DEL PINZO
Characteristic it was of Bud Merkel not to answer at once the sharp and
excited question of his cousin. Living all his life in the West, as he
had done, and most of it having been spent on his father's ranches, Bud
had unconsciously acquired the valuable habit of observation--and quiet
observation at that. He wanted to look about and notice the "sign"
before he gave his opinion. In this he was like the Indians, whence,
doubtless, our own plainsmen developed the habit of looking twice
before they spoke once.
I don't mean to say that Bud was not a regular fellow, or that he was
not at times almost as impulsive as Nort. He was like the majority of
boys, but on this occasion, when it appeared that something unusual was
afoot, Bud held back his opinion for a moment.
"Well, what do you think of it?" asked Nort again, as eagerly as
before. "Doesn't this look like they'd been digging for gold?"
"I should say it did!" cried Dick, no less eager, now, than his
brother. "Those professors saying they weren't after the yellow boys
was all bunk and bluff! They did it to throw us off the track, so we
wouldn't try to have a hand in it. They've been mining here, Bud, as
sure as guns!"
Bud slowly shook his head.
"Why not?" asked Nort, seeing his cousin's denial of the theory that
fitted in so well with his own ideas.
"Well, they don't mine this way--that is, I've never seen any done in
this fashion, and I've been in several mining localities," spoke Bud.
"This looks more like they'd been prospecting for water, digging here,
there and everywhere. But there wasn't any need of that, for here's a
good spring of water, and the river isn't so far away. This is a good
watered country, and that's what makes it so valuable for
cattle--you've got to have grass and water and we've got that on
Diamond X."
"But what do you s'pose this all means?" asked Nort again, as he
slipped from his saddle, and, by pulling the reins forward, over his
pony's head, thus gave that animal the universal sign of the plains
that it was not to wander.
"I don't know," Bud was frank to say, as he shook his head. "They sure
have been tearing up the ground," he added, as he noticed on the side
hill, where there was an outcropping of red sandstone, that many
excavations had been made.
"If it isn't gold maybe it's silver," suggested Dick, willing to accept
a theory of less valuable metal. "Or diamonds!" and his eyes gleamed
as he overmatched his brother's guess.
"Nothing doin!" laughed Bud. "Of course there are silver mines not far
from here, down Mexico way, and diamonds have been found in the United
States, but not around this locality."
"Well, what's your theory?" asked Nort of the more experienced boy
rancher. "Here we've been gassing along, saying what we thought, and
we don't know any of the ins and outs of the matter. You're right on
the ground, and you've lived here all your life, so you ought to have
some idea of what it all means."
"But I don't!" exclaimed Bud. "Wish I did," he added, as he joined his
cousins on foot, walking about the debris of the camp, while the ponies
sniffed, here and there, sometimes finding a choice morsel which they
daintily lipped before eating.
"You'd say they were hunting for something, wouldn't you?" asked Nort.
"Yes, I'd go that far," admitted Bud.
"And they didn't find it," put in Dick.
"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.