rty days they must appear before the register and receiver and file
answer to the contest, and he assured them that forbearance upon their
part would serve to strengthen their case with the Commissioner.

It goes to prove how deeply in earnest they were, that they immediately
began to practice assiduously the virtues of mildness and forbearance.
They could, he told them, postpone the filing of their answers until
close to the end of the thirty days; which would serve also to delay
the date of actual trial of the contests, and give the Happy Family more
time for their work.

Their plans had enlarged somewhat. They talked now of fencing the whole
tract on all four sides, and of building a dam across the mouth of a
certain coulee in the foothills which drained several miles of rough
country, thereby converting the coulee into a reservoir that would
furnish water for their desert claims. It would take work, of course;
but the Happy Family; were beginning to see prosperity on the trail
ahead and nothing in the shape of hard work could stop them from coming
to hang-grips with fortune.

Chip helped them all he could, but he had the Flying U to look after,
and that without the good team-work of the Happy Family which had kept
things moving along so smoothly. The team-work now was being used in a
different game; a losing game, one would say at first glance.

So far the summer had been favorable to dry-farming. The more
enterprising of the settlers had some grain and planted potatoes upon
freshly broken soil, and these were growing apace. They did not know
about these scorching August winds, that might shrivel crops in a day.
They did not realize that early frosts might kill what the hot winds
spared. They became enthusiastic over dry-farming, and their resentment
toward the Happy family increased as their enthusiasm waxed strong. The
Happy Family complained to one another that you couldn't pry a nester
loose from his claim with a crowbar.

In this manner did civilization march out and take possession of the
high prairies that lay close to the Flying U. They had a Sunday School
organized, with the meetings held in a double shack near the trail to
Dry Lake. The Happy family, riding that way, sometimes heard voices
mingled in the shrill singing of some hymn where, a year before, they
had listened to the hunting song of the coyote.

Eighty acres to the man--with that climate and that soil they never
could make it pay; with tha