ntleman
take care of the reorganization on the spot?"

"That's the idea!" breaks in Bonnie Bell right then. "There ain't any
better cow country out-of-doors than the Yellow Bull Valley. I know
that. Give us a chance and we'll pull this whole business out of the
hole," says she.

"James," says Old Man Wright, and he walks around and holds out his
hand, playing the game wide open, like he always done--"James," says he,
"will you shake hands with the worst old fool there is in the whole
world--except Curly?"

Now James he's been doing pretty well up to now, but this about knocks
him out. He gets up, kind of red and startled, and he shakes hands with
the Old Man; but he couldn't say nothing and didn't seem to know what to
do with his hands. So he puts his hand in his pocket, like a man will,
and he seems to feel something there; and all at once, not being able to
think of nothing else, he pulls out what he found and holds it out to
Old Man Wright.

"Colonel," says he, "will you have a chew? It's Arrow Head--same name as
our home spring out there," says he. "I've used no other since. I just
heard you own most of the stock in the Arrow Head Tobacco Company; but I
ain't surprised. You ain't overlooked much!"

I reckon that was the luckiest accident ever happened to him--when he
found that piece of plug. Old Man Wright taken a bite of it liberal, and
says he:

"Son, do you wear garters?"

Everybody fell to laughing then, excepting me and Old Man Wright. It was
serious for us. We was figuring on cowmen now. Bonnie Bell, she goes up
to her pa once more and hugs him, and looks at the hired man.

"Don't mind him, Jim," says she. "He's awful sometimes; but he means all
right and he has his own ways of figuring. I've got the best dad in the
world!" says she.

"You had the best ma in the world," says Old Man Wright. "Seems to me
sometimes you favor your ma," says he.

Then they kissed each other; fact is, most everybody got kissed around
there excepting me. Yet, when you come to figure about it, I'd been
responsible for a good many of those things and the way they come out,
and I didn't get no credit for it. No foreman ever does.

Old Lady Wisner, like I said, she was setting there and saying mostly:
"Gawd bless me!" and "Gawd bless my soul!"--nobody paying much attention
to her. But now Bonnie Bell she sidles over to her and sort of puts out
her hand, shy. The old lady she puts a arm around her, and she begins to
cry t