The Round-Up by Clarence E. Mulford

Author:Clarence E. Mulford
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: western
Publisher: P.F. Collier & Son Corporation
Published: 1933-03-14T02:30:49+00:00

Alice Meadows stirred restlessly and slowly awakened. The darkness outside was turning gray. She heard movements and low voices in the next room, where her stepfather and stepbrothers were getting ready for bed.

She sighed and then clenched her hands as a little burst of anger seized her. If they would only stop this everlasting night riding! Nothing good could come of it, and it made her life no better than a dog's. Not that she worried much for their sakes: the bitterness of her own existence, shut off up here in the hills, without companions of her own sex, working for men who steadily grew to mean less to her—all this had killed any real affection which she once might have felt for them. She was nothing more nor less than a slave, and they did not even have the decency to try to conceal it from her. All four of them had taken pains at odd times, as they said, to put her in her place. She could cook and mend and wash and scrub and iron, and even go out to gather her own firewood, without thanks or appreciation. It was rapidly becoming intolerable.

One voice raised above the others, and she found herself listening because she had nothing else to do. Many nights she had been awakened by the low rumble of indistinguishable conversation, but tonight the words were intelligible, due, perhaps, to sharpened tempers. Evidently something had gone wrong.

"He's got th' brains of a coyote, an' that means that he's damn' cunnin'," said Black Jack's voice, edged like a knife. "Them three fools shoulda got him tonight, but they bungled it like a lot of boys. An' they missed him at th' old 'dobe tradin' post, an' he was too smart to start trailin' 'em."

"We've got to get him," said Maurice, sharply.

"Of course we got to get him!" snapped his father. "There ain't no question about that now. Ridin' all over th' country like he is, turnin' up a fact here, an' a fact there, is somethin' that's got to be stopped. It can't go on!"

"No, it shore can't," came a sharp reply. It was Mortimer who was talking now. They called him Mort, for short, a grisly irony although an unconscious one on the part of the Meadows family, whose knowledge of French did not include even an occasional word. Mort was a name well suited to him, both in regard to the past and the present, but it was more particularly suited to him in regard to the future, because for him the future would prove to be but a brief span of time.

"We can trap him," said another voice, this one belonging to Matthew. In the naming of his sons, Black Jack had called in alliteration's artful aid, to borrow an apt phrase. There were Mortimer, Matthew, and Maurice. Mortimer had been a contribution of the mother, whose favorite reading matter might well have borne the name of Bertha M. Clay.

"Shore," said Mort, with confidence.

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