True, he was seldom disappointed in that. For the Happy
Family looked upon the Flying U as home, and six months was
about the limit for straying afar. Cowpunchers to the bone
though they were, they bent backs over irrigating ditches and
sweated in the hay fields just for the sake of staying
together on the ranch. I cannot say that they did it
uncomplainingly--for the bunk-house was saturated to the
ridge-pole with their maledictions while they compared
blistered hands and pitchfork callouses, and mourned the days
that were gone; the days when they rode far and free and
scorned any work that could not be done from the saddle. But
they stayed, and they did the ranch work as well as the range
work, which is the main point.

They became engaged to certain girls who filled their dreams
and all their waking thoughts--but they never quite came to
the point of marrying and going their way. Except Pink, who
did marry impulsively and unwisely, and who suffered himself
to be bullied and called Percy for seven months or so, and
who balked at leaving the Flying U for the city and a
vicarious existence in theaterdom, and so found himself free
quite as suddenly as he had been tied.

They intended to marry and settle down--sometime. But there
was always something in the way of carrying those intentions
to fulfillment, so that eventually the majority of the Happy
Family found themselves not even engaged, but drifting along
toward permanent bachelorhood. Being of the optimistic type,
however, they did not worry; Pink having set before them a
fine example of the failure of marriage and having returned