The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Round-up, by John Murray and Mills Miller

This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or
re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.net

Title: The Round-up
A Romance of Arizona novelized from Edmund Day's melodrama

Author: John Murray and Marion Mills Miller

Posting Date: September 27, 2008 [EBook #763]
Release Date: December, 1996

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE ROUND-UP ***

Produced by Dianne Bean. HTML version by Al Haines.

THE ROUND-UP

A Romance of Arizona

Novelized from Edmund Day's Melodrama

by

John Murray and Marion 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