"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, d.i.c.k, and cover 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. "Get at him, fellows!"
"Who is he?" asked Nort, as he slipped from his pony, throwing the reins forward and on the ground as notice that the animal was to stand.
"And what"s that funny smell?" asked d.i.c.k. "It"s like--like the time we found the five dead steers!"
"Yes, and there"ll be more dead steers as the result of this!" said Bud, and there was a choking in his voice.
A moment later d.i.c.k and Nort were standing over the prostrate figure of Pocut Pete. His arms were bound firmly to his sides by the tight coil of the lariat, held taut by Bud, and the other boys could see that the cowboy"s gun had slipped from its holster and lay some distance away from him. Nort picked up the gun, and then, with quick motions, he and d.i.c.k 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 the ground and his pony out of reach--he lacked all the prime requisites of a cowboy. There was no escape, covered as he was by Bud, who had drawn his own .45, and Pocut Pete "jest natcherly caved in," as Old Billee described it later.
"Caught you at it, just as I thought I would!" said Bud, when Pete was bound and hoisted up on his horse by the boys.
"Go on! Get it over with," was the grim answer. "I know when the game is played out, and it was a dirty game from the start. I"d never have opened 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 the worst of it is that it isn"t over yet. That epidemic may spread all through our stock!"
Pocut Pete returned no answer as the boys started with him in the direction of the camp.
"What was he doing--trying to cut more warts off your cattle?" asked d.i.c.k.
"Warts!" cried Bud indignantly. "He was infecting them with the germs of 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 to suspect him! But I didn"t think any one would play a trick like this--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 thin gla.s.s bottles, with some sort of germ-dope in them. He cut, or scratched, the cattle and poured this stuff in the sore. That"s how my steers 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 d.i.c.k.
"I don"t care what they do to him!" said Bud. "I"m going to turn him over to Old Billee and the boys!"
"Don"t do that!" begged the bound figure of Pocut Pete. "They--they may 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 punchers who gathered in the camp of the boy ranchers a little later, when Pocut Pete was delivered to them. Indignant voices and looks were noted on all 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 to some form of drug, slangily termed "dope." For he had found fragments of thin-gla.s.s bottles, and had discovered in part of a broken phial, the same evil-smelling mixture that, later, was a.s.sociated with the diseased cattle.
Then Bud did not know enough of the danger to act promptly, and even when Pocut Pete was discovered, "cutting a wart off a steer," as he falsely said, Bud did not know what to make of that. An older person might 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 the disease-killed cattle some pus, filled with millions of germs. This unpleasant mixture he kept in tiny phials.
How he learned that to inject some of this pus under the hide of a steer would infect the animal, not only causing it to die of the disease, 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, Nort and d.i.c.k in the very act of infecting some of Bud"s steers. For when search was made in the morning, at the scene of the capture, broken bits of phials were discovered, some with that vile, yellow substance on them. And an inspection of the cattle showed several with cuts on their flanks, into which cuts, it was a.s.sumed, the germs had been injected, or rubbed.
These animals were at once isolated, to determine what would happen to them. The ground near where Pocut Pete had carried on his nefarious operations was sprayed with disinfectants, and the cattle that had been with those he inoculated were also herded by themselves.
These were all the precautions that could be taken, and then Pocut Pete was hurried off to the nearest jail, there to await trial.
"But what set him up to such vile work?" asked Nort, when the prisoner had been taken from camp.
"What else but the desire of Hank Fisher to see our stock-raising experiment fail?" countered Bud. "This is the doing of those scoundrels at Double Z. I only wonder that Del Pinzo wasn"t in on the game."
"He may be yet," said d.i.c.k.
"Well, we"ll be on the watch from now on--doubly on the watch,"
a.s.serted 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 in the case of the cattle into which Pocut Pete had injected germs of the disease. Dr. Tunison was sent for, but said he could do nothing more than 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 your favor. No more of your cattle have been infected by those five that first died. We caught that outbreak in time. And if it proves that Pocut Pete is the sole source of infection on your ranch, it means that only those he managed to cut in his last operation will die."
But it took time to determine this, and while waiting for the outcome something else happened which, though it seemed to involve tragedy at the time, really resulted in clearing up the mystery and ending the water fight at Diamond X.
One morning, about a week after the roping of Pocut Pete, when the boy ranchers and their friends were a.s.sembled in camp, preparatory to starting out on their rounds of riding herd, Buck Tooth, who had gone to 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 the old Indian.
"Water stop! Water him stop all time!" he yelled.
"What"s that?" shouted Bud. "Isn"t the pipe running?"