CHAPTER XIX
AN EXPEDITION IN THE DARK.
There was a confusion of rope and man. Sock, Bud's pony, braced hisfeet, including the white one that gave him his name, and the lariattightened. 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 stopwhen they saw Bud lassoing the unknown man, but now they spurred up totheir 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 cutby a sliver of flame.
"Trying that, are you!" angrily shouted Bud, and he backed his ponyquickly, pulling the roped man along the ground, until the prostratefigure 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, andcover 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. "Getat him, fellows!"
"Who is he?" asked Nort, as he slipped from his pony, throwing thereins 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 timewe found the five dead steers!"
"Yes, and there'll be more dead steers as the result of this!" saidBud, and there was a choking in his voice.
A moment later Dick and Nort were standing over the prostrate figure ofPocut Pete. His arms were bound firmly to his sides by the tight coilof the lariat, held taut by Bud, and the other boys could see that thecowboy's gun had slipped from its holster and lay some distance awayfrom him. Nort picked up the gun, and then, with quick motions, he andDick 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 theground and his pony out of reach--he lacked all the prime requisites ofa cowboy. There was no escape, covered as he was by Bud, who had drawnhis own .45, and Pocut Pete "jest natcherly caved in," as Old Billeedescribed it later.
"Caught you at it, just as I thought I would!" said Bud, when Pete wasbound and hoisted up on his horse by the boys.
"Go on! Get it over with," was the grim answer. "I know when the gameis played out, and it was a dirty game from the start. I'd never haveopened 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 theworst of it is that it isn't over yet. That epidemic may spread allthrough our stock!"
Pocut Pete returned no answer as the boys started with him in thedirection of the camp.
"What was he doing--trying to cut more warts off your cattle?" askedDick.
"Warts!" cried Bud indignantly. "He was infecting them with the germsof 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 tosuspect him! But I didn't think any one would play a trick likethis--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 thinglass bottles, with some sort of germ-dope in them. He cut, orscratched, the cattle and poured this stuff in the sore. That's how mysteers 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 himover to Old Billee and the boys!"
"Don't do that!" begged the bound figure of Pocut Pete. "They--theymay 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 puncherswho gathered in the camp of the boy ranchers a little later, when PocutPete was delivered to them. Indignant voices and looks were noted onall 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 tosome form of drug, slangily termed "dope." For he had found fragmentsof thin-glass bottles, and had discovered in part of a broken phial,the same evil-smelling mixture that, later, was associated with thediseased cattle.
Then Bud did not know enough of the danger to act promptly, and evenwhen Pocut Pete was discovered, "cutting a wart off a steer," as hefalsely said, Bud did not know what to make of that. An older personmight 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 thedisease-killed cattle some pus, filled with millions of germs. Thisunpleasant mixture he kept in tiny phials.
How he learned that to inject some of this pus under the hide of asteer would infect the animal, not only causing it to die of thedisease, 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, Nortand Dick in the very act of infecting some of Bud's steers. For whensearch was made in the morning, at the scene of the capture, brokenbits of phials were discovered, some with that vile, yellow substanceon them. And an inspection of the cattle showed several with cuts ontheir flanks, into which cuts, it was assumed, the germs had beeninjected, or rubbed.
These animals were at once isolated, to determine what would happen tothem. The ground near where Pocut Pete had carried on his nefariousoperations was sprayed with disinfectants, and the cattle that had beenwith those he inoculated were also herded by themselves.
These were all the precautions that could be taken, and then Pocut Petewas hurried off to the nearest jail, there to await trial.
"But what set him up to such vile work?" asked Nort, when the prisonerhad been taken from camp.
"What else but the desire of Hank Fisher to see our stock-raisingexperiment fail?" countered Bud. "This is the doing of thosescoundrels at Double Z. I only wonder that Del Pinzo wasn't in on thegame."
"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 inthe case of the cattle into which Pocut Pete had injected germs of thedisease. Dr. Tunison was sent for, but said he could do nothing morethan 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 yourfavor. No more of your cattle have been infected by those five thatfirst died. We caught that outbreak in time. And if it proves thatPocut Pete is the sole source of infection on your ranch, it means thatonly those he managed to cut in his last operation will die."
But it took time to determine this, and while waiting for the outcomesomething else happened which, though it seemed to involve tragedy atthe time, really resulted in clearing up the mystery and ending thewater fight at Diamond X.
One morning, about a week after the roping of Pocut Pete, when the boyranchers and their friends were assembled in camp, preparatory tostarting out on their rounds of riding herd, Buck Tooth, who had goneto 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 th
e 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 hislips, 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 afew 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 wherethe water vanished to," was the answer. "We'll get up a regularexpedition this time, and maybe take a boat. We'll find out what itall means."
"I believe you're right," asserted Snake Purdee. "There's no usetrying to work Flume Valley if the water supply is goin' to be cut offwithout notice. I'm with you, Bud!"
"So 'm I!" shouted Yellin' Kid. "Whoop-ee! I'm a lone wolf an' thisis my turn for makin' a noise! Whoopee!"
"Let's find out, first, if the water is coming into the pipe from theriver," suggested Nort.
"You call up," begged Bud. "I'm going to get ready for thisexpedition. We'll have to start in the dark," he went on, referring tothe black tunnel that stretched under Snake Mountain. "But we may comeout into the light. Anyhow, we're going in!"