orth on the unoffensive morning air this portion of a ballad:

"Sing me to sleep with a spur for a rattle,
Fill up the biscuits with lead.
Coil me a rope 'round th' ole weepin' willow,
Curl my feet under my head!"

"Glad you feel that way about it," remarked Bud, rather soberly, as
they squatted around the fire for breakfast, which Buck Tooth seemed to
have prepared in record time.

"What's bit you?" asked Babe, pausing with a smoking flapjack half way
to his mouth, while in his other hand he held a steaming tin cup of
coffee. "Git out th' wrong side of th' saddle this mornin'?"

"No, but there's trouble over at the valley," explained Bud. "The
water has stopped running and----"

"The _water_ stopped running!" interrupted Babe.

"Yes, and when we start out, intending to see what's the trouble, we
get this warning," and Bud extended the dirty piece of paper that had
been fastened to the tree with the thorn.

"Whew-ee-ee!" whistled Babe, as he read the scrawl of misspelled words.
He opened his mouth again, to intone another of the hundred or more
verses of his favorite cowboy song, but Bud motioned to him to refrain.

"Don't you like my singin'?" asked Babe, a bit hurt.

"Yes, but I want to ask you some questions," went on Bud. "You say
you've been out looking for strays?"

"Yep; prospectin' up and down Snake Mountain all yist'day an' part of
th' night. My grub giv' out with supper last night, an' I was hopin' I
might even run into a bunch of Greasers, when I saw you folks spreadin'
th' banquet table here."

"Glad you joined us," remarked Nort.

"So'm I," mumbled Babe, his mouth full of bacon and flapjacks. "But
what's your questions, Bud? Shoot!"

"Did you see anybody who might have written this?" and the boy rancher
again read the sinister warning:

"'Don't take no more watter frum Pocut River if you want to stay
healthy.'"

"Why, no, I didn't see nobody," spoke Babe, with more force than
grammar. "'Tain't a joke; is it?"

"Not when I tell you the water has stopped running," said Bud.

"So you did! Hum, that's mighty queer like!" mused the assistant
foreman, who had, early in the spring, been transferred to Mr. Merkel's
Square M ranch from Diamond X. "But some of us rather thought there'd
be trouble when your paw dammed up the river to shunt some of it
through the old water course over to Buffalo Wallow. Hank Fisher
claims his water supply has been lessened by what your paw