Andy Green rode thoughtfully up the trail from his cabin in One Man coulee, his hat tilted to the south to shield his face from the climbing sun, his eyes fixed absently upon the yellow soil of the hillside. Andy was facing a problem that concerned the whole Happy Family--and the Flying U as well.
He wanted Weary's opinion, and Miguel Rapponi's, and Pink's--when it came to that, he wanted the opinion of them all.
Thus far the boys had been wholly occupied with getting their shacks built and in rustling cooking outfits and getting themselves settled upon their claims with an air of convincing permanency. Also they had watched with keen interest--which was something more vital than mere curiosity--developments where the homeseekers were concerned, and had not given very much thought to their next step, except in a purely general way.
They all recognized the fact that, with all these new settlers buzzing around hunting claims where there was some promise of making things grow, they would have to sit very tight indeed upon their own land if they would avoid trouble with "jumpers." Not all the homeseekers were women. There were men, plenty of them; a few of them were wholly lacking in experience it is true, but perhaps the more greedy for land because of their ignorance. The old farmers had looked askance at the high, dry prairie land, where even drinking water must be hauled in barrels from some deep-set creek whose shallow gurgling would probably cease altogether when the dry season came on the heels of June. The old farmers had asked questions that implied doubt. They had wanted to know about sub-soil, and average rainfall, and late frosts, and markets. The profusely illustrated folders that used blue print for emphasis here and there, seemed no longer to satisfy them.
The Happy Family did not worry much about the old farmers who knew the game, but there were town men who had come to see the fulfillment of their dreams; who had burned their bridges, some of them, and would suffer much before they would turn back to face the ridicule of their friends and the disheartening task of getting; a fresh foothold in the wage-market. These the Happy Family knew for incipient enemies once the struggle for existence was fairly begun. And there were the women--daring rivals of the men in their fight for independence--who had dreamed dreams and raised up ideals for which they would fight tenaciously. School-teachers who hated the routine of the schools, and who wanted freedom; who were willing to work and wait and forego the little, cheap luxuries which are so dear to women; who would cheerfully endure loneliness and spoiled complexions and roughened hands and broken nails, and see the prairie winds and sun wipe the sheen from their hair; who would wear coarse, heavy-soled shoes and keep all their pretty finery packed carefully away in their trunks with dainty sachet pads for month after month, and take all their pleasure in dreaming of the future; these would fight also to have and to hold--and they would fight harder than the men, more dangerously than the men, because they would fight differently.
The Happy Family, then, having recognized these things and having measured the fighting-element, knew that they were squarely up against a slow, grim, relentless war if they would save the Flying U. They knew that it was going to be a pretty stiff proposition, and that they would have to obey strictly the letter and the spirit of the land laws, or there would be contests and quarrels and trouble without end.
So they hammered and sawed and fitted boards and nailed on tar-paper and swore and jangled and joshed one another and counted nickels--where they used to disdain counting anything but results--and badgered the life out of Patsy because he kicked at being expected to cook for the bunch just the same as if he were in the Flying U mess-house. Py cosh, he wouldn't cook for the whole country just because they were too lazy to cook for themselves, and py cosh if they wanted him to cook for them they could pay him sixty dollars a month, as the Old Man did.
The Happy Family were no millionaires, and they made the fact plain to Patsy to the full extent of their vocabularies. But still they begged bread from him, a loaf at a time, and couldn't see why he objected to making pie, if they furnished the stuff. Why, for gosh sake, had they planted him in the very middle of their string of claims, then? With a dandy spring too, that never went dry except in the driest years, and not more than seventy-five yards, at the outside, to carry water. Up hill? Well, what of that? Look at Pink--had to haul water half a mile from One Man Creek, and no trail.
Look at Weary--had to pack water twice as far as Patsy. And hadn't they clubbed together and put up his darned shack first thing, just so he COULD get busy and cook? What did the old devil expect, anyway?
Well--you see that the Happy Family had been fully occupied in the week since the arrival of the homeseekers' excursion.
They could not be expected to give very much thought to their next steps. But there was Andy, who had only to move into the cabin in One Man coulee, with a spring handy, and a stable for his horse, and a corral and everything. Andy had not been harassed with the house-building and settling, except as he assisted the others. As fast as the shacks were up, the Happy Family had taken possession, so that now Andy was alone, stuck down there in the coulee out of sight of everybody.
Pink had once named One Man coulee as the lonesomest hole in all that country, and he had not been far wrong. But at any rate the lonesomeness had served one good purpose, for it had started Andy to thinking out the details of their so called land-pool. Now the thinking had borne fruit to the extent that he felt an urgent need of the Happy Family in council upon the subject.
