Or she must connive to prevent the filing of answers to the contest notices within the time-limit fixed by law, so that the cases would go by default.

That, of course, was the simplest--since she had not been able to gather any evidence of collusion that would stand in court.
There was another element in the land struggle--that was the soil and climate that would fight inexorably against the settlers; but with them we have little to do, since the Happy Family had nothing to do with them save in a purely negative way.
A four-wire fence and a systematic patrol along the line was having its effect upon the stock question.

If the settlers drove their cattle south until they passed the farthest corner of Flying U fence, they came plump against Bert Rogers' barbed boundary line.

West of that was his father's place--and that stretched to the railroad right-of-way, fenced on either side with a stock-proof barrier and hugging the Missouri all the way to the Marias--where were other settlers.

If they went north until they passed the fence of the Happy Family, there were the Meeker holdings to bar the way to the very foot of Old Centennial, and as far up its sides as cattle would go.
The Happy Family had planned wisely when they took their claims in a long chain that stretched across the benchland north of the Flying U.
Florence Grace knew this perfectly well--but what could she prove?
The Happy Family had bought cattle of their own, and were grazing them lawfully upon their own claims.