_ CHAPTER XI. US AND THE FREEZE-OUT
More and more folks begun to talk about us and our place since we got to be alderman. Of course more and more people begun to come in and visit with us now; but not one from Millionaire Row, though, if I do say it, we had the best-looking place now in the whole row of houses.
It was one of Bonnie Bell's ideas to make one of them sunken gardens, which she said was always done in Italy.
"I'll tell you," says she; "we'll build our sunken garden right up against Old Man Wisner's wall. How would it do to plant a few ivy vines to run up the side of the wall, dad?" she ast her pa.
"Why, all right," says he; "but you be mighty careful not to plant any olive branches."
So Bonnie Bell and me we was busy quite a while making plans for this here sunken garden. We read all the books we could find; still, she wasn't happy.
"I need some skilled gardener in this," says she; "them Dutch down at the park are no good at all. I wonder where the Wisners' gardener went."
"That fellow wasn't so much," says I to Bonnie Bell.
"What makes you say that, Curly?" says she.
"Well, I heard him talking one morning and I didn't like it. For that matter, I didn't like the way he talked about you neither. I told him we couldn't have nothing to do with the lower classes--let alone now, when we're alderman, we couldn't do that. He was fired and he ought to of been."
"How did you come to know all this, Curly?" says she.
"I heard him down at the boathouse talking to Old Lady Wisner. I think we're mighty well shut of the whole bunch of them--though I will say he was learning to rope all right, and I could of made a cowhand out of him if I'd had time."
"What did she say, Curly?" she asked me then, "Did she really talk about us?"
"Yes, she did. She thought you was a hired girl. And she says we was can-nye, and he wasn't to mix with us. Can-nye--what is can-nye, Bonnie?" says I.
She got red in the face and was shore mad at something.
"Can-nye, eh!" says she. "Can-nye! So that's what she thinks we are."
"Well, that was before we was alderman," says I. "Maybe they think different now, whatever can-nye is. What is it, anyway?"
"It means something common, vulgar and low down, Curly," says she.
"That wasn't no bouquet, then, was it?" says I. "Well, I didn't think so then, though I never heard it called to nobody in my life. I made it plain, though, to that hired man that he didn't have no chance to break into our house."
"Did he want to come over, Curly?" she ast.
"Crazy to! He wanted to get a look in our ranch room. I told you he was hankering to be a cowpuncher."
"Well, why didn't you bring him over if he was trying to learn things you could teach him?"
"What! Me bring him in our place? I reckon not! Now look here, kid," says I, "you don't half know how good-looking you are."
"I'm not," says she. "I got a freckle right on my nose. It don't come off neither."
"Well, maybe one freckle or so," says I; "but that don't kill off your looks altogether. Let me tell you, when it comes to common people like him talking your name out in public, why, it don't go!" says I. "Besides, another thing"--I went on talking to her right plain. "Look at the money you'll come into sometime! He has got to show me a-plenty what right he had to say you was wonderfully beautiful. You are, kid--but what business was it of his?"
"He has been gone four months and eight days," says she, thoughtful.
"How do you know he has? Do you keep a calendar on folks like him?"
"No; I was just thinking," says she, "that if he was here I might ask him about my sunken garden."
"That would be fine, wouldn't it?" says I. "But then, come to think of it, he wasn't in favor of that fence hisself. He was right free-spoken; I'll say that for him."
"He didn't like that fence idea?"
"Of course he didn't. He knew it wasn't right."
"Well," says she, "I'm going to plant ivy on it. If it runs over the top of the wall and hangs down on their side I'm not going to try to stop it."
Now, why she said that I never could figure out at all. I suppose women is peacefuller than men.
The folks in the ward where we live at they allowed their new alderman was on the square. I reckon it must of been them freckles. There ain't no way of beating a man in politics that has freckles and that can carry his liquor. So by and by all the papers come out and begun to say maybe Mr. John William Wright would be a candidate for treasurer next election. That is about as high as you can get in city politics. Treasurers make a heap more than their salaries usual in any large town. The people don't seem to mind it neither.
Times out on the range wasn't so good now as they might of been. Them high benches along the mountains never was made for farming. The new settlers that had come in under our old patents, through this here Yellow Bull Colonization and Improvement Company, they was shore having hard sledding along of their having believed everything they seen in the papers. They'd allowed they was going into the Promised Land. It was--but it wasn't nothing else but a promise.
It was Old Man Wisner's fault really. Though, after his usual way in side lines, he never showed his hand, he was deep in that company hisself. It was him now that had to hold the thing together. The settlers got sore and some of them quit, and most of them didn't pay their second or third payments. Of course that didn't make no difference, so far as we was concerned, for the Yellow Bull Colonization and Improvement Company had to make their deferred payments just the same to us. But when the company's money run out, and they maybe had to assess the stockholders, some of the stockholders got almighty cold feet.
"Well, Colonel," says I, "I reckon we'll get back our ranch some of these days, won't we? I shore wish we would."
"So do I, Curly; but I'm afraid not," says he.
"Why not?" I ast him.
"Well, it's Old Man Wisner--that's the reason," says he. "You see, it's his money that they are working with now," says he. "Their new ditch has cost them more than four times what the engineer said it would--a ditch always does. They've been wasting the water, like grangers always do, and they're fighting among themselves. These States people has to learn how to farm all over again when they go out into that sort of country. As to them pore stockholders, I reckon you could buy them out right cheap; but, cheap or not, Old Man Wisner's in more than he ever thought he'd be," says he.
"Ain't you going to let the old man off on none of them deferred payments?" says I, grinning.
"I am, of course, Curly," says he, solemn. "Seeing what he has done for us, I'm just hankering for some chance of doing him a kindness!" says he.
I begun to believe that before this here game was all played there'd be some fur flying between them two old hes, neither of which was easy to make quit. _