The Round-Up | Page 3

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This etext was created by Dianne Bean, Chino Valley, Arizona.

THE ROUND-UP A Romance of Arizona Novelized from Edmund
Day's Melodrama by John Murray and Mills Miller
Chapter I.
The Cactus Cross II. The Heart of a Girl III. A Woman's Loyalty IV.
The Hold-up V. Hoover Bows to Hymen VI. A Tangled Web VII.
Josephine Opens the Sluices VIII. The Sky Pilot IX. What God Hath
Joined Together X. The Piano XI. Accusation and Confession XII. The
Land of Dead Things XIII. The Atonement XIV. The Round-up XV.
Peruna Pulls His Freight XVI. Death of McKee, Disappointed
Desperado XVII. A New Deal XVIII. Jack!

THE ROUND-UP
CHAPTER I
The Cactus Cross
Down an old trail in the Ghost Range in northwestern Mexico, just
across the Arizona border, a mounted prospector wound his way, his
horse carefully picking its steps among the broken granite blocks which
had tumbled upon the ancient path from the mountain wall above. A
burro followed, laden heavily with pack, bed-roll, pick, frying-pan, and
battered coffee-pot, yet stepping along sure-footedly as the
mountain-sheep that first formed the trail ages ago, and whose petrified
hoof-prints still remain to afford footing for the scarcely larger hoofs of
the pack-animal.
An awful stillness hung over the scene, that was broken only by the
click of hoofs of horse and burro upon the rocks, and the clatter of the
loose stones they dislodged that rolled and skipped down the side. Not
a breath of air was stirring, and the sun blazed down from the zenith
with such fierce and direct radiation that the wayfarer needed not to
observe the shadows to note its exact position in the heavens. Singly
among the broken blocks, and in banks along the ledges, the cactus had
burst under the heat, as it were, into the spontaneous combustion of
flowery flame. To the traveler passing beside them their red blooms
blazed with the irritating superfluity of a torch-light procession at
noonday.
The trail leads down to a flat ledge which overlooks the desert, and
which is the observatory whither countless generations of
mountain-sheep have been wont to resort to survey the strange world
beneath them--with what purpose and what feelings, it remains for
some imaginative writer of animal-stories to inform us. From the ledge
to the valley below the trail is free from obstructions, and broader,
more beaten, and less devious than above, indicating that it has been
formed by the generations of men toiling up from the valley to the
natural watch-tower on the heights. Reaching the ledge, the prospector

found that what seemed from the angle above to be an irregular pile of
large boulders was an artificial fortification, the highest wall being
toward the mountains. Entering the enclosure the prospector
dismounted, relieved his horse of its saddle and his burro of its pack,
and proceeded to prepare his midday meal. Looking for the best place
where he might light a fire, he observed, in the most protected corner, a
flat stone, marked by fire, and near it, in the rocky ground, a pot-hole,
evidently formed for grinding maize. The ashes of ancient fires were
scattered about, and in cleaning them off his new-found hearth the man
discovered a potsherd, apparently of a native olla or water-jar, and a
chipped fragment of flint, too small to indicate whether it had formed
part of an Indian arrowhead or had dropped from an old flintlock
musket.
"Lucky strike!" observed the prospector. "I was down to my last
match." And, gathering some mesquit brush for fuel, and rubbing a
dead branch into tinder, he drew out a knife and, rapidly and repeatedly
striking the back of its blade with the flint, produced a stream of sparks,
which fell on the tinder. Blowing the while, he started a flame. When
the fire was ready the man shook his canteen. "Precious little drink
left," he said. "I wish that potsherd carried water as the flint-chip