Up through Colorado they chugged; past Pike's Peak; through Denver, flat on the plain with a blue mountain wall to its west; on through the farmlands north of it to the sugar-beet town which was their goal. Beyond the town stood an adobe village for beetworkers on the Lukes fields, where the Beechams were to work. "Mud houses," Dick exclaimed, crumbling off a piece of mud plaster thick with straw. "Like the bricks the Israelites made in Egypt," said Grandpa; "only Pharaoh wanted them to do without the straw." "It's a Mexican village," observed Grandma. "I'd feel like a cat in a strange garret here. And not a smidgin of shade. That shack off there under the cottonwood tree looks cooler." "It's a chicken-coop!" squealed Rose-Ellen as they walked over to it. "Gramma wants to live in a chicken-coop!" "It's empty. And it'd be a sight easier to clean than some places where humans have lived," Grandma replied stoutly. So the Beechams got permission to live in the farmer's old chicken-coop. It had two rooms, and the men pitched the tent beside it for a bedroom. They had time to set up "chicken-housekeeping," as Rose-Ellen called it, before the last of May, when beet work began. They made a pretty cheerful place of this new home; though, of course, it had no floor and no window glass, and sun and stars shone in through its roof, and the only running water was in the irrigation ditch. Even under the glistening cottonwood tree it was a stifling cage on a hot day. They were all going to work, except Jimmie and Sally. It would take all of them, new hands that they were, to care for the twenty acres they were to work. Mr. Lukes said that children under sixteen were not supposed to be employed, but of course they could always help their parents. Daddy said that was one way to get around the Child Labor Law. So the Beechams were to thin the beets and hoe them and top them, beginning the last of May and finishing in October, and the pay would be twenty-six dollars an acre. The government made the farmers pay that price, no matter how poor the crop was. "Five hundred and twenty dollars sounds like real money!" Daddy rejoiced. "Near five months, though," Grandma reckoned, "and with prices like they are, we're lucky to feed seven hungry folks on sixty dollars a month. And we're walking ragbags, with our feet on the ground. And them brakebands--and new tires." "Five times sixty is three hundred," Rose-Ellen figured. "You'll find it won't leave more than enough to get us on to the next work place," Grandpa muttered. It was lucky the chicken-coop was in sight of their acres. Before she left home in the early morning, Grandma saw to it that there was no fire in the old-new washtub stove, and that Sally's knitted string harness was on, so that she could not reach the irrigation ditch, and that Carrie was tethered.