"She's a good roper," says I, "and she can ride as well as she can rope."

"Could you ever show me how to rope?" says he. "Would you?"

"Sh.o.r.e I'll show you sometime if we ever get a chance," says I. "I'll look round in our ranch room there in the house, and see if I can find a rope."

"Have you got a room in there like a ranch?" says he.

"Exacty like our old ranch," says I. "It's the main room out of the old Circle Arrow Ranch."

"Could she, now--would she help teach a fellow how to rope a drowning person?" says he. "That's what she done. She's a corker, ain't she?"

"She sh.o.r.e is," says I. "Her own folks mostly reserves the right to say that, though."

"I beg pardon," says he, and he got red again. "I know where I belong."

"Just kind of keep on knowing where you belong and where she belongs, son," says I--"it's two different propositions. I trust, my good man,"

says I to him, "that you understand I'm the foreman of the ranch."

"Don't it beat the world," says he to me after a while--us standing there still talking though he was wet as a rat--"how things is run?

Sometimes it seems like we can't help ourselfs, and we all get into the wrong places trying to get into the right ones. Now I'd like to thank that lady; but I can't. She's wonderfully beautiful, isn't she--your mistress? I say now, Curly, you thank her for me, won't you?"

I felt rather savage towards anybody coming from the Wisner side of the fence, but someway this fellow was so decent, and he evident meant to be so square, that I couldn't hardly feel no way but friendly to him.

"You've been with your folks quite a while, ain't you?" says I after a while.

"Oh, yes; I suppose I'm kind of useful in the scheme some ways or they'd tie a can to me."

"In Millionaire Row, the way I figure it," says I to him, "the Wisners is the king bees?"

He nods.

"I'm afraid that's about the truth. At least that's the way they think it is--the old man and the old lady. Folks that don't swing in line with their ways they get froze out."

"Is that so?" says I, getting hot under the collar right away. "Well, let me tell you something: When it comes to playing any kind of freeze-out, where Old Man Wright is concerned, believe me, there's two sides to that game. Do you see?"

I looked straight at him, and I went on:

"n.o.body ever seen Old Man Wright weaken in nothing he once begun. As for money, he can't be making less than a million a month or so right here in this town where he is now. He's one of them kind that does."

"I believe you," says he. "Was you saying that your folks used to own the Circle Arrow Ranch out in Wyoming?"

"Uh-huh; and I wisht we did right now."

"That's funny," says he. "And you sold it to a syndicate?"

"Uh-huh--d.a.m.n 'em!"

"And Old Man Wisner was one of the silent partners and one of the biggest owners in that syndicate--colonization and irrigation. There ain't anything that he won't go against that there's money in, and he mostly wins," says he.

"Well, what do you know about that!" says I. "Us moving in here and living right next door to him--that's the funniest thing I ever did hear. They sh.o.r.e was on opposite sides of that game, wasn't they, them two folks? Well, Old Man Wisner got the worst of it--that's all. You can't raise nothing on that land except cows and he'll find it out. We got some of our deferred payments coming in, like enough; but it wouldn't surprise me if we got all that land back sometime, and I sh.o.r.e hope we do."

He kind of puckers up his mouth and puts his fingers on it.

"By Jove!" says he. "By Jove! Would you give me a job cowpunching, Curly?" says he.

"Not unless you could rope better then than you can now," says I. "And if you can't ride a horse any better than you can a boat I don't think you could earn your board."

He took it all right, and only laughed.

I went up through the boathouse and the garridge and up the back steps into the little portico--sort of storm door that's over the back door of our house where it looks out over the lake. If you'll believe me, there was Bonnie Bell standing there, all in her bathing clothes! She hadn't gone in yet.

"Has he gone, Curly?" says she.

"He has just went," says I. "What are you doing here, all wet? Why didn't you go in right away?"

"Is he all right, Curly?" says she, sort of rolling her hair up off her neck and into her rubber cap.

"Yes," says I; "he ain't hurt none."

"What were you talking about so long?" says she.

"A good many things--you, for instance," I says to her.

"What did he say?" she ast of me.

"Why, nothing much; only how sorry he was you saved his life."

"Sorry--why?"

"Well, it makes a man feel mighty mean to have a woman save his life."

"Did he say that?" she says to me. Now when Bonnie Bell smiles she sort of has a dimple here and there. She sort of smiled now. "What kept you out there so long? You two people was talking like two old women."

"Well," I says, "I was just promising to show him how to rope; he says he wants to learn."

"When are you going to show him, Curly?"

"Oh, sometime some morning, like enough, down there on the dock. He says he'll sneak over from his place, so no one will see him. I don't reckon your pa will mind my showing a young fellow how to rope--I'd like to feel a rope in my hand again anyhow. I expect before long he'll be wearing a wide hat and singing 'O, bury me not on the lone prairee!'"

"Curly," says she.

"What?"

"Did you find my rope in along with those in the big room? I forget whether I brought it along."

"Kid," says I, "if there's going to be any instruction to hired men on the rope or mouth organ or jew's-harp, or anything of that sort, it's me that gives it. I'm segundo on this ranch. Now you go on upstairs."

She had her hair all pushed back now under her cap, wet as it was, standing there fixing it. She was in her bathing clothes still and awful wet, but she didn't seem cold. She looked kind of pink and sort of happy; I don't know why. Lord, she was a fine-looking girl! There never was one handsomer than Bonnie Bell Wright.