_ CHAPTER XXI. HER PA'S WAY OF THINKING
"Near as I can figure, Curly," says Old Man Wright to me soon after what had happened between me and Bonnie Bell--"near as I can figure, Old Man Wisner's been advertising that the old Circle Arrow Range is a great little place for the honest granger to raise bananas, pineapples and other tropical fruits."
"It ain't," says I, "except tomatoes--and them in tin cans."
"The honest yeoman," says he, "according to Old Man Wisner's description, he don't never have to eat anything as common as bread and butter, not after he's bought some of that land at four hundred and fifty dollars a acre. He lives after that time on bird tongues and omelet souflay, and all he has to do is to set on his wide veranda and watch his lowing herds increase and multiply at eighty-five dollars a head--and prices going up all the time. Ain't that fine, Curly? Things never used to happen just thataway when you and me owned that range, did they?"
"Not hardly," says I.
"No," says the old man, falling into one of them thinking spells. "No; they didn't."
Then after about half a hour he says:
"Nor they can't, neither. It'll cost that old miser, Dave Wisner, about three or four million dollars," says he. "He's put up his life, his fortune and his sacred honor on that irrigation scheme, and he's going to be lucky if he gets through with any of them before I call it off."
"Colonel," says I, "you and him remind me of two old Galloways out on the range, standing head to head, and pushing for a couple of hours or so at a time--only, you two been pushing for a couple of years."
"Uh-huh!" says he. "But I'm right cheerful; and I don't feel my neck giving none yet," says he; and he rubs his hand up and down it.
"Has Tom Kimberly been here lately?" the old man ast me, real suddenlike, right soon after that, though I hadn't said nothing to him.
"He was here this afternoon," says I. "He ast after Miss Bonnie. She says she was sick, had a cold, and couldn't see no one."
"I'll give Tom sixty days for to propose to Bonnie Bell," says he. "If he don't, then I'll have to. It don't stand to reason that girl's going to have a bad cold that's going to last for sixty days; so she'll be home sometimes when he comes over. I know how his ma and pa feel about it, and I know how I feel too. Maybe we can get Tom to part his hair after a while, or take up some manly habit like chawing tobacco instead of touching the light guitar. Just to take a look at him, I'd say he shaved with one of them little razors like a hoe. For all I know, he may wear garters. Still, time alters many things.
"He's marrying into crowned heads when he comes into our family," says he, going on, "because I'm alderman here, and if my freckles lasts I'm liable to keep on being alderman. Sometimes I wisht I'd put in the papers that I was clean broke and depended on the savings which a faithful old servitor--that's you, Curly--had brung me in my time of need. But I'm afraid it's too late for that now, though the time to test them things is before the wedding obsequies and not after."
"Colonel," says I, "suppose a young man would of come along that didn't have no family back of him, nor no money, but parted his hair, and shaved with a real razor, and wore no garters, and et tobacco, and was right husky looking--what would you think?"
"I'd think the millennium had came, here in Chicago," says Old Man Wright. "I won't deny, Curly, if I had found a young man that could ride setting down, and chawed tobacco, I wouldn't needed to of thought about him twice--always provided he played a wide-open game and acted like he knew what he wanted."
"We don't seem to get together none," says I, despondent.
"Get together!" says he. "What do you mean?"
"Oh, nothing," says I. _