in a big building, with long tables with glass
on top, and big chairs, something like in a bank. He didn't put no
business sign on the door--just his name: J. W. Wright.

I'm lazy enough for anybody, like any cowpuncher--I don't believe in
working only in spots; but sometimes I'd get so tired of doing nothing
at the house that I'd get the chauffore to take me down to Old Man
Wright's office, where I felt more at home. Nobody never come in to see
us once--not in three months. We didn't have no neighbors, and we begun
to see that that was the truth. I couldn't understand it, for we'd never
got caught at nothing.

"Colonel," says I one morning, "do you reckon they're holding our past
up against us anyways?" says I. "We spend a awful lot of money, but what
do we get for it? Not a soul has came in our new house. As for me, I
know I ain't earning no salary."

"Don't worry about that, Curly," says he. "You're getting plenty of grub
and a place to sleep, ain't you? I'm the one that ought to worry,
because I can't hardly find nothing to do here except make a little
money."

"Won't there nobody play cards or nothing? Ain't there no sports in this
town?" says I.

"Poker here is a mere name." He shakes his head. "If you push in a
hundred before the draw you're guilty of manslaughter. But there is
other ways of making money."

"How is the deferred payments on the Circle Arrow coming on?" says I.

"One come in, so far, interest and all," says he. "I wisht it hadn't.
First thing I know, I'll be as rich as Old Man Wisner here. I see he
wants to run for alderman up in that ward. Now I wonder what his game is
there--it don't stand to reason he'd want to be a alderman now, unless
there's something under it. You'd think he was trying to run the town
and the whole world, too, wouldn't you?"

"I don't like that outfit," says I. "They ain't friendly. If a man don't
neighbor with you, like enough he's stealing somewhere and don't want
to be watched."

"That certainly is so," says he. "Still, I been busy enough for a
while."

"The first thing you know," I says to him, "you'll lose your roll, and
then where will we be?" But he only laughs at that.

"For instance," says he, "you see all them electric lights all over this
town. I begun to study about them things when I first come here. There's
a sort of little thing inside that they burn--carbon, they call it. I
seen that everybody would keep their eyes on the light and not notice
t