weight on the table when he
brings down his fist, "if times gets any harder, as like enough they
will, Dave Wisner's got to let that property go on the market for what
it'll bring inside his one year of grace after foreclosure. I know what
that means; it'll mean I got a few thousand acres of land more to
distribute among my heirs and assigns, my executors, friends, faithful
servitors, villagers and others--however you got that figured out in
them papers.

"Let me see them papers," says he after a while. "Are you shore you got
my girl's name spelled Katherine? And that she gets this city residence
here?"

Then they went over it again. But after a while the lawyer got done, and
so did the barber, and they both went away; and the old man turns to me.

"Curly," says he, "I'm rich. I'm awful rich. I didn't know how rich I
was till I begun to figure it up with Fanstead, Maclay & Horn, my
lawyers here. I reckon, taking fair values, I'm worth ten or twelve
million dollars--maybe twenty or forty--most of it made in this here
town in a couple of years or so, and all out of the Wisner money we got
for the ranch, which we're going to get back pretty nigh clean of cost,
you might say. I didn't mean to; but I'm rich--awful rich!

"And so, seeing I ain't got no heirs of my own blood and kin, I been
looking around for a few others. There's that Katherine; she's a good
girl. She kissed me right here once." And the old man put his hand on
the top of his head. "I'm going to give her a little something after I'm
dead; for instance, this house and the things here--half a million
dollars maybe. Likewise, I've fixed up a few things for my faithful
servitor aforesaid, Henry Absalom Wilson--which is you, Curly. I give
you only enough for cigarette money," says he; "never mind how much. And
as for them two," says he--"her and the Wisners' hired man--not a cent!
Not a damned cent! I'll show him!

"The old ranch," says he, "is going to be fixed up sometime--some of my
heirs and executors'll get a hold of that. It's easy to get plenty of
heirs if you have twelve or fifty million dollars. I've left
instructions to make improvements out there. It'll sort of be the best
apology I can make to the woman that's buried out there--Gawd bless
her!--as good a woman as ever lived on earth. I can't see how she could
have such a girl like she done. Well," he finishes, sort of sighing. "I
done my best. I may not live more'n thirty or forty years more.

"S