to drive them.

They did not make much effort toward keeping it a secret. Indeed Weary
told three or four of the most indignant settlers, next day, where they
would find their cattle. But he added that the feed was pretty good back
there, and advised them to leave the stock out there for the present.

"It isn't going to do you fellows any good to rear up on your hind legs
and make a holler," he said calmly. "We haven't hurt your cattle. We
don't want to have trouble with anybody. But we're pretty sure to have a
fine, large row with our neighbors if they don't keep on their own side
the fence."

That fence was growing to be more than a mere figure of speech The Happy
Family did not love the digging of post-holes and the stretching of
barbed wire; on the contrary they hated it so deeply that you could not
get a civil word out of one of them while the work went on; yet they put
in long hours at the fence-building.

They had to take the work in shifts on account of having their own
cattle to watch day and night. Sometimes it happened that a man tamped
posts or helped stretch wire all day, and then stood guard two or three
hours on the herd at night; which was wearing on the temper. Sometimes,
because they were tired, they quarreled over small things.

New shipments of cattle, too, kept coming to Dry Lake. Invariably these
would be driven out towards Antelope Coulee--farther if the drivers
could manage it--and would have to be driven back again with what
patience the Happy Family could muster. No one helped them among the
settlers. There was every attitude among the claim-dwellers, from open
opposition to latent antagonism. None were quite neutral--and yet the
Happy Family did not bother any save these who had filed contests to
their claims, or who took active part in the cattle driving.

The Happy Family were not half as brutal as they might have been. In
spite of their no-trespassing signs they permitted settlers to drive
across their claims with wagons and water-barrels, to haul water from
One Man Creek when the springs and the creek in Antelope Coulee went
dry.

They did not attempt to move the shacks of the later contestants off
their claims. Though they hated the sight of them and of the owners who
bore themselves with such provocative assurance, they grudged the time
the moving would take. Besides that the Honorable Blake had told them
that moving the shacks would accomplish no real, permanent good. Within
thi