t on his wide veranda and
watch his lowing herds increase and multiply at eighty-five dollars a
head--and prices going up all the time. Ain't that fine, Curly? Things
never used to happen just thataway when you and me owned that range, did
they?"

"Not hardly," says I.

"No," says the old man, falling into one of them thinking spells. "No;
they didn't."

Then after about half a hour he says:

"Nor they can't, neither. It'll cost that old miser, Dave Wisner, about
three or four million dollars," says he. "He's put up his life, his
fortune and his sacred honor on that irrigation scheme, and he's going
to be lucky if he gets through with any of them before I call it off."

"Colonel," says I, "you and him remind me of two old Galloways out on
the range, standing head to head, and pushing for a couple of hours or
so at a time--only, you two been pushing for a couple of years."

"Uh-huh!" says he. "But I'm right cheerful; and I don't feel my neck
giving none yet," says he; and he rubs his hand up and down it.

"Has Tom Kimberly been here lately?" the old man ast me, real
suddenlike, right soon after that, though I hadn't said nothing to him.

"He was here this afternoon," says I. "He ast after Miss Bonnie. She
says she was sick, had a cold, and couldn't see no one."

"I'll give Tom sixty days for to propose to Bonnie Bell," says he. "If
he don't, then I'll have to. It don't stand to reason that girl's going
to have a bad cold that's going to last for sixty days; so she'll be
home sometimes when he comes over. I know how his ma and pa feel about
it, and I know how I feel too. Maybe we can get Tom to part his hair
after a while, or take up some manly habit like chawing tobacco instead
of touching the light guitar. Just to take a look at him, I'd say he
shaved with one of them little razors like a hoe. For all I know, he may
wear garters. Still, time alters many things.

"He's marrying into crowned heads when he comes into our family," says
he, going on, "because I'm alderman here, and if my freckles lasts I'm
liable to keep on being alderman. Sometimes I wisht I'd put in the
papers that I was clean broke and depended on the savings which a
faithful old servitor--that's you, Curly--had brung me in my time of
need. But I'm afraid it's too late for that now, though the time to test
them things is before the wedding obsequies and not after."

"Colonel," says I, "suppose a young man would of come along that didn't
have