says he.

"Well, then, what in hell is wrong?" says I.

"It goes back a long ways," says he after a while, and now his face
looked more than ever like it did when he was there a-going through them
trunks. I turns my own face away now, so as not to embarrass him, for I
seen he was sort of off his balance.

"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," say