In spite of their no-trespassing signs they permitted
settlers to drive across their claims with wagons and water-
barrels, to haul water from One Man Creek when the springs
and the creek in Antelope Coulee went dry.
They did not attempt to move the shacks of the later
contestants off their claims. Though they hated the sight of
them and of the owners who bore themselves with such
provocative assurance, they grudged the time the moving would
take. Besides that the Honorable Blake had told them that
moving the shacks would accomplish no real, permanent good.
Within thirty days they must appear before the register and
receiver and file answer to the contest, and he assured them
that forbearance upon their part would serve to strengthen
their case with the Commissioner.
It goes to prove how deeply in earnest they were, that they
immediately began to practice assiduously the virtues of
mildness and forbearance. They could, he told them, postpone
the filing of their answers until close to the end of the
thirty days; which would serve also to delay the date of
actual trial of the contests, and give the Happy Family more
time for their work.
Their plans had enlarged somewhat. They talked now of fencing
the whole tract on all four sides, and of building a dam
across the mouth of a certain coulee in the foothills which
drained several miles of rough country, thereby converting
the coulee into a reservoir that would furnish water for
their desert claims.
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