she. "To be the best people you must deal in
something that somebody else has worked on--you must handle a
manufactured product of some kind. You mustn't be a producer of actual
wealth."
"Sho! Bonnie Bell," says I, "if you're in earnest you're talking
something you learned at Old Man Smith's college. I don't know nothing
about them things. Folks is folks, ain't they? A square man is a square
man, no matter what's his business."
"It's different here," says she.
"Well, now, while we're speaking about houses," says I, us setting there
on our horses all the time and plenty of people going by and looking at
us--or leastways looking at her--"why don't you tell me where your house
is going to be at? You never did show it to me once."
"I'm not going to, Curly," says she. "That's going to be a secret. Of
course dad knows where it is; but as for you--well, maybe we will get
into it by Christmas."
"Now, for instance," says I--and I waves my hand toward a place that was
just starting alongside this big house we'd been looking at--"it like
enough taken a year or so to get this here place as far along as it is."
"Uh-huh!" says she.
So then we turned away and rid back home. When we got back to the hotel
we found Old Man Wright setting in a chair, with his legs stuck out and
his hands in his pockets, looking plumb unhappy.
"What's the matter, dad?" ast Bonnie Bell. "Have you lost any money or
heard any bad news?"
"No, I ain't," says he. "It all depends on what people need to make them
happy."
"Well," says Bonnie Bell--her face was right red from the ride we had
and she was feeling fine--"I'm perfectly happy, except there ain't any
place you can ride a horse in this town and have any fun at it, the
roads are so hard. Everybody seems to go in motor cars nowadays,
anyways."
"Huh!" says her pa. "That's what I should think." He holds up a
newspaper in front of him. "When I first come here," says he, "I seen
that everybody was riding in cars, and I figured that more of them was
going to; so I taken a flyer, sixty thousand dollars or so, in some
stock in a company that was making one of them cars that sells right
cheap. Now them people have gave me eighty per cent stock for a bonus
and raised the dividend to twenty-five per cent a year. She's going to
make money all right. Shouldn't wonder if that stock would more than
double in a year or so."
"For heaven's sake, Colonel," says I, "ain't there nothing a-tall that
you can get into without making money?" says I.
"No, there ain't," says he, sad. "It happens that way with some folks--I
just can't help making it; yet here I am with more money than any of us
ought to have. But I had to do it," says he to Bonnie Bell. "I get sort
of lonesome, not having much to do; so that I have to mix up with
something. Cars, sis?" says he. "Why, let me give you two or three of
the kind our company makes."
"No you don't!" says Bonnie Bell. "I want one that----"
"Huh! that costs about eight or ten thousand dollars, maybe?"
"Well," says she, "you have to sort of play things proportionate, dad;
and I think that kind of a car is just about proportionate to what you
and me is going to do in this little town when we get started."
She turns and looks out the window some more. That was a way she had.
You see, all these months we'd been there already we didn't know a soul
in that town. Womenfolks always hate each other, but they hate
theirselves when other womenfolks don't pay no attention to them. Bonnie
Bell was used to neighbors and she didn't have none here; so, though she
was busy buying everything a girl couldn't possibly want, she didn't
seem none too happy now.
"What's wrong, sis?" says her pa after a while, pulling her over on his
knee. "Ain't me and Curly treating you all right?"
She pushed back his face from her and looks at him; and says she, right
sober:
"Dad," she says, "you mustn't ever really ask me that. You're the best
man in all the world--and so is Curly."
"No, we ain't," says he. "The best man hasn't really showed yet for you,
sis."
"Why, dad," says she, "I'm only a young girl!"
"You're the finest-looking young girl in this town," says he, "and the
town knows it."
"Huh!" says she, and sniffs up her nose. "It don't act much like it."
"If I can believe my eyes," says her pa, "when I walk out with you a
good many people seem to know it."
"That don't count, dad," says she. "Men, and even women, look at a girl
on the street--men at her ankles and women at her clothes; but that
doesn't mean anything. That doesn't get you anywhere. That isn't being
anybody. That doesn't mean that you are one of the best people."
"And you want to be one of the best people--is that it, sis?"
She set her teeth together and her eyes got bright.
"Well," says she, "we never played anything for pikers, did we, dad?"
Then them two looked each other in the eyes. I looked at them both. To
me it seemed there certainly was going to be some doings.
"Go to it, sis!" says her pa. "You've got your own bank account and it's
bigger than mine. The limit's the roof.
"Speaking of limits," says he, "reminds me that the president of our
bank he got me elected to the National League Club here in town; him
having such a pull he done it right soon--proxies, maybe. I've been over
there this afternoon trying to enjoy myself. Didn't know anybody on
earth. One or two folks finally did allow me to set in a poker game with
them when I ast. It wasn't poker, but only a imitation. I won two
hundred and fifty dollars and it broke up the game. If a fellow pushes
in half a stack of blues over there they all tremble and get pale. This
may be a good town for women, but, believe me, sis, it's no town for a
real man."
"Well, never mind, dad," says she. "If you get lonesome I'll have you
help me on the house. We'll have to get our servants together. For
instance, we've got to have a butler--and a good one."
"What's a butler?" says I.
"He stands back of your chair and makes you feel creepy," says Old Man
Wright. "We've got to have one of them things, shore. Then there's the
chauffore for the car when you get it, and the cook. That's about all,
ain't it?"
"That's about the beginning," says Bonnie Bell. "You have to have a cook
and a kitchen girl and two first-floor maids and two upper-floor maids
and a footman."
"Well, that will help some," says her pa. "I've been bored a good deal
and lonesome, but maybe, living with all them folks, somebody will start
something sometime. When did you say we could get in?"
"They tell me we'll be lucky if we have everything ready by Christmas,"
says Bonnie Bell.
"It looks like a merry summer, don't it?" says he sighing.
"And like a hell of a Merry Christmas!" says I.