goes over to the
table and begins to fill his pipe.

"Well, Curly," says he, "I couldn't foreclose on the Circle Arrow if I
wanted to now--they paid their deferred payment for this year. Old
Wisner, he got backing from three banks and he come through. That
leaves only one payment more. Somebody's going to be out in the cold
before long; but it won't be us."

"No," says I; "it'll be them grangers."

"It ain't them that's going to get the worst of it--it's Old Man
Wisner," says he. "As for us, we can't go back there no more--we're city
folks now. I've got to stay here to watch Old Man Wisner a while and
you've got to ride that fence.

"Where's Bonnie Bell?" says he then.

"Huh!" says I. "Where is she? That's what I'd like to know too."

"Come to that, after all," says he, smoking and looking into the
fireplace, "the girl's got me guessing lately. She don't look well. Now
she's up and now she's down--her actions don't track none. If I didn't
know better I'd say she was in love. That couldn't be, for there ain't
been no chance."

"Well," says I, "there's other kinds of deferred payments, ain't there,
Colonel?"

"Maybe so," says he, sort of sighing. "We'll let it run as it lays; we
can't help it much. Mostly a handsome girl finds somebody somewhere or
somehow; or sometime----"

"Ain't that the God's truth, Colonel!" says I.

I was just on the point of telling him all I knew.

"If only she was safe from the sharks!" says he. "If I found any young
man that I thought was after her money, not after her--why, I don't know
what I'd do to him!"

"I know what you'd do, Colonel," says I; and I was glad I hadn't told
him.

"Well, maybe. The trouble is to find any young man that's halfway as
good as her, with some sort of folks back of him and some sort of way of
making a living. You see, Curly, you can't tell much about things ten or
twenty years ahead. A pore man may get money or a rich man may lose
money. Now her ma married me when I didn't have no chance on earth ever
to be anybody or to have any money; but we got on and was right
happy--anyways I was--and I wasn't rich then.

"I'm awful rich now, Curly," says he, "though I don't know as I'm any
happier. It bores me. For instance, I was looking around today for a
chance to invest a little more money; not much, only about half of this
here last deferred payment that come in--all Old Man Wisner's money--and
I seen in the papers that we haven't got no potash works