From where he sat on his horse he could count five in sight, and there were more hidden by ridges and tucked away in hollows.
But there were others going up--shacks whose owners he did not know.
He scowled when he saw, on distant hilltops, the yellow skeletons that would presently be fattened with boards and paper and made the dwelling-place of interlopers.

To be sure, they had as much right to take government land as had he or any of his friends--but Andy, being a normally selfish person, did not think so.
From one partially built shack three quarters of a mile away on a bald ridge which the Happy Family had passed up because of its barrenness and the barrenness of the coulee on the other side, and because no one was willing to waste even a desert right on that particular eighty-acres, a team and light buggy came swiftly toward him.

Andy, trained to quick thinking, was puzzled at the direction the driver was taking.

That eighty acres joined his own west line, and unless the driver was lost or on the way to One Man coulee, there was no reason whatever for coming this way.
He watched and saw that the team was comin' straight toward him over the uneven prairie sod, and at a pace that threatened damage to the buggy-springs.

Instinctively Andy braced himself in the saddle.