Dave? You can't quit, Curly," says he;
"there's too much for you to do out there on the old ranch. Do you
suppose you could teach this kid to rope?" says he.

"I already got a start at it," says I. "Him and me used to practice
some."

* * * * *

Well now, that was how come us to square it all up, both sides, and come
to a understanding that didn't noways seem possible just a little while
before. That was how we come to go back to the old Yellow Bull country,
for part of the year anyways. It was how a right bad run-in was saved.
It was how Old Man Wisner was kept from busting wide open the next day,
and, like enough, a bank or so along with him. Likewise it was how them
two fortunes, maybe fifty or ninety million or more between them when
they got things cleaned up, was joined till death do them part. When
them two old fellows got to pulling together something had to crack. We
shore got a business now--sever'l of 'em.

I got Jimmie--we come to call him that on the ranch--so he could rope
some inside his first year, though I had to show him how to spread his
loop a little wide and not to depend on soaping his hondoo.

It was like old times to see a kid beginning on the range in the one
man's game that's worth while on earth--raising cows in a good cow
country. I was glad I hadn't shot Jimmie, or my boss hadn't shot his
pa--I wouldn't of minded so about Old Lady Wisner, because I couldn't
help remembering how she'd made trouble deliberate from the first. Of
course I'd made trouble, too, but I hadn't went to.

What become of the old wall between them two houses? Nothing much; we
left it stand, for someways it didn't seem so high no more when Bonnie
Bell's ivy and them other plants begun to hang down on it. But, of
course, I had to bust the hole in a little bit bigger after a while, so
as the twins could get through right easy, as well as Peanut. One was
named David Abraham and the other John William; but they couldn't help
it.

The best time was when we all rounded up one spring out there at the
station to go out on the ranch for the spring round-up, and to start
things running for the year. Old Man Wisner and the old lady was there,
and Old Man Wright and Jimmie and Bonnie Bell and me--me that was
foreman now and, like enough, earning it, the way things had been let go
to pieces.

We'd come down from Cody to that station where I found Jimmie--time I
was out hunting for him. For a wh