y, she was game to go along. And he nods
all the time while she talks that way to him--him aching inside.

We didn't know any more than a rabbit where to go when we got to
Chicago; but Bonnie Bell took charge of us. We put up in the best hotel
there was, one that looks out over the lake and where it costs you a
dollar every time you turn round. The bell-hops used to give us the
laugh quiet at first, and when the manager come and sized us up he
couldn't make us out till we told him a few things. Gradual, though,
folks round that hotel began to take notice of us, especial Bonnie Bell.
They found out, too, like enough, that Old Man Wright had more money
than anybody in Chicago ever did have before--at least he acted like he
had.

"Curly," says he to me one day, "I got to go and take out a new bank
account. I can't write checks fast enough on one bank to keep up with
Bonnie Bell," says he.

"What's she doing, Colonel?" I ast him.

"Everything," says he. "Buying new clothes and pictures, and lots of
things. Besides, she's going to be building her house right soon."

"What's that?" I says.

"Her house. She's bought some land up there on the Lake Front, north of
one of them parks; it lays right on the water and you can see out across
the lake. She's picked a good range. If we had all that water out in
Wyoming we could do some business with it, though here it's a
waste--only just to look at.

"She's got a man drawing plans for her new house, Curly--she says we've
got to get it done this year. That girl shore is a hustler! Account of
them things, you can easy see it's time for me to go and fix things up
with a new bank."

So we go to the bank he has his eye on, about the biggest and coldest
one in town--good place to keep butter and aigs; and we got in line with
some of these Chicago people that are always in a hurry, they don't know
why. We come up to where there is a row of people behind bars, like a
jail. The jail keepers they set outside at glass-top tables, looking
suspicious as any case keeper in a faro game. They all looked like
Sunday-school folks. I felt uneasy.

Old Man Wright he steps up to one of the tables where a fellow is
setting with eyeglasses and chin whiskers--oldish sort of man; and you
knowed he looked older than he was. He didn't please me. He sizes us up.
We was still wearing the clothes we bought in Cheyenne at the Golden
Eagle, which we thought was good enough; but this man, all he says to us