"Like making a hole in cheese!" added Old Billee. "This is a terrible place! Let's get out!"

CHAPTER XXV

HAPPY VALLEY

Leaving behind them the roaring, rumbling jet of white water that came from the unknown and went thitherward, the boy ranchers and their friends made their way back to the main tunnel.

"Well, there are two things we have to settle," declared Bud, when they had sat down on convenient rocks, near the running stream, and began to consider matters.

"What are they?" asked "Nort.

"One is, what effect has the turning of that lever we worked on the main stream? The other is, where is the lever that Del Pinzo and his gang shifted to cause this second branch stream to stop running?"

"And when we find answers to those two questions," said d.i.c.k, "I think we'll have solved the mystery."

"Right!" cried Bud. "So let's get at them. In the first place some of us will go back and shift the lever on the big rock in the first cave, while some of us stay here to see what happens."

The party was divided and when watches had been adjusted to mark the same time, so it might be known how many minutes elapsed between the shifting of the lever and any noticeable effect, d.i.c.k, Old Billee and Snake went to the first cave--that of the huge boulder.

It did not take long to demonstrate that when the water flowed from the main stream into that side branch, the stream nearer the river end of the tunnel went dry. But even with that no water pa.s.sed along the main tunnel so that it would flow into the reservoir of Flume Valley.

"The water must flow out of the first big cave by some outlet we know nothing about," decided Bud. "Now we'll look for the second water gate."

They found the lever that controlled this in a corner of the upper, rocky room where Del Pinzo and his conspirators had been plotting when discovered. And when this lever was pulled from the position in which the seekers found it after the Mexican half-breed fled, the second stream (by which I mean the one nearest the river end of the tunnel) filled with water. But this did not affect the first.

And not until both levers were set at positions which caused the branch streams to empty, did any water fill the end of the tunnel near Bud's ranch.

But when this had been done; when the secret of working the levers was discovered, and water was once again flowing along the valley end of the tunnel, where the stream bed had been dry for two days, then Bud cried:

"The fight is over and we've won!"

"I wouldn't say that yet," spoke Old Billee cautiously, "Del Pinzo an'

Hank Fisher are still around an' above ground. But I guess you've put a crimp in 'em, boys!"

"I reckon!" shouted Yellin' Kid. "But are we sure that the water now goes to Flume Valley?"

"We'll soon find out," declared Bud. "We're almost out of the tunnel now, and we can 'phone back and ask."

And a little later they did emerge from the mysterious underground tunnel, with its still stranger water courses. But what was their surprise to find that night had fallen--in fact it was not exactly night, but nearly morning of the next day.

For a moment coming out into the dark night bewildered them. And then, as they stood at the mouth of the mysterious tunnel under the mountain, there was a sharp crack.

"Look out!" yelled Bud, as a bullet "zinged" viciously over their heads.

In an instant Old Billee had whipped out his gun and sent a shot toward a group of hors.e.m.e.n along the river bank.

"There they are! Del Pinzo and his gang!" yelled d.i.c.k, as another bullet sang over his head. "Come on! Let's get 'em!"

"No use!" drawled Snake. "They've got hosses--we ain't!"

And a moment later the gang of conspirators, firing another harmless shot, swept out of view.

A group of men swarmed from the store and adjacent shacks, roused by the early-morning shooting, and with amazement they greeted our friends and heard the strange story.

"What day is it?" asked Bud.

"Friday," some one answered.

The mystery-solvers looked at one another in amazement.

They had been in the tunnel nearly forty-eight hours without sleep, nor did they feel the need of it, so exciting were the events that transpired.

But late, or, rather, early as it was, they managed to get in the store to use the telephone. And when the gray dawn was breaking across Pocut River, Bud learned, over the wire, from one of his father's cowboys left at Flume Valley, that the reservoir was again being filled.

"Hurray! It's all right!" yelled Bud, almost as loudly as the Kid would have done. "I guess, from now on, we'll have no trouble. But I'm going to see if we can't get Del Pinzo. He and his gang certainly tried to blow up the place, and us with it."

"To say nothing of trying, as I believe, to drown, us like rats in there, by shutting off and turning on those queer streams," added Nort.

"Do you think they really meant to drown us or blow us up?" asked d.i.c.k.

That question was never answered, for Del Pinzo and his more intimate a.s.sociates disappeared after their flight from the tunnel, when they fled following the shifting of the lever and the lighting of the fuse.

There was dynamite tamped in among the rocks, and but for the stamping out of the fuse the tunnel never would have carried any more water to Flume Valley, and those in it might never have come out.

Hank Fisher stoutly denied that Del Pinzo was acting for him either in planting the explosives or in shutting off the water from the reservoir of the boy ranchers. But everyone had their suspicions.

For that it was Del Pinzo who had sent, or caused to be sent the mysterious warnings, no one doubted. Nor did anyone doubt but that the vicious Mexican half-breed had played tricks with the water.

For that is what they amounted to--tricks. Who built the copper-lever-controlled water gates, putting them in to utilize the winding underground streams, no one could tell. It may have been the Aztecs. The powerful, slanting stream of water, it was discovered, formed the outlet of the shunted-in-river stream when the two side channels were opened so that Flume Valley's water supply was cut off.

The water gates and the underground streams formed the chief mystery, and these never could be fully explored. It was thought too dangerous.

How Del Pinzo discovered the workings of the levers, utilizing them to try to end the rule of the boy ranchers in Flume Valley, was not disclosed for many years.

"You won't have any further trouble, now that the gates are closed and the levers taken off," Mr. Merkel said, for that had been done.

"You'll get all the water you want in Flume Valley."

"Guess I'll call it Happy Valley," said Bud, "for everything is coming out right, now."

"In spite of black rabbits!" chuckled Old Billee.

"Yes, even with black jacks!" laughed Bud. "Everything is working fine, now."

And so it was. For with the discovery of the secret water gates and the disappearance of Del Pinzo, the epidemic died away. Though this, of course, was due to the arrest of Pocut Pete.

That scoundrel was found guilty and sentenced to a long term in prison.

But he kept his counsel, and never actually confessed that it was Hank Fisher who set him to this dastardly trick--if, indeed, it was that unscrupulous ranchman of Double Z.