"Rattlesnakes, maybe," was d.i.c.k's next contribution. "Horses are afraid of rattlers all right."

"Yes, and with good reason," Bud said, "though I don't know as I ever heard of a horse dying from a side-winder's bite. It may happen, but, personally, I can't prove it. All the same I don't believe it was rattlers, though there are plenty in this region."

"Why couldn't it have been snakes?" asked d.i.c.k.

"Well, if any rattlers had sounded their warning, and they always do rattle before they strike, we would have heard them as well as the horses would, and I didn't hear anything."

"No, I didn't, either," d.i.c.k and Nort admitted in turn. "But what was it, then?" Nort asked.

"It was something the horses smelled!" declared Bud with conviction.

"They got a whiff of something they didn't like and they lit out like all possessed."

"Do you mean a bear?" asked d.i.c.k.

"Bear what?" came from Bud who had urged his pony somewhat ahead of the mounts of his cousins.

"Did the horses smell a bear, do you think?" went on d.i.c.k. "You know a bear, even a tame circus one, will set a cow pony off quicker than anything else."

"Yes," agreed Bud. "But I hardly think this was a bear. There are probably some back in the woods and hills, but they don't very often venture into the open, especially at this time of year. And if it had been a bear I think I would have winded him."

"I don't know about that," came from Nort. "You know a horse, and almost any other animal, has a keener sense of smell than most humans.

The horses might have smelled something we didn't."

"That's true enough," a.s.sented Bud. "But the fact of the matter is I noticed a queer sort of smell just before the horses bolted. It wasn't very strong, and was more like perfume than anything else. In fact I thought it might be some sort of flower or perhaps an herb the ponies stepped on and crushed. I was just going to mention it to you fellows when the rush began and I had my hands full, same as you did. Either of you notice any smell?"

Nort and d.i.c.k had to confess that they had not, but d.i.c.k added:

"You've lived out of doors more than we have, Bud, and you got a better nose--I mean for smelling, not for shape!" he added as Bud's hand went to his olfactory organ. "So you might have caught a whiff of something we didn't."

"There's something in that, though I don't like to boast," said Bud.

"I'm pretty sure that's what it was--a queer smell the ponies didn't like, and feared, and so they ran away from it."

"But what kind of a smell could it be?" asked d.i.c.k.

"Maybe we'll find out when we get back to where the thing happened--that is if the ponies will go back," spoke Bud.

However there seemed to be no trouble on this score, for, as the boys came nearer and nearer to the place whence the animals had started on their dash, there was no sign of fear or nervousness. The steeds trotted on as they had done over any other stretch of the range, and the deepest breathing of which the boys were capable betrayed to their alert noses not the slightest taint in the air.

"This is mighty queer!" murmured Bud as he guided his mount to and fro around the locality. "Mighty queer!"

"It's almost as if we had dreamed it," remarked Nort.

"It was no dream the way I had to pull my horse back!" declared d.i.c.k, and the others agreed with him.

"Well, I guess we'll have to give it up and put it down as part of the unsolved mystery of Dot and Dash," said Bud as he wheeled his horse around and headed for the ranch house.

"Unless you want to take a ride up there again," suggested Nort.

"Where do you mean?"

Nort pointed to the defile--that gulch which the boys had named Smugglers' Glen--and added:

"We might catch the old man in Elixer Cave."

"What good would that do?" asked d.i.c.k. "You don't imagine he had anything to do with scaring our horses; do you?"

"Not exactly," replied his brother. "But, seeing we're so near the place, I thought we might give it the once over."

"Not much point to it," said Bud. "There's nothing to be learned up there. No, I guess it was some sort of queer weed or flower I smelled and which also frightened the ponies. I wish I knew more about botany.

I might find out what it was," and he looked at the trampled gra.s.s over which they were now riding. But it gave no clew.

"If there's a weed, the mere smell of which causes a horse to bolt,"

said Nort, "it may be the thing that's causing the cattle to die.

Maybe it's the poison weed that caused so many deaths here."

"I can't believe anything as strange as that," declared Bud. "But after we get things running well I'm going to have a doctor, or a chemist or somebody who knows about such things come out here and look the place over. We've got to get to the bottom of this puzzle."

His cousins agreed with him. However there was nothing they could do at present. So they rode back to the ranch where they told their strange experience, and suggested to Billee, Snake and the other cowboys that it would be well for them to be on the watch, to find out if any strange weed or flower growing in Death Valley was responsible for the sinister manifestations.

"It may be a new brand of loco weed," suggested Yellin' Kid in his big voice. "Some of that's deadly."

"To eat, yes, but not to smell," Bud reminded him. "But you may be right at that. Keep your eyes open, boys."

"Loco weed!" exclaimed Billee. "I've had experience with that--I mean some ponies I once owned went crazy from it. It sure is queer stuff."

He referred to a species of bean plant, growing in some sections of the west. Horses and cattle who inadvertently eat this weed with their other fodder run madly about as if insane and often have to be shot.

Sometimes loco weed is powerful enough to kill, it is said by some, though there is a doubt on this point. But none of the cowboys had ever heard of the odor from loco weed doing any damage.

The incident of the ponies running away was soon forgotten in the rush and detail of work that soon piled up at Dot and Dash ranch. More cattle were put out to graze, to thus fatten up for market. More hands were hired and the place soon was almost as busy, big and important as the boys' ranch in Happy Valley, or the original one at Diamond X.

There was one thing Bud and his cousins noticed and spoke of, however, and this was that all their cowboys came from distant places, with the exception of Billee, Kid and Snake. All the hands hired gave their addresses as of ranches far removed from Death Valley. And though when they first started business the boy ranchers had endeavored to hire hands in Los Pompan, they were not successful.

"Why don't you want to sign on with us?" Bud asked more than one.

"Oh, well, I don't have nothin' against you, personal, boss," would be the answer, "but I don't jest like that locality."

Then Bud and his cousins knew that the sinister reputation of Dot and Dash was at the bottom of the refusal.

But enough men from other places were hired to run the ranch, and matters were shaping themselves nicely. Bud sent word home that in spite of the sensational stories, and the one or two strange happenings the boys had themselves experienced, it looked as if the proposition would be a successful and paying one. Fah Moo was a jewel of a cook and there was soon established quite a happy little family at Dot and Dash.

Then, without warning, another blow fell.

It was decided that some of the original herd, purchased with the ranch, could now be sold, as cattle on the hoof were bringing good prices. And, talking it over one night, Bud and his chums planned to cut out a number of fat steers and ship them away.

"I'll ride over to that range in the morning," Bud told his cousins at the conclusion of the conference, "and give the bunch the once-over.

Then you two can do the cutting out for I've got to go to town the next few days to sign up some papers for dad. So I'll leave the shipment to you."

"It will be our first from here," said d.i.c.k.

"Yes," agreed his brother. "And I hope they don't die before we get 'em to the loading chutes."