The Boy Ranchers in Death Valley Part 4

Slowly the owner of Diamond X began to speak.

"That's just about what I'd expect of you boys," remarked Mr. Merkel with a smile as he surveyed the lads. "But I can't let you run your heads into a noose."

"That's just what they would be doing if they tried to ride herd in Death Valley," came ominously from the veteran puncher.

"Watch me get him!" whispered Bud to his cousins. Then, addressing Old Billee he went on: "I don't reckon, if we hit the trail for Dad's new Dot and Dash ranch--I don't reckon you'll come with us; will you--Billee?" and he drawled the last few words with a wink at Nort and d.i.c.k.

"Who, me? Go out there with you if your Pa thinks he'll let you? Is that what you asted me?" demanded Billee Dobb, sharply.

"You heard me the first time!" chuckled Bud. "What say?"

"Course I'll go with you an' you know it!" snapped the old man. "Hu!

What you think I am, anyhow?"

"But you just said you vamoosed from Death Valley because you were afraid," said Bud.

"Well, what I mean I _was_ afraid!" admitted Billee. "It was a mighty skeery feelin', I'm tellin' you, to start out in the mornin' an' not know whether you'd come acrost some dead puncher 'fore you'd ridden half way round the herd. I sure was scared!"

"Then why would you be willing to go back?" asked Nort.

"To look after you kids--that's why--if so be your Pa thinks it fitten to send you out to Dot and Dash. An' you heard me, too, the first time!" snapped Billee with a trace of temper which was unusual in his gentle nature.

"Well, I don't believe I'm going to send them--that's the answer to one question," said Mr. Merkel. "After what you told me, Billee, I can't see that it would be wise to take a chance. I'll put up with my loss, and----"

"Did you pay much for the new ranch, Dad?" asked Bud.

"Well, I thought I was getting a bargain," his father relied. "But maybe I'm going to be left holding the bag after all. It strikes me now that Barter was pretty anxious and quick to sell. I ought to have smelled a rat, but I didn't. And, by and large, it was a pretty good sum I paid. But, as I said, I'm willing to lose if----"

"You aren't going to lose, Uncle Henry!" cried Nort.

"Not if we have anything to say about it!" chimed in his brother.

"And you got to count on me!" added Bud.

"The smallest roosters always have the loudest crow!" chuckled Snake Purdee.

"Hey, you! Cut that out!" growled Yellin' Kid. "There ain't a yaller streak in these boys an' you know it!"

"Course I know it!" chuckled Snake. "I was only kiddin'! Me, I aim to go 'long with 'em an' see what caused them mysterious killin's. Sure, I'm goin'!"

"Go easy, boys!" chuckled Billee. "If you all leave Diamond X, how's Slim an' Babe goin' to run things?"

"Don't fool yourselves!" snapped the lanky foreman. "I run Diamond X 'fore any of you fellers ever forked a bronc an' I can do it again."

"He's got me!" chimed in Babe.

"Ho! Ho!" chuckled Yellin' Kid. "You must 'a' been readin' the funny papers!"

There was an ominous note, now, in some of the voices and Mr. Merkel, knowing how easily tempers of even the best of punchers are ruffled, interposed a soothing word or two.

"This isn't getting us anywhere," he said. "If what Billee states is true, and I know he is telling the truth as he sees it, or as he heard it, why, I'm not going to send anybody to Dot and Dash."

"Oh, Dad!" cried Bud, beseechingly, while Nort and d.i.c.k chimed in with:

"Uncle Henry, we just _got_ to go!"

"We'll have another talk about it," went on the ranch owner. "This is all news to me, Billee, and surprising news, too. I don't know what to do. I wish I had heard some of these stories before I went to Los Pompan."

"You'd 'a' heard 'em all right if you had asted me," said the old man, thoughtfully scratching his head near where a bald spot was plainly showing. "But I had no idea you'd ever locate there."

"Oh, I won't _locate_ there!" Mr. Merkel made haste to say. "I'd never live anywhere else than at Diamond X--my wife wouldn't move. But I just have to branch out and this struck me as being a good place to start."

"Ain't no better place in all the west for raisin' cattle than the neighborhood of Los Pompan," interposed Billee. "And if it wasn't for what happened in Death Valley I'd be there yet."

"But what, actually, did happen?" asked Bud.

"That's what I don't know--what n.o.body knows," said Billee, "and that's what makes it all the more mysterious. Shucks! If we could 'a' found out what caused the deaths it would have been easy to stop it--whether it was Indians, rustlers or some disease. But we couldn't find out.

That was the trouble, boys," and his voice sank to a whisper, "we couldn't find out."

"Then we will!" cried Bud.

"You'll do what?" asked his father.

"We'll solve the mystery of Death Valley. Come on, Dad," he pleaded, "you just got to let us go!"

"I'll think about it," was all Mr. Merkel would say, and there was a more serious air about him than he had worn in many a day.

Gone, now, on the part of the boy ranchers, was any interest they may have had in the coming rodeo at Palmo. All their talk and ideas centered about what the ranch owner had told them, and the bad news blurted out by Billee Dobb. While Mr. Merkel went in the house, where he talked to his wife and daughter, speaking only sketchily of the result of his trip and Billee's remarks, the boys began to question the veteran puncher. It developed that other hands on Diamond X had also heard rumors of sinister stories about Dot and Dash.

"But we never had no reason, before, for speakin' of 'em," remarked Squinty Lewis. And that, generally, was the sentiment. But though he could not have guessed his employer was on a mission to Los Pompan, Billee reproached himself for not having sounded a warning.

"Do you honestly mean to say, Billee," asked Bud while his cousins listened eagerly, "that there wasn't any way of tellin' how those punchers and the cattle died?"

"Absolutely not, boy!" was the reply. "They'd be all right one day, and the next they'd be dead."

"Maybe lightning struck 'em," suggested Nort.

"Lightning leaves a mark," Billee replied. "Besides, these things--I mean the deaths--would happen in clear weather. We didn't have many storms, though lightning did kill some cows and I remember one puncher who cashed in his chips that way. He was a nasty looking object, too, let me tell you. But Death Valley don't depend on lightning to get you. There's some other way."

"Well, we're going to find out what it is!" declared Bud and his cousins backed him up so forcefully that, in the end, Mr. Merkel at last consented to the boy ranchers going to Dot and Dash, at least to look the place over.

"I'm not going to ask you to try and sell it for me, so I won't be stuck," the ranchman said after his decision was made. "I'm not going to palm off a death-dealing place on somebody the way Barter, so it appears, loaded me up with it. But I don't yet admit anything is wrong. However, if you boys find there is, just close up shop and we'll forget it."

"No, Dad, we won't!" said Bud in a low voice, but with great determination.

"What'll you do then?"

"We'll find that death-dealing ghost and lay him, or her or whatever it is!" cried the lad.