"Kid, you heard me!" says I. "Go on upstairs now and get your clothes on. And you don't go out in that boat no more!"

VIII

HOW OLD MAN WRIGHT DONE BUSINESS

As the weather begun to get warmer and we got out-of-doors more, it was cheerfuller around our place. Bonnie Bell chirked up quite a bit. She used to sing some. It seemed like she was going to get used to living in town--not me; never!

But Old Man Wright didn't seem to worry none somehow. He was one of the sort that, put him down anywheres and he'd be busy at something. If he was set down on a sand bar beside a creek he'd reach around to find some sticks; and, first thing you know, he'd be building a house out of 'em--he just always was making things somehow. I never seen a man could size up a piece of country for what it would perduce better than him.

"Curly," says he to me one day when I was down in his new office and he was talking about making money, "there's different ways of getting rich," says he, "but only one system. Either get what a mighty few thinks they got to have--that's things for rich folks; or else get something that everybody has got to have whether they want it or not--that's things for poor folks. And when you're in the game you buy when things is low and sell when they is high. Nigh about every man you know plays the game just the other way around. That's why there's so many poor folks," says he. "Yet the game is plumb easy to beat when you know how, if making money is all you care about.

"For instance," says he, "when I bought that bunch of stock in the Lake Electric a while ago it was when n.o.body wanted it or let on they wanted it. Since then it has riz round fifteen or twenty points and it'll go higher. When I sold the Circle Arrow it was when them folks wanted it right bad. Between you and me, them people paid more for it than it was worth. I may buy it in some day when they don't want it no more."

"You reckon you ever will, Colonel?" says I, plumb happy to think of that.

"If I was alone in the world, with just you, I sh.o.r.ely would right off,"

says he, "no matter what it cost. With Bonnie Bell in the game, too, I don't know what I'll do nor when I'll do it.

"I don't have such a hard time here," he went on after a while. "For instance, just a few weeks ago I was reading in the papers about this war in Europe--which is a shame and a awful thing; and I hope it won't come here, though if it does you and me are in," says he. "Well, I seen how they make so much powder and sell it--smokeless powder. For that they have to use a awful lot of picric acid."

"What kind of acid?" says I. "Pickles?"

"I don't know," says he. "I wouldn't know it if it was on a plate--only I know they have to make smokeless powder out of it. So I bought all I could find laying round here or there--not very much; only two or three hundred thousand dollars' worth.

"Well," says he, stretching out his legs and yawning, "it's the same old story, Curly. I couldn't help it and I didn't mean to do it the least way in the world; but now this here picric acid--whatever it is--it's worth two or three times what it was just a little while ago. I cleaned up--oh, maybe two or three hundred thousand dollars on that. There ain't enough in these things to keep me very busy. I don't care for making money nohow, because it's so easy. If there was a real man's game now, I wouldn't mind mixing with it."

"Cows is something that folks has to have whether they are rich or poor," says I to him.

"Sh.o.r.e; and it's a good game too. If you look around you'll find that there is some things that everybody has got to use somehow, somewhere--wood, copper, oil, iron; things like that. You can't build houses and live in 'em unless you have some of them things. Everybody has to buy 'em in wholesale or in retail. I like to buy 'em a little farther back even than wholesale--when they are what you call raw resources.

"If you take things that's made up in packages you can sell them too, a little at a time, but slow. Some folks likes to trade that way; they got to have pictures--objects--right before 'em to believe their money's safe. That's a little slow for me and you, Curly. I like to take the goods before they are put up in packages and buy a lot of them--something that folks has got to have."

"That's where your game is weak, Colonel," says I. "For instance, you deal in cows on the hoof. That ain't respectable. When you cut up cows and hogs into sides, hams and sausage, then's when you get respectable.

Ain't you got plenty proof of that? Look at them Wisners, for instance."

He snorts at that and ain't happy.

"Well, it's the truth," says I. "Look at us! We ain't n.o.body here. Old Man Wisner's the king bee of this here row of houses. We ain't one-two-ten in this race."

"Huh! Is that so? I'm running free, under a pull; and you can't kick.

But then, we're having all the fun--not Bonnie Bell."

"I ain't having no fun worth speaking of myself," says I. "But she's doing well enough--she's disgusting healthy--sounder in wind and limb than anybody else in this town. And she's busy too; she's found a new kind of car that she says she's got to have. She says the Wisners bought one a little shinier than hers."

"Well, she can have whatever she wants. We are doing pretty well, seems like. I just went into a little speculation last week that will maybe pay for that new car."

"What's it about this time, Colonel?" I ast him.

"Well, it has something more to do with this here war. Whenever there is a war somebody makes money and everybody loses it. Now you see they're using a awful lot of sharpnel over there--bullets packed up in packages ready to be busted open. It takes a certain kind of lathe to turn them sharpnel, and there is only one kind of lathe in this country that does it faster than any other; and the people that makes sharpnel can't get enough of them. Well, I bought the control of that there lathe. Looking around not long ago, I found a little stove factory down in the sand hills; and I bought it and put a few of them lathes in there and started a little company.

"Besides, I control them lathes that goes into all the other factories where they make sharpnel. Shouldn't wonder if we'd run into a little money before long--enough to buy a car--five hundred thousand dollars or so. If they got to have sharpnel I suppose we might as well make 'em and make 'em good."

"Well, Colonel," says I, "I hope you'll find enough to do, so that one of these days you can be right comfortable."

"So do I," says he, and he sticks out his legs again, with his hands in his pockets. "But sometimes I almost lose heart about it. Things looks mighty sad to me, because I can't find no game that's interesting for to play."

"How about that running-for-alderman business?" says I.

"I'm looking that over," says he. "I know a good many of the fellows over on the west side of our ward. My freckles helps me some in that part of the ward. They can't look at freckles like mine and call me anything but a honest man. Our ward is in two parts, and a little wears silk socks and a good deal of it don't. Wisner, he's strong with them that does. He maybe ain't so strong with them that makes eight dollars a week. Maybe none of them works for Wisner, but plenty of other people that works for eight dollars a week does work for him."

"He sh.o.r.e makes plenty of money," says I. "I expect he's got more money than anybody in town."

"I'm willing to stack up a little money in this alderman game against him if I thought I'd get any fun out of it. I'm just marking time here, the way it is."

"Doing what?" I ast him.

"Making money and waiting."

"What for?" says I, not understanding.

"For some man," says he.

"What man?" I ast him, still not understanding.

"That's what I don't know. For some man that will make Bonnie Bell happy. But all the young men in a city talk alike and look alike and dress alike. I ain't seen more than one or two that was worth a cuss--not a one I thought was good enough for my girl. And yet it stands to reason that something will happen; and it might be any time. It makes me uneasy."

I couldn't see why more folks didn't come into our house, like they used to out on the Circle Arrow; and I said that.

"It's easy to see why they don't," says Old Man Wright, and he busts the gla.s.s top of his table with his fist. "It's plumb plain to see why. It's them Wisners has blocked our game. They coppered us from the start--that's what! We got in wrong at the start with them; we didn't kotow to them and they've always been expecting it."

"That puts us in pretty hard," says I.

"It wouldn't be hard for you or me, Curly," says he. "There ain't a game on earth that that pie-faced old hypocrite can play that I can't beat him at; I don't fear him no more than I like him. But when I see how easy it was for him and his folks to make my girl miserable---- It ain't on account of myself, Curly," says he, and he sweeps his hand over the desk and knocks every paper and everything else on the floor. "She's all I got," says he. "I loved her ma and I love her. Whatever goes against her happiness goes against me all the way through. And," says he, "I'll buck this here city game until some day I bust the bank!"

I left him setting there, sort of looking down at his feet, with his hands in his pockets and his legs stretched out. He wasn't happy none at all, though all the time he'd been hollering for some game that he couldn't beat.

IX

US AND THEIR FENCE