ily looked
upon the Flying U as home, and six months was about the limit for
straying afar. Cowpunchers to the bone though they were, they bent backs
over irrigating ditches and sweated in the hay fields just for the
sake of staying together on the ranch. I cannot say that they did it
uncomplainingly--for the bunk-house was saturated to the ridge-pole with
their maledictions while they compared blistered hands and pitchfork
callouses, and mourned the days that were gone; the days when they
rode far and free and scorned any work that could not be done from the
saddle. But they stayed, and they did the ranch work as well as the
range work, which is the main point.

They became engaged to certain girls who filled their dreams and
all their waking thoughts--but they never quite came to the point of
marrying and going their way. Except Pink, who did marry impulsively and
unwisely, and who suffered himself to be bullied and called Percy for
seven months or so, and who balked at leaving the Flying U for the city
and a vicarious existence in theaterdom, and so found himself free quite
as suddenly as he had been tied.

They intended to marry and settle down--sometime. But there was always
something in the way of carrying those intentions to fulfillment, so
that eventually the majority of the Happy Family found themselves not
even engaged, but drifting along toward permanent bachelorhood. Being of
the optimistic type, however, they did not worry; Pink having set before
them a fine example of the failure of marriage and having returned with
manifest relief to the freedom of the bunk-house.

CHAPTER 2. ANDY GREEN'S NEW ACQUAINTANCE

Andy Green, chief prevaricator of the Happy Family of the Flying U--and
not ashamed of either title or connection--pushed his new Stetson back
off his untanned forehead, attempted to negotiate the narrow passage
into a Pullman sleeper with his suitcase swinging from his right hand,
and butted into a woman who was just emerging from the dressing-room. He
butted into her so emphatically that he was compelled to swing his left
arm out very quickly, or see her go headlong into the window opposite;
for a fullsized suitcase propelled forward by a muscular young man may
prove a very efficient instrument of disaster, especially if it catches
one just in the hollow back of the knee. The woman tottered and grasped
Andy convulsively to save herself a fall, and so they stood blocking the
passage until the p