The Happy Family

The Happy Family

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Title: The Happy Family
Author: Bertha Muzzy Bower
Release Date: October 7, 2004 [EBook #13670]
Language: English
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[Illustration: "A man's plumb crazy to go round blatting all he knows"]

The Happy Family

BY
B.M. BOWER
(B.M. SINCLAIR)
AUTHOR OF
"Chip of the Flying U," "The Range Dwellers," "Her Prairie Knight,"
"The Lure of the Dim Trails," "The Lonesome Trail," "The Long
Shadow," Etc.

G.W. DILLINGHAM COMPANY
PUBLISHERS NEW YORK

1907, 1909, 1910, by STREET & SMITH. 1910, by G.W.
DILLINGHAM COMPANY.

The Happy Family.

To B.W.V.
"... met the Ananias of the cow camp. I have knocked about cow camps,
mining camps, railroad and telegraph camps, and kicked up alkali dust
for many a weary mile on the desert. Yet wherever I went I never failed
to meet him. He is part and parcel of every outfit.... He is indispensable,
irresistible, and incorrigible; and while in but few cases can he be held
a thing of beauty, he is certainly a joy forever--at least to those who
have known his type with some degree of understanding...."
From a letter.

CONTENTS.
ANANIAS GREEN 7 BLINK 35 MISS MARTIN'S MISSION 61
HAPPY JACK, WILD MAN 90 A TAMER OF WILD ONES 118
ANDY, THE LIAR 178 "WOLF! WOLF!" 210 FOOL'S GOLD 241
LORDS OF THE POTS AND PANS 269
* * * * *

THE HAPPY FAMILY

* * * * *

ANANIAS GREEN
Pink, because he knew well the country and because Irish, who also
knew it well, refused pointblank to go into it again even as a rep, rode
alone except for his horses down into the range of the Rocking R.
General roundup was about to start, down that way, and there was stock
bought by the Flying U which ranged north of the Bear Paws.
It so happened that the owner of the Rocking R was entertaining a party
of friends at the ranch; it also happened that the friends were quite new
to the West and its ways, and they were intensely interested in all
pertaining thereto. Pink gathered that much from the crew, besides
observing much for himself. Hence what follows after.
Sherwood Branciforte was down in the blacksmith shop at the Rocking
R, watching one Andy Green hammer a spur-shank straight. Andy was
what he himself called a tamer of wild ones, and he was hard upon his
riding gear. Sherwood had that morning watched with much admiration
the bending of that same spur-shank, and his respect for Andy was
beautiful to behold.

"Lord, but this is a big, wild country," he was saying enthusiastically,
"and the people in it are big and--"
"Wild," supplied Andy. "Yes, you've just about got us sized up
correct." He went on hammering, and humming under his breath, and
thinking that, while admiration is all right in its time and place, it is
sometimes a bit wearisome.
"Oh, but I didn't mean that," the young man protested. "What I meant
was breezy and picturesque. Things can happen, out here. Life and men
don't run in grooves."
"No, nor horses," assented Andy. "Leastways, not in oiled ones." He
was remembering how that spur-shank had become bent.
"You did some magnificent riding, this morning. By Jove! I've never
seen anything like it. Strange that one can come out here into a part of
the country absolutely new and raw, and see things--"
"Oh, it ain't so raw as you might think," Andy defended jealously, "nor
yet new."
"Of course it is new! A commonwealth in the making. You can't," he
asserted triumphantly, "point to anything man-made that existed a
hundred years ago; scarcely fifty, either. Your civilization is yet in the
cradle--a lusty infant, and a--er--vociferous one, but still an infant in
swaddling clothes." Sherwood Branciforte had given lectures before the
Y.M.C.A. of his home town, and young ladies had spoken of him as
"gifted," and he had come to hear of it, and to believe.
Andy Green squinted at the shank before he made reply. Andy, also,
was "gifted," in his modest Western way.
"A country that can now and then show the papers for a civilization old
as the Phenixes of Egypt," he said, in a drawling tone that was
absolutely convincing, "ain't what