it a real fight?" asked Nort, his eyes sparkling.

"Sounds like it," commented the western ranch lad. "But we'll have to
lay low. No guns," he added regretfully.

Dick turned to look back toward the ranch buildings, now out of sight
owing to the uneven nature of the country. He might have been
calculating whether it would be possible to go back and get weapons.

But he said nothing on this score, though he did let out an exclamation:

"There's another bunch coming along the path."

"Don't say _path_--it's a _trail_," corrected Bud with a smile. "And
that's some of our bunch," he added. "Cowboys from Diamond X. Guess
mother sent them after us, thinking we'd tackled too big a job alone."

"And it does sound like a lively fracas," observed Babe Milton, wiping
his wet and glistening face with the big handkerchief that adorned his
neck, and the neck of every cowboy that Nort and Dick had so far
observed since coming to the "cow country."

These sometimes gaudy handkerchiefs were not mere ornaments. They
served the same purpose to which Babe was then devoting his, and as the
eastern lads learned later, the silk or cotton squares formed very
effective protection to nose and mouth while riding range in the thick,
heavy dust stirred up by the feet of thousands of cattle. So, like the
"chaps," the high-heeled boots, the handkerchiefs and the guns, each
part of the equipment of a cowboy, has its use.

"Hi! They's some shootin'!" cried Slim, as he spurred forward again,
having learned what he wished of the professor.

"Oh, don't let them kill him!" begged the scientist. "It is all a
mistake--thinking we are after gold--but they'll make any excuse to try
to rob us and get the secret."

"What secret?" asked Bud, but just then a renewed outburst of shots,
punctured by shrill yells, told of the need of action as against words.

"They'll kill him! They'll kill him!" moaned Professor Blair.

"'Tain't all one sided!" declared Slim Degnan to Bud, Nort and Dick, as
the three boys managed to get their ponies on a line with the sturdy
beast of the foreman. "There's two sets of shootin' goin' on there!"

The sound of fighting, and yells, whether of defiance or fear,
increased in volume now, and came from a little glade at the base of
the wooded foothills, which formed a sort of stepping stone to the grim
mountains behind them, along the base of which flowed a river. These
hills, or part of them, marked one of the limi