mpression of a double Z inside a
ring--the mark of Hank Fisher's cattle.

"Whew!" exclaimed Dick. "This makes it look bad for them, Bud!"

"Oh, not necessarily, though I'm glad we found it," spoke the western
lad.

"Why isn't it suspicious?" asked Nort, whose high hopes had been rather
dashed by Bud's somewhat cool reception of Dick's statement.

"Oh, it's _suspicious_ all right!" Bud hastened to say, "and don't
imagine I'm making light of you finding this, Nort! I'm mighty glad
you did! Only we can't make it look bad for Hank Fisher, or the Double
Z crowd unless we can fasten this on them."

"You mean we can't prove they dropped it here during the raid last
night?" asked Nort, as he vaulted into the saddle.

"That's it," spoke Bud. "It does look suspicious, I'll admit. But you
see while this is our range, we couldn't make a fuss just because some
cowboy from Double Z rode over it. That wouldn't be right. And what's
to hinder this having been dropped by some cowboy who was merely riding
over our range?"

"That's possible," admitted Dick.

"But I don't believe it," asserted Nort.

"Nor I," chimed in Bud. "But you got to go slow in making accusations
out west, unless you're ready to back your opinion up with a gun; and
we don't want to do that."

"No," Nort admitted. "But Old Billee and Snake said they were going to
ride over to Double Z to-day, to sort of size up the situation. So
what's to prevent 'em taking this branding iron along and asking,
casual like, if they don't want it back?"

"Nothing to stop that," said Bud with a grin. "In fact that's just
what we'll do. Come on, we'll hit the trail for the camp and make a
sort of raid on Double Z--only we'll make it to-morrow instead of
to-day, as it's too late for a long ride."

There were murmurs of surprise and excitement at the camp, when the
boys rode in with the Double Z branding iron that Nort had picked up at
the scene of the raid.

"They dropped that last night, sure as horned toads!" cried Snake
Purdee, whose wound was excuse enough for not being out on duty.

"I reckon," agreed Pocut Pete, who likewise was off duty. "Let's see
that," and he reached for the iron which had a wooden handle to enable
a cowboy to manipulate the marker when the branding end was hot.

Bud, so Nort and Dick thought, looked rather curiously at Pocut Pete
while the latter was examining the iron. And when the strange
cowboy--strange in the sense that he had