United States or Brunei ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Under the spell of fancy he had done more than make the roan unpopular as a roundup horse; he had made him a celebrity in the way of outlaw horses. And they wanted him in the rough-riding contest! Andy, perhaps, had never before been placed in just such a position. "Are you sure of what the horse will do?" Mr. Coleman repeated, seeing that Andy was taking a long time to reply.
The Happy Family went to bed that night as complacently uncomfortable as children after a Christmas dinner. Not often does it fall to the lot of a cowboy to have served to him stuffed olives and lobster salad with mayonnaise dressing, French fried potatoes and cream puffs from the mess-tent of a roundup outfit. During the next week it fell to the lot of the Happy Family, however.
"It would come right handy to me," Luck laughed ruefully. "I need every cent of it. After the beef roundup, I'll be on Easy Street, but it's going to be hard sledding to keep going till then." "You'll make a turn somehow. It will work out. Maybe when money isn't so tight I'll be able to do something for you." Luck returned to the hotel morosely, and tried to figure a way out of his difficulties.
When he heard some of the others complain about long hours and dangerous stunts he wished they could have ridden on the roundup for the Lone Star outfit about a week. Arizona had tanned the complexions of the actors, but it had left most of them still soft of muscle and fiber. The flabbiness of Broadway cannot be washed out of the soul in a month. But to-day he felt he had done a man's work.
In this country cattle are like chips in a poker game. They ain't got any home, I reckon." "Meaning, señor?" suggested the insurgent chief. "Meaning that less than a week ago I paid a perfectly good check of the Lunar Company for that bunch of steers. We did aim to use them in some roundup sets, but I expect you've got another use for them." "Si, señor."
To bring it to pass, he would be obliged to impress the roundup cook and part of the crew. It was breaking an unwritten law of the rangeland, and worse, it was doing something unbusiness-like and foolish. But not even the owner of the Rocking R may withstand the pleading of a pretty woman. Uncle Peter squirmed, but he promised: "We start at six; earlier if you say so."
On this roundup, however, he was not often amiable and he was nearly always rumbling to himself. More than that, he was becoming resentful of extra work and bother and he sometimes permitted his resentment to carry him farther than was wise.
In the attic of this lone cabin Jake Benton was regularly lulled to sleep by the evening lullabies of the katydids as they sang in the tops of the postoak trees with which the cabin was surrounded. One August afternoon when Jake returned from his regular roundup of the cattle, he found, seated on a log near the spring, two men. At the sight of the men Jake's heart leaped into his mouth.
"We didn't cross in a cattle boat," she flashed back at him, dimpling mischievously. "Nor did I go as the Queen of the Rancho, or of the Roundup, or even of the Wild and Woolly Outlaw Band." He flushed with mortification. "I am only too well aware, Miss Knowles, how you must regard me." "Oh, I do not regard you at all as yet," she bantered.
The visitors, headed by their host, swooped down upon the roundup wagons just when the boys were gathered together for a cigarette or two apiece and a little talk before rolling in. There was no night-guarding to do, and trouble winged afar.
Word Of The Day