The Man Next Door

Now, Old Man Wright and me, us two, had brought up the kid. Me being foreman, that was part of my business too. We been busy. I could see we was going to be a lot busier. Before long something was due to pop. At last the old man comes to me once more.

"Curly," says he, "I was in hopes something would happen, so that this range of ours wouldn't be no temptation to them irrigation colonizers; I was hoping something would happen to them, so they would lose their money. But they lost their minds instead. These last four years they raised their bid on the Circle Arrow a half million dollars every year. They've offered me more money than there is in the whole wide world. They say now that for the brand and the range stock and the home ranch, and all the hay lands and ditches that we put in so long ago, they'll give me three million eight hundred thousand dollars, a third of it in real money and the rest secured on the place. What do you think of that?"

"I think s