A claim-shack meant a nester, and a nester
was a nuisance, with his plowed fields and his few head of
cattle that must be painstakingly weeded out of a herd to
prevent a howl going up to high heaven. Therefore, Andy Green
instinctively hated the sight of a shack on the prairie. On
the other hand, those shacks belonged to the Happy Family--
and that pleased him. From where he sat on his horse he could
count five in sight, and there were more hidden by ridges and
tucked away in hollows.
But there were others going up--shacks whose owners he did
not know. He scowled when he saw, on distant hilltops, the
yellow skeletons that would presently be fattened with boards
and paper and made the dwellingplace of interlopers. To be
sure, they had as much right to take government land as had
he or any of his friends--but Andy, being a normally selfish
person, did not think so.
From one partially built shack three quarters of a mile away
on a bald ridge which the Happy Family had passed up because
of its barrenness and the barrenness of the coulee on the
other side, and because no one was willing to waste even a
desert right on that particular eighty-acres, a team and
light buggy came swiftly toward him. Andy, trained to quick
thinking, was puzzled at the direction the driver was taking.
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