and so on.

"Done you good to drop in and hear 'em plan and figger. They was one
happy family. How Sis Em'ly bragged about their hens layin'! In the
spring we all held a bee and made their _'cequias_ for 'em. Baker, he
loaned 'em a plow. They dragged big branches over the ground for a
harrow. They could milk anybody's cows they was a mind to tame, and the
boys took to carryin' over motherless calves for Mis' Taylor to raise.
Taylor, he done odd jobs, and they got along real well with their crops.
They went into the second winter peart as squirrels.

"But, come spring, Sis wasn't doin' well. They had the Agency doctor.
Too high up and too damp, he said. So the missus and Em'ly they went to
Cruces, where Em'ly could go to school.

"That meant right smart of expense--rentin' a house and all. So the
Johns they hires out. John, Junior, made his dayboo as wrangler for the
Steam Pitchfork, acquirin' the obvious name of Felix.

"The old man he got a job muckin' in Organ mines. Kept his hawses in
Jeff Isaack's pasture, and Saturday nights he'd get one and slip down
them eighteen miles to Cruces for Sunday with the folks.

"Well, you know, a homesteader can't be off his claim more'n six months
at a time.

"I reckon if there was ever a homestead taken up in good faith 'twas the
Butterbowl. They knew the land laws from A to Izzard. Even named their
hound pup Boney Fido!

"But the old man waited at Organ till the last bell rang, so's to draw
down his wages, payday. Then he bundles the folks into his little old
wagon and lights out. Campin' at Casimiro's Well, half-way 'cross, that
ornery Freckles hawse has a fit of malignant nostolgy and projects off
for Butterbowl, afoot, in his hobbles. Next day, Taylor don't overtake
him till the middle of the evenin', and what with going back and what
with Freckles being hobble-sore, he's two days late in reachin' home.
For Lake, of Agua Chiquite, that prosperous person, had been keeping
cases. He entered contest on the Butterbowl, allegin' abandonment.

"Now, if it was me--but, then, if 'twas me I could stay away six years
and two months without no remonstrances from Lake or his likes. I'm
somewhat abandoned myself.

"But poor old Taylor, he's been drug up where they hold biped life
unaccountable high. He sits him down resignedly beneath the sky, as the
poet says, meek and legal. We all don't abnormally like to precipitate
in another man's business, but we makes it up to sorter saunt