"It's been but a little while, Curly," says she. "It's been but such a little time! I don't know whether I can get over it--I don't know whether I can forget. But, oh, Curly, for one hour let me open my heart--for just this time let me be a woman!... But it wasn't for him!"

And now she was whispering again.

"I'm a thief, Curly!" says she after a while. "I've stolen your life and dad's. I've taken all you gave me. I don't deserve it."

"Oh, yes, you do," says I; "you deserved all we done for you. We loved you, Honey, and we do now."

"But you can't any more, Curly," says she. "I've been a thief. I've stolen your lives--from you two big, splendid men. But, oh! give me my hour--the one hour out of all my life.

"I stole from him too--from Tom," says she. "I've taken from him what I didn't pay for and can't. I never can. At least I can't until I've had--my hour.

"A woman has to face things all her life, Curly," says she; "and always she says: 'Well, let it be!' She takes her losses, Curly, and sometimes she forgets. But if she ever forgets what is in my heart tonight--if she forgets that--then life is never worth while to her again. There's nothing to do then--it's all a sham and a fraud. If that's what life means I don't want to live any more."

"Bonnie," says I, "you mustn't talk that way." I sort of drew her down on my knee now, and pushed her hair back and looked at her. "Listen at you--you that used to be up in the morning so early and hoorahing all through the ranch--your cheeks red with the sun, and your hair blowing, and your eyes like a deer's! Why, nothing but life was in the world for you then--nothing but just being alive."

"I wasn't a woman then, Curly," says she. "I didn't know."

"I didn't neither," says I; "and I don't know now."

"You can't," says she. "It's terrible! I'm--I think I'll go now."

She taken herself off my knee then; and, the first thing I know, she was gone.

I stayed there looking at the place where she'd been. I knew that now there sh.o.r.e was h.e.l.l to pay!

XXIV

HOW BONNIE BELL LEFT US ALL

I never went to bed none at all that night. I couldn't of slept, nohow.

I set there in the ranch room thinking and trying to figure out what I had ought to do. I concluded that might depend some on what Bonnie Bell was going to do; and I couldn't tell what that was, for she didn't seem clear about it herself.

Along about daybreak, maybe sooner, when I set there--maybe I'd been asleep once or twice a little--I heard the noise of a car going out not far from us. I suppose, like enough, it was over at the Wisners'; maybe some of their folks was going or coming. In the city, folks don't use the way they do on a ranch and night goes on about the same as daytime.

I'd been studying so hard over all these things, trying to see how I'd have to play the game, that I didn't notice Old Man Wright when he come in that morning, about the time he usual got up for breakfast. He wasn't worried none, but seemed right happy, like something was clear in his mind.

"Well, Curly," says he, "you're up right early, ain't you? What makes you so keen to hear the little birds sing this morning?"

He fills up his pipe. I didn't say nothing.

"Well," says he after a time, smoking and looking out the window, "I suppose I'm a fond parent again right now. Maybe I'll be a grandpa before long--who can tell? I never did figure on being a grandpa in my born days," says he; "but such is life."

"What do you mean, Colonel?" I ast him.

"Well," says he, "I ain't a real grandpa yet, maybe, but I reckon it's like enough. All them flowers and that sort of thing--and that late executive session last night. When's the day?"

He still looks right contented. What could I say to him then?

"Too bad," says he, "you couldn't of stayed up to get the happy news, Curly!" says he. "I expect Tom Kimberly would of been right glad to tell you or me; but I knew how the thing was going. I been a young man once myself. He don't want old people setting round--he wants the whole field clear for hisself. It takes young folks several hours sometimes to set and tell things to each other that could be told in just a minute.

Proposing is a industrial waste, the way it's done customary.

"Well, well!" he goes on. "I'm glad my little girl's going to be so happy. She's a good girl and she loves her pa. Sometimes I even think she's right fond of you, Curly," says he. "I can't see why. You're a mighty trifling man, Curly," says he. "I don't see why I keep you."

Then I knowed he was feeling good. He wouldn't turn me off noways in the world, but he liked to joke thataway sometimes.

"Well," says he after a while, "what do you say about it your own self, Curly?"

"I say she loves you as much as any girl ever did her pa. She loves me, too, though I don't know why, neither."

"Sh.o.r.e she does!" he nods. "And she'll do the square thing by us two--that's sh.o.r.e."

"Is it?" says I. "Well, who knows what's the square thing in the world?

Sometimes it's hard to tell what is."

"That's so," says he, thoughtful. "Sometimes it is. I might of liked some other man better'n Tom, maybe, if there'd been any other man; but there isn't. I'm glad she's taken him. He'll turn out all right. He's a good boy and his folks is good. He'll come out all right--don't you worry."

"No," says I; "I reckon it'll do no good to worry, Colonel."

"What do you mean?" says he. "Ain't it all right?" says he.

"That remains to be saw," says I.

"She accepts him, don't she?"

"If I knew I'd tell you," says I; "but I don't know for sh.o.r.e."

"Of course," he says to me, "the girl wouldn't be apt to talk very free to you about it, especial since you was in bed."

"Was I?" says I. "Oh, all right, if I was in bed! If I didn't talk to Bonnie Bell a while here last night, then everything is done, and I'm glad to know it."

"Well, where's she now?" says he. "I'm hungry as all get out; and you know I can't eat till she comes down to breakfast--I've got to have her setting right across the table from me, like her ma used to set. Oh, hum! I suppose some day she won't be setting there no more. Just you and me'll be setting there, looking at each other like two d.a.m.n old fools.

That's what fathers is for, Curly," says he. "That's the best they can get out of the draw.

"Well, that's what I've been living for ever since she was knee-high--just to make her happy; just to give her, like her ma told me I must, the place in life that she had coming to her. No little calico dress and a wide hat for Miss Mary Isabel Wright now, I reckon, Curly.

Her game is different now. Them Better Things is coming her way, I reckon now, Curly. She's left the ranch and is playing a bigger game--and she's won it. Well, I'll tell 'em both how glad I am; but I wisht she'd come down to breakfast, for I'm getting right hungry."

She didn't come. I couldn't say anything to him yet, for I didn't exactly know what the truth was; Bonnie Bell hadn't told me whether or not she accepted Tom, but only said he was going to come back again. I wisht she'd come down and take this thing off my hands, for I was getting cold feet as sh.o.r.e as you're born.

He walks up and down, getting hungrier all the time, and singing "Tom Ba.s.s He Was a Ranger!" But she didn't come. At last he calls our William; and says he to William:

"Go send Annette up to ask Miss Bonnie if she's ready for breakfast."

"Yes, sir; very well, sir. Hit's all growing quite cold, sir," says William; and he went away.

He come back in a few minutes and stood in the door and said his Ahum!