the time of Pocut Pete's arrival Bud had taken a dislike to him,
and had suspected him, wrongly it appeared now, of being an addict to
some form of drug, slangily termed "dope." For he had found fragments
of thin-glass bottles, and had discovered in part of a broken phial,
the same evil-smelling mixture that, later, was associated with the
diseased cattle.

Then Bud did not know enough of the danger to act promptly, and even
when Pocut Pete was discovered, "cutting a wart off a steer," as he
falsely said, Bud did not know what to make of that. An older person
might have been suspicious enough to have acted with more promptness,
but Bud, naturally, had lots to learn.

However, as appeared later, Pocut Pete had secured from some of the
disease-killed cattle some pus, filled with millions of germs. This
unpleasant mixture he kept in tiny phials.

How he learned that to inject some of this pus under the hide of a
steer would infect the animal, not only causing it to die of the
disease, but to transmit it to others, is not vital to the story.
Sufficient that Pocut Pete did know this.

And he put his evil knowledge to evil use. He was caught by Bud, Nort
and Dick in the very act of infecting some of Bud's steers. For when
search was made in the morning, at the scene of the capture, broken
bits of phials were discovered, some with that vile, yellow substance
on them. And an inspection of the cattle showed several with cuts on
their flanks, into which cuts, it was assumed, the germs had been
injected, or rubbed.

These animals were at once isolated, to determine what would happen to
them. The ground near where Pocut Pete had carried on his nefarious
operations was sprayed with disinfectants, and the cattle that had been
with those he inoculated were also herded by themselves.

These were all the precautions that could be taken, and then Pocut Pete
was hurried off to the nearest jail, there to await trial.

"But what set him up to such vile work?" asked Nort, when the prisoner
had been taken from camp.

"What else but the desire of Hank Fisher to see our stock-raising
experiment fail?" countered Bud. "This is the doing of those
scoundrels at Double Z. I only wonder that Del Pinzo wasn't in on the
game."

"He may be yet," said Dick.

"Well, we'll be on the watch from now on--doubly on the watch,"
asserted Bud. "They won't put anything like this over on us again!"

"Not if we know it!" joined in his cousin