At the Flying U ranch, in the care
of the Old Man, were the mortgages that would make the Happy
Family nominal owners of those five hundred cows and their
calves. In the morning Andy would ride back and help bring
the herd upon its spring grazing ground, which was the
claims; in the meantime he was leisurely obeying an impulse
to ride into One Man coulee and spend the night under his own
roof. And, say what you will, there is a satisfaction not to
be denied in sleeping sometimes under one's own roof; and it
doesn't matter in the least that the roof is made of prairie
dirt thrown upon cottonwood poles. So he sang while he rode,
and his voice boomed loud in the coulee and scared long
stilled echoes into repeating the song:
"We're here because we're here, because we're here,
because we're here,
We're here because we're here, because we're here,
because we're here--"
That, if you please, is a song; there are a lot more verses
exactly like this one, which may be sung to the tune of Auld
Lang Syne with much effectiveness when one is in a certain
mood. So Andy sang, while his tired horse picked its way
circumspectly among the scattered rocks of the trail up the
coulee.
"It's time you're here, it's time you're here,
It's time that you were here--"
mocked an echo not of the hills.
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