XIII - Them and the Range Law
When they all went home us three set quite a while in our ranch room, looking at the fire. It wasn't winter yet, but sometimes we lit the fire in the fireplace. Old Man Wright he seemed to be thinking of something, or trying to. At last he says:
"Sis, go get the fine-toothed comb and comb your pa's head—won't you, sis?" says he.
"Can't your barber do that for you?" ast she.
"He does; but no barber can really comb a alderman's head soothing," says he, "not like his own kid can. Now a alderman that's soothed proper might be induced to do almost anything, and combing him on his head is like scratching a pig along its back with a cob. You try it, kid; it might be perductive of a new car or something for you," says he.
So then she gets the comb and begins for to comb his head some, and he goes on talking with me. Evident he had something on his mind; that was the way he'd got used to think when something hard come up.
"Curly," says he to me after a while, "what would you say if we had a chance to buy in the Circle Arrow Ranch again?"
"I'd say it was the finest thing in the world," says I. "Them grangers ain't got a chance on earth. It takes a long course for to learn how to understand a cow's mind," says I.
"That's what they call sikeology in Smith," says Bonnie Bell.