There was nothing whatever to indicate that events were breeding in that peaceful scene, and that adventure was creeping close upon the watcher. He went in from his fourth or fifth inspection, and took a nap.

That night he was awakened by a pounding on the side of the shack where was his window. By the time he had reached the middle of the floor—and you could count the time in seconds—a similar pounding was at the door. He tried to open the door and couldn't. He went to the window and could see nothing, although the night had not been dark when he went to bed. He shouted, and there was no reply; nor could he hear any talking without. His name, by the way, was H. J. Owens, though his name does not matter except for convenience in mentioning him. Owens, then, lighted a lamp, and almost instantly was forced to reach out quickly and save it from toppling, because one corner of the shack was lifting, lifting...

Outside, the Happy Family worked in silence. Before they had left One Man Coulee they had known exactly what they were to do, and how to do it. They knew who was to nail the hastily constructed shutter over the window. They knew who was to fasten the door so that it could not be opened from within. They knew also who were to use the crow-bars, who were to roll the skids under the shack.

There were twelve of them—because Bert Rogers had insisted upon helping. In not many more minutes than there were men, they were in their saddles, ready to start. The shack lurched forward after the straining horses. Once it was fairly started it moved more easily than you might think it could do, upon crude runners made of cottonwood logs eight inches or so in diameter and long enough for cross pieces bolted in front and rear. The horses pulled it easily with the ropes tied to the saddle-horns, just as they had many times pulled the roundup wagons across mirey creeks or up steep slopes; just as they had many times pulled stubborn cattle or dead cattle—just as they had been trained to pull anything and everything their masters chose to attach to their ropes.

Within, Owens called to them and cursed them. When they had just gained an even pace, he emptied his revolver through the four sides of the shack. But he did not know where they were, exactly, so that he was compelled to shoot at random. And since the five shots seemed to have no effect whatever upon the steady progress of the shack, he decided to wait until he could see where to aim. There was no use, he reflected, in wasting good ammunition when there was a strong probability that he would need it later.

After a half hour or more of continuous travel, the shack tilted on a steep descent. H. J. Owens blew out his lamp and swore when a box came sliding against his shins in the dark. The descent continued until it was stopped with a jolt that made him bite his tongue painfully, so that tears came into the eyes that were the wrong shade of blue to please Andy Green. He heard a laugh cut short and a muttered command, and that was all. The shack heaved, toppled, righted itself and went on down, and down, and down; jerked sidewise to the left, went forward and then swung joltingly the other way. When finally it came to a permanent stand it was sitting with an almost level floor.

Then the four corners heaved upward, two at a time, and settled with a final squeal of twisted boards and nails. There was a sound of confused trampling, and after that the lessening sounds of departure. Mr. Owens tried the door again, and found it still fast. He relighted the lamp, carried it to the window and looked upon rough boards outside the glass. He meditated anxiously and decided to remain quiet until daylight.

The Happy Family worked hard, that night. Before daylight they were in their beds and snoring except the two who guarded the cattle. Each was in his own cabin. His horse was in his corral, smooth-coated and dry. There was nothing to tell of the night's happenings,—nothing except the satisfied grins on their faces when they woke and remembered.



CHAPTER 12. SHACKS, LIVE STOCK AND PILGRIMS PROMPTLY AND PAINFULLY REMOVED

"I'm looking rather seedy now, while holding down my claim, And my grub it isn't always served the best, And the mice play shyly round me as I lay me down to rest In my little old sod shanty on my claim. Oh, the hinges are of leather and the windows have no glass, And the roof it lets the howling blizzards in, And I hear the hungry kiote as he sneaks up through grass—

"Say! have they got down the hill yet, Pink;" Pink took his cigarette from his fingers, leaned and peered cautiously through the grimy window. "Unh-huh. They're coming up the flat."

Whereupon Andy Green, ostentatiously washing his breakfast dishes, skipped two or three verses and lifted his voice in song to fit the occasion.

"How I wish that some kind-hearted girl would pity on me take, And relieve me of the mess that I am in! Oh, the angel, how I'd bless her if her home with me she'd make, In my little old sod shanty—

"Got her yet?" And he craned his neck to look. "Aw, they've pulled up, out there, listening!"

"My clothes are plastered o'er with dough, I'm looking like a fright, And everything is scattered round the room—"

"Why don't yuh stop that caterwauling?" Pink demanded fretfully. "You'll queer the whole play if you keep it up. They'll swear you're drunk!"

There was sense in that. Andy finished the line about remaining two happy lovers in his little old sod shanty, and went to the door with the dishpan. He threw out the water, squeezed the dishrag in one hand and gave the inside of the pan a swipe before he appeared to discover that Miss Allen and Florence Grace Hallman were riding up to his door. As a matter of fact, he had seen them come over the top of the bluff and had long ago guessed who they were.

He met them with a smile of surprised innocence, and invited them inside. They refused to come, and even Miss Allen showed a certain reproachful coolness toward him. Andy felt hurt at that, but he did not manifest the fact. Instead he informed them that it was a fine morning. And were they out taking a look around?

They were. They were looking up the men who had perpetrated the outrage last night upon four settlers.

"Outrage?" Andy tilted the dishpan against the cabin wall, draped the dishrag over the handle and went forward, pulling down his sleeves. "What outrage is that, Miss Hallman? Anybody killed?"

Miss Hallman watched him with her narrowed glance. She saw the quick glance he gave Miss Allen, and her lids narrowed still more. So that was it! But she did not swerve from her purpose, for all this unexpected thrust straight to the heart of her self-love.

"You know that no one was killed. But you damaged enough property to place you on the wrong side of the law, Mr. Green. Not one of those shacks can be gotten out of the gulch except in pieces!"

Andy smiled inside his soul, but his face was bewildered; his eyes fixed themselves blankly upon her face. "Me? Damaging property? Miss Hallman, you don't know me yet!" Which was perfectly true. "What shacks are you talking about? In what gulch? All the shacks I've seen so far have been stuck up on bald pinnacles where the blizzards will hit 'em coming and going next winter." He glanced again at Miss Allen with a certain sympathetic foretaste of what she would suffer next winter if she stayed in her shack.

"Don't try to play innocent, Mr. Green." Florence Grace Hallman drew her brows together. "We all know perfectly well who dragged those shacks off the claims last night."

"Don't you mean that you think you know? I'm afraid you've kinda taken it for granted I'd be mixed up in any deviltry you happened to hear about. I've got in bad with you—I know that—but just the same, I hate to be accused of everything that takes place in the country. All this is sure interesting news to me. Whereabouts was they taken from? And when, and where to? Miss Allen, you'll tell me the straight of this, won't you? And I'll get my hoss and you'll show me what gulch she's talking about, won't you?"

Miss Allen puckered her lips into a pout which meant indecision, and glanced at Florence Grace Hallman. And Miss Hallman frowned at being shunted into the background and referred to as she, and set her teeth into her lower lip.

"Miss Allen prefers to choose her own company," she said with distinct rudeness. "Don't try to wheedle her—you can't do it. And you needn't get your horse to ride anywhere with us, Mr. Green. It's useless. I just wanted to warn you that nothing like what happened last night will be tolerated. We know all about you Flying U men—you Happy Family." She said it as if she were calling them something perfectly disgraceful. "You may be just as tough and bad a you please—you can't frighten anyone into leaving the country or into giving up one iota of their rights. I came to you because you are undoubtedly the ring-leader of the gang." She accented gang. "You ought to be shot for what you did last night. And if you keep on—" She left the contingency to his imagination.

"Well, if settling up the country means that men are going to be shot for going to bed at dark and asleeping till sun-up, all I've got to say is that things ain't like they used to be. We were all plumb peaceful here till your colony came, Miss Hallman. Why, the sheriff never got out this way often enough to know the trails! He always had to ask his way around. If your bunch of town mutts can't behave themselves and leave each other alone, I don't know what's to be done about it. We ain't hired to keep the peace."

"No, you've been hired to steal all the land you can and make all the trouble you can. We understand that perfectly."

Andy shook his head in meek denial, and with a sudden impulse turned toward the cabin. "Oh, Pink!" he called, and brought that boyish-faced young man to the door, his eyes as wide and as pure as the eyes of a child.

Pink lifted his hat with just the proper degree of confusion to impress the girls with his bashfulness and his awe of their presence. His eyes were the same pansy-purple as when the Flying U first made tumultuous acquaintance with him. His apparent innocence had completely fooled the Happy Family, you will remember. They had called him Mamma's Little Lamb and had composed poetry and horrific personal history for his benefit. The few years had not changed him. His hair was still yellow and curly. The dimples still dodged into his cheeks unexpectedly; he was still much like a stick of dynamite wrapped in white tissue and tied with a ribbon. He looked an angel of innocence, and in reality he was a little devil.

Andy introduced him, and Pink bowed and had all the appearance of blushing—though you will have to ask Pink how he managed to create that optical illusion. "What did you want?" he asked in his soft, girlish voice, turning to Andy bashfully. But from the corner of his eye Pink saw that a little smile of remembrance had come to soften Miss Hallman's angry features, and that the other girl was smiling also. Pink hated that attitude of pleasant patronage which women were so apt to take toward him, but for the present it suited his purpose to encourage it.

"Pink, what time was it when we went to bed last night?" Andy asked him in the tone of one who wished to eliminate all doubt of his virtue.

"Why—it was pretty early. We didn't light the lamp at all, you remember. You went to bed before I did—we couldn't see the cards—" He stopped confusedly, and again he gave the two women the impression that he blushed. "We weren't playing for money," he hurriedly explained. "Just for pastime. It's—pretty lonesome—sometimes."

"Somebody did something to somebody last night," Andy informed Pink with a resentful impatience. "Miss Hallman thinks we're the guilty parties—me in particular, because she don't like me. It's something about some shacks—damaging property, she called it. Just what was it you said was done, Miss Hallman?" He turned his honest, gray eyes toward her and met her suspicious look steadily.

Miss Hallman bit her lip. She had been perfectly sure of the guilt of Andy Green, and of the others who were his friends. Now, in spite of all reason she was not so sure. And there had been nothing more tangible than two pairs of innocent-looking eyes and the irreproachable manners of two men to change her conviction.

"Well, I naturally took it for granted that you did it," she weakened. "The shacks were moved off eighties that you have filed upon, Mr. Green. Mr. Owens told me this morning that you men came by his place and threatened him yesterday, and ordered him to move. No one else would have any object in molesting him or the others." Her voice hardened again as her mind dwelt upon the circumstances. "It must have been you!" she finished sharply.

Whereupon Pink gave her a distressed look that made Miss Hallman flush unmistakably. "I'm just about distracted, this morning," she apologized. "I took it upon myself to see these settlers through—and everybody makes it just as hard as possible for me. Why should all you fellows treat us the way you do? We—"

"Why, we aren't doing a thing!" Pink protested diffidently. "We thought we'd take up some claims and go to ranching for ourselves, when we got discharged from the Flying U. We didn't mean any harm—everybody's taking up claims. We've bought some cattle and we're going to try and get ahead, like other folks. We—I wanted to cut out all this wildness—"

"Are those your cattle up on the hill? Some men shipped in four carloads of young stock, yesterday, to Dry Lake. They drove them out here intending to turn them on the range, and a couple of men—"

"Four men," Miss Allen corrected with a furtive twinkle in her eyes.

"Some men refused to let them cross that big coulee back there. They drove the cattle back toward Dry Lake, and told Mr. Simmons and Mr. Chase and some others that they shouldn't come on this bench back here at all. That was another thing I wanted to see you men about."

"Maybe they were going to mix their stock up with ours," Pink ventured mildly.

"Your men shot, and shot, and shot—the atmosphere up there is shot so full of holes that the wind just whistles through!" Miss Allen informed then gravely, with her eyebrows all puckered together and the furtive little twinkle in her eyes. "And they yelled so that we could hear them from the house! They made those poor cows and those poor, weenty calves just go trotting back across the coulee. My new book on farming says you positively must not hurry cattle. It—oh, it does something to the butter-fat—joggles it all up or something—I'll lend you the book. I found the chapter on Proper Treatment of Dairy Stock, and I watched those men with the book in my hands. Why, it was terribly unscientific, the way they drove those cow-critters!"

"I'll come over and get the book," Andy promised her, with a look in his eyes that displeased Miss Hallman very much. "We're ashamed of our ignorance. We'd like to have you learn us what's in the book."

"I will. And every week—just think of that! I'm to get a real farm paper."

"I'd like to borrow the paper too," Andy declared instantly.

"Oh, and—what's going to be done about all those bullet-holes? They—they might create a draught—"

"We'll ride around that way and plug 'em up," Andy assured her solemnly. "Whenever you've got time to show me about where they're at."

"It will be a pleasure. I can tell where they are, but they're too high for me to reach. Wherever the wind whistles there's a hole in the atmosphere. And there are places where the air just quivers, so you can see it. That is the shock those bold, bad men gave it with the words they used. They—used—words, Mr. Green! If we could scheme some way to pull out all those wrinkles—I do love a nice, clean, smooth atmosphere where I live. It's so wrinkly—"

"I'll attend to all that, right away."

Miss Hallman decided that she had nothing further to say to Mr. Green. She wheeled her horse rather abruptly and rode off with a curt goodbye. Miss Allen, being new at the business of handling a horse, took more time in pulling her mount around. While her back was turned to Florence Grace and her face was turned toward Pink and Andy, she gave them a twinkling glance that had one lowered eyelid to it, twisted her lips, and spoke sharply to her horse. They might make of it what they would. Florence Grace looked back impatiently—perhaps suspiciously also—and saw Miss Allen coming on with docile haste.

So that ended the interview which Miss Hallman had meant to be so impressive. A lot of nonsense that left a laugh behind and the idea that Miss Allen at least did not disapprove of harassing claim-jumpers. Andy Green was two hundred per cent. more cheerful after that, and his brain was more active and his determination more fixed. For all that he stared after them thoughtfully.

"She winked at us—if I've got eyes in my head. What do you reckon she meant, Pink?" he asked when the two riders had climbed over the ridge. "And what she said about the bold, bad men shooting holes that have to be plugged up—and about liking a nice, smooth atmosphere? Do you suppose she meant that it's liable to take bold, bad men to clean the atmosphere, or—"

"What difference does it make what she meant? There's jumpers left—two on Bud's place—and he's oary-eyed over it, and was going to read 'em the riot act proper, when I left to come over here. And a couple of men drove onto that south eighty of Mig's with a load of lumber, just as I come by. Looks to me like we've got our hands full, Andy. There'll be holes to plug up somewhere besides in the atmosphere, if you ask me."

"Long as they don't get anything on us I ain't in the state of mind where I give a darn. That little brown-eyed Susan'll keep us posted if they start anything new—what did she mean by that wink, do you reckon?"

"Ah, don't get softening of the emotions," Pink advised impatiently. "That's the worst thing we've got to steer clear of, Andy! All them women in the game is going to make it four times as hard to stand 'em off. Irish is foolish over this one you're gettin' stuck on—you'll be fighting each other, if you don't look out. That Florence Grace lady ain't so slow—she's going to use the women to keep us fellows guessing."

Andy sighed. "We can block that play, of course," he said. "Come on, Pink, let's go round up the boys and see what's been taking place with them cattle. Shipped in four carloads already, have they?" He began pulling on his chaps rather hurriedly. "Worst of it is, you can't stampede a bunch of darned tame cows, either," he complained.

They found Irish and the Native Son on day-herd, with the cattle scattered well along the western line of the claims. Big Medicine, Weary, Cal Emmett and Jack Bates were just returning from driving the settlers' stock well across Antelope Coulee which had been decided upon as a hypothetical boundary line until such time as a fence could be built.

They talked with the day-herders, and they talked with the other four. Chip came up from the ranch with the Kid riding proudly beside him on Silver, and told them that the Honorable Mr. Blake was at the Flying U and had sent word that he would be pleased to take the legal end of the fight, if the Happy Family so desired. Which was in itself a vast encouragement. The Honorable Blake had said that they were well within their rights thus far, and advised them to permit service of the contest notices, and to go calmly on fulfilling the law. Which was all very well as far as it went, providing they were permitted to go on calmly.

"What about them cattle they're trying to git across our land?" Slim wanted to know. "We got a right to keep 'em off, ain't we?"

Chip said that he thought they had, but to make sure, he would ask the Honorable Blake. Trespassing, he said, might be avoided—

Right there Andy was seized with an idea. He took Chip—because of his artistic talents which, he said, had been plumb wasted lately—to one side. After wards they departed in haste, with Pink and Weary galloping close at their heels. In a couple of hours they returned to the boundary where the cattle still fed all scattered out in a long line, and behind them drove Pink and Weary in the one wagon which the Family possessed.

"It oughta help some," grinned Andy, when the Native Son came curiously over to see what it was they were erecting there on the prairie. "It's a fair warning, and shows 'em where to head in at."

The Native Son read the sign, which was three feet long and stood nailed to two posts ready for planting solidly in the earth. He showed his even, white teeth in a smile of approval. "Back it up, and it ought to do some good," he said.

They dug holes and set the posts, and drove on to where they meant to plant another sign exactly like the first. That day they planted twelve sign-boards along their west line. They might not do any good, but they were a fair warning and as such were worth the trouble.

That afternoon Andy was riding back along the line when he saw a rider pull up at the first sign and read it carefully. He galloped in haste to the spot and found that his suspicions were correct; it was Miss Allen.

"Well," she said when he came near, "I suppose that means me. Does it?" She pointed to the sign, which read like this:

WARNING!! NO TRESPASSING EAST OF HERE All Shacks, Live-Stock and Pilgrims Promptly AND Painfully Removed From These Premises

"I'm over the line," she notified him, pulling her horse backward a few feet. "You're getting awfully particular, seems to me. Oh, did you know that a lot of men are going to play it's New Year's Eve and hold watch meetings tonight?"

"Never heard a word about it," he declared truthfully, and waited for more.

"That's not strange—seeing it's a surprise party. Still—I'm sure you are expected to—attend."

"And where is all this to take place?" Andy looked at her intently, smiling a little.

"Oh, over there—and there—and there." She pointed to three new shacks—the official dwellings of certain contestants. "Stag parties, they are, I believe. But I doubt if they'll have any very exciting time; most of these new settlers are too busy getting the ground ready for crops, to go to parties. Some people are pretty disgusted, I can tell you, Mr. Green. Some people talk about ingratitude and wonder why the colony doesn't hang together better. Some people even wonder why it is that folks are interested mainly in their own affairs, and decline to attend watch meetings and—receptions. So I'm afraid very few, except your nearest neighbors, will be present, after all might I ask when you expect to—to MOVE again, Mr. Green?"

Smiling still, Andy shook his head. "I expect to be pretty busy this spring," he told her evasively. "Aren't any of you ladies invited to those parties, Miss Allen?"

"Not a one. But let me tell you something, Mr. Green. Some folks think that perhaps we lady-settlers ought to organize a club for the well being of our intellects. Some folks are trying to get up parties just for women—see the point? They think it would be better for the—atmosphere."

"Oh." Andy studied the possibilities of such a move. If Florence Grace should set the women after them, he could see how the Happy Family would be hampered at every turn. "Well, I must be going. Say, did you know this country is full of wild animals, Miss Allen? They prowl around nights. And there's a gang of wild men that hang out up there in those mountains—they prowl around nights, too. They're outlaws. They kill off every sheriff's party that tries to round them up, and they kidnap children and ladies. If you should hear any disturbance, any time, don't be scared. Just stay inside after dark and keep your door locked. And if you should organize that ladies' club, you better hold your meetings in the afternoon, don't you think?"

When he had ridden on and left her, Andy was somewhat ashamed of such puerile falsehoods. But then, she had started the allegorical method of imparting advice, he remembered. So presently went whistling to round up the boys and tell them what he had learned.



CHAPTER 13. IRISH WORKS FOR THE CAUSE

Big Medicine with Weary and Chip to bear him company, rode up to the shack nearest his own, which had been hastily built by a raw-boned Dane who might be called truly Americanized. Big Medicine did not waste time in superfluities or in making threats of what he meant to do. He called the Dane to the door—claim-jumpers were keeping close to their cabins, these days—and told him that he was on another man's land, and asked him if he meant to move.

"Sure I don't intend to move!" retorted the Dane with praiseworthy promptness. "I'm going to hold 'er down solid."

"Yuh hear what says, boys." Big Medicine turned to his companions "He ain't going to git off'n my land, he says. Weary, yuh better go tell the bunch I need'em."

Weary immediately departed. He was not gone so very long, and when he returned the Happy Family was with him, even to Patsy who drove the wagon with all the ease of a veteran of many roundups. The Dane tried bluster, but that did not seem to work. Nothing seemed to work, except the Happy Family.

There in broad daylight, with no more words than were needful, they moved the Dane, and his shack. When they began to raise the building he was so unwise as to flourish a gun, and thereby made it perfectly right and lawful that Big Medicine should take the gun away from him and march him ahead of his own forty-five.

They took the shack directly past one of the trespassing signs, and Big Medicine stopped accommodatingly while the Dane was permitted to read the sign three times aloud. That the Dane did not seem truly appreciative of the privilege was no fault of Big Medicine's, surely. They went on, skidding the little building sledlike over the uneven prairie. They took it down into Antelope Coulee and left it there, right side up and with not even a pane of glass broken in the window.

"There, darn yuh, live there awhile!" Andy gritted to when the timbers were withdrawn from beneath the cabin and they were ready to leave. "You can't say we damaged your property—this time. Come back, and there's no telling what we're liable to do."

Since Big Medicine kept his gun, the Dane could do nothing but swear while he watched them ride up the hill and out of sight.

They made straight for the next interloper, remarking frequently that it was much simpler and easier to do their moving in daylight. There they had an audience, for Florence Grace rode furiously up just as they were getting under way. The Happy Family spoke very nicely to Florence Grace, and when she spoke very sharply to them they were discreetly hard of hearing and became absorbed in their work.

Several settlers came before that shack was moved, but they only stood around and talked among themselves, and were careful not to get in the way or to hinder, and to lower their voices so that the Happy Family need not hear unless they chose to listen.

So they slid that shack into the coulee, righted it carefully and left it there—where it would be exceedingly difficult to get it out, by the way; since it is much easier to drag a building down hill than up, and the steeper the hill and the higher, the greater the difference.

They loaded the timbers into the wagon and methodically on to the next shack, their audience increased to a couple of dozen perturbed settlers. The owner of this particular shack, feeling the strength of numbers behind him, was disposed to argue the point.

"Oh, you'll sweat for this!" he shouted impotently when the Happy Family was placing the timbers.

"Ah, git outa the way!" said Andy, coming toward him with a crowbar. "We're sweating now, if that makes yuh feel any better."

The man got out of the way, and went and stood with the group of onlookers, and talked vaguely of having the law on them—whatever he meant by that.

By the time they had placed the third shack in the bottom of the coulee, the sun was setting. They dragged the timbers up the steep bluff with their ropes and their saddle-horses, loaded them on to the wagon and threw the crowbars and rolling timbers in, and turned to look curiously and unashamed at their audience. Andy, still tacitly their leader, rode a few steps forward.

"That'll be all today," he announced politely. "Except that load of lumber back here on the bench where it don't belong—we aim to haul that over the line. Seeing your considerable interest in our affairs, I'll just say that we filed on our claims according to law, and we're living on 'em according to law. Till somebody proves in court that we're not, there don't any shack, or any stock, stay on our side the line any longer than it takes to get them off. There's the signs, folks—read 'em and take 'em to heart. You can go home now. The show's over."

He lifted his hat to the women—and there were several now—and went away to join his fellows, who had ridden on slowly till he might overtake them. He found Happy Jack grumbling and predicting evil, as it was his nature to do, but he merely straightened his aching back and laughed at the prophecies.

"As I told you before, there's more than one way to kill a cat," he asserted tritely but never the less impressively. "Nobody can say we wasn't mild; and nobody can say we hadn't a right to get those chickencoops off our land. If you ask me, Florence Grace will have to go some now if she gets the best of the deal. She overlooked a bet. We haven't been served with any contest notices yet, and so we ain't obliged to take their say-so. Who's going to stand guard tonight? We've got to stand our regular shifts, if we want to keep ahead of the game. I'm willing to be It. I'd like to make sure they don't slip any stock across before daylight."

"Say, it's lucky we've got a bunch of boneheads like them to handle," Pink observed thankfully. "Would a bunch of natives have stood around like that with their hands in their pockets and let us get away with the moving job? Not so you could notice!"

"What we'd better do," cut in the Native Son without any misleading drawl, "is try and rustle enough money to build that fence."

"That's right," assented Cal. "Maybe the Old Man—"

"We don't go to the Old Man for so much as a bacon rind!" cried the Native Son impatiently. "Get it into your systems, boys, that we've got to ride away around the Flying U. We ought to be able to build that fence, all right, without help from anybody. Till we do we've got to hang and rattle, and keep that nester stock from getting past us. I'll stand guard till midnight."

A little more talk, and some bickering with Slim and Happy Jack, the two chronic kickers, served to knock together a fair working organization. Weary and Andy Green were informally chosen joint leaders, because Weary could be depended upon to furnish the mental ballast for Andy's imagination. Patsy was told that he would have to cook for the outfit, since he was too fat to ride. They suggested that he begin at, once, by knocking together some sort of supper. Moving houses, they declared, was work. They frankly hoped that they would not have to move many more—and they were very positive that they would not be compelled to move the same shack twice, at any rate.

"Say, we'll have quite a collection of shacks down in Antelope Coulee if we keep on," Jack Bates reminded them. "Wonder where they'll get water?"

"Where's the rest of them going to get water?" Cal Emmett challenged the crowd. "There's that spring the four women up here pack water from—but that goes dry in August. And there's the creek—that goes dry too. On the dead, I feel sorry for the women—and so does Irish," he added dryly.

Irish made an uncivil retort and swung suddenly away from the group. "I'm going to ride into town, boys," he announced curtly. "I'll be back in the morning and go on day-herd."

"Maybe you will and maybe you won't," Weary amended somewhat impatiently. "This is certainly a poor time for Irish to break out," he added, watching his double go galloping toward the town road.

"I betche he comes back full and tries to clean out all them nesters," Happy Jack predicted. For once no one tried to combat his pessimism—for that was exactly what every one of them believed would happen.

"He's stayed sober a long while—for him," sighed Weary, who never could quite shake off a sense of responsibility for the moral defections of his kinsman. "Maybe I better go along and ride herd on him." Still, he did not go, and Irish presently merged into the dusky distance.

As is often the case with a family's black sheep, his intentions were the best, even though they might have been considered unorthodox. While the Happy Family took it for granted that he was gone because an old thirst awoke within him, Irish was thinking only of the welfare of the outfit. He did not tell them, because he was the sort who does not prattle of his intentions, one way or the other. If he did what he meant to do there would be time enough to explain; if he failed there was nothing to be said.

Irish had thought a good deal about the building of that fence, and about the problem of paying for enough wire and posts to run the fence straight through from Meeker's south line to the north line of the Flying U. He had figured the price of posts and the price of wire and had come somewhere near the approximate cost of the undertaking. He was not at all sure that the Happy Family had faced the actual figures on that proposition. They had remarked vaguely that it was going to cost some money. They had made casual remarks about being broke personally and, so far as they knew, permanently.

Irish was hot-headed and impulsive to a degree. He was given to occasional tumultuous sprees, during which he was to be handled with extreme care—or, better still, left entirely alone until the spell was over. He looked almost exactly like Weary, and yet he was almost his opposite in disposition. Weary was optimistic, peace-loving, steady as the sun above him except for a little surface-bubbling of fun that kept him sunny through storm and calm. You could walk all over Weary—figuratively speaking—before he would show resentment. You could not step very close to Irish without running the risk of consequences. That he should, under all that, have a streak of calculating, hard-headed business sense, did not occur to them.

They rode on, discussing the present situation and how best to meet it; the contingencies of the future, and how best to circumvent the active antagonism of Florence Grace Hallman and the colony for which she stood sponsor. They did not dream that Irish was giving his whole mind to solving the problem of raising money to build that fence, but that is exactly what he was doing.

Some of you at least are going to object to his method. Some of you—those of you who live west of the big river—are going to understand his point of view, and you will recognize his method as being perfectly logical, simple, and altogether natural to a man of his temperament and manner of life. It is for you that I am going to relate his experiences. Sheltered readers, readers who have never faced life in the raw, readers who sit down on Sunday mornings with a mind purged of worldly thoughts and commit to memory a "golden text" which they forget before another Sunday morning, should skip the rest of this chapter for the good of their morals. The rest is for you men who have kicked up alkali dust and afterwards washed out the memory in town; who have gone broke between starlight and sun; who know the ways of punchers the West over, and can at least sympathize with Irish in what he meant to do that night.

Irish had been easing down a corner of the last shack, with his back turned toward three men who stood looking on with the detached interest which proved they did not own this particular shack. One was H. J. Owens—I don't think you have met the others. Irish had not. He had overheard this scrap of conversation while he worked:

"Going to town tonight?"

"Guess so—I sure ain't going to hang out on this prairie any more than I have to. You going?"

"Ye-es—I think I will. I hear there's been some pretty swift games going, the last night or two. A fellow in that last bunch Florence rounded up made quite a clean up last night."

"That so, let's go on in. This claim-holding gets my goat anyway. I don't see where—"

That was all Irish heard, but that was enough.

Had he turned in time to catch the wink that one speaker gave to the other, and the sardonic grin that answered the lowered eyelid, he would have had the scrap of conversation properly focused in his mind, and would not have swallowed the bait as greedily as he did. But we all make mistakes. Irish made the mistake of underestimating the cunning of his enemies.

So here he was, kicking up the dust on the town trail just as those three intended that he should do. But that he rode alone instead of in the midst of his fellows was not what the three had intended; and that he rode with the interest of his friends foremost in his mind was also an unforeseen element in the scheme.

Irish did not see H. J. Owens anywhere in town—nor did he see either of the two men who had stood behind him. But there was a poker game running in Rusty Brown's back room, and Irish immediately sat in without further investigation. Bert Rogers was standing behind one of the players, and gave Irish a nod and a wink which may have had many meanings. Irish interpreted it as encouragement to sail in and clean up the bunch.

There was money enough in sight to build that fence when he sat down. Irish pulled his hat farther over his eyebrows, rolled and lighted a cigarette while he waited for that particular jackpot to be taken, and covertly sized up the players.

Every one of them was strange to him. But then, the town was full of strangers since Florence Grace and her Syndicate began to reap a harvest off the open country, so Irish merely studied the faces casually, as a matter of habit They were nesters, of course—real or prospective. They seemed to have plenty of money—and it was eminently fitting that the Happy Family's fence should be built with nester money.

Irish had in his pockets exactly eighteen dollars and fifty-cents. He bought eighteen dollars' worth of chips and began to play. Privately he preferred stud poker to draw, but he was not going to propose a change; he felt perfectly qualified to beat any three pilgrims that ever came West.

Four hands he played and lost four dollars. He drank a glass of beer then, made himself another cigarette and settled down to business, feeling that he had but just begun. After the fifth hand he looked up and caught again the eye of Bert Rogers. Bert pulled his eyebrows together in a warning look, and Irish thought better of staying that hand. He did not look at Bert after that, but he did watch the other players more closely.

After awhile Bert wandered away, his interest dulling when he saw that Irish was holding his own and a little better. Irish played on, conservative to such a degree that in two hours he had not won more than fifteen dollars. The Happy Family would have been surprised to see him lay down kings and refuse to draw to them which he did once, with a gesture of disgust that flipped them face up so that all could see. He turned them over immediately, but the three had seen that this tall stranger, who had all the earmarks of a cowpuncher, would not draw to kings but must have something better before he would stay.

So they played until the crowd thinned; until Irish, by betting safely and sticking to a caution that must have cost him a good deal in the way of self-restraint, had sixty dollars' worth of chips piled in front of him.

Some men, playing for a definite purpose, would have quit at that. Irish did not quit, however. He wanted a certain sum from these nesters. He had come to town expecting to win a certain sum from them. He intended to play until he got it or went broke. He was not using any trickery—and he had stopped one man in the middle of a deal, with a certain look in his eye remarking that he'd rather have the top card than the bottom one, so that he was satisfied they were not trying to cheat.

There came a deal when Irish looked at his cards, sent a slanting look at the others and laid down his five cards with a long breath. He raised the ante four blue ones and rolled and lit a cigarette while the three had drawn what cards they thought they needed. The man at Irish's left had drawn only one card. Now he hesitated and then bet with some assurance. Irish smoked imperturbably while the other two came in, and then he raised the bet three stacks of blues. His neighbor raised him one stack, and the next man hesitated and then laid down his cards. The third man meditated for a minute and raised the bet ten dollars. Irish blew forth a leisurely smoke wreath and with a sweep of his hand sent in all his chips.

There was a silent minute, wherein Irish smoked and drummed absently upon the table with his fingers that were free. His neighbor frowned, grunted and threw down his hand. The third man did the same. Irish made another sweep of his hand and raked the table clean of chips.

"That'll do for tonight," he remarked dryly. "I don't like to be a hog."

Had that ended the incident, sensitive readers might still read and think well of Irish. But one of the players was not quite sober, and he was a poor loser and a pugnacious individual anyway, with a square face and a thick neck that went straight up to the top of his head. His underlip pushed out, and when Irish turned away, to cash in his chips, this pugnacious one reached over and took a look at the cards Irish had held.

It certainly was as rotten a hand as a man could hold. Suits all mixed, and not a face card or a pair in the lot. The pugnacious player had held a king high straight, and he had stayed until Irish sent in all his chips. He gave a bellow and jumped up and hit Irish a glancing blow back of the ear. Let us not go into details. You know Irish—or you should know him by this time. A man who will get away with a bluff like that should be left alone or brained in the beginning of the fight—especially when he can look down on the hair of a six-foot man, and has muscles hardened by outdoor living. When the dust settled, two chairs were broken and some glasses swept off the bar by heaving bodies, and two of the three players had forgotten their troubles. The third was trying to find the knob on the back door, and could not because of the buzzing in his head and the blood in his eyes. Irish had welts and two broken knuckles and a clear conscience, and he was so mad he almost wound up by thrashing Rusty, who had stayed behind the bar and taken no hand in the fight. Rusty complained because of the damage to his property, and Irish, being the only one present in a condition to listen, took the complaint as a personal insult.

He counted his money to make sure he had it all, evened the edges of the package of bank notes and thrust the package into his pocket. If Rusty had kept his face closed about those few glasses and those chairs, he would have left a "bill" on the bar to pay for them, even though he did need every cent of that money. He told Rusty this, and he accused him of standing in with the nesters and turning down the men who had helped him make money' all these years.

"Why, darn your soul, I've spent money enough over this bar to buy out the whole damn joint, and you know it!" he cried indignantly. "If you think you've got to collect damages, take it outa these blinkety-blink pilgrims you think so much of. Speak to 'em pleasant, though, or you're liable to lose the price of a beer, maybe! They'll never bring you the money we've brought you, you—"

"They won't because you've likely killed 'em both," Rusty retorted angrily. "You want to remember you can't come into town and rip things up the back the way you used to, and nobody say a word. You better drift, before that feller that went out comes back with an officer. You can't—"

"Officer be damned!" retorted Irish, unawed.

He went out while Rusty was deciding to order him out, and started for the stable. Halfway there he ducked into the shadow of the blacksmith shop and watched two men go up the street to Rusty's place, walking quickly. He went on then, got his horse hurriedly without waiting to cinch the saddle, led him behind the blacksmith shop where he would not be likely to be found, and tied him there to the wreck of a freight wagon.

Then he went across lots to where Fred Wilson, manager of the general store, slept in a two-room shack belonging to the hotel. The door was locked—Fred being a small man with little trust in Providence or in his overt physical prowess—and so he rapped cautiously upon the window until Fred awoke and wanted to know who in thunder was there.

Irish told his name, and presently went inside. "I'm pulling outa town, Fred," he explained, "and I don't know when I'll be in again. So I want you to take an order for some posts and bob wire and steeples. I—"

"Why didn't you come to the store?" Fred very naturally demanded, peevish at being wakened at three o'clock in the morning. "I saw you in town when I closed up."

"I was busy. Crawl back into bed and cover up, while I give you the order. I'll want a receipt for the money, too—I'm paying in advance, so you won't have any excuse for holding up the order. Got any thing to write on?"

Fred found part of an order pad and a pencil, and crept shivering into his bed. The offer to pay in advance had silenced his grumbling, as Irish expected it would. So Irish gave the order—thirteen hundred cedar posts, I remember—I don't know just how much wire, but all he would need.

"Holy Macintosh! Is this for YOU?" Fred wanted to know as he wrote it down.

"Some of it. We're fencing our claims. If I don't come after the stuff myself, let any of the boys have it that shows up. And get it here as quick as you can—what you ain't got on hand—"

Fred was scratching his jaw meditatively with the pencil, and staring at the order. "I can just about fill that order outa stock on hand," he told Irish. "When all this land rush started I laid in a big supply of posts and wire. First thing they'd want, after they got their shacks up. How you making it, out there?"

"Fine," said Irish cheerfully, feeling his broken knuckles. "How much is all that going to cost? You oughta make us a rate on it, seeing it's a cash sale, and big."

"I will." Fred tore out a sheet and did some mysterious figuring, afterwards crumpling the paper into a little wad and hipping it behind the bed. "This has got to be on the quiet, Irish. I can't sell wire and posts to those eastern marks at this rate, you know. This is just for you boys—and the profit for us is trimmed right down to a whisper." He named the sum total with the air of one who confers a great favor.

Irish grinned and reached into his pocket. "You musta knocked your profit down to fifty percent.," he fleered. "But it's a go with me." He peeled off the whole roll, just about. He had two twenties left in his hand when he stopped. He was very methodical that night. He took a receipt for the money before he left and he looked at it with glistening eyes before he folded it with the money. "Don't sell any posts and wire till our order's filled, Fred," he warned. "We'll begin hauling right away, and we'll want it all."

He let himself out into the cool starlight, walked in the shadows to where he had left his horse, mounted and rode whistling away down the lane which ended where the hills began.



CHAPTER 14. JUST ONE THING AFTER ANOTHER

A gray clarity of the air told that daylight was near. The skyline retreated, the hills came out of the duskiness like a photograph in the developer tray. Irish dipped down the steep slope into Antelope Coulee, cursing the sprinkle of new shacks that stood stark in the dawn on every ridge and every hilltop, look where one might. He loped along the winding trail through the coulee's bottom and climbed the hill beyond. At the top he glanced across the more level upland to the east and his eyes lightened. Far away stood a shack—Patsy's, that was. Beyond that another, and yet another. Most of the boys had built in the coulees where was water. They did not care so much about the view—over which Miss Allen had grown enthusiastic.

He pulled up in a certain place near the brow of the hill, and looked down into the narrower gulch where huddled the shacks they had moved. He grinned at the sight. His hand went involuntarily to his pocket and the grin widened. He hurried on that he might the sooner tell the boys of their good luck; all the material for that line fence bought and paid for—there would certainly laugh when they heard where the money had come from!

First he thought that he would locate the cattle and tell his news to the boys on guard. He therefore left the trail and rode up on a ridge from which he could overlook the whole benchland, with the exception of certain gulches that cut through. The sky was reddening now, save where banked clouds turned purple. A breeze crept over the grass and carried the fresh odor of rain. Close beside him a little brown bird chittered briskly and flew away into the dawn.

He looked away to where the Bear Paws humped, blue-black against the sky, the top of Old Baldy blushing faintly under the first sun rays. He looked past Wolf Butte, where the land was blackened with outcroppings of rock. His eyes came back leisurely to the claim country. A faint surprise widened his lids, and he turned and sent a glance sweeping to the right, toward Flying U Coulee. He frowned, and studied the bench land carefully.

This was daybreak, when the cattle should be getting out for their breakfast-feed. They should be scattered along the level just before him. And there were no cattle anywhere in sight. Neither were there any riders in sight. Irish gave a puzzled grunt and turned in his saddle, looking back toward Dry Lake. That way, the land was more broken, and he could not see so far. But as far as he could see there were no cattle that way either. Last night when he rode to town the cattle of the colonists had been feeding on the long slope three or four miles from where he stood, across Antelope Coulee where he had helped the boys drive them.

He did not waste many minutes studying the empty prairie from the vantage point of that ridge, however. The keynote of Irish's nature was action. He sent his horse down the southern slope to the level, and began looking for tracks, which is the range man's guide-book. He was not long in finding a broad trail, in the grass where cattle had lately crossed the coulee from the west. He knew what that meant, and he swore when he saw how the trail pointed straight to the east—to the broken, open country beyond One Man Coulee. What had the boys been thinking of, to let that nester stock get past them in the night? What had the line-riders been doing? They were supposed to guard against just such a move as this.

Irish was sore from his fight in town, and he had not had much sleep during the past forty-eight hours, and he was ravenously hungry. He followed the trail of the cattle until he saw that they certainly had gotten across the Happy Family claims and into the rough country beyond; then he turned and rode over to Patsy's shack, where a blue smoke column wobbled up to the fitful air-current that seized it and sent it flying toward the mountains.

There he learned that Dry Lake had not hugged to itself all the events of the night. Patsy, smoking a pipefull of Durham while he waited for the teakettle to boil, was wild with resentment. In the night, while he slept, something had heaved his cabin up at one corner. In a minute another corner heaved upward a foot or more. Patsy had yelled while he felt around in the darkness for his clothes, and had got no answer, save other heavings from below.

Patsy was not the man to submit tamely to such indignities. He had groped and found his old 45-70 riffle, that made a noise like a young cannon and kicked like a broncho cow. While the shack lurched this way and that, Patsy pointed the gun toward the greatest disturbance and fired. He did not think: he hit anybody, but he apologized to Irish for missing and blamed the darkness for the misfortune. Py cosh, he sure tried—witness the bullet holes which he had bored through the four sides of the shack; he besought Irish to count them; which Irish did gravely. And what happened then?

Then? Why, then the Happy Family had come; or at least all those who had been awake and riding the prairie had come pounding up out of the dark, their horses running like rabbits, their blood singing the song of battle. They had grappled with certain of the enemy—Patsy broke open the door and saw tangles of struggling forms in the faint starlight. The Happy Family were not the type of men who must settle every argument with a gun, remember. Not while their hands might be used to fight with. Patsy thought that they licked the nesters without much trouble. He knew that the settlers ran, and that the Happy Family chased them clear across the line and then came back and let the shack down where it belonged upon the rock underpining.

"Und py cosh! Dey vould move my shack off'n my land!" he grunted ragefully as he lived over the memory.

Irish went to the door and looked out. The wind had risen in the last half hour, so that his hat went sailing against the rear wall, but he did not notice that. He was wondering why the settlers had made this night move against Patsy. Was it an attempt to irritate the boys to some real act of violence—something that would put them in fear of the law? Or was it simply a stratagem to call off the night-guard so that they might slip their cattle across into the breaks? They must have counted on some disturbance which would reach the ears of the boys on guard. If Patsy had not begun the bombardment with his old rifle, they would very likely have fired a few shots themselves—enough to attract attention. With that end in view, he could see why Patsy's shack had been chosen for the attack. Patsy's shack was the closest to where they had been holding the cattle. It was absurdly simple, and evidently the ruse had worked to perfection.

"Where are the boys at now?" he asked abruptly, turning to Patsy who had risen and knocked the ashes from his pipe and was slicing bacon.

"Gone after the cattle. Dey stampede alreatty mit all der noise," Patsy growled, with his back to Irish.

So it was just as Irish had suspected. He faced the west and the gathering bank of "thunder heads" that rode swift on the wind and muttered sullenly as they rode, and he hesitated. Should he go after the boys and help them round up the stock and drive it back, or should he stay where he was and watch the claims? There was that fence—he must see to that, too.

He turned and asked Patsy if all the boys were gone. But Patsy did not know.

Irish stood in the doorway until breakfast was ready whereupon he sat down and ate hurriedly—as much from habit as from any present need of haste. A gust of wind made the flimsy cabin shake, and Patsy went to close the door against its sudden fury.

"Some riders iss coming now," he said, and held the door half closed against the wind. "It ain't none off der boys," he added, with the certainty which came of his having watched, times without number, while the various members of the Happy Family rode in from the far horizons to camp. "Pilgrims, I guess—from der ridin'."

Irish grunted and reached for the coffee pot, giving scarce a thought to Patsy's announcement. While he poured his third cup of coffee he made a sudden decision. He would get that fence off his mind, anyway.

"Say, Patsy, I've rustled wire and posts—all we'll need. I guess I'll just turn this receipt over to you and let you get busy. You take the team and drive in today and get the stuff headed out here pronto. The nesters are shipping in more stock—I heard in town that they're bringing in all they can rustle, thinkin' the stock will pay big money while the claims are getting ready to produce. I heard a couple of marks telling each other just how it was going to work out so as to put 'em all on Easy Street—the darned chumps! Free grass—that's what they harped on; feed don't cost anything. All yuh do is turn 'em loose and wait till shippin' season, and then collect. That's what they were talking.

"The sooner that fence is up the better. We can't put in the whole summer hazing their cattle around. I've bought the stuff and paid for it. And here's forty dollars you can use to hire it hauled out here. Us fellows have got to keep cases on the cattle, so you 'tend to this fence." He laid the money and Fred's receipt upon the table and set Patsy's plate over them to hold them safe against the wind that rattled the shack. He had forgotten all about the three approaching riders, until Patsy turned upon him sharply.

"Vot schrapes you been into now?" he demanded querulously. "Py cosh you done somet'ings. It's der conshtable comin' alreatty. I bet you be pinched."

"I bet I don't," Irish retorted, and made for the one window, which looked toward the hills. "Feed 'em some breakfast, Patsy. And you drive in and tend to that fencing right away, like I told you."

He threw one long leg over the window sill, bent his lean body to pass through the square opening, and drew the other leg outside. He startled his horse, which had walked around there out of the wind, but he caught the bridle-reins and led him a few steps farther where he would be out of the direct view from the window. Then he stopped and listened.

He heard the three ride up to the other side of the shack and shout to Patsy. He heard Patsy moving about inside, and after a brief delay open the door. He heard the constable ask Patsy if he knew anything about Irish, and where he could be found; and he heard Patsy declare that he had enough to do without keeping track of that boneheaded cowpuncher who was good for nothing but to fight and get into schrapes.

After that he heard Patsy ask the constable if they had had any breakfast before leaving town. He heard certain saddle-sounds which told of their dismounting in response to the tacit invitation. And then, pulling his hat firmly down upon his head, Irish led his horse quietly down into a hollow behind the shack, and so out of sight and hearing of those three who sought him.

He did not believe that he was wanted for anything very serious; they meant to arrest him, probably, for laying out those two gamblers with a chair and a bottle of whisky respectively. A trumped-up charge, very likely, chiefly calculated to make him some trouble and to eliminate him from the struggle for a time. Irish did not worry at all over their reason for wanting him, but he did not intend to let them come close enough to state their errand, because he did not want to become guilty of resisting an officer—which would be much worse than fighting nesters with fists and chairs and bottles and things.

In the hollow he mounted and rode down the depression and debouched upon the wide, grassy coulee where lay a part of his own claim. He was not sure of the intentions of that constable, but he took it for granted that he would presently ride on to Irish's cabin in search of him; also that he would look for him further, and possibly with a good deal of persistence; which would be a nuisance and would in a measure hamper the movements and therefore the usefulness of Irish. For that reason he was resolved to take no chance that could be avoided.

The sun slid behind the scurrying forerunners of the storm and struggled unavailingly to shine through upon the prairie land. From where he was Irish could not see the full extent of the storm-clouds, and while he had been on high land he had been too absorbed in other matters to pay much attention. Even now he did no more than glance up casually at the inky mass above him, and decided that he would do well to ride on to his cabin and get his slicker.

By the time he reached his shack the storm was beating up against the wind which had turned unexpectedly to the northeast. Mutterings of thunder grew to sharper booming. It was the first real thunderstorm of the season, but it was going to be a hard one, if looks meant anything. Irish went in and got his slicker and put it on, and then hesitated over riding on in search of the cattle and the men in pursuit of them.

Still, the constable might take a notion to ride over this way in spite of the storm. And if he came there would be delay, even if there were nothing worse. So Irish, being one to fight but never to stand idle, mounted again and turned his long-suffering horse down the coulee as the storm swept up.

First a few large drops of rain pattered upon the earth and left blobs of wet where they fell. His horse shook its head impatiently and went sidling forward until an admonitory kick from Irish sent him straight down the dim trail. Then the clouds opened recklessly the headgates and let the rain down in one solid rush of water that sluiced the hillsides and drove muddy torrents down channels that had been dry since the snow left.

Irish bent his head so that his hat shielded somewhat his face, and rode doggedly on. It was not the first time that he had been out in a smashing, driving thunderstorm, and it would not be his last if his life went on logically as he had planned it. But it was not the more comfortable because it was an oft-repeated experience. And when the first fury had passed and still it rained steadily and with no promise of a let-up, his optimism suffered appreciably.

His luck in town no longer cheered him. He began to feel the loss of sleep and the bone-weariness of his fight and the long ride afterwards. His breakfast was the one bright spot, and saved him from the gnawing discomfort of an empty stomach—at first.

He went into One Man Coulee and followed it to the arm that would lead to the rolling, ridgy open land beyond, where the "breaks" of the Badlands reached out to meet the prairie. He came across the track of the herd, and followed it to the plain. Once out in the open, however, the herd had seemed to split into several small bunches, each going in a different direction. Which puzzled Irish a little at first. Later, he thought he understood.

The cattle, it would seem, had been driven purposefully into the edge of the breaks and there made to scatter out through the winding gulches and canyons that led deeper into the Badlands. It was the trick of range-men—he could not believe that the strange settlers, ignorant of the country and the conditions, would know enough to do this. He hesitated before several possible routes, the rain pouring down upon him, a chill breeze driving it into his face. If there had been hoofprints to show which way the boys had gone, the rain had washed them so that they looked dim and old and gave him little help.

He chose what seemed to him the gorge which the boys would be most likely to follow—especially at night and if they were in open pursuit of those who had driven the cattle off the benchland; and that the cattle had been driven beyond this point was plain enough, for otherwise he would have overtaken stragglers long before this.

It was nearing noon when he came out finally upon a little, open flat and found there Big Medicine and Pink holding a bunch of perhaps a hundred cattle which they had gleaned from the surrounding gulches and little "draws" which led into the hills. The two were wet to the skin, and they were chilled and hungry and as miserable as a she-bear sent up a tree by yelping, yapping dogs.

Big Medicine it was who spied him first through the haze of falling water, and galloped heavily toward him, his horse flinging off great pads of mud from his feet as he came.

"Say!" he bellowed when he was yet a hundred yards away. "Got any grub with yuh?"

"No!" Irish called back.

"Y'AIN'T" Big Medicine's voice was charged with incredulous reproach. "What'n hell yuh doin' here without GRUB? Is Patsy comin' with the wagon?"

"No. I sent Patsy on in to town after—"

"Town? And us out here—" Big Medicine choked over his wrongs.

Irish waited until he could get in a word and then started to explain. But Pink rode up with his hatbrim flapping soggily against one dripping cheek when the wind caught it, and his coat buttoned wherever there were buttons, and his collar turned up, and looking pinched and draggled and wholly miserable.

"Say! Got anything to eat?" he shouted when he came near, his voice eager and hopeful.

"No!" snapped Irish with the sting of Big Medicine's vituperations rankling fresh in his soul.

"Well why ain't yuh? Where's Patsy?" Pink came closer and eyed the newcomer truculently.

"How'n hell do I know?" Irish was getting a temper to match their own.

"Well, why don't yuh know? What do yuh think you're out here for? To tell us you think it's going to rain? If we was all of us like you, there'd be nothing to it for the nester-bunch. It's a wonder you come alive enough to ride out this way at all! I don't reckon you've even got anything to drink!" Pink paused a second, saw no move toward producing anything wet and cheering, and swore disgustedly. "Of course not! You needed it all yourself! So help me Josephine, if I was as low-down ornery as some I could name I'd tie myself to a mule's tail and let him kick me to death! Ain't got any grub! Ain't got—"

Irish interrupted him then with a sentence that stung. Irish, remember, distinctly approved of himself and his actions. True, he had forgotten to bring anything to eat with him, but there was excuse for that in the haste with which he had left his own breakfast. Besides how could he be expected to know that the cattle had been driven away down here, and scattered, and that the Happy Family would not have overtaken them long before? Did they think he was a mind-reader?

Pink, with biting sarcasm, retorted that they did not. That it took a mind to read a mind. He added that, from the looks of Irish, he must have started home drunk, anyway, and his horse had wandered this far of his own accord. Then three or four cows started up a gulch to the right of them and Pink, hurling insults over his shoulder, rode off to turn them back. So they did not actually come to blows, those two, though they were near it.

Big Medicine lingered to bawl unforgivable things at; Irish, and Irish shouted back recklessly that they had all acted like a bunch of sheepherders, or the cattle would never have been driven off the bench at all. He declared that anybody with the brains of a sick sage hen would have stopped the thing right in the start. He said other things also.

Big Medicine said things in reply, and Pink, returning to the scene with his anger grown considerably hotter from feeding upon his discomfort, made a few comments pertinent to the subject of Irish's shortcomings.

You may scarcely believe it, unless you have really lived, and have learned how easily small irritations grow to the proportions of real trouble, and how swiftly—but this is a fact: Irish and Big Medicine became so enraged that they dismounted simultaneously and Irish jerked off his slicker while Big Medicine was running up to smash him for some needless insult.

They fought, there in the rain and the mud and the chill wind that whipped their wet cheeks. They fought just as relentlessly as though they had long been enemies, and just as senselessly as though they were not grown men but schoolboys. They clinched and pounded and smashed until Pink sickened at the sight and tore them apart and swore at them for crazy men and implored them to have some sense. They let the cattle that had been gathered with so much trouble drift away into the gulches and draws where they must be routed out of the brush again, or perhaps lost for days in that rough country.

When the first violence of their rage had like the storm settled to a cold steadiness of animosity, the two remounted painfully and turned back upon each other.

Big Medicine and Pink drew close together as against a common foe, and Irish cursed them both and rode away—whither he did not know nor care.



CHAPTER 15. THE KID HAS IDEAS OF HIS OWN

The Old Man sat out in his big chair on the porch, smoking and staring dully at the trail which led up the bluff by way of the Hog's Back to the benchland beyond. Facing him in an old, cane rocking chair, the Honorable Blake smoked with that air of leisurely enjoyment which belongs to the man who knows and can afford to burn good tobacco and who has the sense to, burn it consciously, realizing in every whiff its rich fragrance. The Honorable Blake flicked a generous half-inch of ash from his cigar upon a porch support and glanced shrewdly at the Old Man's abstracted face.

"No, it wouldn't do," he observed with the accent of a second consideration of a subject that coincides exactly with the first. "It wouldn't do at all. You could save the boys time, I've no doubt—time and trouble so far as getting the cattle back where they belong is concerned. I can see how they must be hampered for lack of saddle-horses, for instance. But—it wouldn't do, Whitmore. If they come to you and ask for horses don't let them have them. They'll manage somehow—trust them for that. They'll manage—" "But doggone it, Blake, it's for—"

"Sh-sh—" Blake held up a warning hand. "None of that, my dear Whitmore! These young fellows have taken claims in—er—good faith." His bright blue eyes sparkled with a sudden feeling. "In the best of good faith, if you ask me. I—admire them intensely for what they have started out to do. But—they have certain things which they must do, and do alone. If you would not thwart them in accomplishing what they have set out to do, you must go carefully; which means that you must not run to their aid with your camp-wagons and your saddle-horses, so they can gather the cattle again and drive them back where they belong. You would not be helping them. They would get the cattle a little easier and a little quicker—and lose their claims."

"But doggone it, Blake, them boys have lived right here at the Flying U—why, this has been their home, yuh might say. They ain't like the general run of punchers that roam around, workin' for this outfit and for that; they've stuck. Why, doggone it, what they done here when I got hurt in Chicago and they was left to run themselves, why, that alone puts me under obligations to help 'em out in this scrape. Anybody could see that. Ain't I a neighbor? Ain't neighbors got a right to jump in and help each other? There ain't no law agin—"

"Not against neighbors—no." Blake uncrossed his perfectly trousered legs and crossed them the other way, after carefully avoiding any bagging tendency. "But this syndicate—or these contestants—will try to prove that you are not a neighbor only, but a—backer of the boys in a land-grabbing scheme. To avoid—"

"Well, doggone your measly hide, Blake, I've told you fifty times I ain't!" The Old Man sat forward in his chair and shook his fist unabashed at his guest. "Them boys cooked that all up amongst themselves, and went and filed on that land before ever I knowed a thing about it. How can yuh set there and say I backed 'em? And that blonde Jezebel—riding down here bold as brass and turnin' up her nose at Dell, and callin' me a conspirator to my face!"

"I sticked a pin in her saddle blanket, Uncle Gee-gee. I'll bet she wished she'd stayed away from here when her horse bucked her off." The Kid looked up from trying to tie a piece of paper to the end of a brindle kitten's switching tail, and smiled his adorable smile—that had a gap in the middle.

"Hey? You leave that cat alone or he'll scratch yuh. Blake, if you can't see—"

"He! He's a her and her name's Adeline. Where's the boys, Uncle Gee-gee?"

"Hey? Oh, away down in the breaks after their cattle that got away. You keep still and never mind where they've gone." His mind swung back to the Happy Family, combing the breaks for their stock and the stock of the nesters, with an average of one saddle-horse apiece and a camp outfit of the most primitive sort—if they had any at all, which he doubted. The Old Man had eased too many roundups through that rough country not to realize keenly the difficulties of the Happy Family.

"They need horses," he groaned to Blake, "and they need help. If you knowed the country and the work as well as I do you'd know they've got to have horses and help. And there's their claims—fellers squatting down on every eighty—four different nesters fer every doggoned one of the bunch to handle! And you tell me I got to set here and not lift a hand. You tell me I can't put men to work on that fence they want built. You tell me I can't lend 'em so much as a horse!"

Blake nodded. "I tell you that, and I emphasize it," he assured the other, brushing off another half inch of ash from his cigar. "If you want to help those boys hold their land, you must not move a finger."

"He's wiggling all of 'em!" accused the Kid sternly, and pointed to the Old Man drumming irritatedly upon his chair arms. "He don't want to help the boys, but I do. I'll help 'em get their cattle, Mr. Blake. I'm one of the bunch anyway. I'll lend 'em my string."

"You've been told before not to butt in to grownup talk," his uncle reproved him irascibly. "Now you cut it out. And take that string off'n that cat!" he added harshly. "Dell! Come and look after this kid! Doggone it, a man can't talk five minutes—"

The Kid giggled irrepressibly. "That's one on you, old man. You saw Doctor Dell go away a long time ago. Think she can hear yuh when she's away up on the bench?"

"You go on off and play!" commanded the Old Man. "I dunno what yuh want to pester a feller to death for—and say! Take that string off'n that cat!"

"Aw gwan! It ain't hurting the cat. She likes it." He lifted the kitten and squeezed her till she yowled. "See? She said yes, she likes it."

The Old Man returned to the trials of the Happy Family, and the Kid sat and listened, with the brindle kitten snuggled uncomfortably, head downward in his arms.

The Kid had heard a good deal, lately, about the trials of his beloved "bunch." About the "nesters" who brought cattle in to eat up the grass that belonged to the cattle of the bunch. The Kid understood that perfectly—since he had been raised in the atmosphere of range talk. He had heard about the men building shacks on the claims of the Happy Family—he understood that also; for he had seen the shacks himself, and he had seen where there had been slid down hill into the bottom of Antelope Coulee. He knew all about the attack on Patsy's cabin and how the Happy Family had been fooled, and the cattle driven off and scattered. The breaks—he was a bit hazy upon the subject of breaks. He had heard about them all his life. The stock got amongst them and had to be hunted out. He thought—as nearly as could be put in words—that it must be a place where all the brakes grow that are used on wagons and buggies. These were of wood, therefore they must grow somewhere. They grew where the Happy Family went sometimes, when they were gone for days and days after stock. They were down there now—it was down in the breaks, always—and they couldn't round up their cattle because they hadn't horses enough. They needed help, so they could hurry back and slide those other shacks off their claims and into Antelope Coulee where they had slid the others. On the whole, the Kid had a very fair conception of the state of affairs. Claimants and contestants—those words went over his head. But he knew perfectly well that the nesters were the men that didn't like the Happy Family, and lived in shacks on the way to town, and plowed big patches of prairie and had children that went barefooted in the furrows and couldn't ride horses to save their lives. Pilgrim kids, that didn't know what "chaps" were—he had talked with a few when he went with Doctor Dell and Daddy Chip to see the sick lady.

After a while, when the Honorable Blake became the chief speaker and leaned forward and tapped the Old Man frequently on a knee with his finger, and used long words that carried no meaning, and said contestant and claimant and evidence so often that he became tiresome, the Kid slid off the porch and went away, his small face sober with deep meditations.

He would need some grub—maybe the bunch was hungry without any camp-wagons. The Kid had stood around in the way, many's the time, and watched certain members of the Happy Family stuff emergency rations into flour sacks, and afterwards tie the sack to their saddles and ride off. He knew all about that, too.

He hunted up a flour sack that had not had all the string pulled out of it so it was no longer a sack but a dish-towel, and held it behind his back while he went cautiously to the kitchen door. The Countess was nowhere in sight—but it was just as well to make sure. The Kid went in, took a basin off the table, held it high and deliberately dropped it on the floor. It, made a loud bang, but it did not elicit any shrill protest from the Countess; therefore the Countess was nowhere around. The Kid went in boldly and filled his four-sack so full it dragged on the floor when he started off.

At the door he went down the steps ahead of the sack, and bent his small back from the third step and pulled the sack upon his shoulders. It wobbled a good deal, and the Kid came near falling sidewise off the last step before he could balance his burden. But he managed it, being the child of his parents and having a good deal of persistence in his makeup; and he went, by a roundabout way, to the stable with the grub-sack bending him double. Still it was not so very heavy; it was made bulky by about two dozen fresh-made doughnuts and a loaf of bread and a jar of honey and a glass of wild-currant jelly and a pound or so of raw, dried prunes which the Kid called nibblin's because he liked to nibble at them, like a prairie dog at a grass root.

Getting that sack tied fast to the saddle after the saddle was on Silver's back was no easy task for a boy who is six, even though he is large for his age. Still, being Chip's Kid and the Little Doctor's he did it—with the help of the oats box and Silver's patient disposition.

There were other things which the bunch always tied on their saddles; a blanket, for instance, and a rope. The Kid made a trip to the bunk-house and pulled a gray blanket off Ole's bed, and spent a quarter of an hour rolling it as he had seen the boys roll blankets The oats box, with Silver standing beside it, came in handy again. He found a discarded rope and after much labor coiled it crudely and tied it beside the saddle-fork.

The Kid went to the door, stood beside it and leaned away over so that he could peek out and not be seen Voices came from the house—the voice of the Old Man; to be exact, high-pitched and combative. The Kid looked up the bluff, and the trail lay empty in the afternoon sun. Still, he did not like to take that trail. Doctor Dell might come riding down there almost any minute. The Kid did not want to meet Doctor Dell just right then.

He went back, took Silver by the bridle reins and led him out of the barn and around the corner where he could not be seen from the White House. He thought he had better go down the creek, and out through the wire gate and on down the creek that way. He was sure that the "breaks" were somewhere beyond the end of the coulee, though he could not have explained why he was sure of it. Perhaps the boys, in speaking of the breaks, had unconsciously tilted heads in that direction.

The Kid went quickly down along the creek through the little pasture, leading Silver by the reins. He was terribly afraid that his mother might ride over the top of the hill and see him and call him back. If she did that, he would have to go, of course. Deliberate, open disobedience had never yet occurred to the Kid as a moral possibility. If your mother or your Daddy Chip told you to come back, you had to come; therefore he did not want to be told to come. Doctor Dell had told him that he could go on roundup some day—the Kid had decided that this was the day, but that it would be foolish to mention the decision to anyone. People had a way of disagreeing with one's decisions—especially Doctor Dell, she always said one was too little. The Kid thought he was getting pretty big, since he could stand on something and put the saddle on Silver his own self, and cinch it and everything; plenty big enough to get out and help the bunch when they needed help.

He did not look so very big as he went trudging down alongside the creek, stumbling now and then in the coarse grass that hid the scattered rocks. He could not keep his head twisted around to look under Silver's neck and watch the hill trail, and at the same time see where he was putting his feet. And if he got on Silver now he would be seen and recognized at the first glance which Doctor Dell would give to the coulee when she rode over the brow of the hill. Walking beside Silver's shoulder, on the side farthest from the bluff, he might not be seen at all; Doctor Dell might look and think it was just a horse walking along the creek his own self.

The Kid was extremely anxious that he should not be seen. The bunch needed him. Uncle Gee-gee said they needed help. The Kid thought they would expect him to come and help with his "string", He helped Daddy Chip drive the horses up from the little pasture, these days; just yesterday he had brought the whole bunch up, all by his own self, and had driven them into the big corral alone, and Daddy Chip had stood by the gate and watched him do it. Daddy Chip had lifted him down from Silver's back, and had squeezed him hard, and had called him a real, old cowpuncher. The Kid got warm all inside him when he, thought of it.

When a turn in the narrow creek-bottom hid him completely from the ranch buildings and the hill trail, the Kid led Silver alongside a low bank, climbed into the saddle. Then he made Silver lope all the way to the gate.

He had some trouble with that gate. It was a barbed wire gate, such as bigger men than the Kid sometimes swear over. It went down all right, but when he came to put it up again, that was another matter. He simply had to put it up before he could go on. You always had to shut gates if you found them shut—that was a law of the range which the Kid had learned so long ago he could not remember when he had learned And there was another reason—he did not want em to know he had passed that way, if they took a notion to call him back. So he worked and he tugged and he grew so red in the face it looked as if he were choking. But he got the gate up and the wire loop over the stake—though he had to hunt up an old piece of a post to stand on, and even then had to stand on his toes to reach the loop—since he was Chip's Kid and the Little Doctor's.

He even remembered to scrape out the tell-tale prints of his small feet in the bare earth there, and the prints of Silver's feet where he went through. Yarns he had heard the Happy Family tell, in the bunk-house on rainy days, had taught him these tricks. He was extremely thorough in all that he did—being a good deal like his dad—and when he went the grass, no one would have suspected that he had passed that way.

After a while he left that winding creek-bottom and climbed a long ridge. Then he went down hill and pretty soon he climbed another hill that made old Silver stop and rest before he went on to the top. The Kid stood on the top for a few minutes and stared wistfully out over the tumbled mass of hills, and deep hollows, and hills, and hill and hills—till he could not see where they left off. He could not see any of the bunch; but then, he could not see any brakes growing anywhere, either. The bunch was down in the brakes—he had heard that often enough to get it fixed firmly in his mind. Well, when he came to where the brakes grew—and he would know them, all right, when he saw them!—he would find the bunch. He thought they'd be s'prised to see him ride up! The bunch didn't know that he could drive stock all his own self, and that he was a real, old cowpuncher now. He was a lot bigger. He didn't have to hunt such a big rock, or such a high bank, to get on Silver now. He thought he must be pretty near as big as Pink, any way. They would certainly be s'prised!

The brakes must be farther over. Maybe he would have to go over on the other side of that biggest hill before he came to the place where they grew. He rode unafraid down a steep, rocky slope where Silver picked his way very, very carefully, and sometimes stopped and smelt of a ledge or a pile of rocks, and then turned and found some other way down.

The Kid let him choose his path—Daddy Chip had taught him to leave the reins loose and let Silver cross ditches and rough places where he wanted to cross. So Silver brought him safely down that hill where even the Happy Family would have hesitated to ride unless the need was urgent.

He could not go right up over the next hill—there was a rock ledge that was higher than his head when he sat on Silver. He went down a narrow gulch—ah, an awfully narrow gulch! Sometimes he was afraid Silver was too fat to squeeze through; but Silver always did squeeze through somehow. And still there were no brakes growing anywhere. Just choke-cherry trees, and service-berries, and now and then a little flat filled with cottonwoods and willows—familiar trees and bushes that he had known all his six years of life.

So the Kid went on and on, over hills or around hills or down along the side of hill. But he did not find the Happy Family, and he did not find the brakes. He found cattle that had the Flying U brand—they had a comfortable, homey look. One bunch he drove down a wide coulee, hazing them out of the brush and yelling "HY-AH!" at them, just the way the Happy Family yelled. He thought maybe these were the cattle the Happy Family were looking for; so he drove them ahead of him and didn't let one break back on him and he was the happiest Kid in all Montana with these range cattle, that had the Flying U brand, galloping awkwardly ahead of him down that big coulee.