Well, things rocked along this way and we got through the winter
someways, though every once in a while I taken a cold along of being
shut up so much. There wasn't nowhere to go and nothing to do except to
read the papers and wish you was dead.
Old Man Wright couldn't stand it no more; so he goes downtown and rents
him a fine large office in a big building, with long tables with glass
on top, and big chairs, something like in a bank. He didn't put no
business sign on the door--just his name: J. W. Wright.
I'm lazy enough for anybody, like any cowpuncher--I don't believe in
working only in spots; but sometimes I'd get so tired of doing nothing
at the house that I'd get the chauffore to take me down to Old Man
Wright's office, where I felt more at home. Nobody never come in to see
us once--not in three months. We didn't have no neighbors, and we begun
to see that that was the truth. I couldn't understand it, for we'd never
got caught at nothing.
"Colonel," says I one morning, "do you reckon they're holding our past
up against us anyways?" says I. "We spend a awful lot of money, but what
do we get for it? Not a soul has came in our new house. As for me, I
know I ain't earning no salary."
"Don't worry about that, Curly," says he. "You're getting plenty of grub
and a place to sleep, ain't you? I'm the one that ought to worry,
because I can't hardly find nothing to do here except make a little
money."
"Won't there nobody play cards or nothing? Ain't there no sports in this
town?" says I.
"Poker here is a mere name." He shakes his head. "If you push in a
hundred before the draw you're guilty of manslaughter. But there is
other ways of making money."
"How is the deferred payments on the Circle Arrow coming on?" says I.
"One come in, so far, interest and all," says he. "I wisht it hadn't.
First thing I know, I'll be as rich as Old Man Wisner here. I see he
wants to run for alderman up in that ward. Now I wonder what his game is
there--it don't stand to reason he'd want to be a alderman now, unless
there's something under it. You'd think he was trying to run the town
and the whole world, too, wouldn't you?"
"I don't like that outfit," says I. "They ain't friendly. If a man don't
neighbor with you, like enough he's stealing somewhere and don't want
to be watched."
"That certainly is so," says he. "Still, I been busy enough for a
while."
"The first thing you know," I says to him, "you'll lose your roll, and
then where will we be?" But he only laughs at that.
"For instance," says he, "you see all them electric lights all over this
town. I begun to study about them things when I first come here. There's
a sort of little thing inside that they burn--carbon, they call it. I
seen that everybody would keep their eyes on the light and not notice
the carbon. But still they had to have carbon. I put a little into a
company that made them things--not much; only a hundred thousand or so.
Since then, what have they done? Why, they've turned in and gave me
eighty per cent stock for nothing, and raised the cash dividend until
I'm making twenty per cent on all I invested and what I didn't invest
too. Such things bores me.
"Then again, there's my rubber business," says he, "rubber tires. The
second day we owned the big car she busts a couple of tires--fifty
dollars or so per each. I begun to figure out how many cars they was
running in this town, up and down the avenue and all over all the other
streets, each one of 'em with four tires on and any one of 'em liable to
bust any minute. I figure the tires runs from fifteen to sixty dollars
apiece and that somebody spends a lot of money for them. Then I went and
bought into a good company that makes them things, a few months ago--not
much; only a couple of hundred thousand or so. But what's the use?" He
sets back and yawns, looking tired.
"I can't help it. I can't find no game in this country that's hard
enough to play for to be interesting. What them rubber-tire people done
was to make me a present of a whole lot of other stock the other day and
raise the dividends. I can't buy into no company at all, it seems like,
'less'n every twenty minutes or so they up and declare another dividend.
I don't like it. I wisht I could find some real man's-size game to play,
because I'm like you--I get lonesome."
Still, he was looking thoughtful.
"Some games we can play," says he. "Then again, seems like there's
others we can't. Now about the kid----"
"She's busy all the time," says I to him. "She reads and paints. Sundays
she goes to church, while you and me only put on a collar that hurts.
Week days she goes down to the picture galleries and into the liberry.
She buys books. She's got her own cars--the big car and the electric
brougham you give her on her birthday last week--ain't a thing in the
world she ain't got. She's plumb happy."
"Except that she ain't!"
"You mean that we don't know nobody--nobody comes in to visit?" He nods.
"Well, why don't we go in and call on them Wisner people that lives next
to us?" says I.
"We can't do that; the rules of the game is that the folks living in a
place first has to make the first call."
"That's a fool rule," says I.
"Shore it is; but Bonnie Bell knows all them rules and she ain't going
to make any break--Old Man Smith taught her a few things--or maybe she
learned it instinctive from her ma. Her ma was a Maryland Janney. They
pretty near knew. And yet she told me---- Oh, shucks, Curly!"
"Well, what did she say?"
"She says she met Old Lady Wisner fair out on the sidewalk one morning
and she was going to speak to her; they was both of them going down to
their cars, which was standing side by side on the street. The old lady,
she turns up her nose, such as there was of it, and she looks the other
way. That hurt my girl a good deal. You know she ain't got a unkind
thought in her heart for nobody or nothing on earth. She never was broke
to be afraid of nothing or expect nothing but good of nobody--you and me
taught her that, didn't we, Curly? And that old cat wouldn't look at my
girl! Well, Curly, that's what I mean when I say there is some games
that seems hard to play. Don't a woman get the worst of it every way of
the deck, anyhow?"
"Well now," says I, "ain't there no way we can break in there
comfortable like?"
"I don't see how," says he, shaking his head.
"Why can't we kill their dog?" says I. "Something friendly, just to
start things going."
"That ain't no good," says he. "We tried it. Bonnie Bell already killed
two of their dogs with her new electric brougham. You see, she had to go
out and try it for herself, for she says she can ride anything that has
hair on it, even if it's only curled hair in the cushions. First thing
you know, the Wisner dog--pug nose it was, with its tail curled
tight--it goes out on the road, acting like it owned the whole street,
same as its folks does. Well, right then him and Bonnie Bell's new
electric mixes it. The dog got the worst of it.
"Look-a-here, Curly," says he after a while, and pulls a square piece of
paper outen his pocket. "Here's what we got in return for that--before
Bonnie Bell had time to say she was sorry. The old lady wrote, for once:
Mrs. David Abraham Wisner requests that the people living next door
to her exercise greater care in the operation of their vehicles, as
the animal lost through the criminal carelessness of one of these
people was of great value.
"Ain't that hell?" says he. "Cheerful, ain't it? No name signed to
it--nothing! But you can see from that just how they felt. That was
three days ago. They got a new dog. Well, this morning Bonnie Bell
killed that one!
"The trouble with them dogs is, they been used to thinking they own this
whole end of the street. They don't seem to recognize that we're anybody
at all. It's a awful thing and it put Bonnie Bell in wrong. She didn't
know what to do. She was so mad she wouldn't write. So she sends for
Jimmie--I mean James, our chauffore--he's got almost sober lately, it
being three months or so since Christmas, and him knowing a lot about
dogs. So she buys a new dog for them--a large one that you can see easy,
a collie dog; and Jimmie says he paid one-fifty for it."
"A dollar and a half is more than any dog is worth," says I, "especial a
dog that has anything to do with someone like that Wisner woman."
"A dollar and a half!" says he. "A hundred and fifty is what it cost;
this was a swell dog--a young collie about a year old. Well, Bonnie
Bell, she sends it round by James, our chauffore, with her compliments.
Their butler takes it in. I don't know whether it's going to stick or
not. It's a sort of olive branch. You see, Bonnie Bell can't write to no
such people, but she is sorry for killing their dogs and she wants to
make good somehow. I think it was a right good way. It looks like she
could hold her own, and yet like she was willing to meet 'em halfway.
"Well, that's all we can do," says he. "Let it go the way it lays on the
board. I don't like Old Man Wisner a little bit anyhow."
"Well," says I, "if he's running for alderman, why don't you run for
sher'f or something, just to keep occupied?"
"I'm studying my ward," says he. "I don't know very many of the saloon
people yet. You have to be pretty far along to get to be sher'f in a
place like this. But now, a alderman might be easier, if you went at it
right. Anyways, the way they have acted, I feel like I'd copper any game
Old Man Wisner was playing. I kind of feel in my bones that him and me
is going to lock horns, Curly. I don't like the way he acts; and, I tell
you, when I want a neighbor to be friendly with me he's got to be
friendly sometime."
Old Man Wright gets up now and walks around some, kind of grinning.
"But, on the whole, I may find something to keep me busy here in town.
For instance, Old Man Wisner is back of some sort of steal, shore as
you're born, in the Lake Shore Electric Extension that's going on up in
there--the paper says he's been selling it, or the interests has. Why?
He never done a direct thing in his life--that ain't the way he does
business; for that matter, it ain't the way business is done in the city
nohow. It's always done at a side door, not at a front door, the way we
done it on the Yellow Bull--straight out, even-Stephen.
"I figure he starts that story to make that stock cheap. Well, the other
day I buy up a little of it, right cheap at that--not much; only a few
hundred thousand dollars. Now I figure that if it ever goes up for Old
Man Wisner it will go up some for me. I may buy some more of it. I don't
know as it is worth anything--maybe not; but it certainly would please
me if I could find some kind of a side game here where I couldn't make
no money. I'm bored, Curly," says he; "that's what's the matter with
me."
But still he came round again and again to the real center of our coming
to town--Bonnie Bell. Him and me could have had a good time, but we knew
perfectly well that she wasn't having no good time.
"Curly," says he, kind of frowning and his jaw working some, "she ain't
got a friend in this whole damn town."
"Listen at you!" says I to him. "What are you talking about? She has got
us, ain't she? We are her friends. We've raised her. We are going to
take care of her. Ain't that enough?"
"No, Curly," says he to me; "we ain't enough."