undulating bench-land gashed here and there with coulees and
narrow gulches that gave no evidence of their existence until one rode
quite close, he lifted his head and gazed about him half regretfully,
half proudly. He hated to see that wide upland dotted here and there
with new, raw buildings, which proclaimed themselves claim-shacks as far
a one could see them. Andy hated the sight of claim-shacks with a hatred
born of long range experience and the vital interests of the cattleman.
A claim-shack stuck out on the prairie meant a barbed wire fence
somewhere in the immediate vicinity; and that meant a hindrance to the
easy handling of herds. A claim-shack meant a nester, and a nester was a
nuisance, with his plowed fields and his few head of cattle that must
be painstakingly weeded out of a herd to prevent a howl going up to high
heaven. Therefore, Andy Green instinctively hated the sight of a shack
on the prairie. On the other hand, those shacks belonged to the Happy
Family--and that pleased him. From where he sat on his horse he could
count five in sight, and there were more hidden by ridges and tucked
away in hollows.

But there were others going up--shacks whose owners he did not know.
He scowled when he saw, on distant hilltops, the yellow skeletons
that would presently be fattened with boards and paper and made the
dwelling-place of interlopers. To be sure, they had as much right to
take government land as had he or any of his friends--but Andy, being a
normally selfish person, did not think so.

From one partially built shack three quarters of a mile away on a bald
ridge which the Happy Family had passed up because of its barrenness and
the barrenness of the coulee on the other side, and because no one was
willing to waste even a desert right on that particular eighty-acres,
a team and light buggy came swiftly toward him. Andy, trained to quick
thinking, was puzzled at the direction the driver was taking. That
eighty acres joined his own west line, and unless the driver was lost
or on the way to One Man coulee, there was no reason whatever for coming
this way.

He watched and saw that the team was comin' straight toward him over
the uneven prairie sod, and at a pace that threatened damage to the
buggy-springs. Instinctively Andy braced himself in the saddle. At a
half mile he knew the team, and it did not require much shrewdness to
guess at the errand. He twitched the reins, turned his spurred heels
against his