How we spent all that spring and summer I don't hardly see now. We was
the lonesomest people you ever seen. Old Man Wright he'd go over to his
new club once in a while and sometimes out to the stockyards, and
sometimes he'd fuss round at this or that. Bonnie Bell and me we'd go
riding once in a while when she wasn't busy, which was most of the time
now. She had a lot of talking to do with the folks that was building her
house and furnishing it--she never would tell me where it was.
Well, it got cold right early in the winter. It was awful cold, colder
than it gets in Wyoming. When it gets cold in Chicago the folks say:
"This certainly is most unusual weather!"--just like we do when there is
a blizzard out in Wyoming. Old Man Wright and me we thought we'd freeze,
because, you see, we had to wear overcoats like they had in the city,
and couldn't wear no sheep-lined coats like we would have wore on the
range.
"Well, you see," said Bonnie Bell when we complained to her, "when we
get our motor car running we won't have to walk. Nobody that amounts to
anything walks in the city. Our best people all have cars; so they don't
need sheepskin coats. Our car will be here any time now; so we can see
more of the city and be more comfortable than you can on horseback.
Nobody rides horseback except a few young people in the parks in the
summertime--I found that out."
"Don't our best people do that now?" ast her pa.
"Some, but not many," says she. "There's a good many people that wants
you to think they're the best people; but they ain't. You can always
tell them by the way they play their hands. Most of the people I've seen
riding in the parks is that sort--they want you to look at them when
they ride because they're perfectly sure they're doing what our best
people are doing. You can tell 'em by their clothes, whether they are
riding or walking. It's easy to spot them out."
"I wonder," says I, "if they can spot out your pa and me?"
She comes over and rumples up my hair like she sometimes did.
"You're a dear, Curly!" says she.
"I know that," says I; "but don't muss up my new necktie, for I worked
about a hour on that this morning, and at that it's a little on one side
and some low. But I'm coming on," says I.
Now, Old Man Wright, when he wore his spiketail coat, he had the same
trouble with his tie that I had with mine. He told his tailor about that
one time, but his tailor told him that the best people wore them that
way--mussed up and careless. Natural like it was a hard game to play,
because how could you tell when to be careless and when not to be? But,
as I said, we was coming on.
Mr. Henderson--he was the hotel manager and a pretty good sport too--he
sort of struck up a friendship with Old Man Wright, and you couldn't
hardly say we didn't have no visitors, for he come in every once in a
while and was right nice to us. You see, what with Old Man Wright
wearing his necktie careless and Bonnie Bell dressing exactly like she
come out of a fashion paper, if it hadn't been for me our outfit might
of got by for being best people, all right. Like enough I queered the
game some; but Henderson he didn't seem to mind even me.
The day before Christmas Bonnie Bell said her new house was all done and
all furnished, everything in, servants and all, ready for us to move in
that very night and spend Christmas Eve there. But she says Mr.
Henderson, the manager of the hotel, wanted us to eat our last dinner
that night in the hotel before we went home. To oblige him we done so.
He taken us in hisself that night. The man at the door snatched our
hats away, but he taken Bonnie Bell's coat--fur-lined it was and cost a
couple of thousand dollars--over his arm, and he held back the chair for
her. There was flowers on the table a plenty. I reckon he fixed it up.
There wasn't no ham shank and greens, but there was everything else.
I shouldn't wonder if some of the best people was there. Everybody had
on the kind of clothes they wear in the evening in a town like
this--spiketails for the men, and silk things, low, for the womenfolks.
Old Man Wright, with his red moustache, a little gray, him tall, but not
fat, and his necktie a little mussed up, was just as good-looking a man
as was in the place.
As for Bonnie Bell--well, I looked at our girl as I set there in my own
best clothes and my necktie tied the best I knew how, and, honest, she
was so pretty I was scared. The fact is, pretty ain't just the word. She
was more than that--she was beautiful.
Her dress was some sort of soft green silk, I reckon, cut low, and her
neck was high and white, and her hair was done up high behind and tied
up somehow, and her chin was held up high. She had some color in her
face--honest color--and her eyes was big and bright. Her arms was bare
up above where her gloves come to. She didn't have on very many
rings--though, Lord! if she wanted them she could of had a bushel. She
didn't have on much jewelry nowhere; but I want to tell you everybody
in that room looked at her all they dared.
I looked at her and so did her pa. I don't know as you could say we both
was proud--that ain't the right word for it. We was both scared. It
didn't seem possible she could be ours. It didn't seem possible that us
two old cowmen had raised her that way out on the range and that she had
changed so soon. She must of had it in her--her ma, I reckon.
There was a table not very far from ours, just across the first window,
where there was a old man and a old woman and a young man. They seen us
all right. I seen the young man looking at Bonnie Bell two or three
times, always looking down when he seen I noticed. He was a good-looking
young man and dressed well, I suppose, for all the men was dressed
alike. His necktie was tied kind of mussy and careless, like Old Man
Wright's, and he didn't have to keep pushing at his shirt. Did Bonnie
Bell notice him? Maybe she did--you can't tell about womenfolks; their
eyes is set on like a antelope's and they can see behind theirself.
"That's Old Man Wisner," says Henderson, the hotel manager, quiet, to
us, leaning over and pretending like he was fixing our flowers some
more. "Mrs. Wisner and young Mr. James Wisner are with him. You know, he
is one of the richest men here in Chicago--packing and banking, and all
that sort of thing. They are among our best people. They live up in
Millionaire Row."
"Yes, I know," says Bonnie Bell.
From where I set I could see them Wisners over at the other table. The
old man was big, with gray whiskers and gray hair, rather coarse. He had
big eyebrows and his eyes was kind of cross-looking, like his stomach
wasn't right. He was a portly sort of man--you've seen that kind. Some
is bankers and some packers and some brewers; they all look alike, no
matter what they are. They can't ride or walk.
This old party he didn't seem to be paying much attention to his wife,
and I don't know as I blame him. She may have had some looks once, but
not recent. They wasn't happy.
After a while the folks at that table got up and went on out before we
was done with our dinner, which was going strong at the end of a couple
of hours--there wasn't anything in the whole wide world we didn't have
to eat except ham shank and greens. At that, we had a right good time.
By and by it got to be maybe eleven o'clock, and Bonnie Bell turns down
her long white gloves, which she had tucked the hands of them back into
the wrists.
"Shall I call your car, Mr. Wright?" ast the manager, Mr. Henderson.
"I don't know," says Old Man Wright. "Have we got a car, sis?"
"Yes, papa," says she--she mostly said "papa" when folks was round;
don't overlook it that Old Man Smith turned out girls with real class.
She didn't talk like her pa and me neither.
"Yes, papa," says she now. "I was going to surprise you about our car;
it's been on hand for a week. I employed a driver and told him to be
ready for us about now." You see all our things had gone out to the new
house.
We all three of us helped Bonnie Bell on with her coat. She picked up
her muff and we all went out. I don't think any man in the place that
had brass buttons forgot that Christmas Eve.
The tall man in front at the door, like a drum major in a band, he knew
us well enough by now; he opens the door for us and we stand there,
looking out.
I said it was cold in Chicago and it was shore cold that night. It was
snowing--snow coming in off the lake slantwise, like a blizzard on the
plains. You couldn't hardly see across the walk. Out beyond the awning,
which covered the sidewalk, we could see our new car--a long, shiny one
with lights inside and lamps all over it, red, white and blue, or maybe
green. There was a couple of men on the front seat outside--I don't know
when the kid had hired them. They was both wrapped up in big fur
overcoats, which they certainly did need that night, since they couldn't
ride in the e-limousine, like us.
Bonnie Bell walks across the sidewalk now, under the awning, with her
muff up against her face, bending over against the storm. She looks up,
after she has said good-by to Mr. Henderson, who run out with us,
laughing and saying "Merry Christmas!"--she just looks up at the man on
the seat, and says she: "Home, James!"
I reckon the man must of been new that she had hired. He looks round at
first, as if he was trying to read our brand. Then all at once, sudden,
he jumps down offen the seat, touches his cap and opens the door.
We all got in and said good-by to the hotel where we'd been living so
long. The chauffore touches his hat again, shuts the door and climbs
back in his seat. He turned that long car round in one motion in the
street. The next minute we was out on the avenue, away from the hotel,
and right in the middle of that row of lights several miles long, where
the bullyvard is at, along the lake there. He turns her north on the
bullyvard, without a skip or a bobble, and she runs smooth as grease. I
seen Bonnie Bell was certainly a good judge of a car, like she was of a
horse or anything else.
"Daughter," says Old Man Wright to her after a time--and he didn't usual
call her that--"you're a wonder to your dad tonight! Where did you get
it? Where did you learn it?"
She looks up at him quick from her muff, plumb serious, and just put out
her hand on his, in its white glove.
We moved right along up the avenue, along a little crooked street or so,
round a corner and over the bridge; and then we come out where the
lights was in a long row again, and we could hear the roar of the lake
right close to the road.
"Where are you taking us, kid?" says I after a while, seeing that her pa
wasn't going to say nothing, nohow.
She only smiled.
"Wait, Curly; you'll see the new ranch house before so very long."
By and by we was right at the lower end of that long row of big houses
that cost so much money, where the best people live--Millionaire Row,
they called it then.
I knew where we was. After a while we come right to the place where
Bonnie Bell and me once had set on our horses and looked out at a new
house that wasn't finished, but was just beginning. It was done now--all
complete, from top to bottom, right where the foundations had been last
spring! I could see where the walks was laid out and some trees had been
planted that fall--big ones, as though they had always growed there.
Here and there was statues, women mostly and looking cold that night.
On behind you could see the line of the low buildings, like the outlying
barns of the home ranch on the Yellow Bull; but this house stood there
just inside, where the lake come in rolling and roaring, and fronted
right on this avenue, where our best people lived. It was stone, three
stories or more, maybe, with a place for buckboards to drive under and a
stone porch over the front door, and a walk and steps. And it was all
lit up from top to bottom; all the windows was bright.
We wasn't cold or wet or tired, us three, but we wasn't feeling
good--not one of us. Now when we stopped there for some reason and
looked at all them red lights shining, I sort of felt a wish that I
could see a light shining in some home ranch once more, like I had so
often out on the Yellow Bull. I set there looking at that place, all lit
up for somebody, all waiting for somebody; and for a time I forgot where
I was--forgot even that the car had stopped.
I turns round; and there was Bonnie Bell pulling her coat up round her
neck and fixing her hands in her muff, and her pa was buttoning up his
coat. Just then, too, I seen the chauffore jump down offen the front
seat. He comes round to the door, right where the walk was that led up
to this new big house, and he opens the door and touches his hat, and
stands there, waiting.
What with their laughing and pulling at me, and me sort of hanging back,
we kind of forgot it was Christmas Eve. Old Man Wright thought of it,
sudden; and he turns back to the man, who still stood at the door
looking after Bonnie Bell and us as though we'd forgot something. He
puts his hand in his waistcoat pocket and hauls out a ten-dollar gold
piece, and puts it into the hand of this new chauffore of ours.
"Here you go, son," says he. "Merry Christmas! And I hope you'll take
good care of my daughter."
The new chauffore, standing there in the snow--he was tall and a right
good-looking chap too--he touches his cap.
"Thank you, sir," says he.
I seen the car move on away. It didn't turn in at our alley, but went on
to the next gate, because our road wasn't quite finished yet. A minute
afterward Bonnie Bell had me inside the door in the hall and was kissing
us both, right in front of a sad-looking man in clothes like ours.
We stood for just a minute near the big door, and before we got it shut
she looked out once more into the night, with the lights shining all
through the snow, and the trees looking white and thin in the drift.
"Call the chauffore in and have him get a drink," says Old Man Wright.
"That was a cold ride."
But by this time he was gone; so we all turns back to wrastle with this
sad man, who evident was intending to mix it with us.
V