VI - Us and Them Better Things
Well, things rocked along this way and we got through the winter someways, though every once in a while I taken a cold along of being shut up so much. There wasn't nowhere to go and nothing to do except to read the papers and wish you was dead.
Old Man Wright couldn't stand it no more; so he goes downtown and rents him a fine large office in a big building, with long tables with glass on top, and big chairs, something like in a bank. He didn't put no business sign on the door—just his name: J. W. Wright.
I'm lazy enough for anybody, like any cowpuncher—I don't believe in working only in spots; but sometimes I'd get so tired of doing nothing at the house that I'd get the chauffore to take me down to Old Man Wright's office, where I felt more at home. Nobody never come in to see us once—not in three months. We didn't have no neighbors, and we begun to see that that was the truth. I couldn't understand it, for we'd never got caught at nothing.
"Colonel," says I one morning, "do you reckon they're holding our past up against us anyways?" says I. "We spend a awful lot of money, but what do we get for it? Not a soul has came in our new house. As for me, I know I ain't earning no salary."
"Don't worry about that, Curly," says he. "You're getting plenty of grub and a place to sleep, ain't you? I'm the one that ought to worry, because I can't hardly find nothing to do here except make a little money."
"Won't there nobody play cards or nothing? Ain't there no sports in this town?" says I.
"Poker here is a mere name." He shakes his head. "If you push in a hundred before the draw you're guilty of manslaughter. But there is other ways of making money."
"How is the deferred payments on the Circle Arrow coming on?" says I.