f been. Them
high benches along the mountains never was made for farming. The new
settlers that had come in under our old patents, through this here
Yellow Bull Colonization and Improvement Company, they was shore having
hard sledding along of their having believed everything they seen in the
papers. They'd allowed they was going into the Promised Land. It
was--but it wasn't nothing else but a promise.

It was Old Man Wisner's fault really. Though, after his usual way in
side lines, he never showed his hand, he was deep in that company
hisself. It was him now that had to hold the thing together. The
settlers got sore and some of them quit, and most of them didn't pay
their second or third payments. Of course that didn't make no
difference, so far as we was concerned, for the Yellow Bull Colonization
and Improvement Company had to make their deferred payments just the
same to us. But when the company's money run out, and they maybe had to
assess the stockholders, some of the stockholders got almighty cold
feet.

"Well, Colonel," says I, "I reckon we'll get back our ranch some of
these days, won't we? I shore wish we would."

"So do I, Curly; but I'm afraid not," says he.

"Why not?" I ast him.

"Well, it's Old Man Wisner--that's the reason," says he. "You see, it's
his money that they are working with now," says he. "Their new ditch has
cost them more than four times what the engineer said it would--a ditch
always does. They've been wasting the water, like grangers always do,
and they're fighting among themselves. These States people has to learn
how to farm all over again when they go out into that sort of country.
As to them pore stockholders, I reckon you could buy them out right
cheap; but, cheap or not, Old Man Wisner's in more than he ever thought
he'd be," says he.

"Ain't you going to let the old man off on none of them deferred
payments?" says I, grinning.

"I am, of course, Curly," says he, solemn. "Seeing what he has done for
us, I'm just hankering for some chance of doing him a kindness!" says
he.

I begun to believe that before this here game was all played there'd be
some fur flying between them two old hes, neither of which was easy to
make quit.

XII

US AND A ACCIDENTAL FRIEND

Bonnie Bell she was busy, after her little ways, fixing her
garden or laying out her flower beds, or reading, or studying about
pictures. She drove her electric brougham a good deal, riding around.

She w