llin' Kid replied:

"Why, they'll just naturally haze 'em over; that's all."

"You mean drive 'em through the creek?" asked Bud.

"Sure."

"The water's too deep."

"Maybe there's a ford," suggested Kid.

Bud shook his head.

"I tried to find one for my horse the other day," he said. "I thought
I had but it was a quicksand and I was glad enough to get out without
being stuck. There's no ford now for miles up and down the Creek from
here--that is, none that I know of, especially not since high water."

For the level of Spur Creek had risen in the last few days, since the
professor crossed, caused, it was learned later, by the diversion into
the creek of a larger stream by some irrigation plan company further
north.

"Well, if they can't make the sheep wade over they can swim 'em, can't
they?" asked Dick.

"'Tisn't so easy to make sheep swim," declared Yellin' Kid with a shake
of his head. "Sheep are scary critters at best. You might get them in
the water if you had a good leader, but if I was a sheep man--which I
never hope to be--I'd think twice 'fore I'd float 'em across a stream,
'specially if it had quicksands in."

"Well, this has," affirmed Bud. "They come and go, the quicksands.
They weren't here the other day but they're here now."

"Maybe they're going to ferry 'em across," suggested Nort.

"Where they going to get boats?" asked Snake, and that seemed to
dispose of this question.

"Though maybe they carry collapsible craft," suggested Dick, but this,
of course, was not reasonable or practical.

"No," said Bud, "they either know some way of getting the sheep over
here, or else they aren't going to cross."

"They'll cross all right," asserted Snake. "Better let your father
know how matters are," he suggested.

Bud went in to ring the home ranch up on the telephone, but he had no
sooner given a few turns to the crank--for this was the old-style
instrument--than he called out:

"Telephone wire is cut!"

CHAPTER XV

A BATTLE OF WITS

This news came as a distinct shock not only to Bud, who discovered it,
but to the others of his party.

"Are you sure it's cut?" asked Nort, hurrying into the shack after his
cousin, who had come to the door to make the announcement.

"Well, it's dead, anyhow," Bud answered. "I can't raise Diamond X.
And it sounds as if it were cut. Or, rather, it doesn't sound at all.
It's just dead."

"Maybe the battery's given out, or there's a loose conne