"Go on! Spill it!" begged Bud. "What you talking to yourself for?

Broadcast it, Billee!"

"Oh, I'll tell you all I know, if your father is through," voiced the veteran puncher.

"Yes, I'm through, Billee," said Mr. Merkel. "Let's hear your good news."

"'Tain't good news, and there's no use pretendin' it is!" snapped the aged cowboy. "If I'd known you was d.i.c.kerin' for any ranch near Los Pompan, Boss, I'd 'a' told you to lay off. But it's too late for that now, it seems, so I can only warn you to keep away."

"But I've bought it and paid for it. Barter has my money and----"

"Let him keep it, Boss."

"And lose the ranch and the cattle on it?"

"Better to lose your money than to lose your life," muttered Billee.

"As for the cattle, you'll find fewer of 'em there when you go back than you left there."

"Oh, stop croaking, Billee, and spill the beans!" begged Nort.

"'Twon't take long," Billee answered. "I forget just how many years ago it is," he said, looking off toward the distant hills that bordered Diamond X, "when, in the course of my wanderings, I struck Los Pompan.

There was a ranch there then, called Dot and Dash, just as there is now, but it was run by a fellow named Golas. Maybe he was a Mex.

Anyhow I signed up with him and started to ridin' herd. But I didn't stay long."

"Couldn't you hold down the job?" chuckled Babe Milton, who was Slim Degnan's a.s.sistant, and as fat as Degnan was lean.

"None of your wise cracks!" snapped Billee. "I can cut out a bunch of cattle better'n what you can any day and I'm a heap sight older 'n'

wiser. No, the reason I quit was on account of what kept happenin' at Dot and Dash."

"And what happened?" asked d.i.c.k.

"Death is what happened!" said Billee, solemnly. "Mysterious death!"

"Death can happen on any ranch," observed Mr. Merkel quietly. "We have, unfortunately, had deaths here."

"Yes, but they were natural deaths!" declared Billee. "And they didn't keep happenin' one after another like at Dot and Dash."

"How many deaths were there?" Bud wanted to know.

"I don't rightly remember, but there was plenty."

"You said they were mysterious," commented Nort. "In what way?"

"That's what n.o.body could find out," resumed the veteran puncher.

"First some poor devil of a puncher would be found dead off in some lonely swale. Then we'd find a bunch of cows stretched out, and then we'd find another dead man."

"Rustlers," suggested Slim.

"Rustlers nothin'!" scoffed Billee. "Rustlers drive off cattle--they don't kill 'em--what would be the good?"

"I meant the rustlers did up the cowboys," suggested the foreman.

"Well, if these fellows, who were found dead, got shot, why wasn't there bullet holes in 'em?" asked Billee, teasingly.

"Wasn't there?" asked d.i.c.k.

"Not a hole."

"How about a knife thrust?" Nort wanted to know.

"Not a scratch or any kind of mark on 'em!" declared the old man. "And yet their faces showed they'd died in agony. That's what I meant by mysterious deaths."

"It does sound rather queer," admitted Mr. Merkel. "But didn't you find out what caused all this, Billee?"

"No, Boss, I didn't stay long enough. And neither did n.o.body else I ever heard of, who worked at Dot and Dash. I vamoosed."

"Well, maybe there was something queer about the ranch years ago,"

admitted Mr. Merkel. "But that doesn't say, because fifteen or twenty seasons back something queer happened, that it's still going on."

"Oh, but it is!" declared Billee. "Not a month ago I met a puncher who was lookin' for a job. He come here but I knew we was full up so I told him to go over to Circle T, and he done so. But he'd been down Death Valley way recent like, and he said it was just the same."

"You mean about mysterious deaths?" asked d.i.c.k.

"That's it, boy! So what I says is, lay off that place, Boss!"

"Hum!" mused Mr. Merkel. "It doesn't sound very jolly. I don't want anybody to take any unnecessary risks and yet I hate to lose my money."

"You shan't lose it, Dad!" cried Bud.

"What do you mean, son?"

"Just this! d.i.c.k, Nort and I will go down there! We aren't going to be scared off by any of Billee's tales! We're not afraid; are we?"

He looked at his fellow boy ranchers.

"Nothing to it!" declared d.i.c.k, valiantly.

"Let's go!" cried Nort, eagerly.

Undaunted by fear, the three lads ranged themselves alongside of Mr.

Merkel, waiting for his word.

CHAPTER III

ON THE TRAIL