raight to the east--to the broken,
open country beyond One Man Coulee. What had the boys been thinking
of, to let that nester stock get past them in the night? What had the
line-riders been doing? They were supposed to guard against just such a
move as this.

Irish was sore from his fight in town, and he had not had much sleep
during the past forty-eight hours, and he was ravenously hungry. He
followed the trail of the cattle until he saw that they certainly had
gotten across the Happy Family claims and into the rough country beyond;
then he turned and rode over to Patsy's shack, where a blue smoke column
wobbled up to the fitful air-current that seized it and sent it flying
toward the mountains.

There he learned that Dry Lake had not hugged to itself all the events
of the night. Patsy, smoking a pipefull of Durham while he waited for
the teakettle to boil, was wild with resentment. In the night, while
he slept, something had heaved his cabin up at one corner. In a minute
another corner heaved upward a foot or more. Patsy had yelled while he
felt around in the darkness for his clothes, and had got no answer, save
other heavings from below.

Patsy was not the man to submit tamely to such indignities. He had
groped and found his old 45-70 riffle, that made a noise like a young
cannon and kicked like a broncho cow. While the shack lurched this way
and that, Patsy pointed the gun toward the greatest disturbance and
fired. He did not think: he hit anybody, but he apologized to Irish for
missing and blamed the darkness for the misfortune. Py cosh, he sure
tried--witness the bullet holes which he had bored through the four
sides of the shack; he besought Irish to count them; which Irish did
gravely. And what happened then?

Then? Why, then the Happy Family had come; or at least all those who had
been awake and riding the prairie had come pounding up out of the dark,
their horses running like rabbits, their blood singing the song of
battle. They had grappled with certain of the enemy--Patsy broke open
the door and saw tangles of struggling forms in the faint starlight.
The Happy Family were not the type of men who must settle every argument
with a gun, remember. Not while their hands might be used to fight with.
Patsy thought that they licked the nesters without much trouble. He
knew that the settlers ran, and that the Happy Family chased them clear
across the line and then came back and let the shack down where it
belong