A NIGHT RIDE
The boy ranchers stood looking down into the reservoir, which was
almost full of water, but which was slowly running out through the
different gates, some to concrete drinking troughs where thirsty cattle
congregated, and some to distant meadows where it supplied moisture for
the grass on which the steers of Diamond X Second fed. From the
slightly ruffled surface of the reservoir, as the evening wind blew
across the water, the gazes of Bud, Nort and Dick sought the faces of
one another.
"This looks had!" murmured Bud, while Buck Tooth, the Zuni Indian,
grunted something in his own incomprehensible dialect.
"What does it mean?" asked Nort, as he looked down the slope from the
reservoir to the group of tents that was to form the home of himself,
his brother and cousin for several months, while they were in camp.
"It means the water supply, on which I depended to raise these steers,
has petered out," answered Bud, and there was a worried note in his
voice.
"You mean stopped for good?" asked Dick.
"I hope not," went on Bud. "But from what you can see--no water coming
through the pipe line that dad laid to the Pocut River--I should say
there was a break in it somewhere, and it will have to be fixed right
away--that is, if I'm to keep these cattle here," and he looked down
the valley where the bunches of steers were ever on the move, seeking
new places to feed, or coming to drink water from the supply flowing
out of the reservoir.
"We seem to have struck a job right off the bat!" remarked Dick, as he
picked up a stone and tossed it into the reservoir.
"Just as we did when we came west before, and had to jump out and help
the queer professors," added Nort. "But we're ready to go to work,
Bud. All you'll have to do is say the word and----"
But Bud did not seem to be paying much attention to what his cousin was
saying. Instead his gaze followed that of his Zuni Indian helper.
Buck Tooth was looking off up the hill under which the big pipe ran to
the distant Pocut River on the other side of the mountain. And as Bud
and Buck Tooth looked, and as the gaze of Nort and Dick was bent in the
same direction, they all beheld a figure on the back of a fast-moving
pony, riding up the trail that led over Snake Mountain.
"Who's that, Buck? See him!" yelled Bud.
"No can tell. Old Billee, mebby!" grunted the Indian.
"No! Old Billee just left me! He's back at the ranch house. But
that's a stranger, and I don't like strangers sneaking around my
ranch--especially when there's a break just happened to my pipe line!"
exclaimed Bud. "I'm going to look into this!"'
"Hi there! Hold on a minute! I want to talk to you!" he yelled,
making a megaphone of his hands and directing it at the figure on the
back of the sturdy pony that was scrambling up the mountain trail.
"Wait a minute!"
But this the stranger seemed unwilling to do. The watching group near
the reservoir saw him raise his quirt, or short whip, and bring it down
savagely on the back of the pony, which, already, was doing its best to
carry its master out of distance.
Then, with a quick motion, Bud drew his .45, and though both Nort and
Dick saw him aim it high above the man's head, in order to shoot over
him, horse and rider went down in a tumbled heap at the sound of the
report, which followed as Bud pulled the trigger.
"You've winged him!" cried Dick.
"Shucks! Didn't mean to hit him--just shot to scare him!" declared
Bud. "But we'll have to see about it now! Come on!" he cried, and he
ran down the side of the reservoir to where he had left Sock, his pony,
followed by Dick and Nort who also headed for their steeds.
"Hu!" grunted the Indian, as he came on down more leisurely. "No
water--man shot--new boys come--big time, mebby! Hu!"
And Buck Tooth was more than right. Big times impended in Flume Valley.
While Bud Merkel and his two cousins who had arrived from the east only
the day before were mounting their ponies, to ride up the side of Snake
Mountain, and seek the man Bud had shot, I shall have a chance to tell
my new readers something about the boy ranchers, and the volume that
immediately precedes this one.
The book is entitled "The Boy Ranchers; or Solving the Mystery at
Diamond X." Norton, or Nort, and Dick, or Richard, Shannon were sons
of Mr. and Mrs. Thornton Shannon, and their home was in the cast. When
Mr. Shannon, the summer previous, had been obliged to make a trip to
South America, with his wife, he sent his sons to spend their vacation
at Diamond X, one of the western cattle ranches owned by Henry Merkel,
Mrs. Shannon's brother.
Almost immediately on their arrival Nort and Dick, who were then
rightly classed as "tenderfeet," became involved in a strange mystery.
A call for help came, and they took part in the rescue of two college
professors who had been attacked by a band of Mexicans and "Greasers,"
the latter being a low-class Mexican.
The professors were rescued, but the mystery only deepened. What it
was, and how it came to be solved, you will find set down at length in
the first volume. Sufficient to say, here, that Nort and Dick, as it
were, "cut their eye teeth," during the exciting experiences that
followed their arrival at Diamond X.
The eastern boys learned how properly to ride a pony cowboy fashion,
they learned the use of the branding iron, the lariat and "gun," as the
.45 revolvers were universally called. They learned, also, how to
"ride herd," "ride line" and how to live in the open, with the prairie
grass for a bed and the star-studded sky for a blanket, their saddle
forming the pillow.
Mr. Merkel, Bud's father, owned several ranches besides Diamond X, so
named because that brand was used on the cattle from it. He had Square
M, and Triangle B, the explanation of which names are obvious.
When it came time for Nort and Dick to return east, as winter
approached, they left, promising to return as soon as their summer
vacation should arrive, for they were determined to become boy ranchers
in earnest, an ambition in which Bud shared.
Now it was summer again, and Nort and Dick had once more journeyed to
their uncle's ranch, to be met by Bud, as arranged, at the water-hole.
For between the two visits of the easterners some changes had been made
at Diamond X.
Bud had been clamoring to be allowed to raise some cattle "on his own,"
and his father had consented. Off to the north of Diamond X, and in a
depression between the Snake Mountains on the east and Buffalo Ridge on
the west, was another valley, well sheltered from the wintry blasts.
This valley was owned by Mr. Merkel, and though part of it was
timbered, and some scattered sections produced an excellent variety of
grass for stock, there was no dependable source of drinking water
available. And without water at hand it is impossible to raise cattle
in the west--or any place else, for that matter.
How to get water to "Flume Valley," as it came to be called, was a
problem. It would have been put to use raising cattle long before this
had Mr. Merkel been able to get any water there for the animals to
drink, and also some to irrigate the more arid portions so that fodder
would grow.
At the foot of the eastern slope of Snake Mountains ran the Pocut
River, which served to supply not only Diamond X, Square M and Triangle
B ranches with water, but also those of Double Z and Circle T, the
respective holdings of Hank Fisher and Thomas Ogden. But though Pocut
River gave plenty of water to Bud's father and the other ranchmen, none
was available for the isolated valley which, except for this, would
have been an ideal place to raise steers.
And it was here that the good services of Professor Wright, one of the
scientists mentioned in the first volume, came into play. For
Professor Wright discovered an ancient underground water course,
connecting with Pocut River, and when this had been partly tunneled,
re-opened at places where it had caved in, and a big iron pipe laid
part of the way, water came gushing out into Flume Valley, as Bud
renamed the place, it having been called Buffalo Wallow before that
time; probably when there was water in it and the buffalo made it a
rendezvous.
And when the water came through the iron pipe, falling into the
reservoir that had been built to hold it in reserve, Bud was allowed to
begin his experiment in stock raising.
His father provided him with the cattle, and Bud was a boy rancher in
reality now. His cousins had agreed to help him in the venture on
their arrival, and Bud had been expecting them when he rode out with
Old Billee that day. Old Billee was one of the Diamond X cowboys, and
he might have been made a foreman, except that he had no executive
ability. He could do as he was told, and that was about all. He was
reliable and dependable, but had no initiative for big undertakings.
Old Billee, with Buck Tooth and some other cowboys, had been assigned
to help Bud in his venture.
As Bud has told his cousins, when he rode to meet them at the
water-hole, on the trail from Diamond S ranch, there was no time, yet,
to construct ranch houses in Flume Valley. Tents would have to serve
the purpose, and the boys were rather pleased, than otherwise, with
this.
"It will be just like camp!" said Bud.
And so the easterners had arrived, and, almost with the moment of their
coming, there had begun the first act in what was to prove a drama of
almost tragic happenings.
"You stay at the camp, Buck!" called Bud to the Zuni, as the three boy
ranchers mounted and prepared to ride up to where the unknown man had
collapsed after Bud had fired. "You stick around! Old Billee, or some
of the boys from Diamond X may ride over, though I don't expect them
until morning. Stay here, Buck!"
"Me stick!" gutturally answered the Indian. "You catchum man
mebby--git back water."
"Maybe," agreed Bud, as he and his cousins trotted off up the trail,
which wound around the reservoir and over the mountain.
Dusk was falling as the boys reached the vicinity of the place whence
they had seen the lone rider emerge from the bushes, spurring his horse
up the rocky trail that led over Snake Mountain, as the whole ridge was
known.
"Must have been about here," said Dick, as he reined in his steed, for
which the panting animal, doubtless, was grateful.
"Little farther on, I think," said his brother.
"No, it was right here," declared Bud, as he dismounted and began to
scan the ground. "Here's where his horse slipped," and he pointed to
the tell-tale marks on the trail.
"Yes, and look--you hit him all right!" added Dick.
He indicated some dull, red spots on the stones. Bud reached down and
gingerly touched them.
"Blood!" he murmured. "Guess I did wing him--or the horse--but I don't
see how I could. I fired high."
"But where did he go?" asked Nort, following the marks left by a horse
that had, obviously, been hard pressed. "See, the sign goes right up
to this rocky wall, and then stops. He couldn't have gotten up there,
could he?"
"Not unless he wore wings," said Bud grimly. "But it's getting too
dark to see well. We'd better be getting back to camp."
"I thought you were going to follow this up, and see what had happened
to your pipe line," suggested Dick.
"I am, but we can't ride on without some grub. No telling what we may
stack up against. We'll have to make a night ride of it, I'm thinking,
and I'd like to have Buck Tooth along. He's a shark on following a
blind trail. Come on, we'll go back to camp, get some grub and then
take this up again. I hope I didn't kill him, though," murmured Bud,
as he again leaped to the saddle, an example followed by Nort and Dick.
"Who was he?" asked the latter, puffing slightly from his exertions,
for he was much stouter than his brother Nort.
"Search me!" replied Bud. "Looked mighty suspicious, though, the way
he rode off. And if he wasn't up to something wrong he'd 'a' stopped
when I hailed him."
"Do you think he had anything to do with the break in the pipe?" asked
Nort.
"You've got me again," confessed his western cousin. "We'll have to
make a night ride of it and find out."
They rode back to the camp tents, to find Buck Tooth calmly smoking his
red-stone Indian pipe, and gazing off in the darkening distance at
nothing at all, as far as the boys could determine.
"Anybody been around, Buck?" asked Bud.
"Nope!" was the answer. "You catchum dead man?"
"Not a sign, Buck! Beckon he must have dug a hole and pulled it in
after him. But we've got to find out what's the matter with the pipe
line. There's only a few days' supply of water in the reservoir.
Rustle out some grub, and we'll ride over the mountain."
"Um," grunted the Zuni, and a little later, after a hasty meal of
flapjacks, bacon and coffee, the boy ranchers, with the old Zuni
Indian, started on a night ride over the mountain trail, in the general
direction of the pipe line, the supply of fluid for which had so
mysteriously stopped.
But strange events were only just beginning to happen in Flume Valley.
There were others in store for the boy ranchers.