ll try it; for he can't. Seems like most of the things he's
been trying on us he couldn't make go."

"Well, dad, I don't believe I'd like that barracks on our land either.
Suppose we all think it over a little bit."

"All right," says he. "There may be other ways of having fun with Dave.
I just thought of that one. Oh, well, I bought the lot north of them,
and I'm thinking of putting a Old People's Home in there," says he.
"Across the street from there I'm thinking of putting up a statue of
Kaiser Wilhelm; some of my constituents they would come there Sunday and
hold services," says he.

"Anything else you got on your mind, Colonel?" I ast him.

"Well, I just seen a chance to make a little speculation in a
moving-picture company," says he. "I didn't put in much--only two, three
hundred thousand dollars; but I didn't know but what it might make some
money after a while. How would you like to be a actor man in our
company, Curly?" says he. "The worst it could do would be to spoil a
puncher that never was much good anyhow."

"No," says I; "it's too much like work."

"Well, we could make other pictures," says he, smiling contented. "For
instance, we could set up two or three cameras right acrost the street
from Old Man Wisner's 'most any morning. Then, when Old Man Wisner come
out we could take his picture and show him how he looks when he has got
a grouch. Or we could take a picture of the old lady getting in her car
or getting out. Neither one of 'em has got much girlish figure now.

"Why, there's loads of pictures that we could take. If you didn't like
to work much riding or anything in the movies," says he, "you could be
taken leaning kind of careless on our gate and looking over the Wisners'
fence--for instance, talking to their hired man.... Don't you dig my
head no more, kid," says he. "I ain't no bomb-proof, like you think."

"Dad," says Bonnie Bell, "I ain't going to comb your head no more."

"Why?" says he.

"You're a mean and revengeful old man," says she. "It ain't right for us
to treat our neighbors thataway," says she, "and I won't have it."

"I'm living up to my laws," says he, calm. "I've got to hand Wisner
what he's trying to hand to me. You know the law that's been good enough
for us. That's the range law."

"This ain't the range," says she.

"Ain't it?" says he. "This looks like a ranch house some. If you'll run
your comb along over my dome, too, you'll find, unless I'm awful
mistaken, some