ests 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.

As he topped at last the final rise which put him on a level with the
great