uite a while in our ranch room,
looking at the fire. It wasn't winter yet, but sometimes we lit the fire
in the fireplace. Old Man Wright he seemed to be thinking of something,
or trying to. At last he says:

"Sis, go get the fine-toothed comb and comb your pa's head--won't you,
sis?" says he.

"Can't your barber do that for you?" ast she.

"He does; but no barber can really comb a alderman's head soothing,"
says he, "not like his own kid can. Now a alderman that's soothed proper
might be induced to do almost anything, and combing him on his head is
like scratching a pig along its back with a cob. You try it, kid; it
might be perductive of a new car or something for you," says he.

So then she gets the comb and begins for to comb his head some, and he
goes on talking with me. Evident he had something on his mind; that was
the way he'd got used to think when something hard come up.

"Curly," says he to me after a while, "what would you say if we had a
chance to buy in the Circle Arrow Ranch again?"

"I'd say it was the finest thing in the world," says I. "Them grangers
ain't got a chance on earth. It takes a long course for to learn how to
understand a cow's mind," says I.

"That's what they call sikeology in Smith," says Bonnie Bell.

"Well," says I, "you can't get no course in cow sikeology in no four
years; it takes more than that on the range, like your pa and me done.
They can't raise nothing out there in the Yellow Bull but cows, and they
don't know how to raise them. Colonel," says I, "ain't them deferred
payments deferring all right?"

"Some," says he. "They didn't pay nothing this year yet and it's way
past due. Looks like there might be some trouble in there, don't it?"

"Well then," says Bonnie Bell, "where does that leave us? Look at this
place; look at all our expense." She stopped combing then.

"Don't worry about that," says her pa. "We've made plenty of money other
ways than that. For instance, I got a offer right now to sell out all
our land below here toward the park for about three times what we paid
for it. The Second Calvary Regiment wants to put up a barracks, or a
armory or something, in there. Also, a French milliner wants in, just
below here."

"What!" says Bonnie Bell. "That would ruin the whole Row. What do you
mean by that?"

"Huh!" says her pa. "That's what they all say. Old Man Wisner was crazy
when he heard something about it--he was going to get out a injunction.
I hope he'