AN EXPEDITION IN THE DARK.
There was a confusion of rope and man. Sock, Bud's pony, braced his
feet, including the white one that gave him his name, and the lariat
tightened. There was a scurrying among the cattle, and the lone pony,
without a rider, galloped off.
Nort and Dick, taken by surprise, had reined their steeds to a stop
when they saw Bud lassoing the unknown man, but now they spurred up to
their cousin.
"What is it?" demanded Nort.
"Who is he?" Dick wanted to know.
At that instant a shot cracked, and the fast-gathering darkness was cut
by a sliver of flame.
"Trying that, are you!" angrily shouted Bud, and he backed his pony
quickly, pulling the roped man along the ground, until the prostrate
figure let out a yell.
"My hands are up!" came desperately out of the darkness.
"They'd better be!" retorted Bud. "Can you get off and tie him, Nort?"
the boy rancher called to his cousin. "Get out your gun, Dick, and
cover him! He's going to be a bad actor, I'm saying!"
"I'm through!" came the sullen response from the man on the ground.
"My gun went off by accident."
"Such _accidents_ aren't healthy around here," grimly spoke Bud. "Get
at him, fellows!"
"Who is he?" asked Nort, as he slipped from his pony, throwing the
reins forward and on the ground as notice that the animal was to stand.
"And what's that funny smell?" asked Dick. "It's like--like the time
we found the five dead steers!"
"Yes, and there'll be more dead steers as the result of this!" said
Bud, and there was a choking in his voice.
A moment later Dick and Nort were standing over the prostrate figure of
Pocut Pete. His arms were bound firmly to his sides by the tight coil
of the lariat, held taut by Bud, and the other boys could see that the
cowboy's gun had slipped from its holster and lay some distance away
from him. Nort picked up the gun, and then, with quick motions, he and
Dick bound some coils of Bud's rope around the rascal's feet.
All the fight seemed taken out of him. Without his gun, down on the
ground and his pony out of reach--he lacked all the prime requisites of
a cowboy. There was no escape, covered as he was by Bud, who had drawn
his own .45, and Pocut Pete "jest natcherly caved in," as Old Billee
described it later.
"Caught you at it, just as I thought I would!" said Bud, when Pete was
bound and hoisted up on his horse by the boys.
"Go on! Get it over with," was the grim answer. "I know when the game
is played out, and it was a dirty game from the start. I'd never have
opened it only I was desperate for money, and he offered me a lot."
"I know who you mean," said Bud. "It sure was a dirty game; and the
worst of it is that it isn't over yet. That epidemic may spread all
through our stock!"
Pocut Pete returned no answer as the boys started with him in the
direction of the camp.
"What was he doing--trying to cut more warts off your cattle?" asked
Dick.
"Warts!" cried Bud indignantly. "He was infecting them with the germs
of that disease! Don't you smell the rotten stuff?"
"Oh!" exclaimed Nort. "So _that's_ the game?"
"Yes," spoke Bud bitterly. "I wish I'd acted sooner, when I began to
suspect him! But I didn't think any one would play a trick like
this--especially on some one who never had harmed him."
"Has he been infecting your cattle?" asked Nort.
"Sure!" answered Bud. "I've got the goods on him! He had some thin
glass bottles, with some sort of germ-dope in them. He cut, or
scratched, the cattle and poured this stuff in the sore. That's how my
steers got it, and not from being infected by those dad sent over. Oh,
it sure is a rotten game, just when we were starting, too!"
"He ought to be shot!" indignantly voiced Nort.
"Or strung up!" added Dick.
"I don't care what they do to him!" said Bud. "I'm going to turn him
over to Old Billee and the boys!"
"Don't do that!" begged the bound figure of Pocut Pete. "They--they
may lynch me. Take me right to the sheriff!"
"Too far," said Bud shortly. "I don't care what the boys do to you!
I'm through!"
The prisoner vainly struggled with his bonds, but they held firm.
It need not be written that there was a surprised bunch of cow punchers
who gathered in the camp of the boy ranchers a little later, when Pocut
Pete was delivered to them. Indignant voices and looks were noted on
all sides as his crime was recounted by Bud.
In brief it was this:
From the time of Pocut Pete's arrival Bud had taken a dislike to him,
and had suspected him, wrongly it appeared now, of being an addict to
some form of drug, slangily termed "dope." For he had found fragments
of thin-glass bottles, and had discovered in part of a broken phial,
the same evil-smelling mixture that, later, was associated with the
diseased cattle.
Then Bud did not know enough of the danger to act promptly, and even
when Pocut Pete was discovered, "cutting a wart off a steer," as he
falsely said, Bud did not know what to make of that. An older person
might have been suspicious enough to have acted with more promptness,
but Bud, naturally, had lots to learn.
However, as appeared later, Pocut Pete had secured from some of the
disease-killed cattle some pus, filled with millions of germs. This
unpleasant mixture he kept in tiny phials.
How he learned that to inject some of this pus under the hide of a
steer would infect the animal, not only causing it to die of the
disease, but to transmit it to others, is not vital to the story.
Sufficient that Pocut Pete did know this.
And he put his evil knowledge to evil use. He was caught by Bud, Nort
and Dick in the very act of infecting some of Bud's steers. For when
search was made in the morning, at the scene of the capture, broken
bits of phials were discovered, some with that vile, yellow substance
on them. And an inspection of the cattle showed several with cuts on
their flanks, into which cuts, it was assumed, the germs had been
injected, or rubbed.
These animals were at once isolated, to determine what would happen to
them. The ground near where Pocut Pete had carried on his nefarious
operations was sprayed with disinfectants, and the cattle that had been
with those he inoculated were also herded by themselves.
These were all the precautions that could be taken, and then Pocut Pete
was hurried off to the nearest jail, there to await trial.
"But what set him up to such vile work?" asked Nort, when the prisoner
had been taken from camp.
"What else but the desire of Hank Fisher to see our stock-raising
experiment fail?" countered Bud. "This is the doing of those
scoundrels at Double Z. I only wonder that Del Pinzo wasn't in on the
game."
"He may be yet," said Dick.
"Well, we'll be on the watch from now on--doubly on the watch,"
asserted Bud. "They won't put anything like this over on us again!"
"Not if we know it!" joined in his cousins.
It could not be determined, for several days, what the turn would be in
the case of the cattle into which Pocut Pete had injected germs of the
disease. Dr. Tunison was sent for, but said he could do nothing more
than had been done.
"You'll just have to wait and see how many will die," he told Bud.
"You've done all you could by isolation. And there's one thing in your
favor. No more of your cattle have been infected by those five that
first died. We caught that outbreak in time. And if it proves that
Pocut Pete is the sole source of infection on your ranch, it means that
only those he managed to cut in his last operation will die."
But it took time to determine this, and while waiting for the outcome
something else happened which, though it seemed to involve tragedy at
the time, really resulted in clearing up the mystery and ending the
water fight at Diamond X.
One morning, about a week after the roping of Pocut Pete, when the boy
ranchers and their friends were assembled in camp, preparatory to
starting out on their rounds of riding herd, Buck Tooth, who had gone
to the reservoir to fish, came running down to the tents much excited.
"He must have caught a big one!" commented Old Billee.
But it was not fish that had aroused the old Indian.
"Water stop! Water him stop all time!" he yelled.
"What's that?" shouted Bud. "Isn't the pipe running?"
"No run!" answered Buck Tooth briefly. "All gone!"
"More trouble!" commented Bud. And then, with a grim tightening of his
lips, he added: "This time we'll get to the bottom of the mystery!"
There was no doubt about the fact that the water had stopped running.
As they all raced up the sloping side of the reservoir they saw only a
few drops trickling from the pipe.
"The third time--I'm going to make it the last if it's possible,"
declared Bud.
"What yo' aimin' t' do?" asked Old Billee.
"Go through the tunnel from end to end, and both sides, and see where
the water vanished to," was the answer. "We'll get up a regular
expedition this time, and maybe take a boat. We'll find out what it
all means."
"I believe you're right," asserted Snake Purdee. "There's no use
trying to work Flume Valley if the water supply is goin' to be cut off
without notice. I'm with you, Bud!"
"So 'm I!" shouted Yellin' Kid. "Whoop-ee! I'm a lone wolf an' this
is my turn for makin' a noise! Whoopee!"
"Let's find out, first, if the water is coming into the pipe from the
river," suggested Nort.
"You call up," begged Bud. "I'm going to get ready for this
expedition. We'll have to start in the dark," he went on, referring to
the black tunnel that stretched under Snake Mountain. "But we may come
out into the light. Anyhow, we're going in!"