s 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 be