I got Jimmie--we come to call him that on the ranch--so he could rope
some inside his first year, though I had to show him how to spread his
loop a little wide and not to depend on soaping his hondoo.
It was like old times to see a kid beginning on the range in the one
man's game that's worth while on earth--raising cows in a good cow
country. I was glad I hadn't shot Jimmie, or my boss hadn't shot his
pa--I wouldn't of minded so about Old Lady Wisner, because I couldn't
help remembering how she'd made trouble deliberate from the first. Of
course I'd made trouble, too, but I hadn't went to.
What become of the old wall between them two houses? Nothing much; we
left it stand, for someways it didn't seem so high no more when Bonnie
Bell's ivy and them other plants begun to hang down on it. But, of
course, I had to bust the hole in a little bit bigger after a while, so
as the twins could get through right easy, as well as Peanut. One was
named David Abraham and the other John William; but they couldn't help
it.
The best time was when we all rounded up one spring out there at the
station to go out on the ranch for the spring round-up, and to start
things running for the year. Old Man Wisner and the old lady was there,
and Old Man Wright and Jimmie and Bonnie Bell and me--me that was
foreman now and, like enough, earning it, the way things had been let go
to pieces.
We'd come down from Cody to that station where I found Jimmie--time I
was out hunting for him. For a while we'd been quite considerable busy
getting things packed, ready to go out to the ranch. We had two wagons,
one full of groceries and things. They'd even put in fly screens out
there now and had rocking chairs to set around in. Old Man Wright was as
busy as a fiddler getting things pulled together. His sleeves was rolled
up, and all at once Jimmie looks at him and says:
"Colonel, if I'm not mistaken your freckles is coming back again."
The old man roars laughing at that.
"Yes," he says; "I'm almost fit to run for sher'f oncet more. Ain't it
all like the old times, Curly?" says he.
"It shore is, Colonel," says I; "and there ain't no better times than
them."
The old man he gets into the buckboard on one side and he taken the two
twins on his knees. On the seat back of him was Pa and Ma Wisner--me
riding with Old Man Wright, in the middle. She was a three-seat
buckboard, and the mules was full of oats and plunging some; but Jimmie
didn't mind--he was driving, with Bonnie Bell, on the front seat.
"All set?" says he, turning his head around; and Old Man Wright nods.
"Giddap!" says Jimmie, and turns 'em loose.
Bonnie Bell, she turns around halfway, half looking at him and half at
the twins, and says she:
"Home, James!"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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