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

"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.

CHAPTER III

THE WARNING

"Will it be safe to leave our camp alone, like this?" asked Nort, as he and his companions rode off, leaving behind them the white tents, gleaming in the wondrous light of a full moon.

"Why not?" inquired Bud. "It won't walk away."

"No, but some one might come in and take everything."

"There isn't much worth taking. You brought your old stuff with you, we have our ponies, so all they could snibby would be the camp dishes, and they aren't worth the risk."

"Could they drive off any of your cattle?" asked Dick.

"Why don't you say our cattle?" asked Bud with a smile, which was plainly to be seen in the brilliant moonlight. "You fellows are in this venture with me, you know."

"We haven't yet gotten used to thinking of it that way," remarked Nort, as he rode beside Buck Tooth. The old Zuni Indian managed to keep pace beside the boys without ever urging his pony forward, a trick of riding which even Bud envied.

"Well, you'd better get used to it," was the laughing retort. "Your dad staked you to part of the expenses of this deal, same as mine did me, and of course you'll share in the profits – if there are any," Bud added rather dubiously. "And if we don't get that water back there won't be enough to make you need a hat to carry 'em off."

"As bad as that?" inquired Nort.

"Oh, I'm not saying it's bad —yet!" exclaimed Bud. "There may be just a stoppage in the pipe, which can easily be cleaned out. Or, it may be – something else."

But what else it might be he did not say, and Nort and Dick were not sufficiently familiar with irrigation and flume lines to hazard a guess. But they knew enough about their cousin to tell that he was worried.

"What do you plan to do?" asked Dick, as the four rode on, their ponies occasionally stumbling as they mounted the rocky trail that led over Snake Mountain. "Look for that man – the one you – "

"The one I didn't shoot!" interrupted Bud. "I'm as sure I didn't hit him as I am that we four are here this minute. I know I fired too high!"

"Unless the bullet hit a rock and glanced down," suggested Nort.

"Well, yes, that may have happened," admitted Bud. "But if he was badly hurt he couldn't get away, as he did."

"Could he have fallen into any hole or gully?" asked Dick. "We didn't look for that."

"He might have," admitted the western lad. "But what I'm looking for, now, isn't that fellow, who may or may not be shot, but for the break in my flume – that's what I want to locate. Once I get the water so it's running back in my reservoir I'll feel better. For if there's a permanent shut-off we might as well move out of Flume Valley," he went on. "The cattle would just naturally die of thirst!"

"Isn't there any water at all?" asked Nort, as he pulled his pony up sharply when the animal stumbled.

"Not enough to water all the stock I aim to raise," answered Bud. "At the far end of the valley – away from our camp – the grass grows pretty well, for some rain does fall there once in a while. But there isn't a water-hole worth the name, and you know what happens to cattle when they can't get a drink!"

"I should say so!" commented Nort, for he and his brother had seen some of the terrible suffering caused by animals having to be driven long distances without any water being available. "Then the pipe line is your only hope?"

"That, and the ancient underground watercourse it connects with to bring water from the Pocut River," replied Bud. "You see, there's a sort of natural tunnel under the mountain, and this was once an old river bed. I suppose, or at least Professor Wright has told us, that once this tunnel was full-up with water. But there was a change in the direction of the old stream, and the water tunnel dried up. However, it didn't cave in, except in a few places, and we now use it to bring water to Flume Valley. There is really only a comparatively short length of pipe at either end, one end being where the water from the Pocut River enters, and the other where the pipe delivers the water to our reservoir."

"How are you going to find the break?" asked Dick.

"Or stoppage?" suggested Nort.

"Well, I aim to ride over the mountain tonight," answered Bud, "and see if all is clear at the river intake end of the line. If it is, I'll know there must be a stoppage, or break, somewhere inside the old water tunnel."

"How you going to find that?" inquired Nort.

"Why, we'll get lanterns and ride through," replied Bud. "That's easy!"

"Ride through an underground river!" cried Dick. "You can't!"

"No, we couldn't if the old underground river course was full," agreed Bud, "but it isn't. There's only a comparatively small amount of water flowing through the old course, which is wide enough for two of us to ride or walk abreast, and twice as high as you need. I've ridden through more than once. It's like a long, natural tunnel under the mountain, with water flowing in the center depression, so to speak."

"Must be rather spooky inside there," suggested Nort.

"It is a little; and it's nearly an all-day's ride. But it's the only way to find the trouble. Professor Wright said that some day the water might work through, and go off on a new course, and in that case I'd be dished until I could stop up the break."

"Well, we'll help all we can," offered Nort.

"Sure thing!" echoed his brother.

"We'd better take it a bit easy now," spoke Bud, as the ascent of the mountain became more steep. "We don't want to wind the ponies, and we may have a hard day ahead of us to-morrow."

"It is quite a climb," admitted Nort. "Are we going to ride all night?"

"No, we'll turn in about midnight," said Bud. "But this will give us a start so we can get to the Pocut River end of the flume by morning. We can stop any time you fellows want to."

"Oh, we aren't tired!" Dick hastened to say, a sentiment with which his brother agreed. "This is as much fun as riding herd, and driving off the cattle rustlers."

"Glad you like it," commented Bud. "And the rustlers might as well drive off our stock, if we don't soon get this water to running again. Old Billee said I'd have bad luck when that black rabbit crossed my path, and it sure is coming!"

"What black rabbit was that?" asked Nort, curiously.

"One that gave me a tumble when I was riding to meet you," answered Bud. "I never saw one before, and I don't want to again. Not that I'm superstitious, but there sure is something queer about this! I don't like it for a cent!"

The boy ranchers and the Zuni Indian rode on, mounting higher and higher along the mountain trail, heading for the summit. And when they reached it, and Bud, by a glance at his watch, announced that it was midnight, he followed with the suggestion that they camp there for the remainder of the night.

"We can make the rest of the trip in a couple of hours, for it's down hill," he said.

"Camp suits me," murmured Nort, and soon, after a bite to eat, they rolled themselves in their blankets, having tied the ponies to scrub bushes, and went to sleep. The riding of the boys, coupled with the pure air they had breathed, brought them slumber almost at once, and even Buck Tooth, alert as he usually was, neither saw nor heard anything of the sinister visitor who came softly upon the sleeping ones during the night hours.

For there did come a visitor in the night, as evidenced by a scrawled warning, on a dirty piece of paper, fastened to a stubby tree by a long, sharp thorn.

It was this fluttering bit of paper that caught Dick's eye when he awakened, rather lame and stiff, and stretched himself in his blanket as the sun shone in his eyes next morning.

"Hello!" he cried, taking a hasty look around to see if Bud had, perchance, ridden away without awakening his companions, and had left this note to tell them so. "What's the idea?" and then Dick noticed that all three of his companions were stretched out near him, and the four ponies were standing together not far away.

"What idea?" asked Bud, sitting up and rubbing his eyes.

"That special delivery letter," and Dick pointed to it. "Wasn't here last night," he went on, "for I tied Blackie to that tree before I staked him out. What is it?"

Bud rolled out of his blanket, and took the piece of paper from the tree.

"It's a warning!" he announced.

"A warning?" cried Nort and Dick, while Buck Tooth began making a fire.

"Yes," went on the boy rancher. "Here's what it says:

"'Don't take no more watter frum Pocut River if you want to stay healthy!'"

"Whew!" whistled Dick. "What does that mean?"

"Just what I'd like to know," said Bud, and then all three boys started, and looked toward the upward slope of the mountain, down which they had partly descended. For there came rolling toward them a mass of dirt and stones, indicating the approach of some one.

CHAPTER IV

A STRANGE REAPPEARANCE

Characteristic it was of Bud Merkel, being a son of the west as he was, that his hand instinctively sought the leather holster whence protruded the grim, black handle of his .45. But he did not draw the weapon, nor did Nort or Dick pull theirs, which they had started to get out when they noted Bud's action.

For Bud smiled when he had a glimpse of the newcomer, and Buck Tooth, who had glanced up from where he was making the fire, gave a grunt of welcome.

"Babe!" exclaimed Nort, as he recognized the fat assistant foreman of Diamond X ranch. "Babe!"

"Sure! Who'd you think it was?" came the smiling question. "Looks like you had an idea it might be one of them rustlers that made trouble when you fellers was here before! Eh?

"Glad t' see you two ex-tenderfeet," and Babe Milton grinned broadly as he accented the ex, and held out a welcoming hand to Nort and Dick. "They said you was comin' back to Diamond X, but I sorter missed you – been out tryin' t' locate a bunch of strays," he confided to Bud, "an' I didn't have no luck! Glad to meet yo' all, though, powerful glad! 'Specially on account of that there coffee!" and he sniffed the air as he caught the aroma of the fragrant pot Buck Tooth was putting on to boil.

"But what are you lads doing so far from Diamond X?" Babe went on, when they had moved over to the camp fire, the blaze of which was genially warm this cool morning on the mountain.

"We aren't stopping there this trip," said Nort.

"We're 'on our own,'" proceeded Bud. "I'm raising cattle in the old Buffalo Wallow Valley – Flume I call it now."

"Oh, yes, I did hear you were going to tackle that," spoke Babe. "Didn't know you'd got stocked up, though. Well, I've been over at Square M for so long I don't hear no real news no more. Gosh! But we did have some excitement the time those professor chaps pulled that Trombone out of the ground; didn't we, Bud?" he chuckled.

"Triceratops, Babe! Triceratops!" corrected Bud, laughing at the expression of the fat assistant foreman's face.

"I never could remember the name of them musical pieces, nohow!" sighed Babe. "Fond as I am, too, of singing," and, taking a long breath, he bellowed forth on the unoffensive morning air this portion of a ballad:

"Sing me to sleep with a spur for a rattle,Fill up the biscuits with lead.Coil me a rope 'round th' ole weepin' willow,Curl my feet under my head!"

"Glad you feel that way about it," remarked Bud, rather soberly, as they squatted around the fire for breakfast, which Buck Tooth seemed to have prepared in record time.

"What's bit you?" asked Babe, pausing with a smoking flapjack half way to his mouth, while in his other hand he held a steaming tin cup of coffee. "Git out th' wrong side of th' saddle this mornin'?"

"No, but there's trouble over at the valley," explained Bud. "The water has stopped running and – "

"The water stopped running!" interrupted Babe.

"Yes, and when we start out, intending to see what's the trouble, we get this warning," and Bud extended the dirty piece of paper that had been fastened to the tree with the thorn.

"Whew-ee-ee!" whistled Babe, as he read the scrawl of misspelled words. He opened his mouth again, to intone another of the hundred or more verses of his favorite cowboy song, but Bud motioned to him to refrain.

"Don't you like my singin'?" asked Babe, a bit hurt.

"Yes, but I want to ask you some questions," went on Bud. "You say you've been out looking for strays?"

"Yep; prospectin' up and down Snake Mountain all yist'day an' part of th' night. My grub giv' out with supper last night, an' I was hopin' I might even run into a bunch of Greasers, when I saw you folks spreadin' th' banquet table here."

"Glad you joined us," remarked Nort.

"So'm I," mumbled Babe, his mouth full of bacon and flapjacks. "But what's your questions, Bud? Shoot!"

"Did you see anybody who might have written this?" and the boy rancher again read the sinister warning:

"'Don't take no more watter frum Pocut River if you want to stay healthy.'"

"Why, no, I didn't see nobody," spoke Babe, with more force than grammar. "'Tain't a joke; is it?"

"Not when I tell you the water has stopped running," said Bud.

"So you did! Hum, that's mighty queer like!" mused the assistant foreman, who had, early in the spring, been transferred to Mr. Merkel's Square M ranch from Diamond X. "But some of us rather thought there'd be trouble when your paw dammed up the river to shunt some of it through the old water course over to Buffalo Wallow. Hank Fisher claims his water supply has been lessened by what your paw did, Bud."

"That's all bosh!" exclaimed Bud. "There's as much water for Hank Fisher as he ever had at Double Z. Besides, this isn't his way of doing business. He's as mean as they make 'em, but he'll come out in the open and tell you what he thinks of you."

"Yes, Hank is that way —sometimes," agreed Babe cautiously. "At th' same time I wouldn't put it past him. Better tell your paw about this, Bud. You got grit – all three of you!" and he included the other boys in his glance. "But you can't fight Hank Fisher, Del Pinzo and that onery gang of Greasers and Mexicans!"

"There!" cried Nort, clapping his hand down on his outstretched leg. "That's who that man was – Del Pinzo!"

"What man?" asked Babe.

"The one Bud shot."

"What's that?" cried Babe, half starting to his feet. "Did you shoot somebody?"

"Well, I may have creased him," admitted the boy, using a word to denote a grazing bullet wound, hardly more than a scratch.

"Whew-ee-ee!" whistled Babe again. "This sounds like old times! Let's have the hull yarn, Buddy!" he appealed.

Whereupon Bud related how he had ridden from his new ranch – Diamond X Second – to meet his cousins whom he expected. He told of finding the stream of water shut off, of the appearance of the man, the shot, his sudden vanishing, and the subsequent night ride of the boys.

"That was Del Pinzo, I'm sure of it!" declared Nort. "I was trying to think where I'd seen him before, and now I remember!"

"You couldn't very well forget Del Pinzo," declared Bud. "But this wasn't he. That isn't saying that it might not have been, of course," he added, "for I understand he broke jail, after they caught him and sent him up for rustling our cattle. No, this wasn't that slick Mexican, Nort."

"Who was it?" asked Babe, helping himself to another of the flapjacks which Buck was making in a skillet over the greasewood fire.

"That's what we don't know," said Bud. "He just naturally vanished, the way my water did. What are you going to do, Babe?"

"Well, I ought t' keep on lookin' for them strays your paw's so anxious about," was the answer. "But I reckon I got time t' mosey along with you. You say you're goin' down to the river?"

"Yes, to see if there's anything wrong at the intake pipe," Bud answered.

"Then I'll go with you," offered Babe. "And before you try that ride through the old water course, under the mountain, you'd better call up your paw."

"What for?" Bud wanted to know.

"Well, he mightn't altogether like it. There's a risk, an' he may want t' send some of us with you. It's easy t' get him on the 'phone from the dam."

"Yes," agreed Bud, "I s'pose I had better do that." He remembered that where Pocut River had been dammed to enable water to flow into the pipe line, and then through the old river course to his reservoir, there was a general store, which boasted of a telephone.

A little later, breakfast having been finished, the party, now including Babe, reached the Pocut River. There an inspection showed the water from the river above the dam running freely into the pipe that carried it to Flume Valley.

"Nothing wrong here," remarked Bud as he looked into the dark tunnel which received one end of the pipe. And it was through this natural tunnel, extending under the mountain, being the course of an old stream, that the boy ranchers proposed riding.

"No, th' trouble must be somewhere inside," agreed Babe. "But call up your paw, Bud."

Which Bud did, learning from his father at Diamond X, that Old Billee had departed, early that morning, to take up his abode at the camp in the valley.

"Better wait until Old Billee reaches your place, and then call him up," suggested Mr. Merkel to his son over the wire, for there was a 'phone in Bud's camp. It seemed rather an incongruity, but it was a great convenience, since it connected directly with Diamond X, Triangle B and Square M ranches, as well as with the regular lines.

There was nothing to do but wait until Old Billee might be expected to have reached the camp in Flume Valley, and after several hours Bud called up his own new ranch headquarters.

"They don't answer," Central reported.

"He's taking his time," commented Babe.

But an hour or so later, after several other trials, the voice of Old Billee came back over the wire from miles distant.

"Hello! Hello there! Wassa matter? Wassa matter?" demanded the voice of the old cowpuncher. "Where's everybody, anyhow? Nobody here but me!"

"We're over at the dam – Pocut River," called Bud into the instrument. "Say, Billee, something happened at my place last night. The water stopped, and we came over here to see where the stoppage was. But it's all right here. How about you there?"

"All serene here, Bud, all serene! Wait a minute and I'll take a look at your reservoir. I can see it from the tent where you got this talkin' contraption strung. You say the water stopped last night?"

"Stopped complete, Billee," Bud answered back over the wire.

"Well then, if there's any comin' over the spillway, now, it's a sign she's runnin' here ag'in, I take it!"

"Sure thing. But is she running?" asked Bud, anxiously.

"Wait a minute, an' I'll take a look. Hold on to that there wire!"

"I'll hold it!" promised Bud, smiling at his cousins.

There was a moment of anxious waiting and, in fancy, the boy ranchers could see Old Billee going to the tent flap and looking toward the reservoir.

"Hello, Bud!" presently came the call over the wire.

"Hello, Billee. What about it?"

"Water's there all right! Must 'a' come back in th' night! She's runnin' fine now!"

CHAPTER V

ANOTHER WARNING

Bud Merkel was about to hang up the receiver, with a blank and uncomprehending look on his face, when Babe caught the black rubber earpiece from him.

"Wait a minute, Billee!" called Babe into the transmitter. "See anything of anybody around there? Anything suspicious?"

The others could not hear what the old cowboy's answer was, but Babe soon enlightened them.

"He says it's all serene," Babe declared as he now hung up the receiver. "Nobody in sight, an' the water is runnin' through the pipe as natural as can be."

"I can't understand it!" declared Bud. "It was almost as dry as a bone when we left last night."

"But it's running in here from the river dam," said Nort.

"Then there must have been a break somewhere in the tunnel natural water course," declared Bud. "Well, if it mended itself so much the better. But that doesn't explain this," and he held out the scrawled warning. "And if the water stopped once it may stop again."

"Yes," agreed Babe, "but if anybody wanted to stop it they'd have to do it either at this end, where the pipe takes water from the river, or at your end, Bud, where it delivers water to your reservoir."

"Unless somebody stopped the stream inside the tunnel," suggested Dick.