The Boy Ranchers: or, Solving the Mystery at Diamond X

"What makes you think so?" asked the young rancher quickly.

"Well, there isn't any hole, or any excavation, where they could have taken out a treasure chest, or bags of hidden gold; not to say mined gold," went on Dick. "In all the stories of recovered treasure I ever read, they always left a hole where they took out the stuff. There isn't any hole like that here, though there's enough to show that plenty of digging went on."

"I don't believe they've been after any gold, or anything like that," declared Bud. "That professor man said so, but – "

"But was he telling the truth?" asked Nort. "That's what we got to figure on."

"I s'pose," agreed Bud. "And from what I know of the country and sizing up this outfit, I'd say he was – they aren't after gold."

"What then?" asked Dick. "A man – two men like Professor Blair and Professor Wright don't hire an outfit such as they had, and prospect for nothing!"

"You are right," quietly agreed Bud. "They're after something, but I reckon it's something we don't know anything about."

"Maybe they were trying to run off some of your cattle, or some steers from the Circle T," suggested Nort. "Cattle rustlers; eh, Bud?"

"If they're cattle rustlers they're a new kind," said the ranch boy. "But of course it's possible. It may be they've gone into cattle rustling on a new scale, to throw everybody off the track, and finding out we were on to their curves, or maybe on account of having a fight among themselves, they couldn't turn the trick."

"That's right!" exclaimed Nort, in his impulsive way. "Maybe instead of being attacked by Greasers and Indians, who thought they could get some gold, the professor's bunch had a fight among themselves, and that's how those two men got hurt."

"It's possible," admitted Bud. "But, as Zip Foster would say, I don't believe that's the right of it either."

"Would Zip Foster know what all this meant?" asked Dick, waving his hand toward the deserted camp.

"Maybe," murmured Bud, turning quickly aside. "But there's no use staying here any longer. We can't learn anything here. Might as well get back to the ranch. If you fellows are ever going to learn to throw a rope, you've got to do some practicing."

"What's the matter with doing it here?" asked Dick. "We've got ropes with us."

To each saddle was looped the cowboy's most dependable friend aside from his horse and his gun – the ever-present lariat. Bud was an accomplished swinger of the rope, and Dick and Nort had been practicing hard since coming to Diamond X.

"Yes, we can try a few throws here," said Bud, as he walked toward his horse. "I'll sit up here and watch you two," he went on, as he leaped to his saddle, and pulled up his pony which had, as was usual, started off the moment he felt a weight on his back. "I can see you better up here," Bud went on. "Try it standing first. Tackle some of those stumps, and for cat's sake remember to keep your palms up when you shoot the rope out. You'll never be accurate until you do."

The brothers tried, one after the other, and Bud encouraged them by saying that they were improving.

"Now you show us," begged Nort, when his arm began to ache, for throwing a long coiled rope is no easy task.

"All right," agreed Bud. "But I'll try it from the saddle. It comes more natural to me that way, and nine times out of ten you do all your roping from the saddle. Of course this isn't regular, for you don't generally rope standing objects," he went on. "Sock isn't used to that, and he expects a pull on the rope after I fling it. But I'll try for that stump you fellows have been mistreating," and Bud laughed.

He rode Sock, his pinto pony, off a little way, coiling his rope in readiness as he did so. Then, wheeling quickly, and with a wild, inspiring "Yip-yippi!" the young rancher came riding fast toward a low, broad stump the two other lads had, more or less successfully, been trying to rope.

His right hand shot out, palm up, his cousins noticed, and the rope went twisting and turning through the air, lengthening out like a long, thin snake, and almost hissing like one. Instinctively, as though roping a steer, Bud prepared himself for the pull that always followed.

Sock, the intelligent pony, braced his feet to hold back as soon as he sensed that Bud had thrown the rope. For Sock had been taught that he must always do this when a steer was being roped, and though he could distinguish between a stump and an animal, Bud's action seemed to call for co-operation on Sock's part.

The coils of the lariat whirled through the air, and, just as they were about to settle over the stump, there was a sudden movement in a leaf-filled hole beside the remains of what had once been a big tree.

Up out of this burrow, or hole, where he had been lying asleep among dried leaves and grass that concealed him from the boys, rose a human figure. He was so close to the stump and he rose up in such a manner leaning slightly over, as if dazed from too sudden awakening from a sound slumber, that he received the noose of Bud's rope fairly about his shoulders!

So suddenly did the man appear, popping out of the hole beside the stump like a Jack in the Box, that Sock was startled, and pranced back, exactly as he would have done in order to drag a refractory steer off its feet. And this was just what took place with the man.

The noose tightened about his middle and he was dragged over the flat top of the stump, yelling and shouting in protest.

Nort and Dick did not know what to think – whether it was an accident, or a bit of play arranged for their benefit by their cousin. But a look at Bud's face was enough to convince them that he was as much surprised as were they.

There was a series of shrill yells of protest from the roped man – shrill language which Nort and Dick recognized as Mexican-Spanish, and then, as Bud stopped his pony, and the rope loosened, the man stood up. He scowled at the boys – a menacing figure of a Greaser, dirty and unkempt.

"Del Pinzo!" gasped Bud, as he recognized the fellow. "Del Pinzo! I didn't know you were near that stump!"

The man's answer was a deeper scowl, and his hand went toward the holster at his hip – a holster that Nort and Dick noted with relief was empty. For Del Pinzo's gun had fallen out as he was dragged by Bud's lasso from the hole beside the stump where he had been hiding.

CHAPTER XI

BAD BUSINESS

"My mistake, Del Pinzo! My mistake!" exclaimed Bud, smiling as good-naturedly as possible under the circumstances. The young rancher leaped from Sock (so called because he had one white foot that looked exactly as if he had on a sock) and approached the Mexican, who had begun to loosen the lariat from around his body.

"I sure didn't know you were there, Del Pinzo," went on Bud, soothingly. "I was just showing these tenderfeet how to throw a rope, pronto, – when up you sprout, and get the benefit of it. Hope I didn't ruffle you any?" asked Bud.

"Hum! Too much pronto!" muttered the man, but his face lost some of its scowl as he realized it had been an accident.

"What's pronto?" whispered Dick to Nort, noting that his brother had half drawn his gun, though there was no need of this action.

"Means quick," translated Bud, who overheard the question. "I was a little too quick with my rope. But I didn't know anybody was behind that stump."

"Nor I," said Dick, while Bud began gathering in the length of his lariat.

"I – sleep!" said the Mexican; with some of the gutturalness of the Indian. "No got a right to sleep?" he asked, half sarcastically, as he recovered his gun from where it had slipped from its holster.

"Sure you got a right to sleep," admitted Bud cheerfully. "This isn't Diamond X land, nor yet Double Z," he added, with a quick glance around. "Not that you wouldn't have a right to take a snooze if itwas Diamond X," Bud went on. "Well, I reckon we'll mosey along," he said slowly, making a sign to Dick and Nort to mount their ponies. "Got to get back to the ranch."

"Um!" was all the remark Del Pinzo made as he brushed himself off. Bather a useless proceeding it would appear, for he was always dirty and unkempt to the last degree.

"Who is he?" asked Dick of Bud as the three boy ranchers rode along the homeward trail, now out of earshot of the man Bud had so unceremoniously roped.

"Oh, he's a sort of Mexican half breed," was the answer. "Not very safe to have on the range during round-up."

"Why not?" asked Nort, as he turned to catch a last glimpse of the

Mexican slinking off amid the foothills.

"Well, he and his kind don't stop to look at the brand on a steer if they happen to feel hungry," explained Bud. "They'll cut one out of the herd, or appropriate a maverick, or an unbranded calf, and feast up on it. They'll skin it, salt down the hide after they blur the brand, and get away with it."

"What's blurring a brand?" asked Dick.

"Putting a hot iron on it over the brand that's already there," explained Bud. "Some brands can be changed from one to another without much trouble, but when this can't be done a cattle thief will simply make a botch of the brand, and it's a pretty slick ranchman who will swear, out of hundreds of steers and calves, that any particular one is his, if he can't make out the brand or earmarks clearly."

"Earmarks?" questioned Nort.

"Sometimes we clip a piece out of a calf's ear," explained Bud, "as well as branding 'em. Each ranchman has his own particular earmark for his cattle. But either may be botched or blurred by a thief if he's cute enough."