They became enthusiastic over dry-farming, and their resentment toward the Happy family increased as their enthusiasm waxed strong.

The Happy Family complained to one another that you couldn't pry a nester loose from his claim with a crowbar.
In this manner did civilization march out and take possession of the high prairies that lay close to the Flying U.They had a Sunday School organized, with the meetings held in a double shack near the trail to Dry Lake.

The Happy family, riding that way, sometimes heard voices mingled in the shrill singing of some hymn where, a year before, they had listened to the hunting song of the coyote.
Eighty acres to the man--with that climate and that soil they never could make it pay; with that soil especially since it was mostly barren.
The Happy Family knew it, and could find it in their hearts to pity the men who were putting in dollars and time and hard work there.

But for obvious reasons they did not put their pity into speech.
They fenced their west line in record time.

There was only one gate in the whole length of it, and that was on the trail to Dry Lake.