t.
Bonnie Bell looks at him and looks at me like she missed something. On
the whole, I reckon we was the three lonesomest, scaredest, unhappiest
people in all that big town--it was Christmas Eve too!

There was a lot of other people in a row standing down the hall, back of
this sad man. He located us at last and began to help Old Man Wright
take off his overcoat--and me too; but I wouldn't let him. I wasn't
sick or nothing. So we stood there a little while, dressed up and just
come to our new home ranch.

"That will do, William," says Bonnie Bell to the sad man.

"Father," says she, and she leads him to the row of folks in the hall,
"these are all our people that I have engaged. This is Mary, our cook;
and Sarah, the first maid. Annette is going to be my maid."

Well, she went down the line and introduced us to a dozen of 'em, I
reckon. I just barely did know enough not to shake hands. Some of 'em
touched their foreheads and the girls bobbed. They didn't talk none and
they didn't shake hands.

By now Bonnie Bell's maid had her coat over her arm and them two was
starting upstairs.

"I'll be back in a minute, dad," says she. "William will take you and
Curly into your room."

The sad man he walks off down the hall, us following, and we come to a
place right in the center of the house--and he left us there. We stopped
when we went through the door.

What do you know? Bonnie Bell had fitted up that room precisely like the
big room in the old home ranch! All our old things was there--how she
got them I never knew. There was the old table, with the pipes and
papers on it, and tobacco scattered round, and bottles over on the
shelf, and a bridle or so--just the same place all the way through. She
even had the stones of the old fireplace brought on, one nicked, where
Hank Henderson shot the cook once.

"Look-a-here, Curly," says Old Man Wright after a while.

He leads me over to the corner of the room, aside of the fireplace. Dang
me, if there wasn't our two old saddles, wore slick and shiny! Old Man
Wright stands there in his spiketail coat, and he runs his hand down
that old stirrup leather a time or two; and for a little while he can't
say nothing at all--me neither.

"Ain't she some girl, Curly?" says he after a while.

"She's the ace, Colonel," says I.

"Ain't a thing overlooked," says he, thoughtful, walking round the
place, his hands in his pockets.

By and by he come up to half a bottle of corn whisky--t