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The first twitter of a bird in the morning brought me to my feet; I roused the others, and we saddled and were riding with the first sign of dawn in the east. Taking the outside circle myself, I gave every bunch of cattle met on my course a good start for the centre of the round-up.
Varied though their occupations had been, almost all had, at one time or another, herded cattle and hunted big game. They were hardened to life in the open, and to shifting for themselves under adverse circumstances. They were used, for all their lawless freedom, to the rough discipline of the round-up and the mining company.
So many billets upon the prairie depended upon the seasons opulence one month and idleness the next. On the ranches it was often worse. There is but little labor needed in the winter. And those who have the good fortune to be employed all the year round generally experience a reduction in wages at the end of the fall round-up, and find themselves doing the "chores" when winter comes on.
"Sit on him!" called Mr. Merkel, owner of Diamond X and other ranches. He was superintending the round-up of his herds and those entrusted to Bud, Nort and Dick in the first business venture of the boy ranchers. "Sit on him!" yelled Bud's father.
The world was far away and quite forgotten. Summer deepened into autumn, the fall round-up was approaching, and there came a September day of such limpid light and such nippy sprightly air as to suggest to Mandy nothing less than a holiday. "Let's strike!" she cried to her husband, as she looked out toward the rolling hills and the overtopping peaks shining clear in the early morning light.
In the mornin' the round-up shows two dead an' five wounded, an' all for openin' co't on an outfit which is too frail to stand the strain of so much justice to stand onexpected. "'As I'm engaged in remarkin', says Tutt, after Boggs an' Texas is redooced to quiet ag'in Tutt bein' married most likely is used to interruptions, an' is shore patient that a-way 'as I states, they're holdin' co't, an' this day they emancipates from prison a party named Caribou Sam.
You and Gary Warden have both flared up from the same spark. I don't know whether this thing has been framed up or not. But it looks mighty suspicious. It is the first time there has been a lack of cars after a round-up. Curiously, the lack of cars is coincident with Gary Warden's first season as a buyer of cattle.
So, for a week of hard work and harder thinking. Mason sent word by a migratory cowboy, who had stopped all night at the ranch and whom he had hired and sent on to camp, that he would not return to the round-up, and that Ford was to go ahead as they had planned.
Besides, she had a perfect right to remain where she was. And, anyway, Bud had no secrets from her. So she placed herself beyond the chance of observation, and remained quiet lest she should lose a word of what the voices were saying. Bud was talking. His tone and words rumbled pleasantly upon the evening air. His talk was of the round-up.
In both instances the men were not hunters out after game, but simply cowboys, riding over the range in early morning in pursuance of their ordinary duties among the cattle. I knew both men and have worked with them on the round-up.
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