It come to a question whether I liked the boss best or Bonnie Bell, which is no fair place to put a man. Any man is apt to want to favor the woman in a case like that. Come to get down to cases, I found I liked Bonnie Bell a lot more than I ever'd realized I did. I was part her dad, you know, and I couldn't stand to see her unhappy.
The trouble with a cowpuncher, like I said, is that he hasn't got no real brains. I never used to notice that before, because it don't need no brains to be a puncher, as long as you stick to the ranch. But here I needed 'em right keen now.
Every day I walked the line fence; but there wasn't no work about that, for the bricks was mostly stuck back in the hole, and the hired man that had made all the trouble he kept on his own side—I didn't never see him no more at all.
Bonnie Bell didn't say a word to me, nor me to her. I thought she ought to come to me and talk things over; but she didn't. I knowed she hadn't said a word to her pa, and I knowed I hadn't neither.
Tom he called three times the first week. I didn't care much for him someways, though I knowed I ought. Bonnie Bell knowed she ought too. Her pa knowed he ought too. If ever a fellow played in a game like that, with all the ways greased for him, Tom was him.
Old Man Wright he turns to me one evening when we was setting by the fire in our room, and he says to me:
"Well, Curly, how are you enjoying yourself now in this hard and downtrod position that life has gave to you?"
"I don't like it none, Colonel," says I; "not none at all, nohow."
"Why don't you join a cowpunchers' union, then?" he ast. "Pshaw! This is a good town and I rather like it. The game here is easy to beat—easier than it was in Wyoming. For instance, just the other day I bought a bunch of timber land out in Arizony—a place where I've never been nor want to go, because they've got the tick fever down there scandalous, and irrigation, which is a crime. Well, I only bought in on this timber because a friend of mine wanted me to come in with him; and, figuring I didn't know nothing about it, I allowed I certainly would lose for once—I couldn't tell a pine tree from a spruce to save my life."
"Huh!" says I. "I suppose then somebody comes along and offers you twice your money for it, maybe?"