The Boy Ranchers in Camp Part 3

"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 d.i.c.k.

"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 d.i.c.k.

"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 d.i.c.k.

"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 d.i.c.k 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 d.i.c.k, 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 d.i.c.k. "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 gra.s.s 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 d.i.c.k.

"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 d.i.c.k. "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."