Part 3

"It's her," says the old man at last.

I might have knew that--might have knew it was either Bonnie Bell or her ma that he had in his mind all the time; but he couldn't say a damn word. He went on after a while:

"When she was sick I begun to get sort of afraid about things. One day she taken Bonnie Bell by one hand and me by the other, and says she to me: 'John Willie'--she called me that, though nobody knew it maybe--'John Willie,' says she, 'I want to ask something I never dared ask before, because I never did know before how much you cared for me real,' says she. Oh, damn it, Curly, it ain't nobody's business what she said."

After a while he went on again.

"'Lizzie,' says I to her, 'what is it? I'll do anything for you.'

"'Promise me, then, John Willie,' says she, 'that you'll educate my girl and give her the life she ought to have.'

"'Why, Lizzie,' says I, 'of course I will. I'll do anything in the world you say, the way you ask it.'

"'Then give her the place that she ought to have in life,' she says to me."

He stopped talking then for maybe a hour, and at last he says again:

"Well, Curly, let it go at that. I can't talk about things. I couldn't ever talk about her."

I couldn't talk neither. After a while he kind of went on, slow:

"The kid's fifteen now," says he at last. "She's going to be a looker like her ma. It's in her blood to grow up in the cow business too--that's me. But she's got it in her, besides, like her ma, to do something different.

"I don't like to do my duty no more than anybody else does, but it shore is my duty to educate that kid and give her a chance for a bigger start than she can get out here. It was that that was in her ma's mind all the time. She didn't want her girl to grow up out here in Wyoming; she wanted her to go back East and play the game--the big game--the limit the roof. She ast it; and she's got to have it, though she's been dead more than ten years now. As for you and me, it can't make much difference. We've brought her up the best we knew this far."

"Well, you can't sell the Circle Arrow now," says I, "and I'll tell you why."

"Tell me," says he.

"Well, let's figure on it," says I. "It'll take anyways four years to develop Bonnie Bell ready to turn off the range, according to the way such things run. She'll have to go to school for at least four years. Why not let the thing run like it lays till then, while you send her East?"

"You mean to some girls' college?" says he. "Well, I've been thinking that all out. She'll have to go to the same kind of schools her ma did and be made a lady of, like her ma." He looks a little more cheerful and says to me: "That'll put it off four years anyways, won't it?"

"Shore it will," says I. "Maybe something will happen by that time. It don't stand to reason that them syndicate people will be as foolish four years from now as they are today; and like enough you can't sell the range then nohow." That makes us both feel a lot cheerfuller.

Well, later on him and me begun looking up in books what was the best college for girls, though none of 'em said anything about caring special for girls that knew more of horses and cows than anything else. We seen names of plenty of schools--Vassar and Ogontz and Bryn Mawr--but we couldn't pronounce them names; so we voted against them all. At last I found one that looked all right--it was named Smith.

"Here's the place!" says I to Old Man Wright; and I showed him on the page. "This man Smith sounds like he had some horse sense. Let's send Bonnie Bell to Old Man Smith and see what he'll do with her."

Well, we done that. Old Man Smith must of knew his business pretty well, for what he done with Bonnie Bell was considerable. She was changed when she got back to us the first time, come summer of the first year. I didn't get East and I never did meet up with Old Man Smith at all; but I say he must of knowed his business. His catalogue said his line was to make girls appreciate the Better Things of life. He spelled Better Things in big letters. Well, I don't know whether Bonnie Bell begun to hanker after them Better Things or not, but she was changed after that every year more and more when she come home. In four years she wasn't the same girl.

She wasn't spoiled--you couldn't spoil her noways. She was as much tickled as ever with the colts and the calves and the chickens and the alfalfa and the mountains; and she could still ride anything they brought along, and she hadn't forgot how to rope. Still, she was different. Her clothes was different. Her hats was different. Her shoes was different. Her hair was done up different. Somehow she had grew up less like her pa and more like her ma. So then I seen that 'bout the worst had happened to him and me that could happen. Them Better Things was not such as growed in Wyoming.

Now, Old Man Wright and me, us two, had brought up the kid. Me being foreman, that was part of my business too. We been busy. I could see we was going to be a lot busier. Before long something was due to pop. At last the old man comes to me once more.

"Curly," says he, "I was in hopes something would happen, so that this range of ours wouldn't be no temptation to them irrigation colonizers; I was hoping something would happen to them, so they would lose their money. But they lost their minds instead. These last four years they raised their bid on the Circle Arrow a half million dollars every year. They've offered me more money than there is in the whole wide world. They say now that for the brand and the range stock and the home ranch, and all the hay lands and ditches that we put in so long ago, they'll give me three million eight hundred thousand dollars, a third of it in real money and the rest secured on the place. What do you think of that?"

"I think somebody has been drunk," says I. "There ain't that much money at all. I remember seeing Miss Anderson, Bonnie Bell's teacher down at Meeteetse, make a million dollars on the blackboard, and it reached clear acrost it--six ciphers, with a figure in front of it. And that was only one million dollars. When you come to talking nearly four million dollars--why, there ain't that much money. They're fooling you, Colonel."

"I wisht they was," says he, sighing; "but the agent keeps pestering me. He says they'll make it four million flat or maybe more if I'll just let go. You see, Curly, we picked the ground mighty well years ago, and them ditches we let in from the mountains for the stock years ago is what they got their eyes on now. They say that folks can dry-farm the benches up toward the mountains--they can't, and I don't like to see nobody try it. I'm a cowman and I don't like to see the range used for nothing else. But what am I going to do?"

"Well, what are you going to do, Colonel?" says I. "I know what you'll do, but I'll just ast you."

"Of course," says he, "it ain't in my heart to sell the Circle Arrow--you know that--but I got to. Here's Bonnie Bell. She's finished--that is to say, she ain't finished, but just beginning. She's at the limit of what the range will produce for her right now. We got to move on."