y sample that wine!
Got to get rid of 'em somehow--they claim to be full uh business as
a jack rabbit is of fleas! When yuh want to git out and round up them
cows? Wagon's over on Dry creek som'ers--or ought to be. Yuh might take
your soogans and ride ove' there tomorrow or next day and ketch 'em.
I'll write a note to Chip and tell 'im what's to be done. And while
you're pickin' your bunch you can draw wages just the same as ever, and
help them double-dutch blisterin' milk-fed pilgrims with the calf crop."

"We'll sure do that," promised Weary for the bunch. "We can start in the
morning, all right."

"Take a taste uh this wine. None of your tobacco-juice stuff; this comes
straight from Fresno. Senator Blake sent it the other day. Fill up that
glass, Dell! What yuh want to be so doggone stingy fer? Think this bunch
uh freaks are going to stand for that? They can't git the taste outa
less'n a pint. This ain't any doggone liver-tonic like you dope out."

The Little Doctor smiled understandingly and filled their glasses with
the precious wine from sunland. She did not know what had happened, but
she did know that the Old Man had seized another hand-hold on life in
the last hour, and she was grateful. She even permitted the Kid to
take a tiny sip, just because the Happy Family hated to see him refused
anything he wanted.

So Flying U coulee was for the time being filled with the same old
laughter and the same atmosphere of care-free contentment with life. The
Countess stewed uncomplainingly in the kitchen, cooking dinner for the
boys. The Old Man grumbled hypocritically at them from his big chair,
and named their faults in the tone that transmuted them into virtues.
The Little Doctor heard about Miss Allen and her three partners, who
were building a four-room shack on the four corners of four claims, and
how Irish had been caught more than once in the act of staring fixedly
in the direction of that shack. She heard a good many things, and she
guessed a good many more.

By mid afternoon the Old Man was fifty per cent brighter and better than
he had been in the morning, and he laughed and bullied them as of old.
When they left he told them to clear out and stay out, and that if he
caught them hanging around his ranch, and making it look as if he were
backing them and trying to defraud the government, he'd sic the dog onto
them. Which tickled the Kid immensely, because there wasn't any dog to
sic.

CHAPTER 10. WHEREI