metimes, 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