The Man Next Door Part 4

I never had lived in town this long, not in all my life before, and, far as I know, the boss hadn't, neither. We wasn't used to this way of living. We'd been used to riding some every day. Out in the parks, even in the winter, once in a while you could see somebody riding--or thinking they was riding, which they wasn't.

One day Old Man Wright, come spring, he goes down to the stockyards and buys a good saddle horse for Bonnie Bell to ride. It cost him twenty-five dollars a month to keep that horse, so he would eat his head off in about three months at the outside. Old Man Wright tells me that I'll have to ride out with the kid whenever she wanted to go. That suited me. Of course that meant we had to buy another horse for me. That made the stable bill fifty dollars a month. I never did know what we paid for our rooms at the hotel, but it was more every month than would keep a family a year in Wyoming.

Bonnie Bell she could ride a man's saddle all right, and she had a outfit for it. When it got a little warmer in the spring we used to go in the parks every once in a while. One day we rid on out into a narrow sort of place along the lake. There was houses there--a row of them, all big, all of stone or brick; houses as big as the penitentiary in Wyoming and about as cheerful.

We stopped right in front of a big brick-and-stone house, which had trees and flower beds and hedges all along; and says she:

"Curly, how would you like to live in a house like that?"

"I wouldn't live in the d.a.m.n place if you give it to me, Bonnie Bell,"

says I, cheerful.

She looked at me kind of funny.

"That's the kind of a house the best people have in this town," says she. "For instance, that house we're looking at looks as though the best architects in town had designed it. That place, Curly, cost anywhere from a half to three-quarters of a million, I'll betcha."

"Well, that's a heap more money than anybody ought to pay for a place to live in," says I. "They ought to spend it for cows."

"But it fronts the lake," says she, "and it's right in with the best people."

"Is that so?" says I. "Then here is where we ought to of come--some place like that; for what we're here for is to break in with the best people. Ain't that the truth, Bonnie Bell?"

"Maybe," says she after a while--"bankers, I suppose, merchants, wholesale people--hides, leather, packing----"

"And not cowmen?" says I.

"Certainly not!" says she. "To be the best people you must deal in something that somebody else has worked on--you must handle a manufactured product of some kind. You mustn't be a producer of actual wealth."

"Sho! Bonnie Bell," says I, "if you're in earnest you're talking something you learned at Old Man Smith's college. I don't know nothing about them things. Folks is folks, ain't they? A square man is a square man, no matter what's his business."

"It's different here," says she.

"Well, now, while we're speaking about houses," says I, us setting there on our horses all the time and plenty of people going by and looking at us--or leastways looking at her--"why don't you tell me where your house is going to be at? You never did show it to me once."

"I'm not going to, Curly," says she. "That's going to be a secret. Of course dad knows where it is; but as for you--well, maybe we will get into it by Christmas."

"Now, for instance," says I--and I waves my hand toward a place that was just starting alongside this big house we'd been looking at--"it like enough taken a year or so to get this here place as far along as it is."

"Uh-huh!" says she.

So then we turned away and rid back home. When we got back to the hotel we found Old Man Wright setting in a chair, with his legs stuck out and his hands in his pockets, looking plumb unhappy.

"What's the matter, dad?" ast Bonnie Bell. "Have you lost any money or heard any bad news?"

"No, I ain't," says he. "It all depends on what people need to make them happy."

"Well," says Bonnie Bell--her face was right red from the ride we had and she was feeling fine--"I'm perfectly happy, except there ain't any place you can ride a horse in this town and have any fun at it, the roads are so hard. Everybody seems to go in motor cars nowadays, anyways."

"Huh!" says her pa. "That's what I should think." He holds up a newspaper in front of him. "When I first come here," says he, "I seen that everybody was riding in cars, and I figured that more of them was going to; so I taken a flyer, sixty thousand dollars or so, in some stock in a company that was making one of them cars that sells right cheap. Now them people have gave me eighty per cent stock for a bonus and raised the dividend to twenty-five per cent a year. She's going to make money all right. Shouldn't wonder if that stock would more than double in a year or so."

"For heaven's sake, Colonel," says I, "ain't there nothing a-tall that you can get into without making money?" says I.

"No, there ain't," says he, sad. "It happens that way with some folks--I just can't help making it; yet here I am with more money than any of us ought to have. But I had to do it," says he to Bonnie Bell. "I get sort of lonesome, not having much to do; so that I have to mix up with something. Cars, sis?" says he. "Why, let me give you two or three of the kind our company makes."

"No you don't!" says Bonnie Bell. "I want one that----"

"Huh! that costs about eight or ten thousand dollars, maybe?"

"Well," says she, "you have to sort of play things proportionate, dad; and I think that kind of a car is just about proportionate to what you and me is going to do in this little town when we get started."

She turns and looks out the window some more. That was a way she had.

You see, all these months we'd been there already we didn't know a soul in that town. Womenfolks always hate each other, but they hate theirselves when other womenfolks don't pay no attention to them. Bonnie Bell was used to neighbors and she didn't have none here; so, though she was busy buying everything a girl couldn't possibly want, she didn't seem none too happy now.

"What's wrong, sis?" says her pa after a while, pulling her over on his knee. "Ain't me and Curly treating you all right?"

She pushed back his face from her and looks at him; and says she, right sober:

"Dad," she says, "you mustn't ever really ask me that. You're the best man in all the world--and so is Curly."

"No, we ain't," says he. "The best man hasn't really showed yet for you, sis."

"Why, dad," says she, "I'm only a young girl!"

"You're the finest-looking young girl in this town," says he, "and the town knows it."

"Huh!" says she, and sniffs up her nose. "It don't act much like it."

"If I can believe my eyes," says her pa, "when I walk out with you a good many people seem to know it."

"That don't count, dad," says she. "Men, and even women, look at a girl on the street--men at her ankles and women at her clothes; but that doesn't mean anything. That doesn't get you anywhere. That isn't being anybody. That doesn't mean that you are one of the best people."

"And you want to be one of the best people--is that it, sis?"

She set her teeth together and her eyes got bright.

"Well," says she, "we never played anything for pikers, did we, dad?"

Then them two looked each other in the eyes. I looked at them both. To me it seemed there certainly was going to be some doings.

"Go to it, sis!" says her pa. "You've got your own bank account and it's bigger than mine. The limit's the roof.

"Speaking of limits," says he, "reminds me that the president of our bank he got me elected to the National League Club here in town; him having such a pull he done it right soon--proxies, maybe. I've been over there this afternoon trying to enjoy myself. Didn't know anybody on earth. One or two folks finally did allow me to set in a poker game with them when I ast. It wasn't poker, but only a imitation. I won two hundred and fifty dollars and it broke up the game. If a fellow pushes in half a stack of blues over there they all tremble and get pale. This may be a good town for women, but, believe me, sis, it's no town for a real man."

"Well, never mind, dad," says she. "If you get lonesome I'll have you help me on the house. We'll have to get our servants together. For instance, we've got to have a butler--and a good one."

"What's a butler?" says I.

"He stands back of your chair and makes you feel creepy," says Old Man Wright. "We've got to have one of them things, sh.o.r.e. Then there's the chauffore for the car when you get it, and the cook. That's about all, ain't it?"