emselves over
with odd jobs till spring came and they could move on to steadier
work. This time they were going up into Colorado to work in the
beets.

"And high time!" said Grandma. "We've lived on mush and milk so
long we're getting the color of mush ourselves; and our clothes
are a caution to snakes."

"But we'll be lucky if the brakebands of the auto last till we
get over the mountains," said Daddy.

The spring drive up through Texas was pleasant, between
blossoming yellow trees and yuccas like wax candles and pink
bouquets of peach trees and mocking birds' songs.

The mountain pass between New Mexico and Colorado was beautiful,
too, and exciting. In places it was a shelf shoved against the
mountain, and Jimmie said it tickled his stomach to look down on
the tops of other automobiles, traveling the loop of road below
them. Even Carrie, riding haughtily in her trailer, let out an
anguished bleat when she hung on the very edge of a curve. And
the Reo groaned and puffed.

Up through Colorado they chugged; past Pike's Peak; through
Denver, flat on the plain with a blue mountain wall to its west;
on through the farmlands north of it to the sugar-beet town which
was their goal.

Beyond the town stood an adobe village for beetworkers on the
Lukes fields, where the Beechams were to work.

"Mud houses," Dick exclaimed, crumbling off a piece of mud
plaster thick with straw.

"Like the bricks the Israelites made in Egypt," said Grandpa;
"only Pharaoh wanted them to do without the straw."

"It's a Mexican village," observed Grandma. "I'd feel like a cat
in a strange garret here. And not a smidgin of shade. That shack
off there under the cottonwood tree looks cooler."

"It's a chicken-coop!" squealed Rose-Ellen as they walked over to
it. "Gramma wants to live in a chicken-coop!"

"It's empty. And it'd be a sight easier to clean than some
places where humans have lived," Grandma replied stoutly.

So the Beechams got permission to live in the farmer's old
chicken-coop. It had two rooms, and the men pitched the tent
beside it for a bedroom. They had time to set up "chicken-housekeeping,"
as Rose-Ellen called it, before the last of May, when beet work
began. They made a pretty cheerful place of this new home;
though, of course, it had no floor and no window glass, and sun
and stars shone in through its roof, and the only running water
was in the irrigation ditch. Even under the glistening
cottonwood t