The Boy Ranchers in Camp: or, The Water Fight at Diamond X

"What hour it was Dick had no idea, but he was suddenly awakened by sensing some movement near him – too near for comfort considering his exposed sleeping position. For he felt something cold and clammy at the back of his neck, as though a chunk of ice, or a hand dipped in cold water, had touched him.

"Hi! Who's doing that?" yelled Dick, for he had a sudden dream that he was back at school, and some one was playing a trick on him. "Cut it out!"

No sooner had he spoken than he realized that he had awakened Nort and Bud, for by the flickering light of the embers of the fire he could see them sitting up and staring over at him.

"What's the matter?" demanded Bud.

"Something tickled the back of my neck," declared Dick. "I guess a coyote must have been picking up scraps of food, and smelled of me. Hope he didn't take me for a dead one!"

"Coyote!" exclaimed Bud. "I don't believe you could get one to come near you, not as long as you breathed. It must have been a – "

"Snake!" broke in Nort, without thinking of what the word might mean.

"Wow! Don't say that!" cried Dick, and he leaped up, scattering his blanket and tarpaulin each in a different direction.

"Shut up!" commanded Bud, laughing. "Do you want to start the cattle off again? If it was a snake it won't hurt you, and it was probably more scared than you, Dick."

"Yes – maybe!" said the other. He lighted a stick of greasewood at the fire, and looked about his part of the sleeping ground. But he found nothing in the animal line.

"Guess you dreamed it!" said Nort.

"I certainly did not!" emphatically declared his brother.

"Well, go to sleep again," advised Bud. "If you feel it a second time call me!"

"Huh! I'll do that all right!" declared Dick. He carefully shifted his sleeping place, making a searching examination of the ground before spreading out his tarpaulin. And he was some little time in dropping off to slumber again.

But there was no further disturbance in the night, and in the morning Bud looked for marks on the ground, declaring the visitor had been a prairie dog, which Dick declared his unbelief in, sticking to the snake theory as being more sensational.

After breakfast they started to drive the cattle again, reaching the railroad yards and successfully transacting the business of selling their stock.

It was the night that Bud and his cousins returned from having driven the steers to the railroad yard that something happened which again brought to the front all their worries and anxieties.

They were all seated about the camp fire, and Pocut Pete had just arisen, remarking that he would get ready for his turn at night-riding, when there was a sort of hissing in the air over the heads of those gathered about the blaze, and something hit the ground in the midst of the circle.

"What's that?" exclaimed Nort

"An arrow!" answered Bud, and so it proved. An Indian arrow – of the sort used by the Redmen years ago, and hard to pick up now, even as relics – quivered in the ground near the blaze. And by the flickering flames it was seen that a paper was rolled about it.

In an instant Bud had leaped to his feet, plucked the arrow from the ground, and torn off the paper. By the light of the fire he read it.

"Another warning!" cried Bud.

"What does it say?" demanded Dick.

Bud read:

"Two wasn't enough. This is the third and last! Leave Flume Valley!"

There was silence for a moment, and then Bud, crushing the scrawled warning in his hand, cried:

"I'd like to see 'em drive me out!"

"That's th' way to talk!" shouted Yellin' Kid. "We'll stick!"

They gathered about, discussing the sinister warning that had been sent to them in such a sensational manner. There was no clue to tell where it had come from, for no one had noticed the direction whence the arrow had been shot. The message itself was written, or, rather, printed on a piece torn from a paper bag, and the writing was in pencil. The paper was common enough in those parts, and the use of printing, in place of handwriting, would, it seemed, preclude any tracing.

"We'd better keep a double watch to-night," suggested Bud, when a hasty inspection in the vicinity of the camp had revealed no one.

"We shore will!" asserted Old Billee.

The night hours passed, a double guard watching with keen eyes for any sign of strangers approaching the reservoir or the cattle. But, in spite of all precautions, the half-expected happened.

It was toward morning, when Nort and Dick had turned out of warm beds to relieve Pocut Pete and Snake Purdee that a confused noise at the extreme end of the valley gave notice that something was wrong.

"What's that?" asked Bud, who had ridden into camp at the conclusion of his tour of duty.

As if in answer came distant shots, the howls of coyotes and the snorting of cattle, mingled with a rush which told its own story.

"Stampede!" yelled Bud. "They're trying to stampede our herd and drive 'em off! Come on, fellows!"

And all within the sound of his voice rallied to repel the night attack, for such it proved to be.

Leaping into their saddles, Nort and Dick followed Bud toward the scene of the disturbance. They saw the cattle running to and fro, and in the slivers of light that leaped from the muzzles of guns which were shot off at intervals, they descried figures swiftly riding backward and forward, evidently trying to cut out bunches of cattle.

Action had followed rapidly on the heels of the sinister arrow warning.

CHAPTER XV
THE BRANDING IRON

"Come on, boys! Come on!" shouted Bud, as he spurred off in the darkness, followed by Nort and Dick. "They're trying to drive 'em off through the lower end of the valley! We've got to stop 'em!"

"You said it!" shouted Dick.

"Who are they?" yelled Nort

Bud had no time to answer. What was needed, then, was quick action to prevent his own and his cousins', as well as his father's stock from the Square M ranch, being driven off by unscrupulous rustlers.

For that this night attack was made by these marauders of the plains was not to be doubted.

"Ride hard, boys! Ride hard!" shouted Old Billee as he galloped up beside the boy ranchers.

And they were riding hard – all of them, including the cow punchers who had come in from their night's duties, expecting to be relieved. It was at this favorable – for them – moment that the rascals had made their attack.

It was so dark that only, indistinctly, could the forms of raiders be made out. But there were several of them, leaning low over the necks of their galloping steeds, and endeavoring to create a panic among the cattle so that a stampede would result. Once this started it would be a comparatively easy matter for them to "cut out" as many choice specimens as possible, driving them to some secret place. There the brands could be "blurred," or changed, and Diamond X Second would be out several thousands of dollars.

"There they are!" yelled Bud, as, riding between Nort and Dick, he saw a group of men swinging their big hats and heard them shouting to frighten the already thoroughly roused cattle.

But though Bud thus indicated the presence of the rustlers it was not a very clear sight of them that he or his companions had. Only for the fact that those of Flume Valley rode together, and saw the indistinct forms ahead of them, could it be made certain that the unknown ones were the enemy.

"Crack!"

Bud's gun shot out a menacing warning, for he had fired high in the air, above the heads of the rustlers. He had borne in mind his father's injunction never to shoot at a human being unless vital necessity required it.

"And I'd rather lose all my cattle than kill anyone," Bud said afterward. "Unless I had to do it to save my life."

It was for this reason that he had fired high, and his example was followed by his cousins.

But that this consideration on the part of our friends was not appreciated, was made plain, a moment later, when Old Billee exclaimed:

"That was a close one!"

His words followed the whining song of a bullet as it zipped through the air, too close to the heads of himself and the boy ranchers to be comfortable.

"I'm goin' t' give 'em some of th' same medicine!" shouted Yellin' Kid, and his gun spat fire, but straight out, and not at a high angle.

Following it, almost instantly, was a yell of pain from one of the rustlers – which one could not be told because of the mix-up and the darkness, but it was a yell nevertheless.

"You winged one!" cried Snake Purdee.

"I meant to!" was the Kid's grim answer.

"Fire high, boys!" cried Bud. "If we can scare 'em off, so much the better!"

"Don't reckon they're th' kind that scares easy," objected Old Billee. "But we've got 'em on the run!" he exclaimed, a moment or two later, when Bud and his party had ridden around some intervening bunches of cattle, and were headed straight for the night attackers.

This seemed to describe the situation. So promptly had the boys of Flume Valley ridden out to repell the raid that the rustlers had no time to stampede the cattle, and cut out some to drive away. Now it seemed there must be a clash – a coming together of the two forces.

But the rustlers, unscrupulous as they were, evidently knew when discretion was the better part of valor. They fired several more shots, one of which scratched Old Billee while another gave an ugly wound to Snake Purdee.

Then, with yells of defiance, and before our boys could come close enough to recognize any of the raiders, the rustlers galloped off, not having succeeded in driving away any cattle.

But their attack had not been without damage to Flume Valley stock. For two valuable steers had been shot, and so wounded that they had to be killed, while several calves were trampled on and crushed into shapeless masses.

This, together with two wounded men, Old Billee and Snake, made up the sum total of the casualties on the part of the Diamond X Second outfit.

"But they're marked!" shouted Yellin' Kid as he and the others rode back to camp. "I got one, I'm sure!"

"I fired low, after I saw they were doing the same, and I saw one nearly slump out of his saddle," declared old Billee.

"I'd like to know if they were any of the Hank Fisher or Del Pinzo gang," said Bud.

"I wouldn't put it past them," asserted Snake. "We'll ride over t' Hank's place, casual like, t'-day, an' see if any of his men are hurt."

Snake spoke rightly of "to-day," for it was getting sunrise-light when the battle was over, and the party returned to the tents near the flume reservoir.

The night of excitement, following the mysterious warning sent by the Indian arrow, had ended, and everyone welcomed the hot, fragrant coffee made by Buck Tooth.

When Snake's wound and Billee's scratch had been bandaged, the dead calves buried and the best part of the killed steers cut off for fresh beef, Bud and his friends took what might be termed an accounting.

The boy ranchers, with Old Billee, rode back over the ground covered in the attack of the night. The veteran cow puncher pointed out where the rustlers had ridden into the valley, over a pass that crossed a low mountain range, which connected, in a fashion, Buffalo Ridge and Snake Mountain. This ridge formed the lower boundary of Bud's range, and once the cattle had been driven over this they could easily have been hazed to Hank Fisher's Double Z ranch.

"Well, there's nothing to make sure it was any of Del Pinzo's gang, except general suspicion," remarked Bud, as they were about to ride back to camp. "What's the matter?" he asked, for, with an exclamation, Nort had leaped from his saddle. The eastern lad was picking up something from the ground that had been so lately trampled by steers and horses.

"Look!" exclaimed Nort, and he held up a branding iron.

"One of ours?" asked Bud, in rather a commonplace voice.

"Not exactly," Nort answered. "It's marked with a double Z!"

CHAPTER XVI
QUEER ACTIONS

What effect this announcement had on Dick and Bud can easily be imagined. Both leaped from their saddles, as Nort had done, and gathered close to him as he held the branding iron in his hand.

It was of the usual type, an iron plate, which had been cast in a mould, so that the device – two Z letters – formed a depression in the smooth surface of the iron plate. On the outer edge was a circle, so that when the brand was heated, and pressed on the hide of a steer, calf or maverick it would burn the impression of a double Z inside a ring – the mark of Hank Fisher's cattle.

"Whew!" exclaimed Dick. "This makes it look bad for them, Bud!"

"Oh, not necessarily, though I'm glad we found it," spoke the western lad.

"Why isn't it suspicious?" asked Nort, whose high hopes had been rather dashed by Bud's somewhat cool reception of Dick's statement.

"Oh, it's suspicious all right!" Bud hastened to say, "and don't imagine I'm making light of you finding this, Nort! I'm mighty glad you did! Only we can't make it look bad for Hank Fisher, or the Double Z crowd unless we can fasten this on them."

"You mean we can't prove they dropped it here during the raid last night?" asked Nort, as he vaulted into the saddle.

"That's it," spoke Bud. "It does look suspicious, I'll admit. But you see while this is our range, we couldn't make a fuss just because some cowboy from Double Z rode over it. That wouldn't be right. And what's to hinder this having been dropped by some cowboy who was merely riding over our range?"

"That's possible," admitted Dick.

"But I don't believe it," asserted Nort.

"Nor I," chimed in Bud. "But you got to go slow in making accusations out west, unless you're ready to back your opinion up with a gun; and we don't want to do that."

"No," Nort admitted. "But Old Billee and Snake said they were going to ride over to Double Z to-day, to sort of size up the situation. So what's to prevent 'em taking this branding iron along and asking, casual like, if they don't want it back?"

"Nothing to stop that," said Bud with a grin. "In fact that's just what we'll do. Come on, we'll hit the trail for the camp and make a sort of raid on Double Z – only we'll make it to-morrow instead of to-day, as it's too late for a long ride."

There were murmurs of surprise and excitement at the camp, when the boys rode in with the Double Z branding iron that Nort had picked up at the scene of the raid.

"They dropped that last night, sure as horned toads!" cried Snake Purdee, whose wound was excuse enough for not being out on duty.

"I reckon," agreed Pocut Pete, who likewise was off duty. "Let's see that," and he reached for the iron which had a wooden handle to enable a cowboy to manipulate the marker when the branding end was hot.

Bud, so Nort and Dick thought, looked rather curiously at Pocut Pete while the latter was examining the iron. And when the strange cowboy – strange in the sense that he had not been long in Mr. Merkel's service – took out his knife and began whittling away at the wooden handle, Bud uttered a sharp cry of:

"Stop!"

"What's the matter?" asked Pocut Pete, with an assumption of innocence, which was so plainly an assumption that Nort and Dick exchanged rapid glances.

"Don't cut off those initials!" went on Bud. "Maybe by them we can tell who owns the iron."

"Initials!" exclaimed Pocut Pete. "I don't see any initials!"

"There they are," and Bud pointed to some, rather faintly cut, on a flat place in the handle. "E. C. are the letters, though I don't know anybody with them at Double Z."

"I don't, either," said Pocut Pete. "In fact, I didn't see them letters, Bud. I was just whittling the handle to see what kind of wood it was. Thought maybe I could tell by that."

"All right," spoke Bud, as he again assumed charge of the branding iron. And Pocut Pete, with a sharp look at the young rancher, went out to the corral where the spare ponies were kept.

"Was he really trying to cut out those initials?" asked Nort, as the three boy ranchers passed on to the grub tent, for it was the joyful time to eat – one of the three joyful times that came each day.

"I wouldn't say he was doing it deliberately," spoke Bud, "but he certainly was whittling near those letters. And if he had cut them off the owner of the branding iron could easily claim it wasn't his."

"That was queer," declared Dick.

"Very," assented Bud. "In fact Pocut Pete has acted queer ever since he's been here. I don't like him, and as soon as dad has another puncher to spare I'm going to ask for a change."

The remainder of that day and the night passed quietly. There was no other alarm, and riding herd was an easy task. Nor was there any stoppage of the water, which ran freely out through the pipe from the underground tunnel as though there had never been any interruption of its very necessary service.

"Well, let's go!" exclaimed Bud next day, as he and his cousins saddled their ponies, and Old Billee called for Yellin' Kid to help catch a rather frisky pinto that the old cowboy was going to ride.

"Over to Double Z?" asked Nort.

"Yes, we'll take a sort of a look around their place, and hand back this iron," went on Bud, as he slung the implement to his saddle by a loop of his lariat.

The ride to Double Z was pleasant enough, for soon the boys and Old Billee struck the hill trail, where it was cooler than down in the valley.

But if they hoped to discover any incriminating evidence at Hank Fisher's place they were disappointed.

There was no sign of Del Pinzo – in fact that wily Mexican half-breed was seldom at the ranch proper. Nor was Hank at home. But his foreman met the boys and Old Billee.

"Hear about the racket over at our place?" asked Bud, easily enough, but with a beating heart. He and his cousins looked around for any signs of wounded men, but saw none.

"What racket?" asked Ike Johnson, the foreman.

"Rustlers," put in Old Billee. "They scratched me, shot up Snake Purdee and dropped this – or at least we found this after the mix-up when we'd druv 'em off!" and he took the branding iron from Bud's saddle loop.

"You don't mean to say – " began Ike, with an ugly tone to his voice.

"Don't mean t' say nawthin'!" drawled Old Billee. "That's one of your irons, I take it."

"Yes, it is," growled the foreman slowly. "But that don't mean – "

"Course it don't!" pleasantly interrupted the old cowboy, giving the young ranchers a slight signal to let him do the talking. "One of your boys dropped it, likely, ridin' short-cut across our place, Ike."

"Yes, I remember now, Ed Carr said he lost his. This is it," and the foreman of Double Z pointed to the initials.

"Well, tell Ed – is he here now?" asked Billee, interrupting himself.

For an instant – and for an instant only – Ike Johnson hesitated. Then he answered:

"No, Ed's ridin' line. I'll give him this when he comes in."

"All right," spoke Billee, with a smile. "We was just passin' and stopped with it. How's things, Ike?" he asked with an effort to be friendly.

"Oh, so-so! Might be wuss, an' might be a hull lot better."

"I reckon it's that way all over," Billee made answer. "Well, boys," he resumed, "might as well ride back. You gittin' all the water you can use from Pocut River, ain't you, Ike?" he asked, turning in his saddle.

"Better ask th' boss about that," was the sullen retort. "I reckon he'll have suthin' t' say, soon, that you Diamond X folks won't like!"

"Is that a threat?" asked Bud quickly.

"Easy, son, easy!" cautioned Old Billee.

"You can make anythin' yo' like of it!" sneered the Double Z foreman.

And then the boy ranchers and Old Billee rode off.

"Well, we didn't find out much," said Nort, when they were on the homeward trail.

"No, but we let 'em know we found that branding iron, and that we knew where it belonged," spoke Bud. "That's something!"

They were rather late getting back to camp, for Dick's pony went lame, and the others accommodated their pace to his. It was dusk when the little party hit the borders of Diamond X Second, and saw the grazing cattle.

Bud saw something else, for as he rode ahead he called:

"What's he doing?"

"Who?" asked Nort.

"Pocut Pete," replied Bud. "Looks like he was trying to brand one of our cattle with his knife! Look! That's mighty queer!"