Читать книгу The Boy Ranchers in Camp: or, The Water Fight at Diamond X - Baker Willard F. - Страница 4

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:

"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!"