THE HAPPY FAMILY

* * * * *

ANANIAS GREEN

Pink, because he knew well the country and because Irish, who also
knew it well, refused pointblank to go into it again even as a rep,
rode alone except for his horses down into the range of the Rocking R.
General roundup was about to start, down that way, and there was stock
bought by the Flying U which ranged north of the Bear Paws.

It so happened that the owner of the Rocking R was entertaining a
party of friends at the ranch; it also happened that the friends were
quite new to the West and its ways, and they were intensely interested
in all pertaining thereto. Pink gathered that much from the crew,
besides observing much for himself. Hence what follows after.

Sherwood Branciforte was down in the blacksmith shop at the Rocking R,
watching one Andy Green hammer a spur-shank straight. Andy was what he
himself called a tamer of wild ones, and he was hard upon his riding
gear. Sherwood had that morning watched with much admiration the
bending of that same spur-shank, and his respect for Andy was
beautiful to behold.

"Lord, but this is a big, wild country," he was saying
enthusiastically, "and the people in it are big and--"

"Wild," supplied Andy. "Yes, you've just about got us sized up
correct." He went on hammering, and humming under his breath, and
thinking that, while admiration is all right in its time and place, it
is sometimes a bit wearisome.

"Oh, but I didn't mean that," the young man protested. "What I meant
was breezy and picturesque. Things can happen, out here. Life and men
don't run in grooves."

"No, nor horses," assented Andy. "Leastways, not in oiled ones." He
was remembering how that spur-shank had become bent.

"You did some magnificent riding, this morning. By Jove! I've never
seen anything like it. Strange that one can come out here into a part
of the country absolutely new and raw, and see things--"

"Oh, it ain't so raw as you might think," Andy defended jealously,
"nor yet new."

"Of course it is new! A commonwealth in the making. You can't," he
asserted triumphantly, "point to anything man-made that existed a
hundred years ago; scarcely fifty, either. Your civilization is yet in
the cradle--a lusty infant, and a--er--vociferous one, but still an
infant in swaddling clothes." Sherwood Branciforte had given lectures
before the Y.M.C.A. of his home town, and young ladies had spoke